<Neither the Nazis nor the Communists are truly socialist, imo, since these two political movements centralize power. This in itself is diametrically opposed to the fundamental premise of socialism, which is power to the people, i.e. decentralization.

Back when I was in college, the socialists on campus were still trying to sell this bizarre "withering of the state" fantasy, which most of their brethren off-campus had long ago given up. You cannot even conceive a functional society based on supposedly "pure" socialism, since the "equality" required demands massive centralized force to enforce it. Hayek proved that a socialist nation MUST decay into a tyranny, or cease to be socialist.

Like the fantasy that Nazism was the "opposite" of Communism, the "pure socialism" fantasy allowed the campus commies to mentally distance themselves from the hideous human cesspools that every single communist nation, without exception, had become*. Nations whose citizens had to be physically prevented from escaping, with walls, mine fields, barbed wire, and machine guns. Nations who, in this century, killed eighty million of their own people, not counting those who died in acts of war.

"That's not us. That's not REAL socialism."

This ability to insulate their minds from reality probably served them well in their later years. I wonder how many are politicians now.

I'll think about your definition challenge. Until then, think about this: Was Ronald Reagan a conservative or a liberal? How about Ralph Nader? How do you know, if you have nothing to go by?

*The benefits of capitalism versus the destructiveness of socialism was proven again and again, in some cases under almost laboratory conditions. In Germany, Korea, and Viet Nam a single nation, with a single language, culture, history, and resource base, was split down the middle and each half given over to one system or the other. The results were horribly obvious. Study North Korea for a while. This is the wet dream of the modern leftist.