Ironically, the [monopolistic] concentration of capital means that one of the great fears about socialism - that decisions about what to sell would be made by small, unelected groups of bureaucrats, rather than determined by competition - is increasingly coming true under capitalism.

The truth is: political reality changes quickly, so it's best to pick the things you want to see happen, and do your best to try to make them happen.

The free market is not necessarily free. Whether people are free depends not just on whether they own themselves, but whether others have power over them in practice.

A commitment to expanding democracy is at the core of all good socialist thinking. Democracy is the principle that people ought to have a say over decisions that affect them, and that they should be in control of their own lives rather than being subjected to the wishes of powerful economic and political elites.

Part of the core socialist commitment involves insisting on pressing forward even when you're being told your goals are unachievable.

The socialist project is not just to create better living standards, but to create collective joy. It is a response to the loneliness, alienation, and deep sadness that occurs when everything is commodified and people are left on their own, without communal ties or collective support, to satisfy themselves through the purchase of consumer goods.

Socialists have advocated numerous ways of democratizing the economy, from setting up worker cooperatives to nationalizing major industries... At the core of economic democracy is the notion that control should not be vested in a small group of people, but in the people who do the labor. Managers and owners shouldn't decide what the workers have to do, the workers should decide what managers have to do (or if they need managers at all). And they should own the workplaces themselves.

...people don't need the illusory freedom of free-market choice (aka, the freedom to die when your medical bill exceeds your paycheck), nor the farcical freedom of an authoritarian police state; they need the ability to meaningfully choose between a lot of different routes of happiness. If this isn't what's happening, then you're not creating a socialist state, you're building an abominable perversion of socialism's ideals.