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That's true. But I support socialist policies around things like education and healthcare. Heck, the public education system in the United States /is/ socialist

That's true. But I support socialist policies around things like education and healthcare. Heck, the public education system in the United States /is/ socialist. But good luck getting a politician to admit that. Anyway, my point is that systems like single-payer healthcare is certainly a socialist policy, but I don't think calling it a communist policy would be accurate. I could be wrong, but it seems like socialism is more about the application of tax dollars towards social security programs, whereas communism is a form of rules and organization imposed on the private market. I'm probably oversimplifying it, though.

deleted 7y ago
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NeedMoreTea 7y ago
Socialism is economic and need not distribute only according to need. Communism is political with some economics. In Europe there's a lot of shades of grey. No one would consider the UK or Nordic countries communist, and no one the UK socialist. Yet with the NHS there is a socialised health service. Nordic model countries go much further with their social policies but are still capitalist democracies far removed from communism. Few would even call them socialist but social democratic or similar. Europe has a lot of social democrat, and middle ground socialist parties that believe in some level of redistribution and other somewhat socialist ideas and healthy capitalism with profit, and freedom to become wealthy. America uses them in a far more black and white manner.
tehjoker 7y ago
There are many socialisms. The weakest form that many socialists (such as myself) don't consider socialism is social democracy, which accepts the market as legitimate and attempts to "fix it" or otherwise tame it with regulations and social spending. Obviously, this doesn't work because eventually, the ruling class decides it wants more money and undoes the regulations - the story of America since the last Gilded Age. The socialisms to the left of social democracy focus on fundamentally changing the basis of the economic and therefore social system. These interventions focus on workers owning the means of production. In "market socialism" this means the market is left intact, but the old capitalist class is eliminated or otherwise largely disempowered in favor of worker ownership of private companies. If we go further left, we get state capitalism, where a democratic state owns the means of production and uses it to serve the people (with various levels of employee empowerment in the workplace). Communism is supposed to be a state where the state, no longer needing to suppress class struggle, fades away as being unnecessary. Many of these ideas are up for interpretation. I currently think that at least large parts of the security state would fade away, but am unsure about other public services and see the need for central authorities to coordinate on environmental issues now that we are facing catastrophe. In the early part of the 20th century, "socialists" and "communists" distinguished themselves from each other. "Socialists" claimed the mantle of an electoral road to one of these outcomes, while "communists" focused on militant revolution, seeing the bourgeois state as hopelessly captured by the ruling classes / reactionaries / counter-revolutionaries. Anywho, I hope that helps defines terms for y'all.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

NeedMoreTea 7y ago

Socialism is economic and need not distribute only according to need. Communism is political with some economics. In Europe there's a lot of shades of grey. No one would consider the UK or Nordic countries communist, and no one the UK socialist. Yet with the NHS there is a socialised health service. Nordic model countries go much further with their social policies but are still capitalist democracies far removed from communism. Few would even call them socialist but social democratic or similar. Europe has a lot of social democrat, and middle ground socialist parties that believe in some level of redistribution and other somewhat socialist ideas and healthy capitalism with profit, and freedom to become wealthy. America uses them in a far more black and white manner.

tehjoker 7y ago

There are many socialisms. The weakest form that many socialists (such as myself) don't consider socialism is social democracy, which accepts the market as legitimate and attempts to "fix it" or otherwise tame it with regulations and social spending. Obviously, this doesn't work because eventually, the ruling class decides it wants more money and undoes the regulations - the story of America since the last Gilded Age. The socialisms to the left of social democracy focus on fundamentally changing the basis of the economic and therefore social system. These interventions focus on workers owning the means of production. In "market socialism" this means the market is left intact, but the old capitalist class is eliminated or otherwise largely disempowered in favor of worker ownership of private companies. If we go further left, we get state capitalism, where a democratic state owns the means of production and uses it to serve the people (with various levels of employee empowerment in the workplace). Communism is supposed to be a state where the state, no longer needing to suppress class struggle, fades away as being unnecessary. Many of these ideas are up for interpretation. I currently think that at least large parts of the security state would fade away, but am unsure about other public services and see the need for central authorities to coordinate on environmental issues now that we are facing catastrophe. In the early part of the 20th century, "socialists" and "communists" distinguished themselves from each other. "Socialists" claimed the mantle of an electoral road to one of these outcomes, while "communists" focused on militant revolution, seeing the bourgeois state as hopelessly captured by the ruling classes / reactionaries / counter-revolutionaries. Anywho, I hope that helps defines terms for y'all.