The polar ice caps are melting, hurricanes and droughts ravish the planet, and the earth's population is threatened by catastrophic climate change. Millions of American jobs have been sent overseas and aren't coming back. Young African-American men make up the majority of America's prison population. Half of the American population are poor or near poor, living precariously on the brink, while the top one percent own as much as the bottom eighty. Government police-state spying on its citizens is pervasive. Consequently, as former President Jimmy Carter has said, "we have no functioning democracy." Imagine: Living In a Socialist U.S.A., edited by Francis Goldin, Debby Smith, and Michael Steven Smith, is at once an indictment of American capitalism as the root cause of our spreading dystopia and a cri de coeur for what life could be like in the United States if we had economic as well as a real political democracy. This anthology features essays by revolutionary thinkers, activists, and artists—including Academy Award-winning filmmaker Michael Moore, civil rights activist Angela Davis, incarcerated journalist Mumia Abu Jamal, and economist Rick Wolff— addressing various aspects of a new society and, crucially, how to get from where we are now to where we want to be, living in a society that is truly fair and just.

"As the turmoil of interlinked crises unfold across the nation and world - crises ranging from climate disasters to the rise of authoritarianism to state-sponsored violence - social scientists can explain what is happening and why. Malin and Kallman offer an accessible, clear book, showing how communities are building better systems and how sociology can help us understand how and why they do this challenging work. Tackling neoliberalism head-on, these communities engage the structures that led us here and show how communities counter the structural violence of neoliberalism by building more distributive and regenerative systems. Malin and Kallman begin by analyzing the origins of these unprecedented social and environmental crises - critiquing structures from colonialism to the state to extractivism. They dig into sociology's colonial past and the consequences of it, arguing that environmental sociology still has the tools to become a more inclusive and intersectional social science. They examine the origins and staying power of neoliberal ideologies, policies, and culture - and show why they create such persistent problems. The authors then present an array of case studies, exploring how community-centered efforts expand beyond neoliberal capitalism's limitations. They show how communities craft more distributive and regenerative systems that fundamentally depart from neoliberal capitalism. These communities range from regenerative hemp farmers, to water protectors to activists fighting oil refineries and uranium mines, to celebratory street band musicians, and Indigenous-led renewable energy cooperatives. All are examples of communities creating new approaches to counter crises like inequality, climate catastrophe, and alienation. These illustrations are emergent, happening in real time and on-the-ground, and are visionary departures from business-as-usual models, showing how people can transform social inequality and environmental injustice"--