Thanks, Cowbee! It seems to me, that in practice (as opposed to theory, not game), if socialism is 5 steps away on the chessboard, then market socialism has to be step 1, simply because that’s where we are (1. markets aren’t going away tomorrow, and 2. everyone currently has to engage in the economy one way or another). It’s what is the ‘adjacent next’. Changing everyone’s minds all at once seems mathematically impossible. I guess what I’m trying to say is that it is possible that all our collective energies might be better spent focusing on just step 1.

Suppose we replace all capitalists with worker cooperatives. What happens when two worker cooperatives compete in free market? We’ll still be at capitalism, wont we?