That anyone can contend (other than as a joke) that the the military is a
socialist institution testifies only to the debasement of the term
"socialism" in the 20th century.  From the coinage of the word to the
Russian Revolution, socialism meant democracy applied to the economy.  (It
meant a good bit more than that, but democratic control of productive
property was the conditio sine qua non.)  Only when the Russian Revolution
was seized by a group of right-wing (i.e., authoritarian) Marxists (viz.,
the Bolsheviks, who then adopted the generally-unused appellation
"Communist"), did the term socialism come to be used for state-ownership,
a usage inconsistent with what had gone before.  Chomsky points out that
the remarkable agreement between the US and the USSR that the latter was
socialist was collusion in a lie:

   One can debate the meaning of the term "socialism," but if it means anything,
   it means control of production by the workers themselves, not owners and
   managers, whether in capitalist enterprises or an absolute state.

   To refer to the Soviet Union as socialist is an interesting case of doctrinal
   doublespeak. The Bolshevik coup of October 1917 placed state power in the
   hands of Lenin and Trotsky, who moved quickly to dismantle the incipient
   socialist institutions that had grown up during the popular revolution of the
   preceding months-- the factory councils, the Soviets, in fact any organ of
   popular control-- and to convert the workforce into what they called a "labor
   army" under the command of the leader. In any meaningful sense of the term
   "socialism," the Bolsheviks moved at once to destroy its existing
   elements. No socialist deviation has been permitted since.

   These developments came as no surprise to leading Marxist intellectuals, who
   had criticized Lenin's doctrines for years (as had Trotsky) because they
   would centralize authority in the hands of the vanguard Party and its
   leaders. In fact, decades earlier, the anarchist thinker Bakunin had
   predicted that the emerging intellectual class would follow one of two paths:
   either they would try to exploit popular struggles to take state power
   themselves, becoming a brutal and oppressive Red bureaucracy; or they would
   become the managers and ideologists of the state capitalist societies, if
   popular revolution failed. It was a perceptive insight, on both counts.

   The world's two major propaganda systems did not agree on much, but they
   did agree on using the term socialism to refer to the immediate destruction
   of every element of socialism by the Bolsheviks. That's not too surprising.
   The Bolsheviks called their system socialist as to exploit the moral prestige
   of socialism.

   The West adopted the same usage for the opposite reason: to defame the feared
   libertarian ideals by associating them with the Bolshevik dungeon, to
   undermine the popular belief that there really might be progress towards a
   more just society with democratic control over its basic institutions and
   concern for human needs and rights.

   If socialism is the tyranny of Lenin and Stalin, then sane people will
   say: not for me. And if that's the only alternative to corporate state
   capitalism, then many will submit to its authoritarian structures as the only
   reasonable choice.

   With the collapse of the Soviet system, there's an opportunity to revive the
   lively and vigorous libertarian socialist thought that was not able to
   withstand the doctrinal and repressive assaults of the major systems of
   power. How large a hope that is, we cannot know. But as least one roadblock
   has been removed, In that sense, the disappearance of the Soviet Union is a
   small victory for socialism, much as the defeat of the fascist powers was.

        --from What Uncle Same Really Wants, by Noam Chomsky

C. G. Estabrook