You wrote: > socialism as a form of economy where all means of production are in the hand of the state whereas even the quote says something quite different:

You wrote: > socialism as a form of economy where all means of production are in the hand of the state whereas even the quote says something quite different: > individual possessions should become the common property of all, to be administered by the State or by municipal bodies This latter part is a very big distinction. Anarchists are by definition anti-state, but not necessarily anti-governance. Of course, the other point is that this is simply the parade of horribles intended to smear the ideology. Quite similar to how today in US whenever someone says "socialism", you can virtually guarantee that someone will respond with "... but gulags!", as if that naturally followed. > In the last years I have seen more and more posters here, especially American, abuse the word "socialism" to describe anything implementing social institutions or worker's rights, even calling very capitalist countries like Sweden "socialist". For a person who has experienced first hand what actual socialism is like, this gets old very fast. FWIW I was born in the USSR so I know full well what that kind of socialism means. I also know that it's not the only kind of socialism possible - indeed, it was kinda late to the party. It just happened to be the one that got into power somewhere first because it was the only one brutal enough to overcome the violent state suppression of all socialist thought, so the kind of society it resulted in shouldn't be surprising. Sweden is, of course, not socialist in any meaningful sense. The classic, and still the most accurate, definition of socialism is the lack of private property on the means of production (i.e. capital) at scale. Note that it doesn't necessarily mean state ownership, or even common ownership - e.g. worker coops are socialist but any given coop is only owned by its member-workers, not by everyone in its area.