The latter is an imposition of structure irrespective of the market: It might be seen more as a rigid body that can stand in certain conditions but begins to buckle once the wind changes.

Socialism requires at a minimum the nationalization of the means of production. If what you're talking about doesn't involve that, then what you're talking about isn't Socialism.

I'm sorry to be so snarky about this, but "socialism means command economy" is the Scholar's Checkmate of Internet political science debates, and I'm think we benefit by not dignifying it.

Is the U.S. not a free market economy in your view?

There's no such thing as a free market, either.

> Socialism means non-free market

Laissez-faire Capitalism ignores that the ideal efficiency of a free market requires the absence of externalities, which are present in the real world.

Socialism attempts to address the existence of externalities (though socialist theory often won't frame it in those terms) through compensatory mechanisms (which may involve outright government control and planned economy, or may, especially in many current strands of socialism, instead include mechanisms to internalize externalities so that the behavior of the imperfectly free market better approaches the efficiency of the ideal free market than an actually unregulated market would without effort to address externalities.)

> and uses extreme violence to accomplish its ends of nationalizing wealth and production (which are inherently linked).

Nationalizing means of production is not an end of socialism, though its a means of some forms of socialism in assuring that the means of production are harnessed to serve the common good of society. Other forms of socialism change (compared to capitalism) the balance of power in firms between labor and capital as a means of harnessing production to serve the common good, others adopt market regulations which serve to internalize externalities so that forces in the regulated market will naturally direct the means of production to serve the general good.

> Socialism requires at a minimum the nationalization of the means of production.

No, it doesn't, if you are referring to "socialism", the political philosophy. If you are referring to "socialism", a particular the phase on the road to communism in Marx's Communism (and thus the "socialism" of Leninsm and its descendants which, while abandoning much of Marx's theory, kept this part), then, yes, socialism does involve that, but note that Marx's Communism was one of many kinds of socialist philosophies of its time, and that the "socialism" phase in Marx's Communism (and, for that matter, Marx's Communism as a whole) is not representative of (though it may be one example of) socialism as a political viewpoint.

I think most socialists would agree that more democratic control of the means of production in general, as compared to laissez-faire capitalism, is a distinguishing feature of socialism. I do not think most socialists would agree that state ownership of the means of production is essential (and, indeed, many would argue that significantly revising the capitalist concept of ownership and property rights in the means of production are necessary to socialism, and that the nature of that revision of what ownership means is more important to socialism than where ownership is located. Socialism as simply state-ownership is a minimally challenging way for capitalists to approach socialism, because it avoids even discussion of the essential difference between socialism and capitalism, which is the challenge to the capitalist understanding of property and ownership.)

With that in mind - countries like the United States, particularly in the latter half of the 20th century, are quite socialist in comparison to previous eras (though obviously somewhat less so than other countries).

It was the formation of class societies of workers and parasites 10000 years ago which led to violence, suppression of the population etc.

Later the word "socialism" came to also mean a market economy in which the government intervenes to a considerable degree, as in European-style social democracy.

American conservatives have also recently come to label New Deal-style liberalism as "socialism."

I think it would be helpful for productive discussion if people labeled which meaning of the term they are using, and acknowledged that it also has other meanings.

Let me add that the state-ownership version of socialism could be totalitarian or democratic. I am not aware of any countries in the world today that have a state-ownership version of socialism and are democracies. Venezuela, from what I understand, has a partly state-owned economy, and is semi-totalitarian.

update: let me explain some why I think that discussion can be more productive if people acknowledge the term "socialism" has more than one meaning, and are clear about which one they are using.

There are many different economic and governmental systems that are labeled "socialist" including, among others, the totalitarian, total state-control system of the old Soviet Union and the democratic, semi-socialist system of the UK after WWII and up until Margaret Thatcher.

What is needed is to discuss how the various systems work and what are their outcomes, good or bad. This is a complicated and difficult discussion. If people insist on either labeling all of them as "socialist" or only one, then people get into endless, fruitless debates over who is right, and it greatly undermines the more factual discussion about specific different systems and why they go right or wrong. The comments to this link are a good example of what I am talking about. But if everyone agrees there are different definitions, then they can focus on the more important part of discussing the systems themselves.

Please describe the ways in which some countries are "fairly" socialist but aren't actually socialist. I'm not aware of a single example of a socialist nation succeeding in any regard towards creating prosperity for its people. Nor am I aware of a successful national experiment in socialism in the last two centuries of various attempts. Every historical attempt has ended extraordinarily badly, universally failing to accomplish high living standards.

None of the Scandinavian nations are even remotely close to being socialist. They all rely on the market economy, they all embrace Capitalism to significant degrees, they all have property rights enshrined into the core of their economies, they all allow for the vast accumulation of wealth without forced redistribution, they all allow for the private ownership of production, they all allow for the accumulation of and investment of capital privately, they all utilize equity and bond markets that can be bought and traded freely (another critical point to Capitalism), and on it goes. They're all substantially closer to Capitalism than Socialism, which is course why they're able to pay for their large welfare states and other actual Socialist nations universally fail at that. Sweden for example famously had drifted too far toward being an over-burdened welfare state - circa the 1970s and 1980s - and had to de-regulate and de-tax their economy, which then resulted in boom courtesy of increased Capitalism. The nations you refer to, are actually welfare states, not Socialist - there is a very big difference.

I disagree. These nations do not allow vast accumulations of wealth. They have significant taxes that actually prohibit vast accumulations of wealth, by design. It's also a form of forced redistribution, because you are required to pay excessive tax rates..and if you don't, you be sent to prison or be subjected to some form of punishment.

In fact, if you look at the average wages across all industries in a country like Sweden, they are relatively the same.

Here are some stats: http://lostinstockholm.com/2012/01/10/average-salaries-in-sw...

Why are they the same? Because the government will tax the money away before you can ever get to those higher amounts.

"The nations you refer to, are actually welfare states, not Socialist - there is a very big difference."

I feel like this is the 'no true scotsman' argument all over again. At a certain tax rate, the government owns the means of production.

We can keep playing semantics and call it 'socialist' or 'welfare state', but the reality is that no matter what you call it, high taxes and excessive government regulations is not something that is conducive to a prospering nation.

Even look at California as a small example: The high tax rates and regulations have started squeezing out the middle class and in many parts of the state, you only have two classes of people: poor and rich.

In the end it's just a question of whether Social Democracy with a free market is half socialism or if it isn't. Not really a useful debate. The roots of social democracy just like all other forms of socialism of course is the workers movement and Marx is very present still in the Social democratic parties' program declarations.

Social democrats accept the market economy. They are socialist in the sense that they are proponents of redistribution/wealth equality, and workers influencing or even owning the means of production (The former through unions having seats in corporate boards, the latter through later scrapped ideas like workers owning corporations through funds, "wage earner funds").

These social democratic ideas try to adapt Marxist theory to a liberal democracy and market economy. Is social democracy socialism despite accepting a market economy? Depends on who you ask. It's simpler to just use the term social democratic instead of socialist. Having a large welfare state is really orthogonal to how the money for said welfare state is raised (Norway for example could in theory have supported its welfare state without much social democracy or socialism).

Sweden does have a lower corporate tax rate than the U.S., though the U.S. tax code offsets this by providing a multitude of different deductions for business expenses. Among other things, government imposed fines are tax deductible as per the U.S. Tax Code. When it comes to personal tax rates, Sweden's rate is much higher than the rate in the U.S. (http://taxfoundation.org/blog/how-scandinavian-countries-pay...)

Not debating the validity of your larger point here, but your assertion re Sweden being economically free as compared to the U.S. isn't that accurate. It is a very much a socialist nation that is also very prosperous.

Can you name the ways in which Sweden is a Socialist nation? I'm aware of very few things that can even be argued to define them as such. Quite the opposite, their overwhelming characteristics economically are that they heavily rely on the market economy determined by individual business owners and investors rather than a command economy dictated by the State.

- Do they allow private ownership of property, including the means of production? Yes, Sweden's economy is almost entirely driven by private businesses.

- Does nearly all of their economy function around private business ownership? Yes.

- Do they allow the existence of so called capital classes? People whose wealth is primarily existent in capital, investment, real estate, etc.? Yes.

- Do they force the redistribution of wealth, so as to attempt to prevent the existence of rich and poor classes? No.

- Do they allow the private ownership of real estate, farm land, etc? Yes.

- May the government arbitrarily nationalize your wealth, investments, or business? No, that would be a rare event in Sweden.

- Do they primarily function via the free market economy of non-coerced trade? Or is all trade primarily dictated by the State? Right, almost entirely free trade.

- Does the State determine all investment priorities for all businesses? No, quite the opposite, businesses are free to set their own priorities, build new products at will, choose how they allocate capital.

- Does the State dictate most allocations of capital? No, the opposite.

Things like healthcare, slightly heavy economic regulation, education - are the primarily arguments I'm aware of regarding Sweden, however those define them as a welfare state, not a Socialist state. The US for example has vast free healthcare, housing, and food systems, along with a massive entitlement system, which is why the US is also a welfare state (and not primarily a Capitalist nation as it was a hundred years ago).

Government spending as % of GDP is an excellent metric re size of the government relative to the private economy. This assumes that as a nation is more socialist, the size of the government will increase.

Sweden slightly over 50% (http://www.tradingeconomics.com/sweden/government-spending-t...) U.S. 20% (https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/FYONGDA188S)

I don't doubt that private property ownership is permissible in Sweden, but the government dominates GDP as compared to any single private sector.

> - Do they force the redistribution of wealth, so as to attempt to prevent the existence of rich and poor classes? No.

Sweden has higher personal tax rates than the U.S. I dispute your "No." here.

> - May the government arbitrarily nationalize your wealth, investments, or business? No, that would be a rare event in Sweden.

It depends. The Swedish government is a highly functional one and will not act capriciously. I believe they will step in and nationalize wealth/real property if doing so was important to the wellbeing of the nation, whereas the U.S. even during the bailouts of 2008 went through great pains to avoid direct government ownership / control, even to the point of handing private equity firms free risk-adjusted money.

> - Does the State determine all investment priorities for all businesses? No, quite the opposite, businesses are free to set their own priorities, build new products at will, choose how they allocate capital.

Given the GDP % stated above, this is debatable.

> - Does the State dictate most allocations of capital? No, the opposite.

Same as the previous point.

To argue that Socialism means something other than a command economy, you have to disagree with all the major players that were actually responsible for defining Socialism to begin with. I choose not to do that and I accept their elaborate, very well documented descriptions of what it is. And I'm not referring to associationism or the cooperative movements, I'm talking about Socialism.

Invoking Mussolini this way is a particularly telling example.

So is Hitler. Why not just simplify your argument to "The Nazis were National Socialists. Check and mate!"

Its worth noting that your examples include:

(1) two members of the same early subset of socialism (Marx and Engels) and two later people known for involvement in the same descendant of the form of socialism embraced by the earlier two (Lenin and Trotsky), and

(2) two other people that aren't recognized as having an important involvement in anything recognized as a branch of socialism, though one of them was involved in a political party with "socialist" in the name (Hitler and Mussolini).

Its hardly a broad sampling of "the very people that were instrumental in creating and spreading Socialism and its intellectual foundations to begin with".

Edit: Yeah, obviously he and his conquest killed a lot of people. And yeah, in this case it was a metric of success for him and his empire.

Mainly because he is seen as a barbarian conqueror, so people understand me if I use that phrase.

(whether he was or not is immaterial: though by modern standards, he was a barbarian conqueror and completely unethical)

When conquering China it was often the case that academics were the first on the chopping block since they were presumably the ones most likely to cause trouble.

So yeah, he fixed the economy?

But lets first understand that "the poor" are not created by the rich in latin america as socialists love to say, its been more than half a century of socialist/socialdemocrat rule and its obvious that they create the poor by making them dependant on the governments' favour. The famous barrios, fabellas and asentamientos are the creation of a socialist elite that uses the filantropy masquerade to get easy money through corruption, currency exchanges, inflation, etc.

>>In a socialist country, it is possible for the government to be governed by law and have limits placed on its power. That is not what's been going in in [Venezuela].

My point is, there were in fact limits, and they went through the democratic process to have exceptions made to those limits. That's not totalitarianism, which would be "some figure saw the limits and bypassed them without approval anyway".

End of the day, there seems to be a need for balance between capitalist striving and government administration based on something other than profit/loss.

Most of the people who cry "socialism" in the US are inspired/motivated by people who control access to natural resources.

Socialism is collective ownership of the means of production. Which always has significant societal drawbacks.

So there _are_ countries with genuine socialist policies that--while contentious and somewhat controversial--are nothing like the Venezuelan catastrophe.

Citation about developed countries where it is true desperately needed.