Comment on What's the difference between communism and socialism?
Yendor@sh.itjust.works 10 months agoThe post office system is socialist, so are functions like public roads, and fire and police services.
I’d argue that having the government provide a service isn’t enough to call something socialist. In “The Wealth of Nations”, Adam Smith said that in a free-market economy, the governments role was to provide defence, law and order, and public works (eg. roads and education). If we’re using Marx’s definitions for communism, then surely we have to use Smith’s definitions for Capitalism.
BlameThePeacock@lemmy.ca 10 months ago
Even if you do exclude those pieces, the US still has socialist organizations and programs that fall outside that definition. I’d argue that even Adam smith is just realizing that socialism is required for certain industries because capitalism has extreme market failures in situations where two or more providers are not economically viable, or in situations where the public good an profit are not aligned.
Florida has a public state insurance company for example. It had to because insurers are fleeing the state.
Texas maintains a publicly controlled electricity distribution organization (Ercort) covering most of the state.