Explain Like I'm Five

Because some of the worst dictators of all time said they were communist and socialist, despite dictatorship being fundamentally antithetical to both.

Then a bunch of idiots watched a dictatorship, the USSR, burn up their economy with a space and arms race, so now they think socialism kills economic progress. It wasn't that the USSR didn't invest properly in the populace, or infrastructure, or that they were fundamentally a kleptocracy with a massive military, it's that they called themselves socialist. That's what killed them.

It's manufactured hate.

It benefits those in power to make average citizens fear socialism.

We already live in a system with numerous socialist programs. Many of the people who have been brainwashed to hate the concept of socialism already benefit from some of these socialist programs.

As with pretty much everything in life, you have to find a happy medium. That goes for socialism too. A full on 100% socialist society may not function well. Just like how we're witnessing the failures of the ultra-capitalist society we live in.

But the brainwashed don't want to meet in the middle. They fear socialism and don't want any trace of it in our society....despite the fact that there are already many socialist aspects present.

It's mostly thanks to the worst real world attempts to create socialism in the 1900s, which ended up being not terribly different from plain fascism. In core USSR cities things were probably kind of fine for most people, but the farther away you got from the large cities and the motherland, the worse it got. Ukraine had a man-made famine that killed 3-10 million people. China has similar horrible hunger waves due to human mistakes or malevolence in planning. Gulag Archipleago, Stasi, KGB. When people attempted to free themselves from communism, the attempts were brutally crushed. Oppression was everywhere.

If you want to meet people who hate socialism most, go to places that used to be socialist. Sure, USA had some counter-propaganda against communism, but it 100% is not the only reason why people don't like it.

Just because it has failed miserably in the past might not mean that it must fail in the future too if somebody is ~~dumb~~brave enough to try again. But there are some important differences between now and then and those differences might be important if put to good use. For instance, we have significant computer capacity today that didn't exist back when communism was really tried the last time. Perhaps those difficult allocation problems can be worked out. Perhaps. Perhaps AI can be an impartial divider of resources. Just let me build the model, I'll make it fair, I promise.

I wonder how Lemmy would explain the apparently much more blatant hatred towards free market capitalism though.

Asking this on Lemmy is like asking a priest "why do people hate the Church?"

Every answer is going to assume the system in question is the best and everyone is either benighted or misanthropic.

The rich don't want equality. They need people to be suffering and in dire want, so they have exploitable people to profit from.

Actual five year old explanation:

Some people, who bake a birthday cake with their mom and dad, want the entire cake for themselves. If mom or dad take a piece anyway, they think that's not "sharing" but "stealing". Even though mom and dad helped bake the cake too. They think cake being taken from them is socialism.

long form:

1. When "socialism" started, it started in a BLOODY way. I mean, the Russian revolution, before that it was mostly just theory, but still "the poors" doing it, so that was ew for history writers. The Russian revolution itself did achieve some kind of no longer aristocratic system, but for many many people, the outcomes were not positive. There were some positive outcomes on average, literacy and food supply improved a lot over time. But we're talking about the negatives here. Then the whole stuff Stalin did and being in power for decades in a system that's supposed to be democratic didn't exactly improve the reputation. Don't forget that for a long time, world domination was the literal declared goal of the international communist party. They were legit "coming for you" because they were coming for everyone. So that's one whole topic covered.
2. Have you ever worked in a group project and someone didn't pull their weight? "The" argument against socialism is that that is going to be everyone. And then nothing gets done. But because society still does need some things to function, like food supply, electricity, etc. society will collapse, because nobody will do what's necessary. Because the mindset of people against socialism, is that external reward is always necessary for people to do things. If everyone has the same, unconditionally, there is no reward and no punishment. To finance the system anyway, the fear is that "socialism" would just tax everything or seize your property and redistribute it.

So when someone says "that's socialism", they fear that they will be robbed or killed or at least threatened. And to be fair, the thought of being robbed or harmed is scary.

The vast majority of the hate for socialism is decades long propaganda and indoctrination, which is mostly false. Socialism is a threat to the wealthy, so they programmed people to hate it.

With socialism or socialism-like policies, the general population gets more, at the expense of the wealthy elites who would get less. The wealthy control or lobby or have a say in our education system, media, entertainment, etc.

Only thing I have against it is the air-headed, simple-minded take of most on lemmy. I've asked a dozen times how socialism stops money from funneling to the top and into the hands of a few. Never once got an answer. Look in this thread right now! There's not one real definition, just the usual capitalism bad, socialism good, take.

Best government and economic system I've seen in human history is a capitalist economic model with serious guard rails and "socialism" for the government. I put socialism in quotes because the word means to lemmings whatever they want it to mean, so the term is wishy washy.

The rest of the commenters here are correct. Although, socialism means differently under different contexts. Socially yes, it means helping others and each other; but socialism in economic context typically means either the workers run the means of production, or the state. The wealth generated is then distributed as equally as possibly among the members.

You need a definition. You didn't define it, and people who hate it rarely define it. If nobody knows what everyone is talking about, then it's all a waste of time.

So, what do you think it means?

The people who own, run, operate and manage all information systems from education, news services to schools are all or mostly private corporations, businesses or wealthy benefactors who all base their wealth on capitalism. So they spend all their time and energy using the services and organizations they control to convince everyone everywhere that capitalism is the only option and that socialism in any form is not good or does not work or is not practical.

Socialism, as far as Marx was concerned, is a transitional stage to Communism. This is why it gets a lot of push back. Because of that connection. Worse, youve got generations of people conflating the two. And worse still, you have a few examples of people who were claiming to be socialist, who were really just using socialism for their own ends.

The reality is that Socialism is about everything being about the betterment of the people. That assets are a shared ownership, rather than privately owned. This in turn creates a fairer distribution of the wealth generated. So everyone's lives improve.

The issue, the real issue, is that socialism needs a very large government in order to work. The fear is that this would create out of control bureaucracy. With middle mangers everywhere doing middle manger things that would create a system that was slow and worse far easier to corrupt. On top of that, you have the issue of competition not being the driving force of innovation. The government would control and mandate investment and innovation. Which again comes back to the middle mangers. There is also an issue with free speech. After all, if the government controls everything, where do you go if that government doesnt see the issues that its created? And worse still, how might it handle those dissenting voices?

The reality is that no one system is "the best" and really what would work best is a mixed system. One that builds a well regulated economy while maintaining a safety net for the people. So you would have private businesses, competition, innovation combined with free healthcare, free education, unemployment support, worker rights, high taxes, and high transparency and accountability.

Every politically charged term ends up having highly disputed definitions, but I think most of those will acknowledge that the term has way more baggage than just the idea of taking care of yourselves and neighbors.

From Wikipedia:

Socialism is an economic and political philosophy encompassing diverse economic and social systems[1] characterised by social ownership of the means of production,[2] as opposed to private ownership.[3][4][5] It describes the economic, political, and social theories and movements associated with the implementation of such systems.

It represents a whole set of beliefs about how the world works, in addition to political goals. Someone might broadly agree with the idea that people should be taken care of, but have strong objections about the specifics. One of those beliefs that I'll object to is the idea that just about everything should be understood as being about class conflict; I don't think that's always accurate.

Care? hahahaha. You made me laugh.

If you don’t define it, lots of things can be wrong with it. Or right.

Which is why almost no one defines it.