Won’t socialism be like the Soviet Union?

I was just talking to Jay today about how people don’t understand what socialism means, and that maybe it would be helpful to try to explain that in tandem with explaining what was wrong with capitalism.

And lo and behold, found this piece by Cassiodorus, posted here and there.

I am seeing the socialism = Soviet Union meme, in various guises, even here at Orange. I suppose that we are to imagine “socialism” as a meme spouted by right-wing zealots who think that Obama is a socialist, a meme that even Ron Paul had the sense to rebut. And then you had this generous diary by Meteor Blades more than a year ago, suggesting a diversity of “socialist” visions. MB’s concluding line:

No matter what The New York Times, Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter and many progressives think, socialism isn’t a dirty word. Nor an obsolete one.

This diary will attempt to address the meme head-on in an attempt to reclaim the word “socialism” from right-wing elitists.

Cassiodorus is always worth reading.

If we are to stabilize this topic, we’ll first have to define “socialism.” Let’s go with the definition in Wikipedia: “Socialism is an economic and political theory based on public or common ownership and cooperative management of the means of production and allocation of resources.”

So what we’re really talking about with “socialism” is democratic control over the necessities of economic life. “The means of production” is not your personal property — it’s the whole apparatus of what it takes to supply everyone with what they need, and “public” does not mean “government” — there are plenty of governments which aren’t really public. The public is you and me and everyone else in our society. Sure, the “public” can be affiliated with a nation-state. Wikipedia again: “Public is a word in the English language, either an adjective or a noun with these meanings:- (adjective) “of or pertaining to the people; (adjective) “relating to, or affecting, a nation, state, or community.” But a public is not the nation-state, nor is it any privileged group of “the people.”

Taking back control of the word “socialism,” then, is also taking back control of the idea of the “public” that would participate in the “public control of the means of production.” Right-wing use of the word “socialist” as an epithet, then, is disdain for the public. The implication is that the public can’t manage the means of production, so it should be up to private individuals to do so. It’s individualism, and elitism.

There is more.