Socialism and the Beard

Given Sanders' repeated reference to himself as a "socialist," arguments over the definition of the word have become very vogue.

I want to contribute a thought today about a wrong way to proceed.

A Facebook friend of mine, who shall go nameless, wrote as follows: "I'd say Stop Signs are socialist. I'd define it very broadly."

What he is saying is that any government as the term is usually understood is socialist, because such an institution collects money, at least some of it non-voluntary, and uses at least some of that money for non-controversial purposes such as putting stop signs up in places that help avoid collision and death.

There are at least two purposes to which such an argument may be put: If I know that you agree that the word "socialism" names something bad, I may use something like this to push you toward anarchism. On the other hand, If I know that you believe in some sort of government or other, I may use the argument to dispose of the objection that policy X (or candidate X) must be wrong because it or he or she is a socialist. "Well, so are they all, so what's the deal?"

I admit having done some of this -- the first of those prongs anyway -- myself. But I repent of it. And especially with Sanders' supporters using the second prong, I'd like to make the following point. "Socialism" refers to a certain specific range of policies some governments pursue and others don't. If we ignore or deny this we have lost the value of a meaningful word, and so we have lost some of our ability to communicate with each other. So ... no, a stop sign is not socialism.

Consider the beard. The fellow in the photo above has a beard, surely. What if he plucked one hair out? Would he still have a beard? Yes, surely. Well ... what if he plucked a hundred hairs out? Would he still have a beard? What if there weer only ONE short hair left on his face??? Would we call it a beard? I submit we'd be better off calling that last hair a stop sign than calling it a beard.

We can, I think, be fairly specific about what "socialism" historically means. It has never meant a stop sign, for Proudhon or Rosa Luxembourg or Bernie Sanders or anybody else. I'll save that for another day, but I'll leave you with this: I would be happy for us silly Americans to adopt the European habit of distinguishing between socialism and social democracy. I think in at least some of his moods Sanders only means the latter. But sometimes he may really mean socialism. It is the difference between Jeremy Corbyn and William Clouston.

Clouston had plucked off many more hairs than has Corbyn, and you can rationally draw a line between them.