en.wikipedia.org
The term is often misused in the United States. Social Security and Medicare are elements of a welfare state but they are not socialism. Socialism requires group ownership of the means of production, usually controlled by a central government.
In true socialism, there is no private industry. The USSR had socialism(not Communism) and so did Communist China until the 1980s. Communist is the name of a political party.
Group ownership of the means of distribution. Social Security and Medicare both fit under that.
It's control over distribution of resources.
"true socialism" has never existed, because it can't exist, because Socialism sucks.
Even in the USSR, a lot of people don't know that roughly 10% of the farms in the Soviet system, were actually private, for-profit farms. And ironically that tiny fraction of the farms, produced 1/3rd of all the food in the entire Soviet system... an outcome fully expected by free-market capitalists that know how badly socialism fails.
We also do in fact, understand that nearly all economies are mixed economies, that have free-market capitalist parts, and socialized parts.
This has to be true, because with zero socialism entirely, you would have a limited form of government, restricted to only defending the country, and enforcing the rule of law.
No government is like that these days.
Further, we knot it is true, because if it was entirely socialized, the country would cease to exist, because socialism has never worked in all human history, and has destroyed every country that has ever tried it.
What we on the right-wing understand, is that socialism always fails. How much it fails is only dependent on how much it is implemented.
Throughout our entire economy... list all the areas that have major systemic problems, and I will give you an identical list of areas where government has taken control of, or put in place restrictions to the free-market capitalist system.