Socialism is to socialism as democratic republic is to capitalism.

[King Coal]

Ecomomic socialism is different from governmental socialism. Who would be in favor of a privatized 911 emergency system? Who would want to have to have their credit card ready when calling 911? We were bullied into saying "progressive" instead of "liberal"; maybe we need a new word to describe economic socailism, just to placate over-reactive knotheads.

[ContinentalOp]

1. Huh? You can have a socialist democracy. -nt-

[King Coal]

2. You missed my point.

[ContinentalOp]

4. Actually I just made my point rather poorly...

I see what you're trying to say but what the heck is "governmental socialism"? Capitalism:Democracy as Socialism:____________. You can't fill in the blank. There's no analogy there.

[Selatius]

3. You talking about the differences between state socialism and anarcho-socialism?

From what I've discovered about socialism, there are various subsets of people who do believe in collective ownership of the means of production. It's just that these people do not agree on how to get there such as through government nationalization or through avenues outside the government, such as setting up labor co-ops owned by their respective workers. State socialists would insists the anarcho-socialists are pursuing a messy, failed strategy, while anarcho-socialists would insist the state socialists are advocating an avenue too vulnerable to concentration of power and thus abuse (they cite Joseph Stalin).

[HEyHEY]

5. I understand the body, but not the title

[King Coal]

6. The title just suggests that socialism has duplicate definitions.

[HEyHEY]

8. that's what I thought

[readmoreoften]

10. The notion that socialism is totalitarianism is not a different definition, its just incorrect.

The idea that Stalinist bureaucracy is a definition of socialism is just propaganda. According to Lenin and Marx, the State is a social invention designed to benefit capitalists through the maintenance of police and military force. The hope was that the State would "wither away" into an actual democracy after the working class (what we call the middle class) stopped the "banksters" from thieving from the people who actually create the world. Unfortunately, the state didn't "wither" away under socialism because the capitalists were never really overthrown and they forever attempted to reconstitute the old system. This lead to a paranoid hardening of the state instead of a withering away of the state.

Neither socialism nor democracy has ever worked according to rhetoric. From the socialist perspective, we don't live in a democracy anyway. We live in a plutocracy, where we have a choice between two candidates who represent the interest of capitalists, with one party insisting that the plutocrats have mercy on their lessers.

[readmoreoften]

7. You mean socialism is different than a totalitarian state.

Yes, clearly. The two criterion are not intrinsically related.

[malaise]

9. All that's going on is projection

Bush has already partially nationalized the banks. Europe will not accept the crazy deregulation version of capitalism anymore.

I think if Democrats focus on the social good in term sof decent schools, roads,, bridges and infrastructure and point out that McSame is a beneficiary of both Social Security and Medicare, people will ignore the stupid attempt to diss democratic socialism.
Liberalism is back - people are once again proud to be liberal. Reagan's crap neoliberalism is dead and all we're hearing is the death rattle.

http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/inquirerheadlines/nation/view/20081020-167358/US-Europe-differ-on-democratic-capital