Socialist Progressives
In reply to the discussion: Dumb question: what's a Socialist? [View all]Jim Lane
(11,175 posts)I really don't understand how what I wrote was red-baiting, cloaked or not. Just to be clear, when I described a libertarian society with "no unemployment insurance, no Medicare, no Social Security, no food stamps, no public education at any level, etc.," I wasn't praising it, I was condemning it.
Our current system has been described as a mixed economy, because it's fundamentally capitalist but has a significant component of programs like the ones I mentioned, which many people consider socialist. When Republicans who actually are engaged in red-baiting rail against "socialism" (as they so often do), I think it's worth asking if they want to abolish those programs. I know that both Social Security and Medicare, when proposed, were denounced as socialism by Republicans.
I don't know whether Marx would consider them to be socialism. I do know that they enjoy overwhelming public support in the United States today, so that characterizing them as socialism serves to counter, not further, the demonization of the term.