In any case, what has generally been tried in the 20th century is a violent overthrow of existing capitalist oppressive systems, declaring a new socialist republic, and then trying to implement socialist policy from the top down from the vanguard. This has been a failure every time it's been tried, AND requires the situation to descend to a level of poverty and deprivation that makes overthrowing the existing system almost a matter of life and death, or a major worldwide disruption like the Great War (and even then revolutionary socialism went something like 1 for 10, though it came damn close in Germany). This is not realistic in most developed countries, the very countries that Marx stated need to go socialist first.
So how do you get a socialist revolution in the USA? You're not going to overthrow the USA militarily; that's more or less the same kind of fantasies the birthers/truthers/right-wing survivalists engage in. There just isn't enough deprivation to say, launch a general strike that shuts down the nation's industry. So that means you need to engage in a long march strategy where you build grassroots support among the dispossessed, create intersectional movements that fight for progress on specific issues (if you can't get the marginalized groups on your side, you might as well not even bother), try to translate that power to the ballot box, and win progressive change which creates a different socio-political ecology for further change. This also has the benefit of creating bottom-up, grass roots institutions that can both provide an alternative to capitalist power and step in whenever that critical mass for major change does come.
Is it incremental? Yes. Do you have to make compromises as part of a longer game to get what you want? Yes. But is it more likely to not only establish a true base for socialism, but not hurt the working class in the process (because I notice a lot of "socialists" are really sanguine about hurting the working class through accelerationist bullshit to get to their idea of socialism, never mind that such an approach is more likely to lead to fascism just like it did in Germany in the 30s).
https://www.jacobinmag.com/2016/04/erik-olin-wright-real-utopias-capitalism-socialism - This post is in a similar vein.
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