I was following a thread about socialism and one of the participants was dead set against socialism because of Jamestown, "and we all know how that ended", he wrote. First of all, Jamestown was a corporate charter exploratory colony and I would say that the outcome was ok. I smoked cigarettes, the outcome of that colony, for many years. Other comments on that thread and others I have read demonstrated a misunderstanding of the terms.
Socialism advocates that the means of production, distribution, and exchange of goods should be controlled or owned by the community as a whole. Whereas, communism as espoused by Marx is achieved by class war, eventually all property is publicly owned, and each person is paid according to their abilities and needs. In a capitalist system the means of production, distribution and exchange are owned by private entities to make a profit. I would add here that today, the capitalists are well on their way to own and control the government.
Another ism that gets bandied about quite bit is fascism and nazis. I am including the definition for that because I believe it too is misunderstood. Fascism tends to include a belief in the supremacy of one national or ethnic group, a contempt for democracy, an insistence on obedience to a powerful leader. who controls the economy, and a strong demagogic approach. Some think that this is the turn the U.S. economy and government are taking.
Communism and socialism were 19th century responses to capitalist overreach. The robber barons set the mode of operation for the capitalist system. That was to disregard the needs of the workers and the workings of nature. The expectations of early capitalists for their labor force seemed to have been based upon the feudal system and some form of forced labor, such as slavery or indentured servitude. They have built their wealth using the nation's resources while disregarding the beauty and functions of the earth. Clean air and water are not the price we should have to pay for capitalists to create their wealth.
Communism and socialism have been demonized by capitalists because their ability to create as much wealth as they desire would be curtailed. If corporations have to pay the total cost of doing business their overhead would be much higher, less profit. Cooperative economic systems want their taxes to go for building and maintaining infrastructure, including schools, public spaces and services. That would mean that the capitalists would have to pay to clean up the toxic waste some of their businesses leave behind. They would have to pay their workers at least enough that anyone working would not need to use public welfare services, like food stamps.
The capitalist system has painted all systems of government, control, and economic development as either good or bad, but just like all of life, it's systems are nuanced. Each government exists somewhere on a spectrum of each of the economic and governmental organization. The United States uses some of it's tax money to build roads, bridges and assist in the overall transportation systems of the country. Helping those in need is another example of using our resources to give a lift to those who need it. The pentagon is funded to protect us and the workers in that system live in a socialist economy where their food, housing and other benefits are subsidized or provided.
Economics is concerned with studying and influencing the economy. Politics is the theory and practice of influencing people through the exercise of power, e.g. governments, elections and political parties. These two systems work together and often are conflated. Socialism and communism appear to us as bad systems because they have been adopted by authoritarian leaders. In essence those leaders make great promise to the average working man, making them easy to manipulate and use to gain power. Just because communism was used by Stalin in a brutal manner does not mean a more enlightened country with democratic principles can't benefit from the system. Likewise, Putin uses democracy as a tool to rule today's Russia and that does not mean the people of Russia have the same freedoms as people in the United States.
