Russian troops land in Venzuela

[hollodero]

(03-25-2019, 07:06 PM)Dill Wrote: Er, let's not underrate historical definitions.  If only my fellow Americans would pay more attention to such when throwing the term "socialist" at anything they don't like, the world would be a better place.

I seriously doubt that.

(03-25-2019, 07:06 PM)Dill Wrote: You are correct that socialism is subject to many different definitions

Yeah and that sure is the problem, everyone uses it as they please and everyone has a more or less fair reason to do so. Wikipedia has no clear definition, which is more or less the non-professional's bible, so how could anyone really know? I'd just argue to use it broadly like obviously western socialists themselves define it. And that has nothing to do with Venezuela and what's going on there.
And also historic, we sure see socialism (sure amongst other things) as those that freed the working class, gave them worthy pay, less work hours, affordable housing and all those things. It's more about that and less about Marx' ideas, that rather led to communism. And to an extent, that's what modern western social democrats (but who uses that term) still stand for, for a somewhat balanced society where the sick are taken care of and a reasonable amount of work allows for a decent living for everyone etc. In that sense, there's quite a lot of socialism in US laws too and I find that hard to deny.

(03-25-2019, 07:06 PM)Dill Wrote: My two cents--I think what you have in Austria is a liberal parliamentary state sitting atop a mixed economy.   (And now run by two conservative parties bent on rolling back state services.) Social democracy played a decisive role in constructing your state, and so it is a state in which, owing to the struggle FOR socialism by real socialists and social democrats, the quality of life is far better than it would otherwise have been.  Like most Central and West-European states, it greatly benefits from socialist movements (as the US would) without itself being a socialist state as most any political scientist would define one.  

In a broad (and wildly sufficient) picture, more or less that (Nazis make everything more complicated). I do get the argument against calling these things "benefitting" though. "Quality of life" is hard to grasp and there might be additional factors to define success or failure.
As a very simple example, we do have almost no real military. I for one wouldn't blame socialism for that, but it's one of many fair points to make to call us and our more socialist model less successful.