To call each thing by its right name

Financial Times:

After massive government bailouts, banks are still enjoying government guarantees, implicit if not explicit. Policymakers have, moreover, slashed the cost of liquidity. Bankers’ handsome compensation is, therefore, in large part underwritten by public money. Second, even before the crisis, inadequate competition failed to whittle away large profits – as enormous returns on equity showed – and therefore outsize compensation, unlike in other industries.

I like to think of capitalism as a system of, by, and for the purpose of capital. If nothing else, it is a system that produces and safeguards capital; administered by whatever group controls the bulk of it.

The fact that this capital class defends its interests through government is not some abrogation of capitalism that suddenly renders it "socialism." It is how the system works, if for no other reason than that this is how power works.

For it's own part, socialism developed out of an acknowledgment that government "picks winners and losers" all the time -- so the public might as well get in the game, rather than perpetually pick up the tab. This is its "social" mandate, which it must fulfill if it is to have any useful meaning.

Talk of "lemon socialism," "socialism for the rich," "Obamunism," and the like, posits some mythical capitalism where privileged minorities don't rely on state protection to secure their interests against the disenfranchised majority at every turn. In a system propped up on myths, this is not surprising; but I don't know of any circumstances in which it is real.