When a CEO cannot personally get richer by cutting wages, understaffing, and outsourcing; all of those things stop. This is why republicans called everyone a communist back in the 1950s. It is sad that people remember mccarthyism, but completely forget the socialistic tax policy that ended the great depression and made it possible to own a home out of high school while raising a family off a single income.
(The guy is joking in the video)
So even if Mamdani calls himself a socialist it's important to ask what he means by that versus what people calling him a socialist what you to think.
You’ve adopted a certain definition of socialism and decided it’s the correct one. Which is fine, everyone does that with vocabulary. But you are not acknowledging to yourself that it was in fact an act of adoption to do so. Thus you are denying yourself the mental framework for evaluating how and why others might try to use competing definitions.
Metaphorically, words are buckets and different people put different things into the bucket. Sometimes it’s just silly like “is a hot dog a sandwich.” Other times there are more serious implications like the fundamental difference between “I have a theory” (about how a lamp got broken) vs “I have a theory” (a mathematical framework for predicting the relationship between genotypes and phenotypes).
And sometimes it is used to create shibboleths, whereby looking in people’s buckets communicates how open they are to persuasion of one type or another.
So it’s always a power move, and useful, to think “what exactly do they mean by that?” What do people gain and lose by adopting different definitions and words? Understanding that this happens continuously in all use of language helps one do a better job of relating labels to observable objective reality.
To come back to “socialism,” you might think Mamdani is doing himself a disservice by misusing (from your perspective) that term, thereby turning you off. But he just easily won a huge election! That’s objective reality: he got what he wanted, he succeeded. This might be a moment to consider other uses of that term, and the degree to which they may be outcompeting your adopted definition.
This is not an accurate quote, what was said was “even if Mamdani calls himself a socialist it's important to ask what he means by that,” and that is what you objected to.
What we have with "socialism" is the entire spectrum of what socialists themselves believe (and can't often agree upon) and what their opponents insist upon. A European style social democrat and an anarcho-syndicalist have radically different goals, but both would be considered "socialist" by most people. As would - just to point out the absurdity of it - Joe Biden, to half the country.
It is absolutely on you, and all of us, to think beyond "labels," otherwise you just make yourself susceptible to propaganda and misinformation, or at least incapable of fighting it.
Any other road leads to madness and an absence of shared meaning. I will hold you to the standard of your own language and actions. Use the words correctly or be misunderstood. That's on you not me.
And by "accepted definition" you mean "definition accepted by you."
There are few personality traits I find as insufferable as language prescriptivism, it always seems to hide a rigid and doctrinaire worldview. I won't waste your time or mine further. Good night.
Is it socialism to hire temporary labor for snow removal? To fix potholes? My boring municipality in the middle of a red state does that and nobody calls it socialist.
I will never not be amazed at the US meaning of "red state" vs. what the rest of the world means by "red state".