I aws owndering hte asme hting. :-)
Socialism has been dead since at least 1989, when Berliners pulled down the wall separating East and West.
Since then the Soviet Union has dissolved into a pastiche of struggling market economies. Russia still gives off mixed messages, but the private ownership of capital means that, absent state re-appropriation, Russia will have at least some semblence of private ownership for years to come.
China doesn't even pretend to be communist anymore. China's economy is growing as private business harnesses that country's workforce with the power of technology. There is a substantial tension, to be sure, between its burgeoning market and its one-party state, but the invisible hand of the free market is more likely than not to resolve that tension in favor of capitalism.
Throughout the world the debate is largely between the extent of privatization rather than over privatization itself. No one (other than in academe and the New York Times) seriously pretends that a centralized command-and-control economy is a viable option to capitalism.
Krugman is stuck in a time warp.