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LOL its funny because its true.
@freemo I think it depends if you mean socialist countries currently under sanctions by USA or not. Mainstream propaganda deliberately forgets to mention important facts like this.
@modrobert all socialist countries regardless.
@freemo No, for example, there is a clear difference between Venezuela and Norway, both of these socialist countries main export is Oil, one of these socialist countries is under USA sanctions and one is not. Guess which one?
@modrobert Norway is not a socialist country, no european country is socialist. Several prime ministers from multiple european countries have already stood up and explained/corrected this when Trump called them socialist. Norway is a capitalist country with strong emphasis on welfare of its citizens, not socialist.
@freemo Both countries are social democracies. I was born in Sweden, which was social democracy for the most part the past 50 years. The difference is that we didn't have our gold reserves held and all our asserts frozen by IMF, but we did have at least one socialist PM killed in Sweden covertly by CIA (he was openly against the Vietnam war).
@modrobert Social Democracies are not Socialism. The democratic from of socialism would be Democratic Socialism. So moot point, my point stands.
@freemo The difference is like comparing the term "rebel" and "terrorist", they can do exactly the same thing, like killing people, but the term is used depending on how you want to frame the reporting. Consider this, USA permanent state hates successful socialist countries because it undermines their own system and power, and they really hate it when said countries finance their socialism with natural resources like oil for example. We are talking decades of propaganda in mainstream media, CIA planing stories, so I understand if you have difficulty accepting this. It's fine, I will not continue this argument.
@modrobert No its not... Social Democracy is a distinctly different form of government than Democratic Socialism. It is trivial and straightforward to determine if a country is one or the other based on, among other things, if it has a free-market system of capitalism or not. European countries are a capitalism as they employ free markets and taxes are used to pay for social programs. A democratic socialism would be government owned markets, and would not have significant capitalist elements like we have in europe.
@freemo Free markets are always OK, as far as I know free markets are only excluded in pure communism (which doesn't seem to exist the real world). As I mentioned, these terms have different meaning depending on media framing, also your background and culture in general.
Food for thought (if you can bare with me): Logically in a true democracy the masses will vote for a system which favors the many rather than one which favors the few, simply because the many always win when counting votes in a democracy. Also, historically, people generally vote against war when given the option to vote. The only way to prevent the mentioned from happening is to rig the system in some way. (Footnote: The word 'democracy' originates from ancient Greece.)
@modrobert Socialism is where the means of production is owned by the people and equally distributed. Communism is the same but where production **and** consumption are regulated.
Therefore all communistic countries are socialist by definition, just a specific form.
China, for example, is a socialist country because its government owns huge portions of the businesses (the means of production), however people are free to make more or less money and buy more or less things from one another.
Communist countries go a step further, they ration the people to ensure everyone has equal buying power as well. So the "means of consumption" as people say is also controlled.
Since no country in europe ensures the vast majority of its means of production are owned by the government, no country in europe is a socialist country.
These terms are well defined since the 1800s... now if the media wants to reframe and misrepresent them (I agree they often do), thats on them. But I'm using the real definitions here, not what the media uses.
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To your point about democracy, yes generally they will vote for what favors the many, not the few... but that is not socialism or communism. Many would argue (correct or not) that pure capitalism with no regulation of any kind benefits the many also.
What defines socialism is not, and never has been, who benefits. It is about who owns the means to production and/or consumption, nothing more or less.
Don't make far fetching statements before checking the actual data - China is nearly as "socialist" as say Russia or Norway - the share of *private* business in the GDP is 60% (!)
Sorry - I should have been more clear: that was about Freemo declaring China socialist.
@kravietz @freemo "Far fetching statements" like being born and lived most of my life in the country I refer to in the discussion?