this post was submitted on 25 Sep 2023
138 points (94.8% liked)

Asklemmy

43803 readers
772 users here now

A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions

Search asklemmy ๐Ÿ”

If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!

  1. Open-ended question
  2. Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
  3. Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
  4. Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
  5. An actual topic of discussion

Looking for support?

Looking for a community?

~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de~

founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[โ€“] dingus@lemmy.ml 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Neither of those is "socialism." Socialism has a strict definition.

From Wikipedia:

Socialism is a political philosophy and movement encompassing a wide range of economic and social systems which are characterised by social ownership of the means of production, as opposed to private ownership.

Socialism doesn't necessarily say we should remove all forms of private ownership, as much as it says we should remove private ownership of the means of production. Also, that doesn't mean that nobody owns it, it means all the workers own it, collectively. It doesn't necessarily mean that you can't have your own house or your own refrigerator, rather that the companies that build those will just be collectively owned. Imagine every company being unionized by default, something like that.

We have a similar structure of owning things in the US when it comes to stocks and public companies, but the thing is in that case anyone can buy a part of the company. In socialism, only workers who are invested in the company through their labor get part in ownership and choice of the direction of the company.

I do agree on higher taxes for the rich, but that's just a band-aid on the existing capitalist system, it's not really a "socialist" idea at all. Higher taxes on the rich is about trying to keep capitalism from spinning out of control into outright feudalism. The rich only become that rich to begin with because of how our system of ownership works where they take all the excess profit generated by their workers and keep it for themselves. Socialism would remove their ability to do that because they would own as much of the company as any worker. They would no longer hold dictatorial control on the finances and where they go.