[littlestymaar]

> wouldn't be surprised if a lot of Democrats are saying yes to the question about "socialism" really to express their support for Democratic policies that have been smeared as "socialist", rather than anything having to do with central planning.

While most democrats aren't actually supporting socialism, interestingly enough, socialism doesn't necessarily have something to do with social planning either: socialism is about getting rid of capitalism, an economic system where a few people owns the means of production and “steal” the work of the working class (note that this has nothing to do with free market). You can achieve socialism by different mean. The Marxist-Leninist way, with all-powerful state and central planning is one, but the anarchist way with workers self-managing is another. The first kind dominated the 20th century (and they slayed thousands of anarchists in the process) but nowadays most socialists (in the western world at least) belong to the second category. Noam Chomsky is a good example of these people.

[zozbot234]

You can't "get rid" of capitalism without involving some sort of central planning. If anything, the original proponents of socialism including Marx never supposed that capitalism would be something to "get rid of" in any way; they thought socialism would only become viable when capitalism had reached its highest stage of development, and then the "transition" into socialism would be relatively natural and painless.

"Workers self-managing" industries works really well if the industries have low capital intensity. Law firms might be one example of that. Not so much otherwise, because workers at any one firm don't really want to deal with highly-uncertain capital investments in the first place (that would mean keeping all their eggs in one basket!); they'd much rather shed that risk to outsiders.

[littlestymaar]

> You can't "get rid" of capitalism without involving some sort of central planning.

Of course you can. We even had a practical example in Syrian Kurdistan for several years in a row. Unfortunately, Rojava was destroyed by the Turkish invasion… It looks like the only thing you can't really do without some kind one central planning is war. Which would explain why every anarchist attempt have been crushed so far.

> when capitalism had reached its highest stage of development, and then the "transition" into socialism would be relatively natural and painless.

Natural (and according to Marx, it wasn't “relatively natural” but more like the obvious course of history) but in no way painless. Revolution and temporary dictatorship was part of Marx vision all along.

Also their is plenty of non-Marxist socialism, some being older than Marx and some modern.

> that would mean keeping all their eggs in one basket!

That may be an irrational choice, but humans do put all their eggs in one basket all the time! And BTW, this popular saying isn't that insightful: if you cannot afford to lose a single egg, you better put them in a single basket, because the probability of one basket failing is lower than multiple baskets ;).

[zozbot234]

> We even had a practical example in Syrian Kurdistan

That's getting rid of capital, in the physical sense; war will do that quite nicely indeed. It's not what's normally meant by socialism - even Marx knew better than that!

[littlestymaar]

Not all capital was destroyed. So far Kurdistan was not the part of Syria where the war hurt most.

If you want an example where war isn't involved at all, you can have a look at Catalonia right after the fascist coup in 1936: anarchists and Communists workers just took the control of the whole industrial system and it was locally administered by workers (at least in the beginning, before the Communists allied with Republicans and massacred the anarchists).