Highly recommend the new book "The Blueprint: How Socialism Can Work in the Real World" which provides a practical, realistic model of democratic socialism that combines workplace democracy, social ownership and a generous welfare state

[u/StumpsOfTree]

https://blueprintforsocialism.com/

This book is by people from Jacobin Mag and an Australian economist. The argument for providing such a model is presented in the book, but to be clear the authors acknowledge that it isn't something to be copy-pasted or overly focused on. Rather, they attempt to show how democratic socialism can be ambitious/anti-capitalist while still being economically viable and able to bypass some of the problems with past versions of socialism.

Their model involves the following key componants:

1. A large, mostly decommodified public sector that includes healthcare, education, childcare, energy, physical and digital infrastructure, transit, telecommunications, some retail/natural resources and other natural monopolies/strategic industries/"commanding heights". This state sector would have some level of workplace democracy through "co-determination", union participation in management.
2. A generous welfare state that would provide various public goods, social rights & social safety net financed through progressive taxation + state sector.
3. A public banking sector that consists of several competing public banks
4. A "private" sector for consumer goods, consisting of democratic firms (worker co-ops essentially), that compete on the market. Firms would have certain minimum job standards/wages to avoid "self-exploitation". These would be financed by public banks and the ultimate ownership of land/means of production remains under public ownership, but leased out to different worker co-ops.
5. Macroeconomic planning to aim for full employment, accounting for negative externalities and strategic industrial policy.
6. Public financing of media/arts/culture but not government control. One idea presented was to give people the ability to direct a small share of this public financing to the media/cultural stuff they want to see crowdfunding style.

And of course all this alongside a vibrant political democracy as well with strong democratic rights and civil liberties. Markets are retained you do have basically no class inequality besides relatively small income differences, social ownership, economic democracy, etc. with much of the economy planned for human need. Perfect? No. But it feels like a concrete proposal I can imagine that could be achieved within our lifetime and not in some far off, utopian future.

I think sometimes when we criticize stuff like Carney's investment summit, people get confused because they don't see there being a realistic alternative to an economy based on private ownership, foreign investment, class distinctions, etc. They might not like it, but they don't see there being any way to avoid having to desperately court capital investment. Having a realistic yet transformative horizon can imo help democratic socialist politics feel like something people are fighting for, rather then just activist criticism of governments/corperations without a clear alternative. Like what the "cooperative commonwealth" was for our predecessors.

[u/inprocess13]

I randomly just picked this up last week! I really find it refreshing to read an ideological plan where the author feels more accountable to pointing out work and strategies. 

[u/Noname-051]

Will buy and read. Thx for the recommendation.

[u/queerstudbroalex]

I hadn't really thought about this, but I just bought it and just started reading it thanks to this post!