Will the liberals who accuse me of not knowing what socialism is please furnish a definition of it?

[andrew w]

My definition of Socialism comes from the works of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky. I think it is safe to say that they knew a bit more about it than the writer of the definition in Merriam-Webster.

so·cial·ism
Pronunciation: \ˈsō-shə-ˌli-zəm\
Function: noun
Date: 1837
1: any of various economic and political theories advocating collective or governmental ownership and administration of the means of production and distribution of goods
2 a: a system of society or group living in which there is no private property b: a system or condition of society in which the means of production are owned and controlled by the state
3: a stage of society in Marxist theory transitional between capitalism and communism and distinguished by unequal distribution of goods and pay according to work done

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I completely disagree with this definition.

Socialism and communism are the same thing.

Socialism takes the control of running society out of the hands of bosses and places it in the hands of ordinary people.

The Bolsheviks used the slogan "all power to the soviets". The Russian word "soviet" simply means "council" - i.e. they wanted councils of workers and peasants to be in control of the running of their industry and agriculture.

Marx and Lenin said that under socialism the state would "wither away". In the beginning, it would be necessary to have a state structure, but as socialism took over from capitalism, there would be less and less need to keep crime in check, for example, as there would be less poverty. Eventually, under advanced socialism, there would be an egalitarian, anarchic society where everything was naturally shared.

This happened in Catalonia, all too briefly, during the Spanish Civil War. In Barcelona, money was briefly abolished and everyone was paid instead using vouchers based on how many hours they had worked, i.e. everyone got the same. Unsurprisingly, this was very popular with the poor! (source 1)

However, because that heroic movement was built on anarchism and not socialism, it failed to get rid of the bosses' system completely and Franco was allowed to regain control. The result was a bloody fascist dictatorship for 40 years.

In Russia, sadly, the gains of the revolution were destroyed by the monstrous regime of Stalinism. This is what many people think of as socialism.

Read George Orwell's "Homage to Catalonia", Lenin's "The State and Revolution" or Trotsky's monumental 3 volume "History of the Russian Revolution".