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Marx's version of "socialism" meant the abolition of private property. In practicality, like it or not, "socialism" is used to represent an extremely large ran
by JohnBooty 2y ago
Marx's version of "socialism" meant the abolition of private property.
In practicality, like it or not, "socialism" is used to represent an extremely large range of ideas. Today it almost exclusively refers to "social democracy" (ie, what we see in Scandinavia) and almost nobody is out here advocating for the abolition of private property.
In America, we see a lot of intentional conflation of these terms, used as a scare tactic, because our public is under-educated on these terms and we have a lot of emotional baggage left over from the Cold War.
Many in the media and in politics talk about socialist ideas such as free healthcare and education as if they're a prelude to full-blown Marxist abolition of private property when in reality, literally nobody is asking for that.
- jltsiren 2y agoIn American use, "socialism" often means the same as "fascism": people and ideas on the other side you don't like. In European use, it often refers to actual socialism, though this varies by country. When it means actual socialism, the left rarely talks about it at all. Because it's something they (or their parents/grandparents) explicitly rejected. As someone working in an American university known for activism, it seems to me that actual socialism is more popular in the US than in Europe. When something happens on campus, socialists are often involved. But almost none of the radical left activists I knew as a student in Finland were socialists.