What % Socialist Are You?

About This Quiz

"Socialism" has a muddled reputation, and before we get into how socialist you are, we're going to get into why this is. Socialism does not actually mean nationalizing all companies and abolishing private capital. That is communism, a separate ideology to the left of socialism. 

Socialism is also not the same thing as liberalism, the ideology to its right. Liberalism is less redistributive and tends to be reformist (i.e., making small changes while preserving the system) while socialism is revolutionary (overturning the system altogether). For example, a liberal might support permitting all people to access the institution of marriage, while a communist would reject the entire idea of marriage, and a socialist might be a mix.

Meanwhile, a liberal might use a carbon tax to stop a fossil fuel company from polluting with impunity; a socialist might phase in a moratorium on fossil fuels; a communist would just nationalize the oilfields and stop digging. To a communist, socialism is an interim step on the road to communism; to a socialist, it is the endpoint. Thus, someone who identifies as a socialist probably isn't a communist. Socialism can also include community (i.e., non-state) regulation of activities and companies; by some definitions, a church is a socialist enterprise, as is any company offering stock to its workers.

There are three main reasons that socialism gets mixed up with its neighbors. First, the Cold War resulted in lumping anything even vaguely left-wing together. Second, most liberals and conservatives actually like some socialist policies like highways and Medicare. Third, Karl Marx called communism "scientific socialism" to distinguish it from what he saw as woollier brands of socialism, a branding exercise the USSR later found useful.

Like society, most healthy people are a blend of ideologies, which means we can identify how socialist any given person is. What's your number?