| Depends on your definition. Capitalists have successfully ejected murderous regimes from their timeline, by saying that capitalism isn’t really real unless it’s got a free democracy associated with it. Thus imperial Japan, Belgium’s atrocious behaviour in the Congo, the behaviour of the British Empire is completely left out of “capitalist history”. If you did the same trick for socialism you could just count Denmark, Sweden and other successful mixed-but-really-socialist democracies and you could say that socialist guided economies are actually fantastic. Ie if I define socialism as only real socialism when there is a free market democracy but large well funded social programs that keep the society from excessive inequality, I suddenly have the recipe for some of the happiest countries on earth. And some people, you know reasonable people who actually understand Marx’s critique of capitalism - not as a recipe but as a pretty accurate descriptor of the end result of the natural forces of capitalism - they might say that Denmark style socialism is actually what they would like. But of course Denmark = Soviet Union in some peoples mind so that’s impossible. Let’s forget of course that past Stalin’s death, the USSR’s criminal activity was relatively limited. They didn’t invade a country until Afghanistan and that was still without imperialist purpose - they just believed Afghanistan to be in their sphere of influence. In comparison with American military, the Soviet military essentially was used to put down revolts in part so the world the USSR believed has been left to their influence after Yalta. When Portugal was turning red in 1974, the Soviets refused to have anything to do with it. Vis à vis the crimes of the Soviet Union or Red China past their murderous genocidal creators - Mao and Stalin - were relatively limited. In the same vein you could argue that the US was also founded on genocide, just of Native Americans. |
"To implement the Nordic model, you have to have a society which is a high trust society, i.e. the government is trustworthy and not corrupt, you identify to your state and not to your tribe, you can trust your fellow nationals, and you can also trust to outsiders. This all stems from Lutheranism.
Calvinist societies are highly individualist and they distrust any central government, and they also tend to distrust outsiders. This is why US, Switzerland and the Netherlands have not adopted the Scandinavian model, while Germany has. Likewise, Catholic countries tend to be more corrupt than Protestant, and Orthodox countries even more corrupt than Catholic. This is why the Nordic model won’t succeed in those countries."