This silly debate comes up everywhere these days as railing against the current western economic system has come in vogue on the web. But it's not enough to complain, I can fill bookshelves with Reddit comments that do that, we need to imagine solutions!
A sibling comment pointed out Mondragon which uses the ParEcon form of economic management which is an actual answer to the question. I'd love to see other answers.
They don't often mention that part when they talk about trade liberalization, do they? This shit has been understood for centuries, but asset-owners just can't help themselves when they get a chance to pump at the expense of export-makers, even if it's literal communists they are selling us out to. I'd rather not sell out to the literal communists, so let's (continue to) roll back the changes. If we don't do it voluntarily, our hollowed out industrial base will eventually start losing us wars and it will happen involuntarily, with a lot more pain.
These are not the 1940s, you cannot convert a car plant to produce jet fighters. So the industrial base writ large is irrelevant. If you are really afraid of losing a world war, you are advocating for expanding the MIC specifically. Problem as Eisenhower put it is that you would hang humanity from a cross of iron. MIC spending necessarily crowds out economic activity for civilian benefit.
Anyway, our MIC is quite large already.
If your understanding of supply chains is so poor that it does not encompass more than a single vertically integrated entity, this deficiency will lead you to catastrophically incorrect conclusions like:
> the industrial base writ large is irrelevant
This in particular:
> If you are really afraid of losing a world war, you are advocating for expanding the MIC specifically
is an egregiously inept straw man. Not only are many industrial machines dual use, most are dual use. In fact, I propose a challenge: I'll name an industrial machine that is dual use and you respond with one that isn't. We go back and forth until we have settled the matter.
I'll start: plastic injection molding machine
Second, if there is a war between US and China we are fighting with the military we brought to the party. Concretely, in the scenario of a hot war over Taiwan we either break a Chinese blockade in relatively short order or Taiwan is forced to capitulate and we have nothing left to fight over. Taiwan cannot last long enough for us to shift to a war economy.
Third, even if we were to assume Taiwan could last, or that we would undertake to eventually liberate Taiwan, a total war where we are rushing to re-purpose our plastic injection molding machines is fantasy. A total war between nuclear powers? It is IMO an irresponsible concept. The eventual escalation would render industry (again) irrelevant.
Fourth, even with dual use technology you cannot convert civilian industry to military industry on a reasonable timescale for such a fight - not in the Cold War and certainly not today. Spinning up new production of jet fighters is one example. But then think about the USN - a critical branch in a fight over Taiwan. Naval strategy is built strategy. I do not think you produce a single carrier before the war is done, not even from existing yards unless work started before the war.
This is relatively well-trodden ground since the Korean war. The entire Cold War, we tried in various ways to reckon with the fact that military preparedness now required a permanent investment in arms production. So yes, I think if you want to be better prepared for war with China you should advocate for a permanent expansion of the MIC, and I further think our MIC is large enough already.
Workplace democracy is the only answer. Any other system is just some form of private ownership, with all the same problems. If we have a different system for choosing owners, it's either not private ownership or we arrive right back where we started.