Steve, I would like to bring up a few points. Capitalism is first and foremost a social relation, not a type of government. Secondly, it is based on the extraction of surplus-value from labor, and thus the accumulation of capital. This is possible because people have been dispossesed of the means to directly meet their needs, and are forced to sell their labor for a wage. With this in mind, how is your "socialist economy" not capitalist? The corporations are nationalized, but they still exist! In other words, I am assuming you want to replace the capitalist free market with One Big Capitalist (the state). I have brought up similar ideas before, see santacruz.indymedia.org/newswire/display_any/12353. What I am trying to do is cut through the rhetoric about the "needs of the people" and try to understand what you are actually talking about.