They don’t like that, so it must be socialist.
I mean, how do people who live in other countries define socialism?
Socialism is a little bird twittering in the meadow. Socialism is a bouquet of pretty flowers, that smell bad.
Uhm, why are you giving me the Spock treatment?
I think Hilaire Belloc’s take on the word socialism was that one could define it strictly, to mean some kind of grand confiscation of land & industry, the engines of wealth; or one could do what most self-described socialists did & use it so vaguely as to have no clear policy meaning.
I am happily in the latter camp. I call myself a socialist because I advocate things that are called socialist by their opponents, & I want to make it not a bad word; because I think that government exists for the welfare of the country, not merely as an extortion racket, & it needs to be reminded of that; and because advocating for the good of society is better than fetishing freedom (like Hayek) or speaking vaguely of progress (like some techno-utopian), so I decline the terms “liberal” & “progressive” as primary self-descriptors.
In practice, I would say socialism can be contrasted to corporatism, in that a socialist program may be fully government-owned, while a corporatist program may work through private intermediaries to serve social ends. The USA is trending toward corporatism, which I consider unnecessarily aristocratic.
As we strict constructionists frequently get reminded around here, ours is a living language. Words take on meanings other than their strict dictionary meaning, and this is happening with “socialism.”
I think many people these days view socialism as being when the government seeks either to redistribute wealth in order to benefit certain segments of the population, or to assume responsibility and control over various aspects of our lives.
(Neither of which, I might add, are comparable to building roads, which benefit everyone who chooses to use them equally and which can be used free from government control.)
So you take a word with existing connotations & then take advantage of those connotations to disparage a new denotation you’ve attached to it?
In that case, I guess I may now refer to laissez-faire capitalism as “self-mutilation.” But see, this is why I just say I’m a socialist, even though I’m probably a progressive liberal by some technical definition.
That said, “when the government seeks either to redistribute wealth in order to benefit certain segments of the population,” is probably corruption if it’s the more offensive type we see in the USA today. And, “to assume responsibility and control over various aspects of our lives,” is what we call governance. What a great many things you use one word for!
And I’m pretty sure the Highway Patrol would dispute the idea that roads are free of government control.
Does the Highway Patrol or any other government agency control when you get to use the nation’s highways? Or for how long? Or how long you have to wait to gain access to them? Or what portion you qualify to benefit from?
I could go on but I’m sure you already know what I’m getting at.
A straw man argument about health care?
Actually, I think “progressive” is a better word for what you’re describing – i.e., something to the right of “socialist” and to the left of “liberal.”
Not the point I was driving at. Whether a policy (such as state ownership) is socialist or not can only be judged on the purposes and aims of that policy. Although I would not go so far as to say it’s a hard and fast rule, in general the socioeconomic structure of a society would be a pretty good indicator of whether or not an act is socialistic in its purposes and aims. State ownership exists to some extent in almost every country on earth, and certainly not always for socialistic aims and purposes. Therefore it is incorrect to label state ownership as socialistic.
The free speech bit was an illustration of Bismarck’s political position. If his hostility towards socialists was such that he had no compunction pushing for laws against them, and he enacted a universal public health care program specifically to drain public support away from socialist ideas, how can you argue that universal health care is in and of itself socialist? If it were inherently so, shouldn’t Bismarck’s hostility toward all things socialist have led him to oppose it? Again, purposes and aims.
Well, in the end it seems you did get what I was talking about. Fair enough.
An afterthought, just for clarification.
Bismarck’s universal health care plan was designed, as I’ve said, to drain off public support for socialism. Therefore it was limited - that is, enough of a compromise to keep working people happy without seriously threatening the order of things. Whatever got them to sit down, shut up and not rock the boat so hard was acceptable. Reluctantly progressive on Bismarck’s part, but not socialist.
Socialists pushing for universal health care, on the other hand, would use the enactment of such a plan in three ways: as a basis for pushing for further health care reform and increased health benefits; as a concrete experience from which lessons could be drawn by working people regarding how to fight for similar reforms in other areas of society; and, finally, as a point of agitation around which they could argue that the only way to win these kind of fights once and for all is through the radical reconstruction of society - that is, a socialist revolution.
The key element here is the self-activity of the working class. Even limited reforms like Bismarck’s UHC don’t come out of thin air, but are a response to either a genuine or perceived threat of mass working-class action from below. They are not socialistic in and of themselves, but they can become socialistic if they are used by the working class as starting points in the struggle for more.
Socialism and other “isms” applied to political discussions are compass headings that relate to liberal and conservative direction. One steers toward state-run industries and one toward privately run institutions.