Socialism is private production and government distribution.
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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.
 'When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said, in a rather scornful tone, ' it means just what I choose it to mean, neither more nor less.'
'The question is,' said Alice, 'whether you can make words mean so many different things.' 'The question is,' said Humpty Dumpty, 'which is to be master - that's all.' |