by Mike Beggs, Ben Burgis, and Bhaskar Sunkara
Verso Books
9/29/2026, paperback
SKU: 9781839768637
Neither capitalism nor central planning, this is the future for socialism.
Capitalism isn't working. But is there a plausible alternative? The Blueprint lays one out: a system where workers control every lever of production, and competitive markets and state planning coexist side by side. Drawing on the history of socialist experiments and the economic debate over planning and markets, The Blueprint confronts the hardest questions about what went wrong in the past--and why it can go right in the future. The result is a socialism worthy of the twenty-first century.
Reviews:
"Democratic socialism is gaining popularity and credibility as the failures of capitalism become harder to ignore. But what would it mean to actually live under democratic socialism? This visionary book takes this critical and too-often-ignored question seriously. The result is thought-provoking, informative, and surprisingly entertaining. The future is anything but preordained, and wrestling with the ideas and proposals in this book can help us create a more just and enjoyable world." --Astra Taylor, author of The Age of Insecurity and co-author of End Times Fascism
"It is rare indeed to find a book that so keenly matches the elegance of its arguments with the passion of its politics. Here we have an alternative economic blueprint for our time, a shining antidote to the crude bestiality of a fading and failing Trumpian regime. The aim is to build a socialism of and for the people, a socialism that meets all our reasonable wants needs and desires with the minimum of effort. We can, the authors claim, for the first time in our history, "combine egalitarianism in distribution and democracy in production with the abundance of high-tech modernity." This is a book to "pry open our imaginations and put the biggest questions of politics back on the table." Let the counterattack to all that is obnoxious in our present circumstances begin." --David Harvey, author of The Story of Capital
"The Blueprint does something rare in left political writing: it takes the question of how socialism might actually work seriously enough to venture an answer. Beggs, Burgis, and Sunkara move past critique and gesture to sketch a workable blueprint -- including worker-governed firms, democratic macroeconomic management, and fully funded, non-commodified health care, education, housing, care work, banking, and pensions -- that could function at scale in a recognizable economy. The argument is rigorous but not airless and is honest about the tradeoffs involved - and how difficult it will be to reach even this near horizon. A genuinely useful book for how to exit the current labyrinth." --Greg Grandin, author of America, América
"Nothing is more urgently needed in our troubled world than a blueprint for socializing capital, democratizing workplaces, restoring the commons, decommodifying basic goods and harnessing markets to society's needs. This book has arrived with perfect timing." --Yanis Varoufakis, author of Technofeudalism
About the Authors:
Bhaskar Sunkara is the president of The Nation magazine, founder and editorial director of Jacobin, and the author of The Socialist Manifesto: The Case for Radical Politics in an Era of Extreme Inequality. Sunkara is a Guardian US columnist who has published more than two hundred articles and essays about politics in outlets like the New York Times, The Nation, the Washington Post, and Le Monde.
Mike Beggs is senior lecturer in political economy at the University of Sydney. His research focuses on the history of macroeconomic and monetary thinking and policy.
Ben Burgis is a Jacobin columnist, an adjunct philosophy professor at Rutgers University, and the host of the YouTube show and podcast Give Them An Argument. He's the author of several books, most recently Christopher Hitchens: What He Got Right, How He Went Wrong, and Why He Still Matters.