Ironic that Einstein, writing in America after fleeing the horrors of national socialism in Germany, still entertained notions of subjugating the individual to the state.
Obviously it's all a sliding scale but to say OstiaAntica is flat out wrong is not accurate.
Actually, the "state owning the property" is not a core idea of socialism --it was only a "feature" of "really existing socialism", and even USSR had things like the NEP. Except for the backward places where "really existing socialism" developed, extremely few europeans (or american for that matter) socialists believed that it was a proper socialism at all.
As in, there are several types of socialism. Things americans complain about and deny as "socialism" (universal health care, for one), are proposed by even right-wing parties in Europe.
I'm sorry, but a cursory glance at one book or a documentary, or something heard from a friend of a friend, won't do. In order to intelligently discuss matters of world politics one has to do a little research. And it would be better if that research was impartial. Buy some books from both sides of the argument, and from both sides of the atlantic (and even the pacific).
The average opinion even on this matters, even on a site like "Hacker News" is often little better than what creationists know about evolution.
Social engineering can be a good thing, in the right quantities. just look at sweden. but it's very hard to achieve this right quantity under a dictatorship, not to talk about the awfull people that usually lead dictatorships.
http://www.politicalcompass.org/
It changed my 1 dimensional thinking about the sliding scale between left and right and I feel richer for it.
The Nazi party had nothing to do with socialism, as the term was and is known and defined in the relevant political literature.
Or, more correctly, the horrors of Nazi germany had nothing to do with economic regulation and the social health care et al, and all to do with racist ideology, dictatorship and imperialism.
Actually, Sweden is socialist, in the sense most americans define the word, as well as New Zealand, and it's all the better for them --and they have tens times more refined than either US Republican or Democrat policies.