It certainly is strange -- seeing terms made into different words by propaganda and so-forth. I think as a Socialist myself, perhaps I could give my take...
Anything in the way of democratic socialism and a push towards the left is a good thing. The biggest thing that I think we need is profit-sharing (where every member works for their own profits, not someone else's profits), socialist unions (have the unions control how much people are paid, have to work, when they work, etc.), and large social safety nets -- so homelessness isn't even a problem anymore, I'd also like tax reform and some more basic things that make sense. The whole world system doesn't need to be so complicated.
Anyway, I guess the reason I would argue in favor of " socialism" specifically is because that's pretty much all socialism.
I like democratic socialism, I think it's a step in the right direction -- but it's mostly just pulling out some aspects of the need to survive thing from capitalism.
I mean that is a tenable example of something that would be very effective with our wealth/people gap because then people can have power without risking their survival. But how far does the idea go before it comes to socialism? Okay -- our problem with the businesses controlling legislation, property/housing prices, owning most property, and selling us back the very creations we subsidized the creation of, such as hydroelectricity and internet.
What I'm trying to say is democratic socialism is a perfectly reasonable conclusion -- most American politics are in a hysterical far right place, so it shows that at least you're thinking in the direction of true worker's rights -- I guess my question is, why draw the line in the center? Because the things that democratic socialism avoids is
- change of ownership over the means of production
- makes business and production owned and controlled by a worker's union while the owner can still receive ROI -- just not profit.
- makes individual workers earn more and determine how they work.
A lot of the biggest things don't sound that bad to me, and sound along the same lines as democratic socialism -- I just find it to be a very compromised representation of socialism that has become the ONLY representation of socialism.
Socialism is also a mixed economy. In all honesty I think we could pull things from all sorts of mixed economies -- just that most of the policies I really want revolve around a more centralized, socialist economy, where people have control over how they live and work vs. a massive plutocracy doing so.
