First, read over your post. You capitalize "Socialism" everywhere, but seem to purposefully lowercase capitalism.
If you are so attached to ideology, rather than the results those ideologies bring, we can't have a serious conversation.
> Serious question. How is this any different than unbridled capitalism?
"Unbridled capitalism", no matter how unrestrained, denotes heavy government involvement by virtue of the second word in there.
> No government involvement and a laissez-faire approach to the market is exactly what unbridled capitalism looks like in my understanding.
Your understanding is wrong.
Capitalism requires the accumulation of substantial capital in private hands and its application. And not just any hands, very specific hands, where that capital is magnified.
You can't have that kind of distribution and application of capital without government involvement.
Eminent domain, government contracts, grants, regulations, etc. all direct the flow of capital to the few individuals blessed to wield it.
In short, the government controls and directs the flow of capital. That's capitalism.
> Just because Socialism is in the name USSR doesn't necessarily mean anything.
Yes, it does. It means those who were at the center of the creation of the state saw the enterprise as a socialist one. Even your friend Lenin.
> If we are to look at the name Nazi which was the National Socialists Party and their Italian counterpart was a major proponent (even father of) of Corporatism, a rather extreme form of capitalism
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazism#Economics
"Nazis also promised social policies like a national labour service, state-provided health care, guaranteed pensions, and an agrarian settlement program."
"To tie farmers to their land, selling agricultural land was prohibited."
"Farm ownership was nominally private, but business monopoly rights were granted to marketing boards to control production and prices with a quota system."
Sounds like state controlled means of production to me. I can go on, but you get the point. They were clearly socialist.
> The Welfare State has it's roots in Socialism.
Yes.
> Socialism is an umbrella term.
No. We defined it a few posts above.
> Anarchism is a main branch of Socialism
> to be fair extreme Anarchists don't want a State at all so Socialism cannot and does not mean State ownership
You're skipping steps there. Socialism -> Communism -> Anarchism.
Communists aren't fans of government either. They believe(d) that once all private property is out of the picture, there would be no need for government, since there would be no disputes over private property to mediate ... which would lead to a state without government. Leading to anarchism.
> his is one of the major confusions into what Socialism means and kills any possible meaningful discussion around the topic, especially in the USA where Communism and Socialism are used interchangeably.
What? The front-runner for the Democratic nomination openly calls himself a socialist ... that's clearly not true.
> Also Lenin didn't kill 50m+ people just because he was paranoid. You can't lump them together.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladimir_Lenin#Red_Terror
Ok, so he didn't kill 50m+, maybe 1m?
How do you differentiate between a thug who was responsible for the murder of 50m and one for who was responsible for 1m?
> While Lenin was certainly not a saint, he was an intellectual with brilliant ideas, operating in an extremely difficult environment.
I'm glad to hear he's your hero, but at the end, he's just another murderer. An honest, decent man wouldn't be capable of what he did.
Being intelligent, well spoken, even brilliant ... doesn't excuse you from being a shitty human being.
Stalin was also quite brilliant. That doesn't excuse him either.