Labeling By Policy

The New York Times published an article explaining what Bernie Sanders means when he says he's a Democratic Socialist.  The article is a good read, but the Facebook group Moderates for Bernie introduced the article with an excellent summary: 

WHAT IS BERNIE SANDERS?
Bernie Sanders is primarily a social democrat, calls himself a democratic socialist, and is called by others a socialist running as a Democrat. No wonder so many people are confused! Unfortunately, these very similar names represent very different political ideologies.
So let’s try to clear things up a bit.
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SOCIALISM is a broad economic system involving collective ownership of the means of production. Although there are many different types of socialism, it is most closely associated with the USSR. And USSR labeling is its own mess: it called itself socialist, was called by others communist, and was actually state-capitalist.
 DEMOCRATIC SOCIALISM is a type of socialism that combines the economic collective ownership of the means of production with the political rule by the people (via direct democracy or republic, like we have).
 SOCIAL DEMOCRACY is a type of democracy with a large social safety net and other government-sponsored social programs. Such social programs include any government program that uses private resources (collected via taxes) for the public good. So any politician that wants the government to continue building roads and maintaining fire departments is a social democrat.
 Bernie Sanders and the Europeans you hear him talking about are primarily social democrats. They may want more/bigger social programs than other politicians, but everybody wants approximately the same system of government. One real difference is that Sanders & co also have a tiny bit of democratic socialism sprinkled in; e.g. a single-payer healthcare system socializes health *insurance* (NOT healthcare itself). But for the most part, Sanders and the Europeans want to maintain privately owned businesses.
 Of course, labels – especially political labels – change meaning over time. So even with full understanding of the current definitions, it makes sense to focus on specific policies, rather than labels.