Although welfare is important to any modern society, people have conflated the idea to think that socialism is just hyper welfare. Its not. Socialism is an economy where workers own the means of production and every stakeholder has a say in the inner-workings of the company.
Capitalism rewards risk takers and innovators. That is why the best products are developed in capitalist countries. Not in socialist countries like Cuba or North Korea or dictatorships in the Middle East, or Russia.
Socialism kills innovation, it demotivates people, it kills any progress. It equalizes the outcomes.
This is all false. The most dangerous jobs that involve risking one's most valuable thing, their life, are not nearly the highest paid but capitalists wouldn't even consider that risk because money is literally the only thing that has value to them. The concept of a life having more value or risk involved than the financing put forth from one's account with the click of a button is absent.
Russia is capitalist. Cuba nor North Korea have given workers control over the means of production.
https://www.socialism101.com/basic/I have so much renewed confidence in socialism because I have yet to meet a person who understands socialism and is against it. Most people against it are against it because capitalists have tricked them into believing it is necessarily authoritarian, it eliminates personal property, eliminates personal freedom, the USSR revived, or is just welfare for everything.
I advise everyone to read sites like this, read Marx and Engels, and read socialist platforms like this
Socialist Society
Freedom & Equality
Democratic socialism is a political and economic system with freedom and equality for all, so that people may develop to their fullest potential in harmony with others. The Socialist Party is committed to full freedom of speech, assembly, press, and religion, and to a multi-party system. We are dedicated to the abolition of male supremacy and class society, and to the elimination of all forms of oppression, including those based on race, national origin, age, sexual preferences, and disabling conditions.
Production For Use, Not For Profit
In a socialist system the people own and control the means of production and distribution through democratically controlled public agencies, cooperatives, or other collective groups. The primary goal of economic activity is to provide the necessities of life, including food, shelter, health care, education, child care, cultural opportunities, and social services.
These social services include care for the chronically ill, persons with mental disabilities, the infirm and the aging. Planning takes place at the community, regional, and national levels, and is determined democratically with the input of workers, consumers, and the public to be served.
Full Employment
Under welfare capitalism, a reserve pool of people is kept undereducated, under-skilled and unemployed, largely along racial and gender lines, to exert pressure on those who are employed and on organized labor. The employed pay for this knife that capitalism holds to their throats by being taxed to fund welfare programs to maintain the unemployed and their children. In this way the working class is divided against itself; those with jobs and those without are separated by resentment and fear. In socialism, full employment is realized for everyone who wants to work.
Worker & Community Control
Democracy in daily life is the core of our socialism. Public ownership becomes a fraud if decisions are made by distant bureaucrats or authoritarian managers. In socialist society power resides in worker-managed and cooperative enterprises. Community-based cooperatives help provide the flexibility and innovation required in a dynamic socialist economy. Workers have the right to form unions freely, and to strike and engage in other forms of job actions. Worker and community control make it possible to combine life at work, home and in the community into a meaningful whole for adults and children. Girls and boys are encouraged to grow up able to choose freely the shape of their lives and work without gender and racial stereotyping. Children are provided with the care, goods and services, and support that they need, and are protected from abuse.
Ecological Harmony
A socialist society carefully plans its way of life and technology to be a harmonious part of our natural environment. This planning takes place on regional, national, and international levels and covers the production of energy, the use of scarce resources, land-use planning, the prevention of pollution and the preservation of wildlife. The cleanup of the contaminated environment and the creation of a nuclear-free world are among the first tasks of a socialist society.
https://www.socialistpartyusa.net/principles-points-of-agreementNot all parties or types of socialists are the same (we are talking about 1/3rd of the political compass) but you will be hard pressed to find authoritarian socialists which is the only thing people have arguments against.
