Schwab: So, what do we mean when use the word 'socialism'?

Hoping to divert attention from their agenda of enriching the rich; cutting Medicare, Social Security and Medicaid; censoring science; polluting the environment; taking health care access from millions without replacement; controlling women’s bodies; worsening climate change; gutting consumer protections and suppressing minority voting, it’s clear that Republicans’ cries of “socialism” will be central to their attacks on Democratic candidates. So let’s address it, starting with three compendious definitions:

Socialism: state-owned production and commerce in which workers are government employees.

Capitalism: private ownership with workers employed by the owners.

Communism: ownership of everything by everyone; give what you can, take what you need; no private property.

Only right-wing media and people unhappy with certain opinion columnists mention communism, and no Democrat advocates it. In purest form, it’s existed only on Russian kolkhozes, Israeli kibbutzim and a few ephemeral, utopian enclaves in this country. A socialist dictatorship, the USSR was never “communist.” Because humans tend toward greed and jealousy, comm-baya fails.

So does pure socialism. Which is why — Trumpic lies notwithstanding — Democrats aren’t proposing it. Touring the Soviet Union when a student of the Russian language, I saw it. Their products were junk, their workers unproductive, and it seemed their only incentives (other than avoiding Siberia) were omnipresent warnings of an enemy to fear and hate: namely, us. It’s what despots do. And would-be despots. Not that anyone comes to mind.

Venezuela — the right’s disingenuous definition of Democrats’ desire, and one of two potential stages for performing our next war — is failing for many reasons, including incompetence and authoritarian corruption. For those seeking partisan analogies, there they are. Venezuela is as far from what liberals want as Trump is from veracity.

We’ve never seen pure, unfettered capitalism, either, although the U.S. came close in the Gilded Age, when regulations were few, capitalists were extraordinarily wealthy and oligarchical — and their employees, including children — were overworked, undercompensated and disempowered. Workplaces were unsafe and unhealthy, often fatally. Along came liberalism and unions to rectify, at least partially, the inhumane inequality, but not before unbridled greed led to the Great Depression. MAGA, it turns out, means Make America Gilded Again.

-more-

https://www.heraldnet.com/opinion/schwab-so-what-do-we-mean-when-use-the-word-socialism/?utm_source=DAILY+HERALD&utm_campaign=463fd07b67-RSS_EMAIL_CAMPAIGN&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_d81d073bb4-463fd07b67-228635337