> It reminds me of the people calling the nordic countries "socialist" (remind me which means of production the state has forcefully taken in Sweden). Words have meaning, and bastardizing them annoys me.
Words have meaning, and they also evolve. You'll have a much easier time understanding others' meaning and communicating with them in kind if you recognize that in many contexts:
- Social democracy has largely been associated with the word socialism.
- Communism has largely been associated with the word socialism. (Side-note: this is the association you appear to be making; many communists would wholesale reject the notion of the state seizing the means of production, or for that matter the notion of the state as a legitimate institution.)
- Communism basically doesn't exist in the broader vocabulary, except as an historical marker for the Soviet Union, and a geopolitical classification of countries like China or Cuba; to the extent it can be associated with any word today, it's anarchism and only among self-identifying anarchists.
- Anarchism has always been aligned with communism except in terms of the question of the state.
- Big-L Libertarians are largely an ideological faction of the right-wing/Republicans.
- Democrats and Republicans occupy a narrow spectrum of corporatism (though that is increasingly expanding rightward).
- Small-l libertarians are more frequently associated with the word anarchism, which is resented by pretty much everyone who cares.
(Full disclosure since at least my clarity if not my characterization displays a bias: I am an anarchist, of the communist variety, and I tend to view social democracy as harm reduction.)