I am using the definition of socialism commonly used in economics since the time of Hayek: central planning. Similar to what socialists since
Henri de Saint-Simon have defined it: "He proposed: That the state carry out production and distribution...." Would you prefer Marx's dictatorship of the proletariate? THose have failed, so new socialists come up with new definitions. My thought right now is progressive so sullied the label progressivism that FDR hijacked the term liberalism, and now liberalism has been so sullied there need for a new term, can't be socialism, a failure, aha! Social democracy!
Most social welfare systems have been put in place under capitalism, and usually by conservatives, like beginning with Bismark, and on to today. It goes back as far as Adam Smith, was argued for by Hayek. The promises of socialism, supposedly, to hear people talk today, have been carried out by capitalism.
That's reasonable, though it mistakes self-interest for selfishness. What capitalist ecnomists since Adam Smith have argued all along is that that is how the market works, self-interest benefits society. How? Because in the free market you can only exchange voluntarily, so you exchange what you value less for what you value more--in short, in order to get what you want economically you must produce things others value, and in the process generate the wealth that allows for social welfare.
And yet that is precisely where socialism fails. From the 40s through to the 90s there was a great socialist debate. Ludvig von Mises issued the challenge to them of the problem of economic calculation, basically, how, sans the price system, do you decide what inputs to provde for what production for consumption? The socialists pointed to the USSR till it collapsed economically. The second part of the debate was centered on Hayeks challenge with the problem of knowledge in society, basically, knowledge is society is diffuse, dynamic and often tacit and as such is impossible to compute, even technologically, by central planners. With the collapse of the USSR the socialist conceded. The result is stated succintly by soialist Robert Reich:
The Answer Isn’t Socialism; It’s Capitalism That Better Spreads the Benefits of the Productivity Revolution.
The state manages it and we go further and further into debt. The state also manages the economy through the fed, and turns the natural business cycle into great depressions and recessions. The state also manages the money with inflation that shrinks the purchasing power of the dollar. The state also manages welfare which as shown several times flat-lined the decline in the poverty rate in the US.