Why? Socialism is not a narrow political philosophy, it’s a continuum that includes virtually all modern economic thought. Stalin was a socialist. Hitler was a socialist. FDR was a socialist. Dubya is a socialist. Some more than others, and they disagree on the particulars, but ultimately they all fall under the umbrella of socialism.
There’s nothing wrong with admitting the USSR was socialist any more than there is in admitting they had roads. They weren’t bad because they had socialist economic policies, although those policies were certainly executed with the competence of a monkey on acid. They were bad because they squelched free thought and expression, killed thousands, and were subjected the nations on their border to a series of expansionist campaigns. It’s those things we should condemn and seek to differentiate in ourselves.
The problem isn’t that the USSR needs to be excluded from socialism, it’s that the USA (even its Republican elements) need to be included in it. During the Cold War the word was appropriated to try and link anyone left of George Wallace to the communist movement, but I think it’s been long enough now that we can start using it in its proper sense again. We won’t, but we can.
Not exactly. Those are the components of a totalitarian state. You could say the same of the Reich, for instance, and they certainly weren’t communist. Marxist communism is the idea that as technology and science advance, we will reach the point where scarcity is eliminated and thus economics becomes bunk, leading to a classless and stateless society. Subsequent thinkers, notably Lenin, decided that this could be accomplished by dedication to increased industrial production rather than simply occuring as a result of natural social evolution.
Both of these ideas are silly, but that’s for another thread.
Unfortunately, it seems that you do not. You continue to use “communist” in the sloppy manner that I noted in my response to WoodCM as the third definition. This interferes with any serious discussion, because language that imprecise simply clouds the issue rather than clarifying it.
The U.S.S.R. was a totalitarian state. A majority (although not 100%) of those states that have been established under the hope or pretense of fulfilling the vision of Karl Marx have been totalitarian states. However, 100% of them have been socialist. While that might give you a comfortable feeling of knowledge, it needs to be pointed out that there are other totalitarian states that have never attempted to implement the ideas of Marx. In addition, you have missed the point that there are, indeed, socialist states that have free elections and truly representative governments. Socialism is, as noted above, a general belief about economy that extends across a broad spectrum of political efforts.
Communism is the free association of individuals in a classless society. There will not be nation states in a communist society, therefore naming a country “Communist Republic” is ridicoulus.
If that is what made the vicious criminals in charge of the “evil empire” name their countries “socialist” instead - I don’t know.