>>45
"Dems not even close to left-wing you say? LOL. The democrats want to nationalize the health care industry. Socialized medicine.. Wikipedia describes the party as being 'center-left'. If the dems are to the left of center, that makes them more socialist than capitalist, right? Center-left, I would be inclined to describe as socialist, especially considering their apparent intent to socialize health care in the USA, raise price controls on labor, and in general increase the governments control over the economy."
The democrats were in power for well over 8 years in the 90s, and socialism simply wasn't on the agenda. They are left wing relative to the Republicans, yes, but if you compare them to any of the left-wing parties in Europe (and I mean even the moderate ones) they look completely right wing. The Democrats may look left-wing in the highly conservative climate of U.S. politics, but as a standard they are not, or at least have appeared as such in government.
Furthermore, 'centre' does not mean capitalist. It means exactly what it says- something which lies between the extremes of the right/left model (which is itself outdated anyway). Centre-left does not mean socialist, by any stretch of the imagination. To say so is ridiculous. By your logic, Britain was a socialist state in the 1980s, when the British right-wing conservative party were in power under Reagons best friend Thatcher.
"I didn't confuse the two."
Well, you referred to socialism as having produced some of the greatest assholes in history. Now, unless these are socialists who you know personally who happen to be epic assholes, I don't see how thats true. Communism produced many brutal dictators etc, but as socialism is primarily an economic rather than political theory, there have been very few brutal socialist governments- none, in fact that I can think of. Socialism does not necessitate government oppression, unlike communism.
"As stated, there are many variants of socialism. Socialism and fascism both require stringent socioeconomic controls. Some socialists tolerate capitalism, as long as the government maintains the dominant influence over the economy. An economic system in which the production and distribution of goods are *CONTROLLED* (regulated) substantially by the government."
Regulation is not the same as control. There is a subtle but very important difference. For example, the U.S. government regulates U.S. companies (every government on earth does to some degree)- it does not control them however.
More importantly, simply controlling the economy does not make you socialist. What you do with the economy is also crucial.
The stringent economic controls you talk about resulted (crucially) for different reasons and to acheive different ends than those usually associated with socialism. Hitlers state first and foremost rejected democracy and was totalitarian- as such, it was necessary that it had massive control over all aspects of life. That does not make it socialist, as socialisms aim was/is to provide an economic system which benefits the lower-classes (even if that rarely worked in practice); government control was thus used to this end.
This NOT the case in Nazi germany, where government control had entirely different aims and as such simply CANNOT be described as socialism. Hitlers economic policies were based around producuing a strong army which could then be used to create a roman-style emperial economy- that control resulted from his racial-political ideology, which had nothing to do with economics, never mind socialism.
Every king of Europe once had total control of the economy by virtue of their being absolute rulers. It didn't make them socialists because their policies were not socialist in nature. Hitler was not a socialist; he was simply a despot, and despots can control the economy if they bloody well like. It doesn't make them socialists.