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Politics : American Presidential Politics and foreign affairs -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: RMF who wrote (42105)	3/16/2010 1:21:43 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 71588

To me "socialism" has always meant things like Social Security and National Healthcare. It's never meant government "ownership" of the means of production. The original and still common meaning of the term socialism is government (or collective in some way, but it usually means government) ownership of the means of production. Its been extended to, in the usage of some, include all forms of welfare spending and government redistribution, but the original meaning is still valid (and in the eyes of some the only valid meaning). Also "National Healthcare" is government ownership of the means of production (either production of health care services if you nationalize the whole thing, or more likely just production of health insurance or health care payment plan services). Was Teddy Roosevelt a "socialist" when he broke up the corporate monopolies with his "trust busting"?... Regulation is not usually considered socialism OTOH sufficiently extensive regulation may effectively make the government the real owner of the enterprise even if the official nominal owner is still private; because it changes to the government being the primary decision maker (and with high enough taxes the primary profit maker as well) of the nominally private activity. I don't think anti-trust law (at least if you avoid the most extensive, powerful and arbitrary versions of anti-trust law) qualifies as the government being the primary decision maker for a private company. The same would go for the other example you gave, child labor laws. Where's the LINE between Capitalism and Socialism exactly? The primary line is that governments don't own the means of production in a primarily capitalist system. By extension you could also say its socialist if the government takes the lion's share of the profits or becomes the primary decision maker. But in the real world socialism is not a binary thing, you have more or less socialist, rather than totally socialist or totally capitalist.