Someone was stating that a regulatory document allowed his agency to do something. Every one else at the meeting said that the particular passage totally forbid it. His response was "words mean what I choose them to mean".

Socialism means government ownership of the means of production. Democratic Socialism would mean that such ownership was arrived at through the working of the electorate. Communism implies a non-democratic "dictatorship of the proletariat" to achieve such ownership.

While Bernie may be a real Socialist with the end goal of government ownership of the means of production, the program he is currently espousing is more along the lines of Social Democracy which is tapping the fruits of capitalism to improve the lot of the people through social welfare programs.

A person could be a true capitalist and still feel that there is a role for the government in regulating capitalism

I need all the help I can get helping me understand all of this. Thanks

and it's pushed by a major American party (the republicans) and a significant minor political party (the libertarians).

And pure capitalism with it's moral demands the all productive (i.e. profitable) activity be in private hands, and that maximum profitability be achieved is just as capable of GREAT HARM as is socialism. Pure capitalism endorses slavery and serfdom and control of nations by elite powers based on elite accumulations of wealth.

If we look at centuries old arguments in favor of elected governments, those arguments rest largely on the notion that government is created and empowered by consent of the governed to collectively protect the governed from the bad behavior of other people.

Seems to me what is being sought is that pleasant and broadly rewarding domain of human affairs between capitalism's feudal tyranny by the filthy rich and socialism's command economy/central control of production. In the 20th century we've seen both extremes tend to develop authoritarian dictatorships run by individuals or committee, yielding variously fascism, phalangism, or neo-colonialism and oligarchic neofeudal free-market democracies. Even superficial inspection suggests that for all economic systems there is a tendency for their governing systems to produce collections of power elite composed of people who seek personal power and personal control.

Democratic republics have pyramid structures, willing populations that set above them bureaucrats and elected officials organized into successive layers of fewer people with more and more power (and access to wealth and benefits of holding power). Democratic republics are are sitting ducks for people who would turn them into political ponzi schemes for enhancement of self-aggrandizement possible by becoming power elite. Ben Franklin summarized this nicely when asked what form of government was our new nation. He said and this isn't an exact quote 'a republic if we can keep it'.

When progressives speak of progress, they are speaking of movement along one or more axes that protect people from the bad behaviors of other people, and in particular reining in of the propensity of power elites to become only interested in self-service.

the same way that "pure socialism" is pushed by many on DU.

In name only, because they confuse words with things and ideology with reality. It's something you can only say if you've bought into a decontextualized caricature of the other side. The reductionist claims by conservatives I've known are every bit as spot-on as those made by progressives I've known--which is to say, self-serving caricatures.

Nobody wants "pure" anything because it becomes an anti- or at least un-human abstraction that ignores what people are actually like, either stripping out essential traits or overlooking the diversity of traits that exists both within a single person over time or within even a fairly homogeneous community. The merest feint at attempting it under Lenin led to horrible problems; the merest glimmer of Pol Pot's ideological purity was a disaster.

Even Adam Smith's version was constrained by factors he regarded as extra-economic factors but which were very much economic. Rip what he says out of cultural and political context and you've changed its meaning irreparably. Rip a collectivist vision that works in a small agrarian community out of its social and cultural context and you've set yourself up for true disaster.

And for all the "we've reverted to a really atavistic form of capitalism" the US was further from it in 2008 than in 1940, and further from it in 1940 than in 1860. The very fact that many are perceived to hypocritically push "pure capitalism" while relying on socialist-leaning elements in the economy should clarify this; that they fail to perceive their hypocrisy (which makes it pretty much not hypocrisy but blindness) is systematic and endemic.

Communism means the abolition of private property -- that was Marx' definition anyway. Socialists at that time wanted the economy to be administered on behalf of the employees, preferably through workers' control in the various workplaces. Some of us -- most, I suspect -- still do.

Basically is is public ownership of property/means of production. Theorists argue about how that plays out in the real world (we have only seen dictatorships but not everyone believes it would have to be that way ultimately).

Engels discusses here: https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/11/prin-com.htm

I don't think Engels was crazy about the democratic socialists of his time, as indicated here:

There is the political ideology of Communism and then there is the economic system of communism.

For example, the Soviet Union was ruled by a Communist party, and their ideology was called Communism, but the underlying economic system was socialism.

The economic system of communism is very different, because it essentially calls of the abolition of government. The means of production are owned and operated directly by the people, whereas under socialism they are owned and operated by the government. Also, people offer society what they can and take what they need, whereas under socialism the government chooses a job for them and they are still compensated based on their economic value.

Meanwhile, Soviet-style Communism had a totalitarian political system in addition to the socialistic economy.

Sanders isn't a socialist in the classical sense, as he doesn't call for government to seize all the factories and to plan the economy centrally. He doesn't call for a totalitarian government, so he isn't a Communist, and he doesn't call for the abolition of government, so he isn't a communist either.

was supposedly the end goal of Soviet Communism.

The idea was that you needed a "dictatorship of the proletariat" as a "temporary" measure until the stage was set to usher in small "c" communism and the "socialist paradise".

In one book I read, two students in a Soviet military school studying to become officers were on a labor sentence for some infraction of the rules. As a part of their punishment detail, they were hauling and spreading natural fertilizer on the flower beds of a general's villa under the supervision of the general's wife. While they were making another trip to the fertilizer pile, one spoke of the prospects for communism. The other said that communism would never come because there would be no one to carry the shit.

In other words, those who could make the paradise come have a vested interest in it not coming.