Socialism is a fundamentally different social system where the world's resources are not controlled by a greedy, undemocratic oligarchy. This is not the same as the capitalist welfare states that have existed in some European countries.

For a whole historic period after World War II, US capitalism was the strongest in the world and could afford to concede rising living standards.

We have a rotting infrastructure that is literally poisoning children in Flint, Newark and elsewhere.

Bernie Sanders has shown that socialism is no longer the barrier that it used to be during the Cold War.

Today, we live in a world of incredible wealth and technology, alongside the most horrendous conditions of poverty, war and environmental crisis. This is result of capitalism, a system based on prioritizing profits not human need where the wealth is concentrated in the hands of a capitalist elite.

A permanent and sustainable solution to all the problems facing working people is possible by taking the biggest companies into democratic ownership, and reorganizing the economy on a democratically planned basis. Under such a system we could democratically decide how to allocate resources. We could rapidly transition away from fossil fuels, develop massive jobs programs to rebuild the country's rotting infrastructure, and begin to build a whole new world based on meeting the needs of the majority, not the profits of a few.

To break the power of the big corporations, we would propose that the biggest 500 corporations that dominate the rigged economy and political system should be taken into public ownership, and run democratically.