Reply #32: No, they are social democracies with capitalist economies.

[eallen]

Social democracy is not the same thing as socialism. I think it would be terribly unfair to socialist thinkers and activists, from Fourier onward, to bend the meaning of the word so much that it means a nation like Sweden or France -- or the US? -- that has a capitalist economy.

There were people who believed in socialism. I think they were mistaken, and that the economic of history of the 20th century pretty well demonstrates the nature of their error. Being mistaken doesn't mean their desires were misplaced. They wanted what many people here want. We owe them their history. And we also owe ourselves the benefit of learning from that mistake.

Socialism is not the same thing as social democracy. Sweden has a capitalist economy. Yes, it has relatively high rates of taxation and relatively generous social programs, and it is all well and fine to point to the benefits of that. But its economy is still capitalist, with all the characteristics that Marx, for example, would have recognized as capitalist, and a few characteristics, such as derivative trading, that would have him shaking his head at where capitalism would go a century after his death.

:hippie: