"Socialism!"

There are different ways of discrediting your opposition.  Senator Joe McCarthy was notoriously successful with the smear.  He would accuse someone of being a communist – either outright, by innuendo, or using guilt by association.  Proof was unnecessary because the word itself was toxic and stuck like velcro.  In a formal study of debate or polemics a straw man is a debating technique and also an example of something called an informal fallacy.  You can set up a “straw man” – an argument that is superficially similar to another – and knock it down.  Logically you have not actually undermined the target argument but it looks like you have.

A recent example could be a response to the argument, “There is a predominant role for government in managing Obamacare.”  A straw man counter-argument might be “That’s Socialism!”  Determining the truth, falsity, or merit of the initial statement has not been advanced, hence the logical fallacy. A sarcastic rejoinder to the “Socialism!” attack could be “Oh, you mean like public schools, Social Security, and the National Park Service?” This example brings us closer to the crux of the problem: not everyone values public schools, Social Security or the National Park Service perhaps because they are, indeed, socialist –ic.

If words are going to be used as though they are “proof” of something or other, we’d better take a look at the words. To determine whether or not you care if something is “Socialism!”, there is an awful lot in our American culture – not only our government - that you will have to evaluate piece by piece.  We are a mixed economy which, formally, means you can find elements of a command system (“Socialism!”), a market system and traditional institutions within our way of life and our way of doing business.  We are also called a regulated market system because we are primarily a market system with considerable oversight and control by the government (“Socialism!”). 

Socialism includes, to a greater or lesser degree, some or all of these elements: 

• The government owns or controls productive resources including factories, farms, dams, rivers, forests, housing stock, etc. 
• The economy is centrally planned from the top down and your individual role may be largely determined by institutions beyond the control of your personal initiative (like a military draft or assignment to a vocational track in school). 
• The nation is a welfare state: it is the primary responsibility of the government to assure that the needs of the people are met. 
• Equity is a stated economic goal:  in this case equity does not mean a share or ownership; it means fairness or rough equality. People may be accorded some perquisites based on their contribution but there are no desperately poor nor conspicuously wealthy in such a system.

As a footnote, Comunists – on their own terms - would say (have said?) that they have not achieved Communism yet but that they are working to achieve Communism through Socialism.  Informed understanding of the label Socialism recognizes that  something is an example of Socialism because it conforms in some ways to the elements described above – that it is socialistic.

Many may argue that a completely Socialist society would fail.  That is almost certainly true.  I can say in my own mind that the same is equally true of a pure market system.  Fortunately both creatures dwell in the land of unicorns and fairies.  We have to live in reality every day and evaluate choices rationally.  This approach includes discounting scare words as “proof”.