A quick visit to Wikipedia shows that the classic definition of socialism is:

… an economic and political theory advocating public or common ownership and cooperative management of the means of production and allocation of resources.

This means that government controls key industries, which is why some were calling out the government bailout of G.M. as evidence of socialism. Except that the U.S. government wasn’t really calling the shots, they just put up a huge sum of money. (That all started under George W. Bush, by the way.)

Now, bear with me, we’re going to get a bit technical for a moment. On the Wikipedia page for socialism is the definition of the “social democracy” movement:

Traditional Social democrats advocated the creation of socialism through political reforms by operating within the existing political system of capitalism. The Social democratic movement sought to elect socialists to political office to implement reforms. The modern social democratic movement has abandoned the goal of achieving a socialist economy, and instead advocates for social reforms to improve capitalism, such as a welfare state and unemployment benefits.

Social democracy should not be confused with democratic socialism:

Since the rise in popularity of the New Right and neoliberalism, a number of prominent social democratic parties have abandoned the goal of the gradual evolution of capitalism to socialism and instead support welfare state capitalism.[6] Social democracy as such has arisen as a distinct ideology from democratic socialism.

So, while the social democracy movement did, in fact, grow out of the idea of creating a socialist economy democratically and within the political system of capitalism, today the idea of social democracy falls squarely into both the political and economic spheres of capitalism.

I think it is fair to label programs such as Medicare and Social Security as ”reforms to improve capitalism” that were driven by the Democratic Party. So, then, as a capitalist country with some limited social programs, could the U.S. be called a social democracy? Certainly. Are Canada, Australia and the countries of Western Europe better examples of social democracies? Certainly. Have we taken different routes to end up at roughly the same place? Yes.

But, forget all of this for a second. What’s important here is that the Democratic Party does not have its roots in socialism, democratic socialism, or even social democracy. (Contrast the U.S. to European countries where there are actual social democratic parties that play a real role in politics.) Social Security was first created as part of the New Deal, the creators of which specifically did not include any members of the Socialist Party. Medicare and Medicaid were created under the Social Security Act of 1965, during the height of the Cold War. Only in the most paranoid conservative circles (tea, anyone?) could anyone claim that these programs stemmed from the desire of Democrats to try to implement socialism.

Bottom line: The U.S. can be called a social democracy and its limited social programs are not manifestations of socialism.

Why does this matter?

I think it’s fair to say that most North Americans still cringe when they think of the word “socialism.” In the U.S. at least, that word is generally associated with ideas of non-competitveness, taking money away from the wealthy and giving it away (without merit!) to the poor. But, “democracy” is a term that seems to be universally embraced in our society. (Wasn’t that why George W. Bush wanted us to invade Iraq? Snark.) When people on the “left” call programs such as Social Security “socialist,” even with the best of intentions, they’re using the definition of their political foes and are letting them frame the debate.

Linguist George Lakoff explains this in his most recent blog post at the HuffPo:

Using conservative language activates the conservative view, not only of the given issue, but the conservative worldview in general, which in turn strengthens the conservative worldview in the brains of those listening. That leads to more people thinking conservative thoughts, and hence supporting conservative positions on issues and conservative candidates.

Somehow, I don’t think this is what Larry and Bill would like to do.

I think it is most appropriate to end with this quote from FDR as he spoke about the New Deal:

Some people will try to give you new and strange names for what we are doing. Sometimes they will call it ‘Fascism,’ sometimes ‘Communism,’ sometimes ‘Regimentation,’ sometimes ‘Socialism.’ But, in so doing, they are trying to make very complex and theoretical something that is really very simple and very practical…. Plausible self-seekers and theoretical die-hards will tell you of the loss of individual liberty. Answer this question out of the facts of your own life. Have you lost any of your rights or liberty or constitutional freedom of action and choice?

(Note: This diary is cross-posted from my blog. Also, Wikipedia is used as a source not because it is the gospel of political science, but because it is an easily available source that is created and edited by consensus.)