Chomsky on socialism

[Tal Vez]

7. Listen, there is no law that prevents you from defining socialism any way you want.

However, you might benefit from reading the first several paragraphs of the following article:

http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2016/03/bernie-sanders-democratic-socialism/471630/

You have listed a lot of rights that you think should accompany employment and I am not here to debate the merits of your proposals. If you look into the history of some of your desires, you will find that more than 100 years ago, Teddy Roosevelt (who had been a Republican president) called for a "living wage" in his 1912 independent campaign for the presidency. Teddy Roosevelt was not a Socialist. He called himself a progressive. And, many of the goals you describe have been goals of the progressive movement in this country. But, they aren't socialism as that term was traditionally defined. Of course, you are free to make up a new definition of socialism, but if everyone has their own definition, it becomes more or loss useless to use the term socialism, as Chomsky points out.

My point is that the label Socialist has been a political epithet in this country. Future presidential candidates are not advised to label themselves Socialist, or atheist, or communist, or Scientologist even if they have devised their own personal definitions for these terms. So, I'm wondering why he did that. It makes no sense to me. And, I might add, while there may be some people who advocate that ownership of all companies be turned over to employees, I have never heard Bernie Sanders make that proposal. So, the question remains, why did he label himself a Socialist, if in fact he did?