is socialism a purple cow?

Remember those high school essays that began with “Webster’s dictionary defines suchandsuch and soandso.” I think that was mostly because some kid saw it in some other kid’s essay, and said hey, here’s a way I can pad my word count. Communism has a pretty clear definition in that the state owns all the means of production. What that means in China where government big shots and their cronies seem to own most of the businesses, or in America where the businesses control a lot of the government, I don’t know what to call it, you pick a name.

But socialism, who the hell knows what that means? I suppose there is an entry in the dictionary for the subject, but I don’t think anybody looks that up before they use the word because it means so many different things (like small L libertarian), that a single definition would be useless. To you and your ilk, the lone loony wolves howling at the moon, it basically means anything you don’t like (Honey, does this hat look socialist?), or more specifically anything the democrats want to do, or even more specifically anything Obama wants to do, or any hat or tie he chooses to wear. It’s just like an insult, you call somebody that because it sounds bad, and it’s easier than do any kind of analysis about it.

How long have I been hearing this? All my life, because I was born while FDR was still alive. The United States, on the other hand, has been drifting towards socialism since the days of FDR. What the hell does it mean? We’ve been creeping towards it for seventy years, and we are still not there? What the hell kind of a revolution is that? And how are we so socialist (whatever you happen to mean by that)? Since you mention FDR, I assume you mean social security. Surely you aren’t against that.

Democracy has a pretty good definition going back to Plato, pretty much means everybody gets to vote, well not really that because early on the United States only allowed rich white men to vote, and we still call that democracy. But that’s a whole other story, so let’s just call it a democracy because a lot of people got to vote. Let’s leave out some of those countries where there is only one candidate and where the government backs its own candidate and persecutes the opponents, which I guess would leave out Russia, though most likely the Russkies would choose Putin even if he didn’t cheat on elections. Anyway that leaves the rest of Europe (which you claim is socialist whatever you mean by that) as democracies. 

 I guess I just take issue with your description of democratic socialism, as if that was something odd. It reminds me of the cold war when folks used to speak of democracy vs communism, like the two were opposites and it was like comparing apples and oranges. You could have a communism which was democratic, and you could have a non-communist country that was not democratic.

I see I have gotten past my allotment of words without getting into the subject of fairness. Mostly I am speaking of income distribution. If the current system of the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer, continues, is there any point where you would think this has gone too far and something needs to be done about it? And of course we are assuming that the rich got richer fair and square and legal and by working hard.