Many speak of changing the direction in which the system is developing, hoping that enough partial successes will eventually lead people to see the merits of trying a more radical, systemic solution or at least will buffer the worst effects of the mindless machinery of profit. But efforts to tame the market system are futile, because you cannot run a system of class exploitation in the interests of the exploited majority. Socialism vs. the State Nationalizing industry has often naively been proposed as a solution. The workers in a nationalized Chrysler Corporation would be no less the servants of profit than they are now. And whatever the merits of national health insurance, such a plan would not divert any real decision-making power into the hands of the working majority.
Nationalization is state capitalism.
Gaining control of the government is in any case not the same as operating the machinery of state. None of the now-defunct Leninist governments ever aimed at eliminating capital as the basis of wealth production and consumption. Not one of the Leninist parties ever encouraged workers to dig their way out of marketplace economics at the point of production. The only thing socialists can actually do with a government is use it ,over a short period, to implement the explicit decision of the majority to eliminate the requirement of paying for goods and services. This can only work if people, acting as both workers and consumers, already recognize the need for anti-market solutions, and it can only be functional if formal democracy is reinforced by the power of immediate recall over the delegates elected.