Democracy a group effort; all progress not socialism

In response to Mike Clifford’s Feb. 22 submission “Nation’s characteristics already show socialism,” Vocabulary.com says a “commonwealth” refers to any group of people organized under a single government, particularly a republic. If you live in the United States of America, you live in a commonwealth.

Common, “belonging to all. Wealth, “happiness or riches.”

The site defines socialism as the collective ownership of the means of production and control of distribution. We are by definition still a capitalistic society come together in a commonwealth where the means of production and distribution are still firmly held in private hands.

It’s time to stop denigrating all the things we have collectively done to better the lives of the citizens of this country by always labeling our advances as a society as socialism or communism. All of the similarities Clifford cites between the USA and a Marxist society boggle the mind. At the present moment we are closer to becoming a dictatorship run by oligarchs than we are to the Marxist society he alludes to. His statement that corrupt socialism leads to an elite ruling class and a peasant class is true, but what we have today in this country is far from socialism, not when the 1 percent in this country controls more wealth than the bottom 90 percent.

What we have presently is closer to a corrupt oligarchical society than a corrupt socialist society. We need to stop tossing around labels and do the hard work of getting this capitalist democracy back on track, to the benefit of all its citizens, not just the 1 percent.

JIM NICELY

Bella Vista