Hi comrades. I was in a discussion last week about socialism (like I usually am) and I think we can do some self crit.
I think it's important to remember that multiple modes of production can (and almost always do) exist in a single soceity at once. There is a dialectic between the systems along with within them.
So when we discuss the social democracies, the soviet states, and modern communist projects like China, we should keep that in mind. There are capitalist, socialist, and communist sectors in many countries now. One of them will dominate, however (Marx says this in the first sentence of Capital).
When looking at the USSR, is had basically no capitalist sector, a very large socialist sector, and a big communist sector. But communist sectors are not unique to the USSR or a DotP. Denmark and the UK both had small communist sectors in things like their healthcare. The period before Thatcher actually saw a UK mix quite similar to post-Deng China--a large capitalist sector, a big socialist sector, and a sizable communit one. (This is likely why the economic performance and worker gains were so high during this time comared to other waning empires like France).
Modern China is very similar. And we should not be ultra leftists and ignore that these are all states in transition. We as communists, and Marxist Leninists do not deny that socialist sectors and communist sectors can appear in other societies. We simply state that unless there is a DotP established, the capitalist sector will erode them away.
Note: The definition of sectors here is whether production is governed by exchange value or use value. Capitalist ones have commodity production i.e. their productive forces are guided by exchange value. Communist sectors are governed by use value (to each according to their need and from each according to their ability). This means Communist sectos don't have commodities. Socialist sectors are ones where commodity production does exist but exchange value takes a secondary role in governing production.
UPDATE: Two comrades said they did not agree with how I defined socialist here. I don't think the definition of what true socialism is effects this argument. Feel free to replace "socialism" with whatever word you would describe for a sector where production is not entirely governed by exchange value but still is to some degree.
I hope you all gain something from this. Everyone in our discussion did. I look forward to any other perspectives. I'm originally a USonian so I know I may be narrow sighted.
Your apparent way of defining socialism and communism as "when the government kind of does stuff" and "when the government totally does stuff" are very bad and undermine the ability to describe either socialism or sectors of the economy. Markets and capitalism are not the same thing, just as public roads don't make the US "partly communist"
I'm sorry for the confusion, but my definition is not whether the government does something. There are nationalized industries which are still governed entirely by exchange value and not at all by use value.
You are absolutely correct that markets != capitalism. I was not trying to make that argument.
My friend, terms like "State-owned enterprise" can be helpful here.