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VGPolyglot on 06 April 2017
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Illusion said:
Shadow1980 said:

Of course not. Most Americans have no idea what those things really are, especially not conservatives. They only know them as catch-all political slurs to be used against anyone and anything right-wing pundits deem left-of-center left-of-Reagan. Meanwhile, in the real world, there really isn't much "socialism" in America, because socialism isn't taxes or regulation. It's public ownership of the means of production. And everywhere you go, you see capitalism thriving.

Every street in America is dotted with shopping centers, big-box stores, auto shops, gas stations & convenience stores, grocery stores, clothing stores, restaurants, local ma-and-pa shops, et cetera, et cetera, et fucking cetera, all privately owned and operated for profit, all filled to the gills with consumers eager to part with their hard-earned money in exchange for goods and services. Capitalism is everywhere. Something like 85% of all jobs are private sector. Sure, we have public infrastructure, public military, police, and emergency services, and public social insurance and safety net programs, and maybe the occasional co-op, but the idea that the U.S. is anywhere close to being socialist is quite frankly laughable.

The only reason "socialism" remains a snarl word is because of decades of Cold War/Red Scare red-baiting, and because the right was able to basically highjack and control political language in America to steer discourse in ways so-called "political correctness" never could. The right won the "framing wars" in the 80s thanks to shock jocks like Limbaugh, and it only got worse from there with the ever-expanding right-wing media.

I prefer to separate economic socialism from cultural socialism.  In the west, the state of capitalism is a gray area because many of the big corporations are controlled by a small number of aristocrats (I call them globalists) who also have a controlling stake in government.  People like George Soros, Warren Buffet, Rupert Murdoch, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg basically control our society through mega corporations but they also have a controlling stake in the funding and the agenda of politicians like Hillary Clinton who are under the thumb of the establishment.  Are we in a truly capitalist society when the big corporations are effectively run by the same ruling class that controls the government and the media?  When we expand the bubble to include these unelected multi-national elites who exist outside the boundaries of any one government, our world as a whole starts to look a long ways from being anything close to the idea of capitalism that Adam Smith would have envisioned.

Culturally, however, the west starts to look a bit closer to the traditional values of socialism.  First, we see the demonization and hatred towards christianity by mainstream society and strong support for scientific atheism which is an absolutely curcial component of any socialist culture.  Secondly, we see a hatred towards all things traditional (white men, women who choose to stay at home, traditional definition of marriage, national pride, concerns about radical Islam, etc...).  The third pillar of socialism is the hatred of private property and while this has not yet been realized on the individual level we definitely see this on the national level where people are labelled racist if they want to defend the borders of their country or if they elect a president such as Trump who wants to put first the prosperity of a country's own citizens.  There are also many other smaller signs of the cultural aspects of socialism at work in our society: the media is controlled heavily by a small group of elites who control the message, political correctness is forced on people, sexual immorality and marital infedeility is supported and celebrated by mainstrream culture.  There are far too many signs to ignore the connection but I do concede that the traditional definition of socialism may not be a great fit.  Maybe cultural marxism is a more accurate term.

Economic socialism is a redundant term, as socialism is an economic idea. You can't just split it off as a way to justify mislabelling things as socialist. It can't be "cultural Marxism" either, because Karl Mark certainly did not support it, in fact he recognized that the bourgeoisie would attempt to appear as though they cared about the disadvantaged as a way to keep their hold on power. Just call it what it is: liberalism.