Am I a Socialist?

Recently, I’ve been told I am a socialist, or that I support socialism. Socialism is defined as ‘a political and economic theory of social organization which advocates that the means of production, distribution, an exchange should be owned or regulated by the community as a whole.’

Because I’ve suggested that there should be an increase on taxes on the rich (so as to ease the burden on the poor), I’ve been told I am a socialist, but I don’t advocate for the wholesale public ownership of everything. There’s a difference between suggesting a billionaire (and multi-billion dollar corporations) pay their workers a fair, living wage, and pay a reasonable share of tax, and suggesting that we nationalise say, Amazon or Google. I am not suggesting (I don’t know why I am pointing this out for the upteemth time, it gets ignored) stripping away all the money from the likes of Musk, Bezos, Zuckerberg etc. There’s no reason why they can’t continue to be wealthy, but guess what? Others could be better off at the same time!

There are some services that I don’t think belong under the auspices of private enterprise. Healthcare is one of them (I don’t object to the existence of private healthcare options, I’ve even used them in the past, but they should not be the only ones to exist). Education is another (again, I don’t object to private schools, even if they are the playgrounds of the ridiculously wealthy, and therefore unavailable to most others).

Is it true that I lean to the left of the political spectrum? Absolutely. I don’t deny that. In fact I am proud of that! 13 years of right-wing Tory rule (which drove even harder to the right when Boris Johnson became PM) has been an intense demonstration of how self-serving, divisive policies (not to mention greed) can damage a country. We’re not better off than we were 13 years ago, we’re considerably worse off. I don’t advocate for full-scale socialism, and I certainly don’t advocate for communism (as some have implied in the past), but unchecked, unregulated capitalism isn’t a great thing either. You need only look at the problems caused by deforestation, as but one example.

So, with my position defined, and socialism defined, perhaps the likes of Citizen Tom and Tricia won’t conflate my position anymore?

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