/lit/ - Literature

thotts?

A topic im sure everyone has seen discussed at one point or another that has caught my interest is the definition of socialism and the debate regarding whether or not the so called "nordic socialism" or whatever people like to call capitalist states with extensive welfare, usually the modern nordic nations, are "socialist", same for the debate regaurding "national socialism"

anyway like most my initial thought was that socialism is specifically social ownership of the means of production so of course they arent "socialist" by any means, but reading about Hitlers thoughts on socialism prompted my curiosity regarding the term and my first idea to satiate this curiosity was to look into the idea of "pre marx socialism" and in my admittedly light research i came across plenty of examples of people who were considered socialist, for one example, some ancient Roman statesmen who advocated for policies in the interest of the Plebeians like subsidized grain to help the poor and some wealth distribution, basically a lot of welfare type programs

So my question is, do you think socialism is truly limited to Marxist type thought? Is it genuinely honest to say national socialism or other types of governments that are very heavily defined by their extensive social welfare programs are not socialism in any sense of the word just because they dont adhere to the philosophy of later socialist thinkers whose writings became exceptionally popular and dominated socialist discourse?