So I guess the problem is that socialism and communism are kinda used in two different ways. One way refers to a political program, the other refers to a hypothetical stage of economic development.

yeah, so the way that i see it is that communism is a specific subset of socialism with very clearly defined restrictions, however i think it suffers from a generally similar problem, regarding the lack of specificity at least. Capitalism manages to do away with it on a fundamental basis by simply moving that to the markets itself. I guess to preface this entire comment, i see the lack of market flexibility as a fundamental issue with everything other than capitalism, as it’s a decentralized system that works to fit the market needs.

But “socialism” and “communism” as stages of economic development are moving targets, impossible to pin down because they’re entirely hypothetical and there are only a couple countries that have even tried to achieve them.

This is one of my primary concerns when i see people talking about economic socialism, there is no clearly defined mechanism of operation for it.

Was the Soviet Union communist? Well, it was lead by Communists in the political program sense, but I don’t think anyone would argue that it achieved communism in the economic and social development sense.

it also depends on the period of time as well, you could make the argument that under lenin it was communist/socialist, but under stalin it was more authoritarian/dictatorship. It certainly made strides and advancements from the previous state that russia was in at the time, so there’s something to be said about that, although it’s pretty clear to most people that this was primarily due to industrialization and increasing productivity, which levels off in a goods market eventually.

Modern day China, too, is Communist in the political sense, but even by their own metrics they are still capitalist, and see socialism as a goal they are working towards (if you believe their rhetoric and don’t think it’s all just cynical, which many western socialists do).

i’m not sure how applicable this is, since communism and capitalism are economic systems, the chinese government would be more authoritarian capitalist than anything. And as you said “socialism” as defined is a very broad goal, so it’s really hard to even interpret that statement to begin with.

So while the Chinese Communists have their own definition of practical socialism, western leftists are not in power and all of our ideas remain purely theoretical as a result. Add to this the fact that there is no major leftist political org in western countries for the socialists to rally around and you get more definitions of socialism and communism (the stages of economic development) than you can shake a stick at. This leads to the problem you’re describing, where socialism appears to have no solid meaning at all, because the notion of it is so phantasmal.

yeah i’m just sort of surprised that with the modern age being here and present and what not, that somebody hasn’t tried simulating a few hundred variants of a socialist economy to write a thesis on yet, it shouldn’t be difficult, and i’m sure it would make for an interesting read. It’s definitely an odd problem to have with something so popular among farther left types. Even the far right nazis know what they want to do when they get into government lol.

But I don’t think that you can dismiss socialism or its results as “capitalism, but different,” because the whole thing about socialism is that new power structures create new incentive structures and therefore even if there are some superficial elements of capitalism that remain - like the use of currency - under a socialist regime the outcomes should be more equal, fair, and democratic.

to be clear, i’m not inherently dismissing socialism, i’m just dismissing the particular issue i see present with it. And while the equality aspect is arguably true, i feel like you could just as easily apply socialist policy to a capitalist system and get a similar result, while retaining the very clear operation of capitalism.

There are numerous historical examples of these better alternative outcomes, but of course they’ve all been relentlessly propagandized against in Western countries so that the average person doesn’t realize that there is a better way to run society than the one they were born into.

idk i guess i just feel like we kinda hit the nail on the head with the “decentralized self regulating market economy” idea from the get go. There are problems with it, and notable issues for sure, but that’s why the government exists, to take care of these problems. There are also some interesting ethical implications you get into with either system as well. That’s a whole other discussion though.