I agree with most of this, I just don’t think we can afford to discount the power of stigma when it’s easier to go around that stigma and choose other names to unite under. The left has no problem getting hateful and even simply distasteful words out of common usage by drawing attention to what makes them problematic, sometimes even with proposed changes that are more inflammatory than the original (Looking at you, “Latinx”). I don’t see why we can’t do the same for the term “Socialism” and use something with less historical baggage in order to better appeal to moderates without sacrificing any actual ideological shifts.

I am called a socialist by a lot of people who call themselves socialist, but I am called capitalist to a lot of people who call themselves capitalist. As I said, the word has taken on many different meanings by people who interpret or misinterpret Marx’s ideas differently.

I don’t align myself with any named doctrine because the names are reductive and often misleading or conflicting. If you consider me socialist because of your definition of socialism I won’t tell you otherwise, but I will push back if someone tells me to call myself socialist because I don’t agree with the more common interpretations of what it means to be socialist.

All squares are quadrilaterals and all cubes contain squares, but a cube is not a quadrilateral, it merely looks like a quadrilateral in some projections. It may look like a hexagon in others. Projections don’t show the whole shape

I agree that it isn’t very similar to modern Capitalism at all, but the means of production would still not be state-owned or managed, so the only socialism going on would take the form of unions and government welfare, which is more similar to early 20th century american capitalism than it is to most socialist movements of the past 100 years.

The definitions of socialism and capitalism are constantly in flux though so assigning a simple name to a nuanced economic framework will always be reductive and confusing.

They’re pretty compatible when you use capitalist principles to allow for a market economy where the corporate machines are owned collectively by their workers, rather than their boards of shareholders like we see today. We need a completely different government structure to properly enact and enforce environmental and safety regulations though, since lobbying, bribery, gerrymandering, and cronyism are entirely too effective in the US