This is what socialism means if you restrict yourself to orthodoxy from 100 years ago. Social democrats are not swearing allegiance to capitalism. They are not meeting with billionaires in back rooms promising to not almost go far enough. This is naive, academically outdated, and exactly the kind of thing I am tired of explaining to people who read some pamphlets and think it represent a broad view of contemporary political science.

Third way socialism starts with an acknowledgement that capitalist forces arise from places other than malevolence by so-called capitalists, and a broad rejection of such modernist economic determinism. Rather, it acknowledges that capitalism is in part an inevitable product of scarcity and economic complexity which can be whittled away, while also being a tool which can be wielded by the state. But the imperative to eliminate it is as artificial as the imperative to eliminate rainy days or icebergs.

If the goal is keeping people dry and ships afloat, then just do those things, and push society forward iteratively until the conditions are correct that we can legitimately control the weather. Liberate people by creating conditions for liberation, not by calling their chains something different.