64 percent say Democratic Party supports socialism, says poll

[PETRUS]

81. Thank you.

Government ownership is/was just one idea about how to achieve worker control. Like you said, most contemporary leftists (at least those with whom I have some familiarity) are more interested in co-ops and co-determination than state ownership. That said, I agree that there may be certain cases where government ownership is viable (and preferable to private, for profit enterprise). One lesson from the 20th century that seems obvious to me is that ownership by an autocratic/authoritarian government is not at all a path to worker control. Of course, an autocratic/authoritarian government is objectionable (to me, anyway) whether or not it owns industry.

I embrace an even broader definition of socialism. Karl Polanyi wrote "Socialism is, essentially, the tendency inherent in an industrial civilization to transcend the self-regulating market by consciously subordinating it to a democratic society." (That's one of the most succinct explanations I have encountered.) There isn't a purely capitalist/market society anywhere in the world - it "never works out well," to quote the fellow upthread. All of the so-called capitalist countries are actually mixed economies. Certain kinds of regulation and public spending are appropriately understood as expressions of socialism. In theory, we could rely on markets to deliver K-12 education, fire service, and set the wage floor (to list a few examples), but people prefer to "transcend the self-regulating market by consciously subordinating it to a democratic society" in those cases. It's hard not to notice that the the right wing describes certain measures as "socialism" when people are trying to get them enacted, and then turns around and says it's not socialism when they are enacted and people are satisfied with the results.