why name not “socialism” as a goal or value?

“Anti-capitalism” is increasingly a value among activists and organizers and despite the fact that actual socialist countries like the Soviet Union, Vietnam, Cuba, etc., fought capitalism, imperialism, and colonialism, there is often hesitance to name “socialism” as the anti-capitalism we are interested in. However, naming socialism provides the opportunity to build more unity about what it is we want and what steps might take us there, to ground our ideas and relate our projects to current and historical struggles and create greater visibility for one movement. That said, I do understand there is a lot of hesitance, or even outright refusal, to name socialism. This hesitance is in part because of ruling class sponsored anti-communism/anti-socialism that has made socialism the proverbial “s” word.

However, despite being under an unending deluge of attacks from Western capitalists, socialism has achieved important successes in the Soviet Union, China, Venezuela, Laos, Vietnam, Nicaragua, Tanzania, including lifting millions of people out of poverty, exponentially increasing literacy, providing healthcare, and supporting African struggles for liberation against capitalism. “Socialism” is a helpful and flexible enough term to actualize anti-capitalism into a program seeking sociality and relationality, particularly around the ownership of the means of production, to be the system’s core purpose instead of the growing of capital. At the heart of it, this system of settler colonialism and its co-pilot capitalism is one of wanton human and ecological destruction. So, why not imagine another world is possible and name it socialist? If the answer is because it is eurocentric, authoritarian, statist, undemocratic, these are the essentially arguments used by the capitalist class or their compatriots in their pursuit of the “cold war,” which puts the notion that not naming socialism is strategic in a different context.