Krugman isn’t a sound choice at all; he’s a neo-Keynesian. Though there are important differences between Keynesianism and neo-Keynesianism (such as the incorporation of the IS/LM model, the Phillips Curve, and the Mundell-Fleming model; recall Joan Robinson’s reference to "bastard Keynesianism), Keynesianism and neo-Keynesianism are both based in the sustainment of capitalism, since socialism entails the public ownership and management of the means of production. Krugman himself is also ultimately supportive of trade liberalization.
My own advocacy of socialism is based on an interest in efficiency maximization. While even the most neutral depict capitalism as defended by those interested in efficiency and socialism as defended by those interested in equity, capitalism is characterized by an abundance of negative externalities, market concentration, and asymmetric information, all efficiency killers. Socialism, by contrast, is built upon workers’ ownership and management, which has been shown to exceed the productivity of the orthodox capitalist firm.
Cohen and Burczak’s Socialism After Hayek are both excellent choices. What’s ironic is that as Burczak in particular illustrates, the Austrian critique of central planning has been turned on its head in the case of the labor cooperative. The orthodox capitalist firm is rigidly hierarchical, meaning that there will be impediments to the acquisition and transmission of distributed knowledge and tacit knowledge. The far more horizontal structure of the labor cooperative largely minimizes this problem, and eliminates principal-agent problems caused by asymmetric information by unifying ownership and management. Since workers are both owners and managers, there is no longer a divergence of interests between the two.
I don’t think so. Let’s consider the typical rightist claim that voluntary workers’ ownership and enterprise would be introduced by market forces if it were truly a more productive form of organization. Although workers’ ownership and management has an empirically proven record of greater efficiency than the orthodox capitalist firm, it won’t spontaneously emerge as the dominant form of firm organization. Many anti-socialists are confused as to why that is, insisting that markets would be forced to introduce something if it was more efficient, since anyone could simply gain a competitive edge by using it. This is an indication of their economic utopianism and failure to consider the all-important factor of market concentration. True libertarians understand the unjust, restrictive nature of such conditions. For example, the point is well illustrated in a letter of libertarian social theorist John Stuart Mill that attacked established sellers that created an unfair barrier to firm entry through underselling:
That illustrates market socialist economic theorist Jaroslav Vanek’s point that “[t]he capitalist economy is not a true market economy because in western capitalism, as in Soviet state capitalism, there is a tendency towards monopoly. Economic democracy tends toward a competitive market.” The consolidation of the private ownership of the means of production by the financial class prevents fair market competition and maximization of efficiency.