Simple guide to socialism

I'm a little out of the loop, why is a social democratic welfare state not socialism?
- Social democratic welfare states re-distribute some of the surplus value extracted from the labor of workers back to them, but the fundamental functioning of the economy remains decision-making in firms owned and run by capitalist investors rather than workers.
  
  That's fair, but if the workers regulate the companies, control supply via subsidies and taxation, and cap the wealth of the investors then doesn't it have the exact same effect as if a government office made all the business decisions while also allotting the freedom of the workers to create or retire businesses?
  Pretty big but, though, I admit it would be asking a lot to accomplish that from the perspective of the world we live in.

Genuinely curious about the standard by which you evaluate whether the means of production are collectively owned. For example, one person might say that it looks like a government, representing all workers on a national scale and making decisions based on votes or elected representatives, owning all the means of production. Another person might say it looks like each industry being controlled by a union representing the workers in said industry. A third could say that it means anytime a person operates a machine, they own it and can decide what to do with it, until they stop using it.
Is there any concievable physical reality in which it would be impossible to reasonably argue that the workers do not collectively control the means of production, because of a disagreement on which means of production should be owned by which workers and in what form? It seems like a very vague definition when you start looking beyond slogans into what it actually looks like.
- For example, one person might say that it looks like a government, representing all workers on a national scale and making decisions based on votes or elected representatives, owning all the means of production.
  That might be relevant if the USSR was actually democratic.
  Is there any physical reality in which it would be impossible to reasonably argue that the workers do not collectively control the means of production, because of a disagreement on which means of production should be owned by which workers? It seems like a very vague definition when you start looking beyond slogans into what it actually looks like.
  "Does socialism really MEAN anything?
  "
  Really showing the libs, I see.
  
  That might be relevant if the USSR was actually democratic.
  Are bourgeoisie liberal states democratic? Curious your thoughts.

i mean, lenin era USSR might be socialist probably closer to communism though, but it was most definitely NOT socialist under stalin or communist.
- Lenin's 'war communism' was little more than state-sponsored looting (which, to be fair, is far from unusual in times of crisis; it is not, however, much of an innovation or a path to socialism); while the NEP was the exact social democratic reformism that the Bolsheviks were supposedly against, only without the pesky 'democracy' bit the SRs liked.
- the biggest difference was the war

What does it even mean to own the means of production? How are decisions made? Big decisions can go to a vote, but what about small ones? I don't see how any organization can function without some kind of hierarchy. But the way you describe socialism implies that hierarchy can't coexist with socialism.
- Maybe the pirate ship system would work well.
  Every man got the same share except the captain (2x) and quartermaster (1.5x) and the doctor (1.5x) any of that position can be replaced anytime by a vote
  
  Aye, this be a fittin' trajectory for ye politics
  
  Maybe the base pay the same for everyone but and only do a multiplies on profit sharing.
- The socialist democratically owned company would still elect a CEO or something like it to make those kinds of decisions, and if they don't make good decisions they can be recalled by the employees to be replaced with someone else. The way I look at it it would be like how companies are currently but with all employees owning shares of the company rather then outside investors or the owner of the company. Atleast that's how I interpret it but there's probably a million different ways you could set it up while still having it be much more democratic then the modern structure.
  
  That is capitalism

Similarly:
Is every good or service-providing entity privately owned? No? Then it's not capitalism.
Is the fire department part of the government (i.e. worker-owned), or is it a private entity? Do you have pinkertons or police? Are there soldiers, or are the armed forces entirely mercenaries? Are roads privately owned? When people get old and need some kind of regular monthly payment, does that payment come exclusively from private insurance policies and/or investments, or are the payments provided by fellow workers in the form of a government benefit?
Every modern economy is a mixed system involving some capitalist elements and some socialist elements.
- That's ot what the word capitalism means. Like, not even close.
- The meme said, "the means of production." It did not say, "every, single means of production."
  The OP could have meant anything from workers electing their CEOs in 51% of the steel mills, smelteries, oil rigs, cinemas, restaurants, etc. all the way up to 100% like you decided to assume.
  But honestly, it makes very little sense to read 100% into this, especially with your wording of "good or service-providing entity".
  A hell of a lot of "good or service-providing entities" are sole proprietorships, which are in a blurry gray area between private ownership and cooperative ownership. On the one hand, many capitalists started out as sole proprietors. On the other hand, by owning one's own means of production, a sole proprietor is both worker and owner, fitting perfectly in the definition of socialism. In fact, I would argue that the sole proprietor doesn't really become a socialist or a capitalist until another worker joins the business and it becomes a cooperative or a private company. Until then, the distinction is meaningless.
- Socialism is generally considered to be the workers owning the means of production.
  Welfare, infrastrucutre, and public services are not means of production, even if you think that the government is a workers' state (and I can think of no major current governments which are legitimately workers' states).
  Socialism is not simply when the government or community does or owns things in general, but the core means of generating economic output.
- It is private in case you didnt know (police) It is just not on paper

No True Scotsman
- No True Scotsman
  I love how people use the term to mean "Words cannot have definitions", which isn't what the fallacy means at all.
  But I bet it makes them feel real smart for a few seconds when they incorrectly use the term.
  
  Lol yeah. No True Scotsman is against shifting/arbitrary definitions, but your definition of socialism here is rigid and clear.

This is an extremely important point you just made! Pure socialism is impossible for humanity due to the individuals that are so easily corruptible. We need a system similar to socialism, capitalism, AND communism, that takes the best of all of them, abandones the worst, and compensates properly for human nature. Human nature is why everything fails, not the theoretical systems themselves. Theoretically they work.
- I would actually argue that money -- and not human nature -- is the point of failure. To be more specific, money's capacity for growth.
  The second you have the growth associated with a store of value (the ability to spend $100 and get back $110), you have the capacity for different piles of value to grow at different rates (depending on things like luck, ruthlessness, and cleverness) without being limited by a single human's ability to labor.
  And when you have different piles of money growing at different rates with no upper limit, you have some growing so fast that they become cancerous, sucking the resources out of the entire system.
  It's both better and worse having this problem than having one of human nature. Worse because growth is an even more universal part of nature than greed. (So we can't get rid of it.) Better because it's something we are intimately familiar with trying to contain. We have surgeries for rapid cellular growths. We have antibiotics for rapid bacterial growths. We have entire forestry organizations that release hunting licenses dedicated to containing rapid deer population growth.
  Growth is an incredibly simple, two-dimensional graph, and it's easy to tell when we're controlling a growth vs succumbing to it.
  
  The second you have the growth associated with a store of value (the ability to spend $100 and get back $110), you have the capacity for different piles of value to grow at different rates (depending on things like luck, ruthlessness, and cleverness) without being limited by a single human’s ability to labor.
  That's all material value, though?
- Colloquial definitions of socialism, capitalism, and communism differ strongly from the proper usage of the terms.

Lmao at the "le not real socialism" 😂
- It cray cray that words have meanings, amirite😂
- It's really very simple. If you win your revolution and create a society better than the one you replaced, then you're a red fash tankie - only the revolutions that fail or never start in the first place are true socialism.
  
  It's even simpler - if your revolution results in workers not owning the means of production, it's not even vaguely socialist. If workers have no say over how the means of production are run, in practice, then they do not own the means of production in any sense.
  Thus, hyper-centralized non-democratic states like the USSR are not socialist.
  If you win your revolution and create a society better than the one you replaced,
  Yeah, it took the USSR 30 years to create a society better than Tsarist Russia. Tsarist fucking Russia. The bar was on the ground, and the fuckers still tripped over it. Had the Soviets been utterly neglectful and corrupt, they could've cleared that bar. Yet they worked to make a worse society than the fucking Tsars ran.
  Thinking maybe that by the period it takes 30 years of internal uncontested control to create a better society, you're looking at less 'revolution' and more 'reformism'.
  But red fash have always prefered empty repetition of 'revolutionary' rhetoric to results.

The workers do not need to control the means of production when Pooh Bear Xi knows what's best for them before they do.
- Socialism is when capitalism
- Ah, you mean the elite, wealthy, oligarch class, Xi Jinping.
  
  Whoa buddy you a fed? Got any sources? My xi would never.

The DPRK is, I'd argue, more or less an absolute monarchy that just uses different words to describe itself than traditional for that kind of system.
- The People's™ Absolute monarchy
  Seriously it's insane how people can unironically lie to themselves. Thy literally said "socialism is not for the workers" lmfaoo

If socialism were bad, law firms wouldn't be structured as partnerships.
- Law firms are so so so not socialist.
  Partnerships only involve a few select attorneys at a firm, associate attorneys, paralegals, legal assistants, and every other role is not part of the partnership, and has no stake other than their vested interest in getting their paycheck (the same as any employee).
  "Big Law" firms have thousands of employees excluded from any partnerships including billable (associates, paralegals) and non billable (legal assistants, HR, IT) staff, the partnership is more of a private ownership club where people are accepted mostly on vibes and sometimes, rarely, on merit.
  The partnership structure is pretty antithetical to socialism, since it's structured in a way to exclude people deemed not worthy of receiving profits (But still somehow needed to make the profits??).
  TL;DR: a small group of owner operators within a larger company is decidedly capitalist.
- karl marx only invented socialism for rich people, read theory shitlib

Owning the means of production is a means, not an end in itself. I'd argue the social democratic welfare state comes impressively close to achieving the ends.
- Not really.
  
  Which is the better embodiment of socialism:
  Means of production are collectively owned, but the the moneyed elite is somehow still accumulating power and wealth while the working class suffers
  Means of production are not collectively owned, but the moneyed elite is somehow gone, and wealth and power are in the hands of the workers, who ensure that the creation of wealth benefits all
  Not saying a welfare state is #2, but I'm interested to hear if #1 is a better socialist state.
- only if you are strictly comparing it with full-force no-brakes capitalism
  
  If we're working in the purely abstract, the welfare state is not necessarily ideal, but is there another currently implemented state ideology which serves its workers better? I.e. what would you compare it with which defeats it?