mikema63 wrote:Democratic socialism is a form of capitalism, not socialism.
What is socialism? You will usually get something like this (wikipedia):
Socialism is a social and economic system characterised by social ownership and democratic control of the means of production,[1][2][3][4][5][6][7] as well as a political theory and movement that aims at the establishment of such a system.[8] "Social ownership" may refer to public ownership, cooperative ownership, citizen ownership of equity, or any combination of these.[9]
Mike's statement is pretty much correct, if we are primarily only looking to maintaining consistent categories. However, in the real world, the categories are much more muddled. A definition of socialism usually includes language requiring social ownership and democratic control of the means of corporation. We have had the social ownership part, but not the democratic control (perhaps experiments during the Spanish Republic might be cited as an exception). Democratic control is not consistent with state-owned enterprise model, nor can a dictatorship of the proletariat be made consistent with democratic control of the means of production, IMO. Socialism can never exist without democratic units controlling production, organized from the bottom up. This is not a matter of mere fairness or equity, it is a fundamental categorical requirement.
By most accepted definitions of socialism, the Soviet and current Chinese models do not qualify. Not based on some standard of fairness, but actual categorical distinctions.
I would also point out that forms of socialism that incorporate some form of market mechanisms do not necessarily fall outside such a definition, so long as social ownership and democratic control are enforced.
The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born: now is the time of monsters. -Antonio Gramsci