Socialists have long argued that the failures of capitalism can only be overcome by a shift from private to public ownership and from market competition to economy-wide coordination. A growing number of our compatriots are open to our ideas; under the pandemic, even some Republicans are calling for more socialist measures like handing out cash payments to unemployed workers.

The emergency conditions created by the COVID-19 pandemic open space for our advocacy. We still face the challenge of convincing people that a socialist transformation of our entire economy — where public ownership and control would be economy-wide and not limited to health care and emergencies — could be both democratic and effective. One obstacle is that we simply don’t have any example we can point to. However, as I argue in my recent book The 99 Percent Economy, we have at hand an impressive working model of socialism, albeit in a surprising place — in some of our biggest businesses.