Rave This: If you think modern day Dems are socialists, Posing as old school Liberals.

This is an alphabetical list of all members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC) (Social Democrats) as of April 2011:

Tammy Baldwin, Karen Bass, Xavier Becerra, Earl Blumenauer, Robert Brady, Corrine Brown, Michael Capuano, Andre Carson, Donna Christensen, Judy Chu, David Cicilline, Yvette Clarke, William "Lacy" Clay, Emanuel Cleaver, Steve Cohen, John Conyers, Elijah Cummings, Danny Davis, Peter DeFazio, Rosa DeLauro, Donna Edwards, Keith Ellison (co-chair), Sam Farr, Chaka Fattah, Bob Filner, Barney Frank, Marcia Fudge, Raúl Grijalva (co-chair), Luis Gutierrez, Maurice Hinchey, Mazie Hirono, Michael Honda, Jesse Jackson Jr., Sheila Jackson-Lee, Eddie Bernice Johnson, Hank Johnson (whip), Marcy Kaptur, Dennis Kucinich, Barbara Lee, John Lewis, David Loebsack, Ben Ray Lujan, Carolyn Maloney, Ed Markey, Jim McDermott, James McGovern, George Miller, Gwen Moore, Jim Moran, Jerrold Nadler, Eleanor Holmes Norton, John Olver, Frank Pallone, Ed Pastor, Donald Payne, Chellie Pingree, Jared Polis, Charles Rangel, Laura Richardson, Lucille Roybal-Allard, Bobby Rush, Linda Sanchez, Bernie Sanders (CPC's lone Senator), Jan Schakowsky, Jose Serrano, Louise Slaughter, Pete Stark, Bennie Thompson, John Tierney, Nydia Velazquez, Maxine Waters, Mel Watt, Henry Waxman, Peter Welch, Frederica Wilson, and Lynn Woolsey.

The goals of the CPC are those of the Social Democrats around the World. http://blog.beliefnet.com/wat...

What is socialism?

Socialism refers to a broad array of ideologies and political movements with the goal of a socio-economic system in which property and the distribution of wealth are subject to control by the community for the purposes of increasing social and economic freedom, equality and cooperation.

Socialism is a type of Collectivism. The key assumption made is that the individual belongs to the community, and therefore his/her labor belongs to the collective. There are various offshoots of the core ideal.
Properties of Socialism

All members of the economy share benefits, regardless of their economic value to the system.
A healthy socialistic system results in non-economic productivity.
In environments with plentiful resources, socialism provides all members with their survival needs, through the redistribution of wealth from those who produce.
Members that cannot participate economically - due to disabilities, age, or periods of poor health - can still impart wisdom, support and continuity of experience to the system.
Leaders, who are not producing, have domain over those who are producing.


There are different varieties of socialism. They share a desire for egalitarianism, by which they mean some real equality, not just equality before the law and equal opportunities. In a socialist society one would expect income tax to be sharply progressive, for example.

One common feature is the assumption that people are inherently bad, and if left to themselves, will let their neighbors starve. It is argued that to prevent this, everyone must give all they have to the government, who will benignly distribute it to the needy. Forgotten is this : if men are inherently bad, then how will setting inherently bad men over them help? And if men are not inherently bad, then why set anyone over them?

According to Daniel DeLeon, socialism "is that social system under which the necessaries of production are owned, controlled and administered by the people, for the people, and under which, accordingly, the cause of political and economic despotism having been abolished, class rule is at an end. That is socialism, nothing short of that." Mr. DeLeon forgot that as "the people" are an abstraction, that a leadership class will evolve to speak "for" the people.

Other theories have it according to degree of public good, where industries are seized in some countries where it was felt a direct effect on the welfare of the citizens as whole would result. Such vital sectors such as Military, Border Control, Customs, Public Health, and Police are normally under control of the state. Universally, Socialism could be considered as a tool of modern governance. It has been overused in the past to disastrous result [some still present to this day]. It has morphed into a matter of degree rather then a thing unto itself.

Pure socialism can only work in small communities, ideally with a strong sense of identity and perhaps family ties. As socialist societies grow, they can foster even more corruption among officials than capitalist ones. Also, in the absence of force the more able in society will limit their labour if they don't benefit from their efforts directly.

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Socialism - Economic vs Political

One thing the above gets a bit confused with is that in modern-day academic usage, socialism is mostly an economic idea, not a political idea. When talking about political socialism, usually it is referred to by another name, which specifies how the socialist economic policy is to be implemented; see things like Marxism, Communism, and Maoism. Economic socialism by itself says nothing about the way that wealth should be distributed per se - that is, a socialist economy does not have to have one particular form of political system structure. It is entirely possible to run a socialist economy mated with a republican form of government.

Commonly, Socialism (with the capital 'S') is a shorthand for Marxism, while socialism (with a lower-case 's') refers to the socialism economic theory.

Like all economic theories, socialism has major faults, though it appears that socialism and capitalism are currently the most successful economic theories so far, as virtually the entire world runs on some form of either one (and, in most cases, a blend of the two).
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