The paper – written with André Pedersen Ystehede (Statistics Denmark) – deals with the recent resurgence of interest in the concept of “socialism” from an economic perspective. The most significant contemporary proposals for a new model of socialism are surveyed across five major thematic areas: socialism as a voluntary endeavour and socialist ethics; socialism as a process of democratization; socialism, efficiency and profit maximization; the problem of planning and the new calculation debate; and, socialism as a means versus socialism as an end. A common framework to assess the new blueprints is constructed to identify the likely directions of the research on these themes in the near future.