It depends on your perspective. From theirs, they are vastly different from Ds and Rs, and Libertarians aren’t.

That’s statism, or authoritarianism, or totalitarianism. It overlaps with socialism, but they are different things. There’s also non-socialistic statism and non-statist socialism.

A lot of this will depend on the write-in votes, most of which have not been reported yet.

My grandmother was one to her dying day, in the late 1990s.

Nevertheless, I think it misses the main point, which is still valid.

There is little appeal to the socialist parties, as they aren’t sufficiently different from Republicans and Democrats.

I didn’t see anythign in this discussion to dissuade me from that opinion.

Eugene Debs, of course, was the most popular socialist, getting nearly 6 percent of the vote.
I don’t think anyone thinks of socialism as a cult of personality, but it really did its best under Eugene Debs….and probably due to the cult of personality around him at the time.

However, I also think it did better, because it was so much different, in those days, from the mainstream parties. In these days, mainstream parties will nationalize banks, partially nationalize healthcare, maybe even completely nationalize it. We have all kinds of social welfare programs unheard of in the early 1900′s.

nevermind Karl Marx.

I guess its because I study Russian so much, its where my perspective lies….but Russians didn’t give a crap about communism, there wasn’t a sincere communist alive after 1960 or so…

but where they really did believe they were special was universal healthcare, retirement for pensioners, public housing.

All of which, are mainstream stuff for both Democrats and Republicans, which lowers the real appeal for socialist type candidates…who left to hawking, not real differences, just ethereal philosophical differences that joe 6pack will never get.

On #4 above, “Major Strasser has been shot!”

=exchange of looks=

“Round up the usual suspects!”

- from the film “Casablanca”

Socialism, in this man’s definition, is where the government confiscates and redistributes the wealth of the productive citizens, varying in degree according to Keynes, Mussolini or Marx.

How does your definition account for anarcho-socialism? I don’t see the existence of a state as an essential element of socialism. A group of hippies or religious communalists can be socialistic, yet voluntary.

I would agree that the workers do not control the means of production in allegedly socialist states. That is their proclaimed goal, not the reality.

Which connects better: “Workers of the world, unite!” or “Be proud to be German!” (or Italian, or fill-in-the-blank with your preferred race, nation or culture)?

It depends on who you are talking to.

But to deny that fascism is not socialist, despite any Wikipedia revisionism, is too much of a stretch for this freedom-loving man.

What incorrect revisionism did you find in the linked article? If you haven’t read it, it is not very long, and worth reading in a discussion like this.

Socialism, in this man’s definition, is where the government confiscates and redistributes the wealth of the productive citizens, varying in degree according to Keynes, Mussolini or Marx.

National socialism certainly does that, to a lesser degree than international socialism, but it is only illusory and temporary.

Illusory because, any time the citizen [who is supposedly guaranteed his private property in small business, land or savings] aggravates the state, he quickly finds the property confiscated and likely his freedom as well.

Temporary because all socialist systems “run downhill” towards totalitarianism.

Fascism, as the fake antidote to communism, seemed plausible to frightened Germans in the 20s and 30s [see: millions of dead and starved kulaks in nearby Ukraine, which despite that intrepid Pulitzer-winning NYT reporter Walter Duranty, Europeans actually knew was happening].

Which connects better: “Workers of the world, unite!” or “Be proud to be German!” (or Italian, or fill-in-the-blank with your preferred race, nation or culture)?

But to deny that fascism is not socialist, despite any Wikipedia revisionism, is too much of a stretch for this freedom-loving man.

My compliments.

Now to your post: the “socialism” in national socialism is inoperative. See

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strasserism

for details.

The “mixed economic system” of Keynes has morphed, as all socialist systems must do, into something increasingly sinister.

On that, we can agree. But it is hardly a system where the workers control the means of production, whether through the state or not.

The increasingly totalitarian state operates on behalf of the oligarchy and the bureaucracy intertwined in a kleptocratic death-embrace.