I’m progressive as fuck. But what does that actually mean? American political toxicity has warped the meaning of words. Socialism, for instance. Socialism in America is not socialism in the rest of the world.
Socialism is a political and economic system in which the means of production — factories, resources, major industries — are owned or regulated collectively, either by the state or by the workers themselves, rather than by private individuals. This is a good idea, unlike capitalism, where the rich get to shit on everyone else.
The core idea of actual socialism is that the wealth generated by labor should be distributed more equitably among those who produce it, rather than concentrated among those who own the capital. In so doing, everyone’s basic needs get met, at least in theory.
In practice the word covers a wide spectrum. At one end you…
