In a thread under this meme, a chud commented "socialism is cringe." When I responded with, "Taxes going towards social welfare programs isn't socialism, lol," a girl replied:

actually it is definitely a socialist thing. Public schools, public infrastructure (such as roads and parks), stuff such as the fire brigade, public transport, medicare/Medicaid, and even the military. Essentially, if the government funds it, it is widely beneficial to people, and its free for said people to access... Then it's probably socialist. A lot of American stuff is based on socialism. Some elements of socialism is literally required to function. Imagine if there was no public school. Or every fire department was privately owned. Your kids get no education, your house burns down... Well unless you are rich enough to pay, of course.

I said, "Socialism is when the means of production are publicly-owned. Taxes being used to fund programs has existed long before socialism was an established ideology. I get what you mean, but sometimes I cringe when people say that socialism is when the government does stuff. This is coming from a socialist."

Then she came back with this:

"In a purely socialist system, all production and distribution decisions are made by the collective, directed by a central planner or government body. " By that definition, a government funded state school is controlled by the government, whom the public vote in. Hence...

I mean, the "all production and distribution decisions are made by the collective" part is pretty key to establishing whether something is socialist or not. Sure, publicly-funded fire departments, healthcare, education, and transportation would exist in a socialist system, but those institutions aren't inherently socialist by themselves just because we pay taxes to fund them. But I'm struggling to put into words that socialism refers to the economy and society as a whole, and not just things that we pay for through taxes.

  • axont [she/her, comrade/them]
    ·
    2 years ago

    Liberals often use the word socialism to mean what we'd call social democracy or public welfare. They use the word communism to mean something kinda like what we call socialism. And they tend to have no words to describe the particulars of leftist ideology as a base framework. You can actually see this divide with European parties. There will often be a socialist party and also a communist party in the same country, with the first being social democrats and the latter typically being Marxist-Leninists.

    An issue is that liberals believe in an inherent public/private division that simply exists as a feature of reality, not to be questioned or overthrown. There is simply always a state that is publicly funded that exists to regulate a private sphere. That simply can't change according to liberalism, because it's intrinsic to how humans interact with one another. So all politics is a game of negotiating how far apart the two spheres are, which is why your person said pure socialism is when a central planner regulates the entirety of all production. The sliding scale of public has overwhelmed the private. It's why liberals fall into a trap of believing fascism is socialist.

    Stalin's interview with HG Wells is a really good read on this stuff. HG Wells calls US president Roosevelt more of a socialist than Stalin, right to his face. Stalin is actually really polite about it and gives answers like this:

    Stalin : But what will this "socialism" be? At best, bridling to some extent, the most unbridled of individual representatives of capitalist profit, some increase in the application of the principle of regulation in national economy. That is all very well. But as soon as Roosevelt, or any other captain in the contemporary bourgeois world, proceeds to undertake something serious against the foundation of capitalism, he will inevitably suffer utter defeat.