[camgunz]

Eh I would say Socialism as practiced in Western Europe and the Nordics is doing better. They're out doing the US in most important metrics, and they're trending more Socialist (though we'll see what intensifying climate migration and other climate change consequences bring).

[christkv]

Social democracy is not socialism. Please don’t confuse the two because they are still miles away from each other.

[camgunz]

I think that it is. Socialism is where the workers own the means of production. I think a democracy that's nationalized significant industries fits that description, e.g. France:

> 1982 François Mitterrand's proposals in the 110 Propositions for France and alliance with Jean-Pierre Chevènement's Socialist Party faction CERES, committed France to an explicitly socialist ‘rupture with capitalism’. Full nationalisation (100%): the Compagnie Générale d'Electricité, the Compagnie Générale de Constructions Téléphoniques, Pechiney-Ugine-Kuhlmann, Rhône-Poulenc, Saint-Gobain-Pont-à-Mousson, Thompson-Brandt. Partial nationalisation (51%+): Dassault, Honeywell-Bull, Matra, Roussel-Uclaf, Sacilor, Usinor. Thirty-nine banks, two financial houses, and the remaining 49% of the SNCF were also nationalised, taking the size of the French state to unprecedented levels within a year of Mitterrand's election as president in 1981.

[constantcrying]

>Socialism is where the workers own the means of production.

Clearly that is not the case in any European country.

>Dassault

Literally family owned.

I don't think you realize just how capitalist European countries really are. State owned corporations are usually quite rare and generally known for being run extremely badly. On the other hand many of the largest corporations are still controlled by the families of their founders.

[cscurmudgeon]

> Eh I would say Socialism as practiced in Western Europe and the Nordics is doing better

It is not an easy comparison.

They have the luxury of the US taxpayers taking care of their defense while they propped up Russia, which US is also paying the most by a large margin to fix now [1, 2, 3]. Hilariously US socialists are against US defense spending except when it comes to US spending on Europe.

They also have the luxury of oil money which American "socialists" are totally against [4].

All in all, a pretty neat scam if you ask me.

[1] https://carnegieendowment.org/politika/88764 [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eKEycjREgPE [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_military_aid_to_Ukrain...

[4] https://www.barrons.com/news/norway-earns-record-oil-gas-rev....

Edit: All of what I say is objective. Luxurious Western Europe and Nordic "socialism" can't survive without gullible US taxpayers footing the bill over decades.

[camgunz]

Arguably the US caused the Russia problem with the aggressive expansion of NATO, and the failure to defend Crimea, so this seems fair. Also the US produces a bonkers amount of oil; dunno what your point is here.

EDIT: how could I forget Trump's undermining of NATO, cozying up to Russia, and withholding aid to Ukraine?

[cscurmudgeon]

1. NATO doesn't need Russia's permission to expand.

2. All I am saying is socialism that exists due to the benevolence of capitalism and exploiting nature is not real socialism and is not sustainable.

3. > how could I forget Trump's undermining of NATO, cozying up to Russia, and withholding aid to Ukraine

Wasn't Trump the one who warned the snickering Europeans against Russia? Even if that is the case, it doesn't go against my point #2.

[constantcrying]

All these countries are market economies with tax funded social services. Not "Socialist" under any meaning of that word.

>they're trending more Socialis

Indeed. More and more ridicolous taxes and less and less useful social investments.

[davidw]

Anyone who thinks that, say, Denmark is not a mixed economy with a strong bit of capitalism as well as a strong social safety net has never dealt with a kid who wants to buy lots of Lego.

[camgunz]

There are important differences between Denmark and the US though. Aren't we saying the same thing?

[Kamq]

> There are important differences between Denmark and the US though.

On the human level, sure. On the level of "fundamental economic system" (which is, I believe, the line of discussion), there really aren't.

They're both WEIRD countries with market based-economies and a social safety net. They both end up at the top of the lists on economic power (adjusted for population).

The differences between them are political fine-tuning of the system to target an extra 5-10% of the population with the safety net, or to target those people in different ways. That's incredibly minor in terms of economic systems.

When comparing two different economic systems, you tend to see differences on the order of "mass-famines" and "percentage of the population involved in subsistence farming".

[mindslight]

> On the human level, sure. On the level of "fundamental economic system" (which is, I believe, the line of discussion), there really aren't.

One of the problems with this whole "debate" is that defenders of the status quo apply a huge motte and bailey to the definition of "capitalism". Both strawmanning any criticism of it as a rejection of all aspects claimed by capitalism, and also giving capitalism credit for systems that share some aspects of capitalism even though they haven't gone all-in and let capital run roughshod over everything else.

This dynamic is so common it has become a trope - kneejerk cries of "socialism". The original link that kicked off this comment tree was basically doing the same thing in more words.

The distinction between the motte and the bailey is easiest to see when aspects that we associate with capitalism end up in direct opposition to capitalism itself. For example, free markets can be directly opposed to capitalism, like in the context of imaginary property. A capital-centric view says that inventing a new form of capital out of whole cloth is the right thing to do. A market-centric view says that competition should drive the cost of information to within an epsilon of the copying/distribution cost.

[Kamq]

> One of the problems with this whole "debate" is that defenders of the status quo apply a huge motte and bailey to the definition of "capitalism". Both strawmanning any criticism of it as a rejection of all aspects claimed by capitalism, and also giving capitalism credit for systems that share some aspects of capitalism even though they haven't gone all-in and let capital run roughshod over everything else.

This is a fair call-out, given that there's so much drive-by arguing on the internet.

I'm pretty sure I'm using a standard definition, but let me state the definition I'm using just to be as explicit as possible: A system is capitalist if it has private ownership of the means of production.

So, to give an example, a country would be a capitalist country regardless of their tax scheme/welfare spending so long as the means of production were privately held. Another country that nationalized industries (the oil industry is a common one) would be, at the very least, a mixed-economy, regardless of how free their markets are.

Given the above comments on Europe, I would argue that European countries do meet the definition of capitalist for the most part. While some European countries do completely nationalize a handful of industries, it's rare, and the majority of industries are privately owned, even if they are highly regulated.

[mindslight]

I don't know that is a great definition any more. A straightforward implication is that China is capitalist. Which isn't necessarily wrong, but rather demonstrates that it's focused on yesterday's arguments.

Meanwhile I'd say most critics of "late stage capitalism" aren't bemoaning the private ownership aspect itself. Rather they're criticizing the wealth concentration, industry consolidation, and government corruption that large accumulations of capital symbiotically buy and benefit from.

[davidw]

If people actually bothered to read the link I posted, it is all about the lazy blaming of a wide variety of problems with specific solutions on a very hand-wavy "capitalism".

I know a fair bit about about the housing shortage for instance, and it's not "capitalism". It's a specific set of rules and institutions that cause the problem.

[mindslight]

Sure, but that's the strawmanning I'm talking about. Citing tweets from people trying to be edgy with Marxism and pointing out their intellectual laziness isn't actually addressing the legitimate complaints about late stage capitalism.

To me, the root causes of the housing crisis are zoning and the endless supply of newly created money from the Federal Reserve. Both of these policies are direct results of those who own housing (aka capital owners) politically insisting that the value of their "investments" continually go up. That's capital acting on the meta-system to optimize for capital itself. It's sensible to lay the blame for this on capitalism itself, and doing so doesn't mean I'm looking to somehow blow away the entire system in favor of some completely different -ism.

I'd personally make my own distinction of centralized capitalism versus distributed capitalism. But that's more of a constructive argument of how to specifically reform the system, while still sharing the general criticism.

[camgunz]

There are large differences though. The US poverty rate is 2.5x higher than Denmark's (15% to 6%). Denmark's life expectancy is 6 years longer. The kinds of policies you'd need to close that gap in the US would be transformative.

> When comparing two different economic systems, you tend to see differences on the order of "mass-famines" and "percentage of the population involved in subsistence farming".

There are plenty of capitalist countries that do a lot of subsistence farming.

[Kamq]

> The kinds of policies you'd need to close that gap in the US would be transformative.

I disagree. When laid against things like the end of mercantilism, I don't think that qualifies as transformative.

I think the effects would look pretty much like the existing US system, because Denmark looks pretty close to the current US system by the standards we're talking about. If you want to argue they'd be fundamentally different, you can make a case, but I'd like to know why they would produce different results.

> There are plenty of capitalist countries that do a lot of subsistence farming.

Do you have some examples? The areas I'm aware of that practice subsistence farming, don't have a long history of leaving the means of production alone in private hands for very long.

[camgunz]

> I disagree. When laid against things like the end of mercantilism, I don't think that qualifies as transformative.

That may be your benchmark but it's not mine. I think permanently pulling 30m people out of poverty in the US would be a multi-trillion dollar multi-decade endeavor on the scale of combating climate change (you need housing reforms, education reforms, health care reforms, criminal justice reforms, etc). That may not qualify for you, but it definitely does for me.

> Do you have some examples? The areas I'm aware of that practice subsistence farming, don't have a long history of leaving the means of production alone in private hands for very long.

Besides being something of a no-true-scotsman, examples are India, Brazil, and Mexico.

[sudosysgen]

> Do you have some examples? The areas I'm aware of that practice subsistence farming, don't have a long history of leaving the means of production alone in private hands for very long.

This is not correct. Under, for example, the Roman Empire, privately held land was routinely leased to free men, either for a share of the produce (métayage) or for a fixed fee. This practice lasted hundreds of years. The end of subsistence farming has everything to do with technology and nothing at all to do with capitalism.

In the eigth century in France, around 50% of the land was under a sharecropping-like system, too. This page, and the page in French wiki it links in the intro, give a good rundown of capitalist-like subsistence farming in antiquity and the middle ages : https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metayage

[chanakya]

A core element of socialism is that all industries and natural resources are state-owned. European countries are capitalist, not socialist, and got where they are by being so.

[FrustratedMonky]

Technically, kind of, but not exactly.

Anytime this point comes up, someone on the right/Republican will say any taxation is Socialism, that Europe is Socialist. So, to compare Europe/Nordic socialist policies, to US policies is not a large leap. You can't just say, "well technically that isn't really socialism so we can't use that as an example in this argument", when literally for a decade the 'right' has specifically called them socialist.

[constantcrying]

>taxation is Socialism

Nonsensical strawman. Socialism has a real meaning and "taxation" isn't it.

[FrustratedMonky]

Tell that to Republicans. If 50% of the population does believe that. Then I'm forced to make the point, to address it in that way.

I know this, but there is 50/50 chance that whoever is posting on the internet does not know it.

[constantcrying]

America has taxation.

[FrustratedMonky]

Yes? and The US also has regulations.

And Republicans argue that both are socialism.

Half of the country thinks "anything the government does is socialism" and campaigns to stop it, or get rid of it, or handicaps it, or how it is just evil and control.

Basically to the right: 'government' = 'socialism'. And they haven't realized yet they are arguing for anarchy.

[Kamq]

Minor quibble. The industries generally need to only be "socially-owned" rather than state-owned. Though I will admit that state-ownership is the most common in practice.

More of an academic point though, as Europe, as a whole, is still basically completely capitalist under this definition as well.

Edit: An example of a socially-owned company that is not state-owned would be an employee owned company.

[camgunz]

Sure, I'm saying:

- there are big differences between US capitalism and European social democracy

- European social democracies are trending more socialist all the time

> European countries are capitalist, not socialist, and got where they are by being so.

Ehhhh communist movements, multiple devastating wars, and unions had a hand in it too.

[rsynnott]

> - European social democracies are trending more socialist all the time

Eh? Which ones? As a European this is very much news to be; not much seizing of the means of production going on. If anything, some divesting of the means of production; heavily regulated privatisation of state energy, transport etc monopolies has been going on all over Western Europe for a while.

I realise that in the US, the colloquial definition of ‘socialist’ these days is more or less “not actively going around kicking poor people”, but the idea that Europe is becoming more socialist by any reasonable definition is a bit out there.

[camgunz]

There's a recent rightward shift for sure, but long term benefits are increasing, unions are gaining power, and you're seeing people use democracy to force industry to adopt green policies. This is the power dynamic described by socialism: people control companies, not the other way around.

[constantcrying]

>you're seeing people use democracy to force industry to adopt green policies

No, you are seeing governments force green policies against the will of the majority.

[rhaway84773]

https://www.heritage.org/index/ranking

This is a ranking of economic freedom which strongly aligns with capitalism. The U.S. ranks 25th behind European countries like Ireland, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland, Germany, Iceland, etc.

[camgunz]

It looks like this ranks things like freedom to invest, trade, etc., none of which are incompatible with socialism.

[constantcrying]

Investment directly implies private ownership of the means of production.