> To repeat and sum-up the core point: socialism does not really care about taxation or regulation except as tools, it cares about workers owning their own tools, work-sites, materials, and enterprises, and thus controlling their own lives rather than being controlled by an owner.

Clearly you are talking about collectivism (as opposed to individualism), and the Democrats are collectivist. You just have this technical implementation difference.

Which is to have workers control enterprises by some sort of voting scheme. As opposed to the natural course of evolution from freedom to collectivism, where you would have "private" ownership of enterprises, but with the state controlling the owner through regulation and taxation.

That really is an implementation detail. There is a whole lot more that goes into a political system than just deciding how enterprises are managed. (And, by the way, it's not any different to have your 99 fellow workers decide by voting how things are run, vs. a bureaucrat from a central government. So it's also an unimportant implementation detail.)

I think that makes it pretty disingenious for Democrats to scream "we are not socialists" and socialists to say "Democrats are not socialists." Because the people complaining about socialism don't care about that technical implementation difference; that's not actually the issue being raised. Rather, they are arguing against collectivism.

People in general use "socialism" to mean "collectivism," and I think that's perfectly fine, because people in general don't (and shouldn't) care about some obscure implementation detail that is being argued over by true believers.

If you have an argument against what I've said here, I'd be interested to see it, but I'd rather get something really specific and targeted vs. more of a soapbox.