COLLEGE PARK, Md. -- If conservative Republicans are right and the $700 billion financial-sector rescue plan signals America's slide into socialism, you'd think Seth Dellinger would be celebrating.

But Mr. Dellinger, a Socialist Workers Party candidate for Congress, says that what might smell like communism to free-market purists looks like just another capitalist shell game to him.

"They can reorganize capitalism in different ways, and they will," says Mr. Dellinger, a college graduate turned working-class meat cutter. "But it is above all with a view toward continuing a system in which a small minority of super-rich families controls everything."

To Mr. Dellinger, 32, capitalism's crisis may be socialism's opportunity. He's making the case to anyone who will listen that the U.S. should adopt a Cuban-style government before the Bush administration and Congress empty the treasury in order to keep workers from storming the barricades. "What they're trying to do, above all, is prevent millions of workers from lining up outside banks all over the country, because they know they'll have to send troops and cops," says Mr. Dellinger. "That kind of scenario could unfold quicker than people think."

On Wednesday, as he does once a week or so, he and another Socialist Worker drove to the University of Maryland and set up a folding table outside the student union. Mr. Dellinger, wearing black slacks, a mock turtleneck and smudged horn-rimmed glasses, taped up a few posters. "U.S. Troops Out of Iraq and Afghanistan," said one. "For a Workers and Farmers Government," said another.