In a thread under this meme, a chud commented "socialism is cringe." When I responded with, "Taxes going towards social welfare programs isn't socialism, lol," a girl replied:
actually it is definitely a socialist thing. Public schools, public infrastructure (such as roads and parks), stuff such as the fire brigade, public transport, medicare/Medicaid, and even the military. Essentially, if the government funds it, it is widely beneficial to people, and its free for said people to access... Then it's probably socialist. A lot of American stuff is based on socialism. Some elements of socialism is literally required to function. Imagine if there was no public school. Or every fire department was privately owned. Your kids get no education, your house burns down... Well unless you are rich enough to pay, of course.
I said, "Socialism is when the means of production are publicly-owned. Taxes being used to fund programs has existed long before socialism was an established ideology. I get what you mean, but sometimes I cringe when people say that socialism is when the government does stuff. This is coming from a socialist."
Then she came back with this:
"In a purely socialist system, all production and distribution decisions are made by the collective, directed by a central planner or government body. " By that definition, a government funded state school is controlled by the government, whom the public vote in. Hence...
I mean, the "all production and distribution decisions are made by the collective" part is pretty key to establishing whether something is socialist or not. Sure, publicly-funded fire departments, healthcare, education, and transportation would exist in a socialist system, but those institutions aren't inherently socialist by themselves just because we pay taxes to fund them. But I'm struggling to put into words that socialism refers to the economy and society as a whole, and not just things that we pay for through taxes.
Production of commodities and services for exchange and profit value is not socialist, it is capitalist, and it is centered around profit accumulation through private ownership of capital goods. I think you'd benefit centering the discussion about the production of goods and services by private enterprises, as their primary purpose in society: for exchange and private accumulation. Socialism's purpose is to center production and services around the use value. For human need and public benefit.
And the only way for production to shift from primarily exchange to use value is through command economies and social ownership of capital goods and their production via direct worker control or through a proxy like the state.