Opponents of health insurance reform are scoring points by shouting about "socialism." We need not accept their framing of the discussion by agreeing that the many kinds of goods and services they enjoy because of government are examples of "socialism." Most are not.
Malumaureus, Granny Doc, and Vegas Dave recently launched discussions aimed at defanging the rhetoric of the right regarding health insurance reform. (dailykos.com/story/2009/9/17/783446/-Call-it-what-it-is:-socialized-_____ , (dailykos.com/story/2009/9/14/781910/-Get-the-government-out-of-my-life!), (dailykos.com/story/2009/9/17/783538/-In-Defense-Of-Socialism.
Clearly, the right has some advantage in using the smear of "socialism" to frame its attacks on any government action that it dislikes, but I suggest that it is a mistake to develop lists of communally-consumed goods and services and call them "socialistic" in order to embarrass the loons. There is no better source for their embarrassment than in the theoretical propositions of neoclassical economics, which is itself a set of "proofs" of the superiority of market economics.
Introductory economics, a course required of business majors and few other intrepid souls, presents a theoretical rationale for the role of government in a system completely dominated by market transactions, but hampered by two kinds of failure, externalities and public goods. Externalities exist when the structure of property rights fails to produce a cost structure that ensures that all costs of a product are covered by its market price. For example, a manufacturer may dump toxic wastes from a factory into the atmosphere (even though it is not privately owned by that manufacturer), thereby causing harm to others who live near or far from the factory and reducing the total well-being of the society. If these "negative external costs" (i.e., external to the requirements of cost accounting by the business firm) are forbidden, such that the manufacturer is barred from discharging the wastes or required to pay for their decontamination, the products’ prices will rise to account for the higher cost of production. The consumers of the products will then pay in full the costs of production and the harm to others will be eliminated.
The same argument applies to unsafe labor conditions within that privately owned manufacturing plant, in which owners’ property rights allow them a free hand in managing production processes. Workers’ health may be harmed by decisions of managers who implement owners’ property rights; the workers have no property stake, hence no voice. In this case as in the previous one, total well-being is less than optimal until the cost of maintaining safe conditions is mandated (in effect, reducing the scope of the property rights of the manufacturer) and incorporated into the products’ prices. Manufacturing enterprise provides the most easily understood example of externalities, but careful examination will reveal that the extent of negative externalities is huge and usually tilted in favor of the business sector and against workers and the larger community. Their rectification requires reform of property rights and immunities, which is not "socialism," but an attempt to establish conditions in which the socially optimum level of production and consumption is achievable. (Even the staunchest conservative unfailingly argues that a primary role of government is protection of property rights; many of these defenders are myopically focused on the structure of existing protections of business functions, unable to extend the concept to other social or economic groups. They need to be called on this.)
There are also "positive" externalities, the existence of which also reduces general well-being. A good current example is the flu vaccine. Each individual who elects to be immunized not only improves her own health prospects, but adds to the probability that others will benefit from not being exposed to her if she were to become ill. If people are (theoretically) rational, they will consume (and pay for) only the amount of a good that directly benefits them. Thus, they ignore the wider impact of the vaccine and their purchases do not result in the socially optimum provision. As with negative externalities, a correction of the market is called for, perhaps in the form of a subsidy that expands the total consumption of the good. This is not "socialism," but an effort to establish conditions for social efficiency in market transactions.
The other major realm of government’s role concerns "public goods." These are goods or services that have distinctive characteristics that set them aside from ordinary goods and services. First among these characteristics is that use or consumption of the good or service by one person does not diminish the amount of that good or service available to others. The most obvious example would be national defense: whatever protection I derive from the existence of the military establishment does not lessen the amount of protection that exists for anyone else. Secondly, the benefits of military protection are realized by all the members of the society. No one can be excluded, not even those who might refuse to pay. Finally, it is not possible to determine the amount of benefit that I or anyone else receive(s), so there is no way to attach a price to the individual benefit, and as a consequence, no way to charge anyone for the benefit. Since business enterprise cannot gauge a price and sell only to those who pay it, it is impossible to generate a profit, so the item cannot be produced by private, profit-seeking organizations. It is necessary, therefore, for government to provide the good or service and pay for its production from levies laid upon all the beneficiaries, which are called taxes. (The desirable structure of fair taxation is a topic for another time.) The essential point is that a wide range of goods and services have the properties of public goods, and this is true in the most completely market-based system. The essence of "socialism" lies elsewhere, and it is probably too much to hope that reactionary propagandists will be stilled by the "simple" lessons of neoclassical, free-market economic theory. Still, I suggest that these are better arguments than the line that portrays as "socialism" a multitude of arrangements for helping a market-dominated economy provide efficient and socially optimal outcomes. (I do not suggest that these arrangements always, or even often, deliver their promise. That too is a topic for another time.)