Does Bernie Know Dems Need A Miracle?

[Dill]

(03-03-2020, 11:43 AM)Belsnickel Wrote: Ok, lot's of confusion here on what is socialism and what isn't. Let's begin with a primer: Socialism is an economic theory in which collective, public ownership of the means of production and distribution of goods occurs.

Medicare/medicaid, and by extension medicare-for-all as a single-payer healthcare system, still utilizes private individuals and companies to produce and distribute the goods/services for healthcare. This means that it is not a socialist program.

Socialized medicine, like the National Health Service that exists in the UK, is a different thing. The doctors work for the NHS. That is government (public) control of the means of production and distribution of goods. This is a socialist program and is not what is being proposed by anyone of any consequence in this country.

Brad: you're wrong in your understanding of socialism.

Benton: you're wrong in your understanding of socialism.

Anyone else who is using a definition other than the one I provided above: you're wrong in your understanding of socialism.

When you overuse the term socialism to describe social welfare policies you are playing into Cold War era fear-mongering where anything and everything that didn't fit our way of life was deemed socialist/communist.

Just want to second Bels here, and point to what I think is the source of confusion--namely the widespread conflation of the concept of "SOCIALIZING COSTS" with SOCIALISM, the theory and the practice.

All governments SOCIALIZE COSTS in one way or another. E.g., when we are taxed to build a public highway system, or to pay for national defense. Our local communities SOCIALIZE the cost of public education and fire and police protection. 

And yes, the cost of the Social Security check I receive every month has been SOCIALIZED, so I'll hopefully get more than I paid in, from you guys still working.

But the public still doesn't own Amazon or Anglo-American Platinum or Pfizer or Cargill or Sinclair Oil or General Motors or Continental Grain or Weyerhauser or Koch Industries or US Steel or even the Steelers for that matter. We are not a "socialist" country by a long shot. And SOCIALIZING some costs within our political-economic system does not alter its fundamentally capitalist character because the policies which re-distribute a fraction of US wealth do not individually or collectively transfer ownership of or control over privately owned MoP to the public--even when the government wholly manages them. If anything, they are designed to optimize the working of that very capitalist system by preventing larger costs to it from social instability. 

So the existence of programs like SS and Medicare do not make a part of our government/economy "socialist" the way that free economic zones could be said to make make part of China's economy capitalist (because in those zones policy DOES transfer ownership from public to private). I'll go a step further than Bels and say that even if the government does wholly manage such polices, it makes about as much sense to call such policies "socialist" as to call them "communist." Even when actually inspired by real socialists/ socialist theory.

If the goal is to accurately describe and understand such programs in effective social scientific terms, it would be so much more accurate to say "WE SOCIALIZE SOME COSTS" than to say "WE ALREADY HAVE SOCIALISM/SOCIALIST POLICIES" and such like.