Ben Burgis in conversation with Matt McManus – The Blueprint
Sunday, Oct 11, 2026 4:00 PM
Location:
A Cappella Books
208 Haralson Avenue, NE
Atlanta, Georgia 30307
“Nothing is more urgently needed in our troubled world than a blueprint for socializing capital, democratizing workplaces, restoring the commons, decommodifying basic goods and harnessing markets to society’s needs. This book has arrived with perfect timing.” —Yanis Varoufakis, author of “Technofeudalism”
A Cappella Books is pleased to welcome author Ben Burgis for an in-store talk and signing in honor of his timely new book, “The Blueprint: How Socialism Can Work in the Real World.” He will appear in conversation with Matt McManus, author of “What Is Liberal Socialism?”
This event is free and open to the public; copies of the book will be available for purchase.
About the Book
Neither capitalism nor central planning, this is the future for socialism.
Capitalism isn’t working. But is there a plausible alternative? The Blueprint lays one out: a system where workers control every lever of production, and competitive markets and state planning coexist side by side. Drawing on the history of socialist experiments and the economic debate over planning and markets, “The Blueprint” confronts the hardest questions about what went wrong in the past—and why it can go right in the future. The result is a socialism worthy of the twenty-first century.
About the Authors
Ben Burgis is a Jacobin columnist, an adjunct philosophy professor at Rutgers University, and the host of the YouTube show and podcast “Give Them An Argument.” He’s the author of several books, most recently “Christopher Hitchens: What He Got Right, How He Went Wrong, and Why He Still Matters.”
Mike Beggs is senior lecturer in political economy at the University of Sydney. His research focuses on the history of macroeconomic and monetary thinking and policy.
Bhaskar Sunkara is the president of The Nation magazine, founder and editorial director of Jacobin, and the author of “The Socialist Manifesto: The Case for Radical Politics in an Era of Extreme Inequality.” Sunkara is a Guardian US columnist who has published more than two hundred articles and essays about politics in outlets like the New York Times, The Nation, the Washington Post, and Le Monde.
About the Conversation Partner
Matt McManus is the author of “What Is Liberal Socialism?”, “The Political Theory of Liberal Socialism” and “The Rise of Postmodern Conservatism” amongst other books. He's an Assistant Professor at Spelman College.
