Who are you planning to vote for? (US presidential election)

[metroid composite]

"liberal" gets used in all sorts of ways as a political term.  Some countries have their right wing party called "liberals" some have their left wing.  Canada's liberal party is actually the center wing party.

Strictly speaking, if you look up "liberal" on wikipedia, the official definition is effectively what most of us would think of as libertarian.

So...technically speaking, yeah I guess liberal is not the right term for Jill Stein.

Then again, Jill Stein is probably a lot closer to the technical definition of "liberal" than the technical definition of "socialist".  Socialism literally means have social control of the means of production.  So...unless Jill Stein's policies include "annex Detroit's auto companies into the federal government, and rename then 'the federal department of automotive manufacturing'", no, Jill Stein is NOT socialist.

[NotMiki]

Terms used to define political movements can't be shoehorned in to a single definition, so I find it's best to go with popular usage, which in the US means supportive of a collection of causes associated with democrats to the exclusion of republicans - belief that the government should play a strong role in regulation, specifically with respect to consumer protection, affirmative action, protection of the environment, and support for the more vulnerable members of society.  All that said, I have no trouble calling Stein a liberal, even if she self-identifies differently.

[Grefter]

For the record (and others I guess), greens tend to be pretty bad at Liberalism itself, a very key part of it is with regards to freedom in property rights and Greens tend not to give as many fucks about it.

[NotMiki]

Property rights aren't really championed by American liberals either.  That's why you had liberal justices voting the way they did in this case (a terrible decision in my opinion).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelo_v._City_of_New_London

[MalcolmMasher]

So...unless Jill Stein's policies include "annex Detroit's auto companies into the federal government, and rename then 'the federal department of automotive manufacturing'", no, Jill Stein is NOT socialist.

From jillstein.org/issues: "Ensure the right to accessible and affordable utilities – heat, electricity, phone, internet, and public transportation – through democratically run, publicly owned utilities that operate at cost, not for profit." I'd say calling her a socialist is fair.

[Cmdr_King]

Those are basic utilities, not means of production.  Calling for socializing those specific things is not particularly socialist, though sure, in an absolute sense it qualifies.

But no, what I've read of Stein indicates she's 'socialist' in the sense that most european countries are 'socialist', ie not at all socialist just USians have no goddamned idea what that word actually means.

(Ignoring of course that those thing being private is looney tunes to start with.  THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS COMPETITION FOR ELECTRICITY.)

[superaielman]

Jill Stein is very much in line with the Social democracy model, yes. Calling her a socialist then is certainly reasonable enough, unless you take the hardline stance that socialism has to be full on Marxist style communism.

[metroid composite]

So...unless Jill Stein's policies include "annex Detroit's auto companies into the federal government, and rename then 'the federal department of automotive manufacturing'", no, Jill Stein is NOT socialist.

From jillstein.org/issues: "Ensure the right to accessible and affordable utilities – heat, electricity, phone, internet, and public transportation – through democratically run, publicly owned utilities that operate at cost, not for profit." I'd say calling her a socialist is fair.

Canada has most of those.  Canada is a capitalist democratic country where the Conservative party is currently in power.

unless you take the hardline stance that socialism has to be full on Marxist style communism.

Marxist style communism involves dissolving the government, and having everyone get along because sharing is caring.  It's a small-government movement at its core.

Note that the USSR was in-practice socialist, not communist.  (It's even in the name, for what little that means--United Soviet Socialist Republics).

[SnowFire]

As usual, definitions are highly overloaded and mean lots of things to different people.  I believe you're referring to "true communism" which even Marx saw as something of a mystic nirvana over the rainbow that wasn't likely to arrive anytime soon.  I wouldn't really call Marx a small-government type; he certainly believed some form of government, in the sense of institutionalized force against class enemies to enforce the perfect society, was required.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_Commune#Retrospect  has some reasonable details on it; while obviously Marx was a huge fan of the Commune in general, his complaint with it was that they were too merciful to capitalists and spent too much time worrying about democracy rather than seizing power, etc.  When people say "communist states" in 1970 or whatever they almost assuredly mean the Marxist-Lenninist or Maoist definition, in both of which there's still a dictatorship of the protelariat where the Communist Party runs everything in an incredibly powerful single-party state to prepare the way for the happy governmentless society.... which is very, very, very far off.  I'm not sure the far-off Promised Land of a stateless society is enough to qualify communism as a "small-government movement at its core" when every actual communist state hasn't really gone that way.

Anyway, Western European leftist parties usually identified as "socialist", got elected, and actually held power, so I'm inclined to let their definition be "socialism" as they're the notable ones who practiced it.  Stein would probably be at home in the various French socialist parties so I'm fine with calling her a socialist (and also acknowledging that by the American definition of liberal, she is super-liberal, which is not the same as the European or Australian definition of liberal, etc.).

[Grefter]

For what it is worth, Liberal as a descriptor here in Australia tends not to be associated with the party that shares the name the same way that Liberal/Democrat and Conservative/Republican have in the US.