Has socialism died?

I'm sad enough to have looked socialism up in my 1991 Collins Dictionary of Economics. Under their definition it is basically a mixed economy - some state provision of services and some private sector. I was taught, and this isn't that long ago - when I was eighteen - that this is the sort of economy that we live in, in the UK. In my 2000 Penguin dictionary of philosophy, socialism is 'a theory and a movement advocating public ownership of the more important means of production'.

But precisely who these days is advocating this? Not the labour party for definite.

Not Roy Hattersley, from his diatribe advocating selling off the NHS a couple of weeks ago with the health secretary. And not Polly Toynbee who was doing the same. And not the New Statesman magazine, which had a glossy colour page pull out on privatising the NHS sponsored by Norwich Union.

And these are the 'left wing' of the Labour party.