Mr. Moderate

The economic doctrines of socialism could be said to include the extreme form of communism. And at the other end of the spectrum, socialism can be said to include any economic system (such as that within the United States) where the state interferes with the free market for the benefit of the people as a whole. Even the taxation necessary to the survival of any government could be said to be a socialist “system in which property and the distribution of wealth are subject to control by the community.” In that sense at least, then, all government can be said to have some attributes of socialism.

But in common usage, socialism implies some state ownership of large businesses while retaining free market activities for all consumers and most businesses. Socialist political parties, on the other hand, generally have their roots in the labor (worker’s) movement and so they will tend to take the side of unions against businesses in general. Consequently, left-wing political dogma tends to concentrate on the workers as the source of political power (communist regimes at least give lip service to the idea that the workers are in control, even if it is a totalitarian dictatorship that is in actual control) while right-wing political dogma tends to concentrate on the workers as the objects of political power (fascist regimes totally suppress worker movements as being “against the interests of the state”).

People tend to have love-hate relationships with socialist regimes. On the one hand, they love the benefits of socialism and the protections against big business oppression of their economic activities. On the other hand, they tend to hate anything that tends towards totalitarianism, and the more power the state gains to protect the people, the more totalitarian it tends to become. This is the real knock on socialism: you can’t scratch a socialist leader without touching a dictator-in-training.