I've been really frustrated with the lack of consensus on the left of what socialism even means for a while so here I tried to collect some of my thoughts on how you approach that question.

I, I suspect like a lot of others, first socialism defined by the left (instead of completely right-wing misunderstandings) as workers' or social ownership of the means of production, and so tried to apply that definition as an absolute to real societies. I see that commonly, all over left spaces.

I used to be skeptical of the claim I'd seen later from some MLs that no, it's defined by the presence of a dictatorship of the proletariat. This used to confuse me, and seemed like apologia for AES not being sufficiently socialist or whatever or being too fixated on what the state looks like rather than what the economy really is.

But after reading more Marx, learning more about the presence of non-socialized economic sectors in not just China but AES all over the world, and considering what it really means that every capitalist country has a state sector of some kind, and even large ones, this began to make a lot more sense to me as a definition than trying to dogmatically apply our ideal arrangement of property to entire economies in a period of historical transition. You can't take an absolute view of ownership to identify a mode of production, there has been overlap and even combination for centuries.

I won't restate much more, but it really stands out to me that my old view is ahistorical and dogmatic, and unfortunately prevalent. Obviously the ultimate goal remains complete common ownership and abolition of class, but it can't be a simple litmus test for underdeveloped revolutionary societies in real historical conditions. I want to shout this conclusion from the (online) rooftops sometimes so I'm glad you read this a month later and thought it was good or helpful. Thanks