The Practical Patriot

Discussions on Socialism – Part II

Yesterday’s number was a feeling about a word. Forty-three percent positive is not yet a program, because the word is doing at least three jobs in the same argument.

One job is the old definition: common or state ownership of the means of production. A second is the program of the people who organize under the name, who say plainly that capitalism is to be replaced. A third is what most favorable respondents actually describe when Gallup asks them, in their own words, what is good about it. They name a safety net and a fairer split. They almost never name ownership.

Those three are not the same settlement. A week of talk goes nowhere if we grade one of them with the record of another.

Start with the dictionary, because the other two meanings borrow its authority.

Socialism, in the sense used by its theorists and by its twentieth-century governments, means that the main means of production are owned in common or by the state, and that production is directed toward use as the planners define it rather than toward profit. Land, factories, energy, transport, and finance sit on the public side of the line. Markets may survive at the edge. They do not decide the core. That is the definition that makes the word different from a welfare state. A country can tax heavily, insure widely, and still leave capital in private hands. That country is not socialist. It is a market economy with a large public budget.

The organized movement in this country uses a third term, democratic socialism, and it is worth quoting rather than paraphrasing. The Democratic Socialists of America say capitalism is a system to be replaced, not trimmed. They want ordinary people to have a real voice in workplaces and neighborhoods, and they want to “collectively own the key economic drivers that dominate our lives, such as energy production and transportation.” Their chapters add that workers and consumers should own and control the economic institutions that affect them, through cooperatives or public firms, and that large concentrations of capital in industries such as energy and steel may require state ownership. They also say they do not want an all-powerful planning bureaucracy, and that markets may still set demand for many consumer goods. They distinguish themselves from the authoritarian socialisms of the last century, and they say their vision “pushes further than historic social democracy.”

Read that as a program, not a mood. It is not “Medicare, but for more things.” It is a change in who owns the commanding heights, reached by elections and workplace organization rather than by a vanguard party. A reader can think that desirable. He cannot honestly call it a modest expansion of the safety net. The organization has already rejected that description.

Gallup asked Americans, in an open-ended survey tied to its 2025 ratings, what they liked and disliked about socialism. No list was offered. The single most common answer, from 30 percent, was “nothing.” Another 15 percent could not name a positive. Among those who could, the leading answer was a social safety net: affordable access to health care, education, housing, and other basic services, at 26 percent. Next was greater equality and a more even distribution of wealth, at 23 percent. Broader government control barely registered as a virtue.

The age split sits inside that pattern. Adults 18 to 34 were far less likely than adults 55 and older to say nothing good could be said about socialism, 13 percent against 42 percent, and more likely to name equality and basic services. Criticisms did not split the same way. Inefficiency, government overreach, weaker incentives to work, and less individual freedom were named across ages. The young are not describing a different machine. They are more willing to praise the brochure.

The downside answers are the ones a market argument recognizes: economic inefficiency at 21 percent, government overreach at 19, weakened work incentives at 18, reduced freedom and opportunity at 17. Supporters and skeptics are, in practice, talking about different halves of the word.

This is where the Nordic example usually enters, and where it usually misfires. Denmark, Sweden, Norway, and Finland run market economies. Private ownership drives production. Prices are set by competition. Corporate tax rates sit near or under the American combined rate. What sets them apart is the tax take and the welfare state: Denmark’s tax-to-GDP ratio was 45.2 percent in 2024, against an OECD average of 34.1 percent, much of it raised by broad consumption taxes rather than by soaking a small rich. A former Danish prime minister put the label question plainly in a speech Americans still quote: Denmark is far from a socialist planned economy; Denmark is a market economy. High taxes and universal services are a real argument. They are an argument about social democracy. The DSA has already said it intends to go further than that.

So the word, this week, is three things.

It is a system of ownership. It is a named program that wants that system, reached democratically, and says so. It is, for most of the Americans who like the sound of it, a wish for security and a fairer split, with ownership left unmentioned. Post 1’s 43 percent lives mostly in the third. The chapters and the candidates live in the second. The history people cite when the argument turns grim lives in the first.

None of this settles the size of the safety net. A serious country can argue for a long time about how much insurance to buy in common, and how to pay for it, without ever transferring the steel mill. The costly move is letting the third meaning borrow the moral warmth of “fairness” and spend it on the first

Sources

• Lydia Saad, “How Americans View Capitalism, Socialism and Free Enterprise,” Gallup, August 6, 2026. Open-ended likes and dislikes. Thirty percent said “nothing” good about socialism; 26 percent named a safety net; 23 percent named equality. Ages 18–34 were less likely than those 55 and older to say nothing good, 13 percent against 42. news.gallup.com
• Democratic Socialists of America, “What is Democratic Socialism?” The organization says capitalism should be replaced, and that it wants to “collectively own the key economic drivers that dominate our lives, such as energy production and transportation.” It also says its vision pushes further than historic social democracy. dsausa.org
• Lars Løkke Rasmussen, then prime minister of Denmark, Harvard Kennedy School, October 30, 2015: “Denmark is far from a socialist planned economy. Denmark is a market economy.” Reported by Vox, October 31, 2015. vox.com
• Nordic tax and ownership context used in the post: private ownership and market prices, with a high tax take. Denmark’s tax-to-GDP ratio was reported at 45.2 percent in 2024, against an OECD average of 34.1 percent. legalclarity.org

1. When you use the word socialism, which of the three are you using: ownership of the main industries, the DSA program of collective control over energy, transport, and the workplace, or a larger safety net inside a market economy?
2. If most people who like the word are describing security and equality, should the argument drop the label and be conducted as an argument about the size of the net? What, if anything, is lost by doing that?
3. The DSA says it wants to go further than historic social democracy, and a Danish prime minister said Denmark is a market economy. Does the Nordic example belong in this debate, or does it answer a different question?