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Politics : View from the Center and Left

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To: Lane3 who wrote (10437)	2/1/2006 10:58:54 AM
From: TimF	Read Replies (2) of 541477

I think you can even claim that the military is a socialist system. That claim would technically be correct but somewhat less justified than using the same claim about the education system. Maintaining public order and protecting against external attack are the core functions of any government. Yes you could probably meet this minimal need with much lower defense spending, and yes it is possible for the state to secure itself mostly with mercenaries but this has been more the exception instead of the rule (usually at most mercenaries where bought in to supplement the military when needed), and the mercenaries were still funded by the government. Public education, even publicly paid for education has not been the norm until near modern times. If you are going by what is common today than you could argue that someone shouldn't call a government run health care system socialist since many countries (probably most developed ones) have a largely government run health care system and even those that don't (such as the US) have a large government role in health care. I think by the definition of the word socialist, even defense is a service provided by a socialist system. I looked up the definition at dictionary.com but it was to self-referential. I tried Wikipedia but it redirected to socialism and was about the theory or theories of socialism and historical systems that overall might be described as socialist. I looked at m-w.com but it provided definitions for a person being a socialist, not a system. I don't think my definition is incorrect but lacking an easy to find source that defines what makes part of a system socialist I can't point to a reference. Call it "collectivist" if you like, but not "socialist." I'm not sure how it could be one and not the other.

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