You're right. But where I live (France), educated people do know the difference between "socialist" and "communist", and it is generally nothing to be ashamed of to be called a socialist. A former President (the one before Macron) was a socialist, and so am I

@Thibaud70 Australia is the same.

My favorite example is what social scientists call "social capital", a shared trust among members of a society, hard to measure, but intuitively plausibel if you compare dysfunctiolnal societies, where people do not trust each other with highly functional societies where interactions run smoothly, because citizens share a sense of "we" that allows them to treat each other which respect
[en.wikipedia.org]

Other examples would be functional institutions, a rule of law, a welfare state which prevents poverty... anything where the benefit does not accrue directly to individuals but to a society or the community as such, but indirectly to members of these groups.

I'm not sure what vaccination means to you, but I chose on behalf of my kids to get childhood vaccinations to protect them, not anybody else. Vaccination protects the individual above all else.
The fact that vaccines provide immunity to the individual means that individual cannot act as a vector and pass it on, thus creating a "common good". But the intention of vaccination first and foremost is to protect the individual, with any common good benefits flowing on from that.
Thank goodness and I didn't have to decide regarding covid vaccines and my kids. Sure, I would not have subjected my kids to an unproved vaccine that for them, provided no real benefit ie kids were not dying from covid, never were. But I witnessed the extreme pressure that the state and media put on parents to vaccinate their kids. Not for the kids benefit, but for the "common good". Disgusting politics all round.

So vaccinations are not for the "common good", that is instead a positive byproduct of their wide use. But only if they stop transmission can any claim of "common good" be made, I cannot emphasise that enough. If they do not stop transmission, no common good.
Instead, you take vaccines for purely selfish reasons, to protect yourself #1. Anyways, that's how I looked at it when deciding for my kids. They got their childhood jabs.

@puff Covid is now the eighth most common cause of death in children in the U.S.

And the reason you got vaccinated is irrelevant. It still helps the common good by reducing or eliminating the spread of diseases. Not only are you preventing YOUR kids from getting polio (for example) but also helping to ensure polio is no longer a public threat.

And I think that the world of 2023 versus the world of 2020 is proof enough that the Covid vaccine works.

@Charles1971 " It still helps the common good by reducing or eliminating the spread of diseases".
Obviously I didn't emphasise enough.
"Covid is now the eighth most common cause of death in children in the U.S."
According to the graph here, death from respiratory disease has remained pretty static over the years in children so I call bollocks. Children are not dying from covid.
[nejm.org]

@puff Well, about about this article which seems to support what I said and is also from the NEJM.

[jwatch.org]

Yes, though I think that it was always a stronger idea with the left. Though i favour of the rights view, there is some value in the idea that the common good, can be left to take care of itself. But that will become less likely to be valid in today's world, where technology give the individual huge power, both economic and physical to do harm.

Depends on the kind of "right wing". There are conservatives who subscribe to communitarianism
[en.wikipedia.org]
and there is an identitarian "progressive" Left which has abandoned the idea of a common good and favors the exclusive good for certain "identity groups"

@Thibaud70 Aren’t atheists an identity group? Every lawsuit against prayers in schools or public meetings is all about that identity and as such could be characterized as progressive and thus “woke”.

@Scott321 Atheists? If many of say "Being an atheist is an essential aspect of my identity", and if enough of them organize and act like a group, then one could call them an identity group. In France, that's not the case, but I don't know enough about the situation in the US.
But I don't think that atheists are "woke" because wokeness is mostly about race and gender, and about oppression (in history and present)