Comment by impossiblefork a day ago
Socialism would be worker ownership.
This is simply state ownership of what's seen as a strategic business. It's an abandonment of market dogmatism, but not a step towards any of the many ideologies or positions where markets have a smaller role.
If we go by Marxist definitions, universal healthcare, universal education, etc. are communism, not socialism ('to each according to their need', which I interpret as capacity to provide a return on an investment of resources by society in one).
We have really little socialism in modern society, instead we have market systems combined with elements of communism. The only socialist elements we have are copyright and patents (you get them for contribution, so it follows the Marxist maxim characterizing socialism 'to each according to his contribution').
It's really a strange thing that communism, this hypothetical post-socialist stage of development, is so easy for states to adapt and so uncontroversial that elements of it are implemented today on a large scale, everywhere from the US to Africa, when socialism which Marx imagined as the stage that would give rise to communism is a relatively small element of society. I suppose the software industry has eaten a lot of other businesses though, and that it in the end is dependent on copyright, so maybe we actually are in the socialist stage, only with large middlemen intermediating 'to each according to his contribution' part. Socialism but with capitalist middlemen.
I’m going by the GOPs definition where “Socialism bad” because bigger govt. I realize there are internal inconsistencies of that definition.
> So by that logic, state provided healthcare is not socialism.
Well, it's not. It's only socialism if the state decides to provide it for everybody.
A state-owned corporation isn't necessarily socialism.
(And yeah, you say it like if it's a bad word...)
I think the phrase i heard before is State Capitalism. But i could be wrong
Yes. State capitalism is definitely the word.
Usually I suppose, when I think state capitalism I would think something like the Soviet Union, where this happens across many businesses with the state owning everything, but I suppose it is state capitalism, or a state capitalist element in a market system. One might even call it a mixed economy, or a sort of hacked-apart Swedish model without labour unions and state ownership of only certain strategic industries, rather than let's say, state ownership of hospitals.
So by that logic, state provided healthcare is not socialism. But a labor union providing health insurance is socialism.
Can we get some of that state owned health care :-p