This year marks the five-hundredth anniversary of Thomas More’s Utopia — the book that introduced the term “utopia” into radical thought during the early days of capitalism. In More’s story, a fictional character matter-of-factly declares, “wherever you have private property and money is the measure of all things, it is hardly ever possible for a commonwealth to be governed justly or happily.”

Half a millennium later, this idea — that private ownership of the means of production is the central barrier to a better world — has much purchase on the Left, with many calling for an economy based on direct worker and community control.

Michael Albert and Robin Hahnel were at the forefront of such demands, attempting to establish the practical feasibility of a “participatory economy” beginning in the early 1990s. Writing after the 2008 financial crisis, Hahnel re-emphasized the importance of believing in a plausible alternative: without it, he said, “we cannot expect people to take the risks necessary to change things” nor “forge a strategy of how to get from here to there.”