On 30-12-2009 11:54, Darren New wrote:
> Stephen wrote:
>> Sabrina Kilian wrote:
>>> Why do people from the USA want to shout about socialism?
>> It sounds that (in the US) “socialism” is becoming a synonym of 
>> “Communism”
> 
> What do *you* think the difference is?  They sound pretty similar, 
> except one has stuff owned by "the government" and one has it owned by 
> "the people".

In the Netherlands communism is associated with Russia and China. We had 
a communist party (now part of a larger alliance). It was closely linked 
to Moscow, very dogmatic and very surprised when it became known what 
Russian communism actually meant in practice.
Socialism is a much broader term. Our labour party (in size number 1,2 
or 3 of our political parties over the last decades) is a socialist 
party. Socialist parties are very well represented in the European 
parliament as well. The main characteristic is that they will always 
think first about what a proposal means for the working class, those 
without the money to buy political influence (or that is the theory).
In short: to Europeans the difference is huge. Americans using the term 
'socialism' are generally regarded with a friendly sort of paternalism. 
They clearly don't know what they are talking about, but that is OK, 
they are Americans.

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