14-Socialism

            People tend to think of a meaningless word as a nonsense word, like snrrghhyfg. It’s gibberish. But a more important example is a word that means so many different things to different people that it has lost all specific meaning. Socialism is one of those words. The original meaning involved government ownership of the means of production (and services). Current pure examples are rare. Probably Venezuela and Cuba qualify. China mostly does, though they allow a fairly robust private economy alongside the government run economy. Russia seems to be a straight up feudal autocracy with a crony-capitalist economy, a twisted version of both socialism and capitalism and not true to either.

            Often these days European economic systems are called socialist. That’s because many of them have medical care paid for by the government and various similarly funded public welfare programs for the poor, the elderly, the disabled, etc. These systems are based on robust capitalist economies that fund these systems through taxes. They are nothing at all like a classic socialist economy as well as their being different from each other.

            Today Americans throw the word around as if it means something unique, but it doesn’t. This makes it useless for serious discussion unless each person involved agrees on a specific definition at least for the moment. When Cuban Americans hear the word, they naturally think of Cuban socialism that they or their ancestors escaped at great risk and often great cost. The same is true of many Latin Americans who have or have observed recent history of true socialism. They want nothing to do with it. I believe this is the main reason the democrats are losing their votes. Many other Americans feel the same way. In fact, if you stick to that classic definition and walk someone through its consequences, I doubt you’d find many Americans who would want it. 

            When progressive politicians use the term, often calling it “democratic socialism”, they mean something different. I’m going to try to define what I think they mean. 

NOTE – The qualifier “democratic” says nothing of itself. A dictator can be elected democratically and has been more than once historically. Latin Americans know that. I’ll use it anyway, because that’s what we are calling it these days.

            Here’s what I think this kind of socialism means today. 

Definition: Democratic Socialism – A democratically governed society with a healthy capitalist economy that has government run social welfare programs funded by progressive taxation to redistribute some of the private wealth to benefit all citizens.

            Taking this definition as my starting point, I can discuss what it can imply in the United States today. You may not agree with this definition, but that’s what it will mean in this essay. If you are discussing socialism, you can clarify your own definition.

            First, the obvious open points are how much of the private wealth is to be redistributed for the benefit of all and how that wealth is used.

            I’ll consider the second point by listing some possible social welfare programs. 

            Here are some that are not very controversial in and of themselves, though how they perform can be: 

            Public education, law enforcement, military defense.

            The governments’ (national, state, or local) taking some of the private wealth to fund these services is widely accepted. How they are funded and how well each performs is full of ongoing debates in an ever-changing world, but the appropriateness of their existence is rarely challenged. Note that all three of these fit the criterium of redistributing private wealth for the welfare of all citizens.

            Here are three more possible uses for redistributed wealth:

            Elected representative salaries (including the president), civil servant salaries (e.g. air traffic controllers and IRS workers), government property maintenance (from the capitol building to the national parks).

            These are slightly more controversial, but still pretty obviously needed to some extent if we’re going to have any functioning government.

            Three more:

            Social Security, Medicare, Unemployment insurance

            Another three:

            Free school meals, Medicaid, Food Stamps

            Another possible level:

            Negative income tax, free housing for the homeless, free medical care for everyone

            My point is that this is a spectrum of wealth redistribution. There is no hard boundary between socialist and not socialist. You may be OK with public education but not OK with a negative income tax. That doesn’t make you anti-democratic socialism, just at a different point on the spectrum from someone who is OK with both.

            Most importantly, none of these are true socialism by the classic definition, but all fit easily into my (I think reasonable) definition of democratic socialism.

            How much of each of these we do and how much private wealth we take to fund them is vitally important to debate openly and energetically to make the best possible decisions for us as a nation, which inevitably includes some consideration of the rest of the world, since what other countries do can affect us dramatically.

            We cannot have this debate if we aren’t speaking the same language. When you talk about socialism with anyone, please define what you mean by it before you start.

Hugh Moffatt
Nashville, Tennessee
July 13, 2025