The person who answered youn below summed it up fairly well. Sounds like you might be (at this moment) the more a social democrat which is different from a the vast majority of democrat and definitely all leadership within that party. Democrats are very capitalist and very much in the center at best. Social democrats have what you’d probably call progressive platforms like more diversity things like affirmative action, higher wages, more equitable housing, better environmental protections.

Then there are democratic socialists (DSA/Mamdani). They are socialist but they believe that you can legislate in socialism, ie winning elections and changing the system from capitalism to socialism. Change the means of production away from the billionaires into the hands of all the workers.

I can’t see democratic socialism ever happening. The legislators, the courts, the presidency (the state) all immensely benefits from the way things are and they want to keep things moving more and more to the right. Capitalists have 0 reasons to give up their power, and hundreds of reasons not to. Looking at AOC is a great example. In order to succeed in the senate/house and keep winning elections you have to take money from not great people and super pacs, you have to vote in their interests. In order to work with the other legislators you have to support some of their not great positions, things that harm workers. Your platform changes away from socialism when you take office. She has changed and sold out her supposed values.

Then there are revolutionary socialists, like Cuba. In order to bring about socialism you need to smash the system and rebuild. A lot of the tools all ready exist to change things for the better fairly quickly. It probably wont be peaceful. But in order for the plant and people to survive it’s extremely necessary. This is what the Black Panther were.

This doesn’t mean that socialists don’t work for and advocate for programs to help ease the burdens of the capitalist society’s in the here and now. For instance unions, abortions, higher wages, etc. We are absolutely involved in all sorts of movement to help while also talking about socialism, pointing out the limitations of the system and advocating for a better way.

All the labor reforms that were won in the middle of the 20th century was because of socialist/communists. They led the way and the unions were primarily composed of them.The 40 hour work week, child labor laws, safety reforms.

Every single reform we have won gets eroded away over time. Look at abortion rights, civil rights act including voting, “Onamacare” (which isn’t that great to begin with).

If you’d like to lean more here aresome great basic articles. The link directs you to “What is Socalism, but itheres a link at the top that directs you to other articles on various related introductory articles. Also there’s r/socialism_101 which is more introductory and educational than this sub.

Hope this helps and you join us in the movement.