OP, if you take nothing else away from this conversation, it is that different people have different notions of what exactly the word “socialism” refers to, which in practice makes it a useless word to use in the context of discussing public policy because you just end up with groups talking past each other. In the most extreme case, if someone thinks you are proposing “socialism”, then they might abruptly stop listening to what you are actually saying and assume that what you are actually proposing is to turn over the entire country to a corrupt authoritarian government because that is what the word “socialism” means to them. For this reason, should you find yourself in a discussion about public policy, it is generally better to be very specific about exactly what policies you are saying are good or bad and why you think they are good or bad without resorting to using what are in practice ambiguous and loaded terms like these. (Just to be clear, I am not saying that this state of affairs is reasonable, just that this is how it is at the moment.)
In real general terms, communism is about people/state’s ownership of the means of production. Under this system, most private property is nationalized.
Socialism allows for private property and sees the role of the state to redistribute power and wealth among its citizens through some sort of state program.
Also for additional information, Countries/Economies don’t have to be entirely one or the other.
The US has both socialist and capitalist components. The post office system is socialist, so are functions like public roads, and fire and police services. There are also overtly socialist programs in place in things like food stamps, medicare, etc.
Other countries like Canada are the same, but generally have more socialist organizations and programs in comparison (like our healthcare system and electric grids)
The post office system is socialist, so are functions like public roads, and fire and police services.
I’d argue that having the government provide a service isn’t enough to call something socialist. In “The Wealth of Nations”, Adam Smith said that in a free-market economy, the governments role was to provide defence, law and order, and public works (eg. roads and education). If we’re using Marx’s definitions for communism, then surely we have to use Smith’s definitions for Capitalism.
Even if you do exclude those pieces, the US still has socialist organizations and programs that fall outside that definition. I’d argue that even Adam smith is just realizing that socialism is required for certain industries because capitalism has extreme market failures in situations where two or more providers are not economically viable, or in situations where the public good an profit are not aligned.
Florida has a public state insurance company for example. It had to because insurers are fleeing the state.
Texas maintains a publicly controlled electricity distribution organization (Ercort) covering most of the state.
First off, you may live in a republic. I don’t. Don’t assume everyone is American.
Secondly, your definition of Socialism is too narrow. Socialism isn’t strictly an economic system of who owns things. Social welfare programs are Socialism, but in the political sense. The political movement of Socialism almost always involves wealth redistribution programs like food stamps.
The US is very obviously not strictly a capitalist country. The government owns and controls significant assets including land, resources, and companies which it utilizes to the benefit of the citizenry and would fall under even your definition of Socialism.
Between the federal and state governments, they own around 60% of all the land in the US. https://www.nrcm.org/documents/publiclandownership.pdf
Fanny and Freddie? FDIC? Government owned Export-Import Bank of the United States (EXIM)? Government owned Hospitals? There’s a number that are owned by State Governments Airports? Liquor Stores? Lotteries? Utilities? Transit Systems? Also lots of them owned by Governments in the US
You are mistaken. Socialism is worker owned means of production. Communism is a theoretical stateless, classless, moneyless society that Marx supposed would eventually form from the conditions of socialism (AKA dictatorship of the proletariat).
Does communism really only have this one meaning defined by marx? At least to me that sounds stoopid to let one guy define something that could be a spectrum
No, there have been many theorists after Marx who added their own thoughts. Marx came up with it though so his influence is great.
Your definition of socialism is false. Socialism is when the means of production are owned by the workers. This is incompatible with capitalism, where the means of production are held by those who own capital. In simpler terms, under socialism workers have agency over how their workplace whereas under capitalism that is decided by a CEO/board of directors.
What you’re describing is a social democracy, which is a more socialised version of capitalism.
Factories and stuff. In capitalism, a rich person buys the equipment necessary to turn raw materials into useful products, pays workers a set wage to operate that equipment, and then pockets the difference between the cost of raw materials and employee wages, and the sales price of the product. In socialism, the equipment is collectively owned by the workers themselves, who share the difference between the price of raw materials and sales price.
Socialism: a political and economic theory of social organization which advocates that the means of production, distribution, and exchange should be owned or regulated by the community as a whole.
Socialism would be a country like USSR. What you are on about could easily be a capitalist country like Denmark. I’m a big time capitalist because I think socialism is inherently unstable and prone to have huge huge inefficiencies as seen in the USSR. You need the market to correct itself. But like capitalist countries like Denmark, Sweden, Switzerland I think the capitalist state should correct the market with externalities and via taxes pay for education, healthcare etc. As time goes on I support UBI and we should start that now. Economists are beginning to push cash transfers as the best means of improvement the welfare of citizens. But this is absolutely capitalism, the free market and capital expenditure by individuals is the foundation of the system.
I have no idea why, at times, Americans do not understand the word socialism. Plenty of people in European capitalist countries died to try get out of a socialist system or to avoid it. Yet some Americans say they are socialist. It’s crazy and disrespectful.
It depends a lot on what you actually mean by socialism and communism because these words can have very different meanings to different people and ideology.
As a very broad baseline, socialism is the socialization of the means of production, as opposed to the current privatization of those means. Now there are a lot of ways this could be done, and thus a lot of ways to define socialism. Some socialists want a strong State that can enforce strict rules of ownership, others want no State at all and a free cooperation between individuals, with a lot of variations in between. An anarchist, a communist, a social-democrat would all consider themselves socialists, even when they actually have very distinct ideologies.
Now communism, at least in its most recognizable form, is basically the end state of socialism in the Marxist ideology specifically. It designates a stateless, classless society in which each person contributes according to their ability and receives according to their needs. It’s basically the end goal theorized by Marx that has never been achieved yet in History.
