The Fear of Socialism...or is it Communism?

[judy]

The Trump campaign keeps maintaining confusion about the meaning of the word "Socialism"...
The confusion has to do with the difference between communism and socialism.

Communism is when the government owns the means of production. An example is the former Soviet Union.

Socialism is regulated capitalism (means of production are privately owned, except and not necessarily for what can be considered "the commons" such as police and firefighters, energy, roads, and public transportation) with emphasis on social services, unions and a commitment to democracy (examples are many European socialist governments).
Trumpists would like you to believe that socialism and communism are the same. They are not.

In fact, the U.S Constitution, written in 1787, was the first ever hint at a socialist government. A government of "We the people".
Please do not be confused, and do not adopt the language of the right wing. Language, these days is extremely important.
This post is not meant to endorse any candidate for the Presidency, but to emphasize the correct use of language.

[spanone]

1. Democrats need to talk about the fear of Authoritarianism...

[ProudMNDemocrat]

2. There is a difference between Communism and Democratic Socialism.....

Which is why Communism never works in the end. Look at Cuba, even China.

Putin would love nothing more than to go back to that so he can CONTROL it all.

[redstateblues]

4. I'm not defending Communism but Communist Capitalist China has a booming economy

[el_bryanto]

14. How much of their power is the economic power they have wielded skillfully

- which comes from their large population and the opportunity to sell to that market?

Bryant
http://politicalcomment.blogspot.com

[TheBlackAdder]

3. Yet Bill Barr said recently that he wants the US to buy cellular companies to compete with China.

.

https://www.democraticunderground.com/100212959417

.

[CrispyQ]

5. We're up against almost 40 years of brainwashing by Limbaugh and his ilk.

Forty years of misinformation and hate and divisiveness, completely unchallenged by the left. Now it's morphed into Fox and social media. I don't know how we get these people back. I have seen it three times in my family, one was a dem and the other who were apolitical, and they got caught up in the right wing hate stations or websites, and in months they were different people, all very political, all very hard right. My husband was skeptical until it happened on his side of the family.

These people are actually authoritarian followers. Bob Altemeyer has an excellent paper on how authoritarian leaders masterfully manipulate their authoritarian followers. I have to admit it's been awhile since I've been to his site. I see he's updated it for the Con.

https://www.theauthoritarians.org

on edit: My point was that authoritarian followers are easy to dupe. And now there are ways to reach massive numbers of them. I don't know how we fight this deluge of misinformation.

[maxsolomon]

7. Its longer than that. 120 years.

Socialism has been a bugbear for American Money since before WW1. The propaganda has never ceased.

Eugene Debs ran for President in 1900. He ran 5 times, and went to jail for Sedition in 1918.

[FakeNoose]

9. Fear of socialism goes back to the days of the Great Depression

Rush Limbaugh can't take much credit for America's fear of socialism or communism. He just used fear to stir up the uneducated and the non-critical thinkers, and we know there are a lot of Americans that fit that description. The super wealthy one-per-centers figured out a long ago that there aren't enough of them to ever sway an election, so they needed to attract big numbers of voters by subterfuge. We're finally seeing their end-game, and they're putting all their chips down on Chump.

[redstateblues]

6. According to its definition Socialism advocates the means of production

Distribution, and exchange should be regulated by the community as a whole. You left out means of production

[brush]

8. Actually classic socialism is when the government owns the means of production,...

and communism is a form of socialism. What you described as socialism is actually what the social democracies of Europe have—well regulated capitalism with high taxes that provide a robust safety net for their populations—single payer healtcare, free college, etc.

[gratuitous]

10. Fear of a system that works for more people, not just the wealthy

Instead of spending tax dollars on policies and programs that benefit more citizens, let's pipeline it directly into the overstuffed pockets of the wealthy, and see what happens. After stealing his pile, Andrew Carnegie built some libraries. Maybe something like that will happen again?

[Falcata]

11. Sorry

I don't want to live under a Socialist, Communist or Authoritarian government.

[ooky]

12. My personal definition of "Socialism" is a made up fear pushed by Republicans to get votes.

When I hear it used I ask the person using it to explain to me why they fear it and how they think someone labeled a socialist is going to change their life if elected president. Many don't really have any idea how to answer this question, they have just been hard wired by decades of Republican propaganda to fear it. I liken it to a little girl fearing monsters hiding under her bed when the lights go out. Fearing Soviet type communism, of course, is a common response, especially with older people who remember figures such as Khrushchev. Younger people who weren't around for that period of history don't have that mental image and far less likely to care if someone identifies as a socialist.

All Democrats can do is try to educate the public that our agenda doesn't include enslaving people under a communist regime, that anybody that believes that is falling for a lie. The problem is they are falling for a lie perpetrated to get people to vote for a party that has an agenda which is actually counter to their own personal interests. A party which has an agenda that nobody would actually vote for if it wasn't for the false fears that party is peddling to those gullible enough to believe it.

[Ron Green]

13. The USSR never had true Communism; it was State Capitalism.

Kind of the direction we’ve been moving in recent decades.

I recommend reading Richard Wolff.

[JHB]

15. Regulated capitalisim is not socialism. Can we please not adopt conservative terminology?

Conservatives have spent decades calling every policy and program they don't like "socialist". Hell, they've done it for more than a century, since they leveled the term at Theodore Roosevelt for his Progressive Party's 1912 platform, calling for a progressive income tax, old age pensions, establishment of a Labor Department, a minimum wage, regulation of corporations, etc.

Look, if you're in a small forum where everybody can agree on terminology, sure, feel free to parse the difference between socialist vs democratic socialist vs social democracy vs etc.

But out in the uncontrolled wilds of American politics, where the terminology has been vandalized for decades, there are whole swaths of people for whom "socialism" means only one thing: oppressive, authoritarian, mass-murdering police states. Y'know, like the Soviet Union's full name: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics? Those people don't see any difference between socialism and communism. It may as well be "twelve" vs "dozen".

Don't we have a big enough fight on our hands without adding a missionary side-quest over terminology before we can win it?

Regulated capitalism is regulated capitalism. A mixed economy, like what we had for the Cold War, when conservatives had to merely intimate at "creeping socialism" because there was a big obvious counterexample if they tried to talk about it in the same terms they do today.

If you're going to fight over terminology, please fight the fight that works for us: pushing back against how conservatives have warped the term. How they've vandalized the language. How they're effectively calling Dwight Eisenhower a "socialist".

How they're full of shit and how every time they use that word they can blow it out their asses because they always say that, to the point where it's meaningless.

The OP warns against adopting the language of the right wing, while doing exactly that.

[Poiuyt]

16. Joseph Stiglitz has advocated the philosophy of Progressive Capitalism

This is a good term as it integrates traditional capitalism with the understanding that government has a part in a healthy society.