Vote negative to conceptually expand socialism beyond the economic. That generates credibility and unites emerging movements.

In any case, "socialism," too, is back! For decades the word was considered an embarrassment--a despised failure and relic of a bygone era. No more. At least not in the United States.' Today, US politicians like Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez wear the label proudly and win support, while organizations like the Democratic Socialists of America attract new members in droves. But what exactly do they mean by "socialism"? However welcome, enthusiasm for the word does not translate automatically into serious reflection on its content. What exactly does or should "socialism" signify in the present era?

The arguments of the preceding chapters suggest an answer. The expanded conception of capitalism outlined there implies that we need an expanded conception of socialism, too. After all, once we've abandoned the view of capitalism as an economy, we can no longer understand socialism as an alternative economic system. If capital is wired to cannibalize the "non-economic" supports of commodity production, then a desirable alternative to it must do more than socialize ownership of the means of production. Over and above that desideratum--which I wholeheartedly endorse--it must also transform production's relation to its background conditions of possibility: namely, social reproduction, public power, nonhuman nature, and forms of wealth that lie outside capital's official circuits but within its reach. In other words, as I shall explain, a socialism for our time must overcome not only capital's exploitation of wage labor, but also its free riding on unwaged carework, public powers, and wealth expropriated from racialized subjects and nonhuman nature.

This point invites a disclaimer at the outset: to expand the idea of socialism is not to add epicycles to it. Far from simply appending more features to received understandings, it will be necessary to transform the very concept. That is in effect what I sought to do for capitalism in the previous chapters--by treating as structurally integral to it matters that are usually considered secondary--above all, gender/sexuality, race/ empire, ecology, and democracy. Now, in the present chapter, I seek to do the same for socialism. I aim to reconceive it, too, as an institutionalized societal order, one that is as comprehensive as capitalism--and hence, can claim to be a credible alternative to it. In this way, I hope to cast new light as well on many classical topoi of socialist thought: on domination and emanci pation; on class and crisis; on property, markets, and planning; and on necessary labor, free time, and social surplus. Each of those matters should assume a different guise once we view socialism, too, as more than an economy. What should appear as well are the outlines of a socialism that differs sharply from Soviet-style Communism, on the one hand, and from social democracy, on the other--a socialism for the twenty-first century.

I must begin, however, by revisiting capitalism, which is the necessary starting point for discussions of socialism. Socialism, after all, should not be a "mere ought" or utopian dream. If it is worth discussing now, it is rather because it encapsulates real, historically emergent possibilities: potentials for human freedom, well-being, and happiness that capitalism has brought within reach but cannot actualize. Equally important, socialism is a response to capitalism's impasses and injustices: to logjams that the system precipitates periodically and cannot overcome definitively; and to forms of domination that are so deeply grounded in it that they cannot be eradicated within it. Socialism, in other words, claims to remedy capitalism's ills. And so, it is there that we must begin.