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To: Kaslin

Technically, communism is when the government owns the means of production AND distribution.

Socialism is private production and government distribution.

And with anything else, it’s a matter of degree, i.e., how much of the economic production and distribution does the government “run”.

E.g., progressive tax rates, instead of one tax rate for all, is a socialist distribution scheme.


15 posted on 01/01/2019 7:40:27 AM PST by fruser1
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To: fruser1

No. Socialism is when the government owns the means of production.
Communism is when the people own the means of production.
Fascism is when the government directs privately-owned production.


22 posted on 01/01/2019 7:47:31 AM PST by VanShuyten ("...that all the donkeys were dead. I know nothing as to the fate of the less valuable animals.")
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To: fruser1
Technically, communism is when the government owns the means of production AND distribution.

Socialism is private production and government distribution.

________

For a Marxist, communism is the last utopian stage of socialism. So for Communists, the USSR and its satellites were socialist and on the way towards communism. Communism was associated with the final withering away of the state.

As for socialists, someone like Eugene Debs or Norman Thomas might not have wanted cobbler's and tailor's shops nationalized, but they certainly didn't want industrial enterprises and banks in the hands of private capitalists. They wanted socialism to be something more than "the tax collector for the welfare state" (as Newt Gingrich called Bob Dole).

Now that the Soviet bloc has collapsed, "socialism" can mean almost anything somebody wants it too. "Marxism" as well, apparently. But from about 1991 to about 2008 support for state or communal ownership of the means of production was at a low point.

What I think Stoessel is saying is that it wasn't the welfare state that made Sweden socialist for a time, but the attempts at taking industrial and commercial enterprises out of private hands.

29 posted on 01/01/2019 8:08:38 AM PST by x
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