cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/18056637
source: https://x.com/MaraWilson/status/1288387415833317382
Capitalism sucks.
The problem is that none of the countries you listed were ever socialist. Finland, Denmark, Sweden and Norway are just capitalist countries with good social policies.
And as much as their propagandists wish they did, the USSR, Cuba and China never got past the state capitalism part of establishing socialism.
There has never really been a socialist country in the world, it’s a bit of a moot point to go like “I like this kind of socialism but not this kind” when nobody ever got to see it…
That’s my point. Socialism developed a broad meaning as time went on. Before, it started to mean simply demanding better worker’s rights and conditions. But evolved to mean businesses owned by workers. Eventually, communism came into the scene and started to promote stateless society run by the proletariat. Then with so many people being turned off by the violence of communism, the more moderate left-- social democrats-- advocated to implement socialism through political and electoral mobilisation. But even then, as time progressed, social democrats abandoned their attempts to implement wholesale socialism and instead rein capitalism with sweeping regulations, instead of abolishing capitalism. Nonetheless, even though social democracy still embraced capitalism, the ideology is still considered under the wide tent of socialism but further right to it.
IIRC communism was the original Das Kapital version, and socialism came into being as “communism-lite” not really following Marx’s ideal but giving some good things to workers
The term socialism was first coined in 1832, way before Das Kapital has been published in 1866. But before Karl Marx, socialism as we know it wasn’t something that is fully solid despite the term already being coined. During 1848 liberal revolution, there were some who participated who’d be considered “socialists”, but they don’t necessarily know what they want.