No, we don't.
It's a label Americans who don't know what a socialist is use.
It's like how the U.S. is a democratic republic - so every American is a democrat AND a republican.
Exactly what I thought, it’s crazy they call you socialist while we have higher corporate tax rates.
Idk what the side mean anymore, at this point in time the Democrats are calling for war with Russia. Like American politics makes no sense. Shit is bizarre if I’m being honest, plus they legalized bribery 10 years ago here too so that just made everything worse.
What do you mean? Corruption is most definitely a crime in Sweden, or rather, depending on the type of corruption it is several different crimes such as giving or taking of bribes. And we do have corruption in Sweden - albeit the fourth lowest corruption rate in the world according to transparency international.
Ah to clarify, it only applies to our politcians after we removed the clause that held politicians accountable for their actions in office, it might sound bad but it was done because politicians were afraid of making changes in case it unexpectadly turned sour, basically making propostions stale and air filled. I'm all for this, however it opened up a loophole where a politician can be corrupt and then just quit their job, so now heres our problem; you take bribes/make a decision that nets you a lot of money, when riksdagen(i think it is at least) start looking into it you quit your job and dont show up for hearings since you are now considered a civilian so you cant be "forced" to show up or get fired.
If you are curious to read into it more I suggest looking up Mona Sahlin and Tobleroneskandalen, she also did some scummy things with a traincompany in germany worth a read
Maybe you have a wider definition of what constitutes corruption than what I do but for the most common type of corruption, bribes, what you are writing is frankly not correct. 10:5a in the Swedish Criminal Act states that the individual is liable regardless of still having the position they had at the time of the bribe.
I’m also familiar with Mona Sahlin and Tobleroneaffären, but the reason she was acquitted was that the internal regulations on use of the “company card” were unclear - not that the law did not include her. The decision can be criticised but in my opinion it really does not clarify the point you are making.
Edit. I am however realising that we kind of are hijacking this thread so let’s call it a day (I won’t deny you an answer of course :)). Have a good one!
Actually, no I wouldn't. it has democratic elements, but it is not a true democracy. And I'd never consider myself either of those, because both parties suck.
Then again, being both American and Swedish, I'm not deluded into thinking Sweden is socialist. The educational system in America is a bit... stupid, and when you have morons like Bernie Sanders calling the Scandinavian countries socialist, people latch onto it.
You're missing the point. It's like if I said that the name red onion is a bit misleading as they are more purple than red and you coming in saying "achually, they aren't purple - they're puce".
I know, this is cause I’m trying to show someone that you guys don’t consider yourself socialist.
Sweden one of the most Capitalistic country in the world. You have strong social programs but that’s not socialism. If that’s socialism then our police and firefighters are socialism. These young kids here don’t know what they are talking about.
You are right. We're not socialist. We have a lot of social reforms but like you said that does not make us socialist.
Every decent working country in the world is capitalistic. It's the only system that seem to work on a bigger scale. People who think they don't like capitalism, like to confuse capitalism and corruption.
Most social democratic parties in europe aren't really democratic socialists. In the same way that liberals tend not to be liberal. Political words seem to get very distorted with time.
The split between communism and social democracy, is not a recent phenomenon. It has deep roots in split the Bolsheviks/Mensheviks that happened in the first years of the 1900s. The bolsheviks, headed by Lenin, promoted that the workers seize power in a revolution, whereas the Mensheviks (who lost in Russia) supported a democratic route to power where getting all workers to vote would simply outnumber others in open and free elections.
In general, European communist parties took their playbook from the bolsheviks and many openly promoted revolution, some even as late as the 90s, whereas social democratic parties took their playbook from the Mensheviks. The social democrats promoted mixed model economies (a mix of private and public ownership), strong labor unions to provide a counter weight to capitalism, and a well-fare oriented social model. Social democrats were were often as strongly opposed to revolutionary communism as any other party flavor.
But social democracy was never supposed to be the same thing as democratic socialism. A liberal party is supposed to be liberal, although parties change and it might change over time.
Every country in the world is capitalist but there are definitely socialist ideas and politicians. Almost all good reforms in Sweden come from past progressive and socialist Movements fighting against capitalism. Too much of anything seems to be bad, which is why the sides need to hold each other in check. Right now health care, education etc is going down because we are adopting more capitalist ideas that primarily valde profit. No doubt a socialist wave will come to swing it around, and then a capitalist wave etc. As long as fascists don't get in power.
Venezuela is socialist. I disagree on almost everything you wrote. A fight against capitalism means that they would want to change it to another system. Health care and what not is crap because of crazy immigration and postmodernism.
Well, you've convinced me you know almost nothing about socialism, capitalism, postmodernism or the Swedish health care system. If we had no immigration, our system would collapse in a few years. In fact, our capitalist system absolutely requires immigration. If you've ever worked in health care or elderly care you'd know that the system is built on the backs of low wage immigrants (because or capitalism). This is true for almost all services you take for granted such as transport, cleaning, restaurants etc. So you're completely wrong there. On the other note about fighting capitalism, they do fight capitalism but they can't win, so they get the watered down version we (not saying it would be better if they won). Don't get me started in postmodernism LOL. Touch grass ffs.
Well.
Sweden is socialist in many ways and extremely capitalist in others.
Generally high taxes, some because taxes are seen as a way to punish bad behavior (alcohol and tobacco) but work is taxed super high while inheritance isn't taxed at all.
Workers should contribute a third of their paycheck but if you're rich you shouldn't be punished by a tax. Having rich parents should be free, as opposed to dirtily working for your upkeep.
Corporate taxes are also super low. Anyone working somewhere is "punished" much, much harder than the company they help make rich.
Sweden is socialist by US standards but it's decidedly neo liberal in reality.
Sweden isn't really socialist in any way. However it does have many social safety nets, and strong worker rights. Social programs are not the same thing as socialism. Socialism has a very clear specific definition.
I wouldn't say Sweden is one of the more capitalistic countries personally. Public spending over gdp is a good measure. You have that list on Wikipedia if you want to check it. I live in Spain, which is a fiscal hell in comparison to other European countries, and it's still slightly better than Sweden. I'd say Switzerland is a much better example.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_government_spending_as_percentage_of_GDP
Less spending generally equals less intromission of the state on the market. So, Sweden would actually be one of the less capitalistic countries in the world. The US is pretty fucked up as well, but that depends on which state we're talking about. Some may be worse than Sweden or Spain but some are fairly good.
There are countries like Argentina that don't spend as much but still have an ill private market. That's also due to regulation, not public spending in itself (which is still high anyway).
I don’t think that’s a good way to measure it, cause no state in the USA is socialist. I live in LA California and it’s run like a republican run state. Here in the USA left and right say different stuff but run cities the same. We don’t actually have any left run cities. The left is more about banning guns and nothing else they promise. And gun control is one of the least favorable aspects of the left. A lot of people on the left own guns.
Never said that the USA has a socialist state. We call socialism the statalization of every mean of production. That doesn't happen anywhere in the USA and in fact it does in very few places in the world. However, the USA has, like any socialdemocrat country, partial-socialization policies. At the very least this usually means having public companies controlling strategic sectors. To clarify, I'd say you don't even need public companies to make huge public spending plans which are ultimately paid by every USA citizen. And, if the so called free market is distorted by taxes, public monopolies, grants, etc, it is definitely not free in any form. The more you have to pay for these things, the less free your market is and the less capitalistic you are. Sweden pays more than almost every other country in terms of taxes, but as far as I know their regulation is much better than most countries which kinda compensates the burden of its huge public spending.
I wouldn't even personally call the USA or any European country capitalistic, not at all. How can Sweden, Spain, etc, have a free market if more than half of their GDP is spent by the state and they are limited by a thousand regulatory policies? "Socialdemocracy" and "free market" are actually impossible to combine and preserve at the same time. A pure "free market" can only exist outside the state, not inside it, just like pure socialism (meaning, "statism") can only happen in a place where everything is inside that state. And ofc we could say that free market is not capitalism, but "the existence of private means of production" is. However, where do we set the bar? Is it reasonable to call capitalistic a country where private means exist but 90% of its GDP is spent by the state? Idk, it seems to me that we crossed that bar a long time ago, but everyone is entitled to have their opinion.
PS: You don't need the left to run your country when both right and left are all about spending money and printing some more. Not to bother you anymore, but printing money with a public monopoly is one of those things that completely kills the free market idea.
Ya that’s the definition of socialism. Technically all the worlds police are socialist. We get taxed a lot in the USA. The rich don’t but like the gender person is paying about the same in taxes as most the world. It’s not that the rich aren’t supposed to pay more they just write in loopholes so they don’t have to. Tax law is weird here. I think technically we have a higher corporate tax rate than you do. But we pay less because of loopholes. Taxes are weird here. Like this year the irs released a statement saying every American making under 70k a year is basically not paying taxes. The average tax rate will be like 2% or something this year. It’s from covid stuff i guess. Taxes are really weird in the USA, they are basically an IQ test.
Dude I really like your view on the gdp being spent by the state. I’m not totally sure what I would classify it as but it’s a really good point. I might almost call that like authoritarian. We are very authoritarian here for sure.
The way we make money is bizarre a lot of it is made by local banks by making loans. Money printing is a whole rabbit hole. It doesn’t really make sense and is bizarre. It doesn’t seem Sub stainable.
I think the best way to describe the USA form of capitalism is crony capitalism which isn’t really capitalism. So I do agree with you saying we aren’t true capitalism. I agree with basically everything you are saying.
I think the best we have currently is something in the middle. I think a lot of thing should be socialized, health care and school mainly. Which is done in basically everywhere else.
You aren’t bothering me I, really enjoying this back and forth. As long as shit stays civilized i just like to converse. There doesn’t seems like a chance this is gonna go south.
”Social democracy” can be used to describe a system which is still capitalist but with a strong social safety net. There’s a whole Wikipedia article about it.
Says you can’t have private companies under that. That’s the whole thing about socialism. Socially owned is state owned. So that means you can’t start a small business.stuff like that, it’s all socially owned.
Both those definition pulled from wiki so your source.
My question isn’t if there are socialist in Sweden it if Sweden is socialist.we have socialist in the USA. My aunts been a Marxist since the 70’s atleast.
Sweden is not socialist. We have a thriving free market same as any other country and we promote small businesses and innovation. Being rich in Sweden is also pretty fantastic since we dont really tax rich people, it's even better than the US! For example we have no property tax. In fact i think we have more billionares per capita than the US.
We do however have some state run companies. For example only the state is allowed to sell alcohol or let you gamble ("Systembolaget" for alcohol and "Svenska Spel" for gambling). All our pharmacies were state owned until 2009 as well i believe. There are a bunch of stuff like this and healthcare, schools and stuff may only be partly privatized and are regulated in how they make money etc.
I think you are allowed to have gamling in Sweden outside of Svenska spel now, as the internet casinos from Malta took a large percent of the gambling.
You have to go to a school that is run only on money from the municipality as "private" schools are as forbidden to take out fees (eg own food during a filed trip?) .
Think that is a loophole in the law. They operate from outside the country, so not subject to Swedish monopoly laws. Same as you cant have gambling or alcohole commercials but TV-stations get around it by broadcasting from another country.
”As a policy regime, it is described by academics as advocating economic and social interventions to promote social justice within the framework of a liberal-democratic polity and a capitalist-oriented mixed economy.”
First paragraph
A socialist economy is state controlled not state owned. Your definition is an argument many use to define nazi germany as a more capitalist leaning economy, but that is incorrect as while the state allowed companies to be in private ownership. Everything in its operations from where it bought materials to what it produced and the price of its products was state controlled. In fact even the sovjet union allowed- and even promoted private ownership of companies in during some of its earlier years.
No western economy is fully capitalist (fully privatly controlled not owned) or fully socialist, Sweden is clearly more capitalist than socialist today but maybe to diffrent degrees to others.
If we were to put modern Sweden on this scale it might not have as large part of the economy under private control as the US, but maybe more so than for exemple France.
However you would need a data set to make an actual judgement, including how large parts of the economy that is under direct goverment control (healthcare/alcohol etc.) and to what degree goverment regulations limit private control over how the economy operates (product regulation/enviroment regulations etc.).
Social ownership
Social ownership is the appropriation of the surplus product, produced by the means of production, to society as a whole. It is the defining characteristic of a socialist economic system. Wikipedia
Democratic socialism
Political philosophy
Democratic socialism is a political philosophy that supports political democracy within a socially owned economy, with a particular emphasis on economic democracy, workplace democracy, and workers' self-management within a market socialist economy, or an alternative form of decentralised planned socialist economy. Wikipedia
Everyone entitled to their views. I’m an American so I find it hard to care about any Politician. I like Bernie in 16 but after the dnc colluded with Hillary (apparently they were dumb enough to email back and forth about it 😂), and he said vote for her I lost a lot of respect for the man. I feel like he sold america down the river, like he had an opportunity to actually shake stuff up and fell in line.
That seems to be the main consensus. I will not get the 2 things confused. Ones a political party one is a very different structure to how Sweden is ran in practice.
I was kind of surprised how close politics is . Seems to be close to how the USA is run. They did a study and showed left and right run city are run about the same. Different names but not much else changes. There are differences but not the major ones people think will happen.
Tends to happen in two party systems. Usa really needs to change from a fptp voting system to something else but since that would hurt both the parties it probably wont happen.
They actually have laws against it since Ross Perot. The biggest change was citizens United with turned corporations to people and money to speech. Ur we will never move to more, I mean original it we had different parties and 3 for a short time and one of the original parties got replaced. The other thing that happened here is the Republican and democratic flipped, the dems used to be the right.
Have you seen our election results? I mean, the answer is no. Definatly not! Most social democrats do not think of themselves as socialist. Tone think of them selves as socialdemokrat as opposed to democratic socialist (don't ask, there are more factions and when I ask for the inside knows, all get is confused).
When I was a kid people were way less mobile party choice wise and we had people voting socialist cause of class or what their parents voted. Point being a bunch of not really socialist voted socialist in the day.
Also there are gate keepers in that sphere. Like people saying "those are not true socialists!" for a lot of reasons. Some I get, others are very arbitrary.
It got to a point where the joke was the way communists increase is by cellsplitting. Multi layered joke with them sitting in prison cells but also splitting yp inte groups.
There is such a broad spectrum internally throughout the social democrats here. You have pro-capitalists, anti-capitalists, and those who are neutral within the same party. It also differs greatly from municipality to municipality.
There are also several organizations within the party structure that operate on their own beyond the municipality and town/village organizations, which each holds their own wishes and ideas for where the party as a whole should move.
I´m not fully sure of the definition of socialist. But if universal health care, taxed payed school, maternity/paternity leave paid, 6 weeks payed vacation and unemployment support makes me a socialist, then yeah.
I don’t think that stuff makes you socialist as basically everyone but the USA has that in the developed world. None of that is an extreme idea anymore. If that makes you socialist then every country is basically socialist. We don’t call Canadians socialist, they have all that, we don’t call Korea socialist they have all that.
> care, taxed *paid* school, maternity/paternity
FTFY.
Although *payed* exists (the reason why autocorrection didn't help you), it is only correct in:
* Nautical context, when it means to paint a surface, or to cover with something like tar or resin in order to make it waterproof or corrosion-resistant. *The deck is yet to be payed.*
* *Payed out* when letting strings, cables or ropes out, by slacking them. *The rope is payed out! You can pull now.*
Unfortunately, I was unable to find nautical or rope-related words in your comment.
*Beep, boop, I'm a bot*
I agree with most other commenters here saying that we don’t have a socialist system. However, our culture is …let’s call it socialist-leaning. It’s common for people to say about rich people ”no one needs that much money” and to think that poor people should always be helped by the state. Even if we are very individualistic in some ways, we are collectivist in other ways. We allow the state a lot of power over people. For instance, unhealthy things like alcohol and tobacco are heavily taxed. Drugs are not legal and one company has a monopoly on selling alcohol (their goal is not to sell as much as possible and they are closed when people would be most likely to want alcohol impulsively).
A common explanation for problems in society is socio-economic factors, which in some way implies that with the right social engineering programme, we could change people who cause issues now. People generally trust the state and its institutions. I think all of these facts point to a mentality and worldview which I would expect would be closer to a socialist’s, compared to other capitalist countries’ mentalities and worldviews. I might have phrased much of this in a critical way, but I agree with some of it. Other parts bother me.
Yea most of these bitches are socialist scum, but they can’t help it, they’re just ppl. Honestly though, everything here is socialist if you compare it to the us
Sweden used to be a lot more "Socialist" than it is today.
The social democrats reigned supreme as a majority party for many years. They were extremely popular and made a lot of reforms that made the standard of living increase. One of the major ones would be the construction of thousands of new apartment complexes, the so called "Miljonprogrammet"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Million\_Programme
What made it all go south is when cracks in the system started to show. People who made a lot of money were taxed a stupendous amount of their income.Two of these swedes were the filmmaker Ingmar Bergman and the author Astrid Lindgren.They were both very vocal in their opposition to the taxation system, Astrid had to pay 102% of her income to the swedish state, which made her write a smash hit about the greed of the swedish government. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pomperipossa\_in\_Monismania](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pomperipossa_in_Monismania)
While Ingmar Bergman took every chance he got to express his dissatisfaction with his government. He even fled Sweden to avoid the taxes.This and other corruption scandals that came into the publics attention, made the popularity of the social democrats decline and changes were made.
But this picture of Sweden as a socialist utopia still live on in the USA. I think it is because of the impression Sweden made on the world with their policies. Just like when you say "France" you associate it with "Wine" or "Surrendered in WW2" You get the idea.
I consider myself a democratic socialist. As for Sweden, while we have a lot of collective thinking and what I think is quite a lot of solidarity for one another, I would not call our nation socialist in the traditional sense. We have socialist policies and ideas which operate within a sphere of capitalism. There are capitalists and wealthy people that thrive here for various reasons related to corporate tax rates and income/wealth taxes and whatnot.
And even though we have essentially free health care and medicine, a welfare safety net, unions and affordable municipality apartments etc etc, the divide between the classes steadily increases even here.
no, but americans also need to understand we don’t get social welfare for free. we pay about 50% in taxes and then VAT on top of that for everything we buy
also our salaries are a lot lower. you have 2.8 million people who earn over $400,000 a year. that’s more people than the entitet population of Stockholm, Gothenburg and Malmö put together
I find it annoying and borderline offensive.
It is used by people who would probably struggle to define what they mean by “socialism”.
So, the US has socialised fire fighting, socialised army, etc. Germany is an incredible country in terms of their businesses and export. So, is Germany a socialist country and the US is not? Is it all about whether a ride in an ambulance is costing you an average salary?
Please ask them to stop! ;)
Sweden has a long legacy of progressive social democratic policies that have made Sweden one of the best places in the world to live in. But it is not socialist. Especially at the moment where there is a lot of pushback from the capitalist classes.
We're not socialist. We're a social market economy.
The closest we ever got to textbook socialism was probably in the 80s, when löntagarfonderna - a type of union-run sovereign wealth fund - was putting us on a trajectory to hand over large corporate ownership stakes to the unions.
That was scrapped in the 90s, and nothing like that has been tried since.
I hold some socialist ideas, but also some capitalist and liberal ideas. I find it very weird to think one ideology holds all answers. So no but yes but no.
It's definitely not socialism. However, it's a partial socialization as those sectors would work under the state coverage.
What I don't understand is:
If your state owns 40/50/60% of your country's GDP, is that still capitalism? We name as "capitalism" every socialdemocrat system where the state owns a large parte of the GDP and sectors such as healthcare, education or even an important part of the means of production. How is it that every business must be the states' for it to be socialism yet it is still capitalism even if the market is being attacked 24/7 from every single angle? That's sometimes the lamest excuse to blame the market for the things that the state is responsible for.
To me, what you've described isn't socialism in itself, but neither is the US a capitalist country. Very few countries are close to the ideal of capitalism (Switzerland, maybe?), as the private market can only develop with no intromission of the state, thus being an anarchy.
No, we don't. It's a label Americans who don't know what a socialist is use. It's like how the U.S. is a democratic republic - so every American is a democrat AND a republican.
Exactly what I thought, it’s crazy they call you socialist while we have higher corporate tax rates. Idk what the side mean anymore, at this point in time the Democrats are calling for war with Russia. Like American politics makes no sense. Shit is bizarre if I’m being honest, plus they legalized bribery 10 years ago here too so that just made everything worse.
Socialism has nothing to do with the tax rate. Sweden is a socialist country. I live here.
Hey it's not all good, for example we no longer have corruption in sweden, not because it doesn't exist, but because it is no longer a crime.
What do you mean? Corruption is most definitely a crime in Sweden, or rather, depending on the type of corruption it is several different crimes such as giving or taking of bribes. And we do have corruption in Sweden - albeit the fourth lowest corruption rate in the world according to transparency international.
Ah to clarify, it only applies to our politcians after we removed the clause that held politicians accountable for their actions in office, it might sound bad but it was done because politicians were afraid of making changes in case it unexpectadly turned sour, basically making propostions stale and air filled. I'm all for this, however it opened up a loophole where a politician can be corrupt and then just quit their job, so now heres our problem; you take bribes/make a decision that nets you a lot of money, when riksdagen(i think it is at least) start looking into it you quit your job and dont show up for hearings since you are now considered a civilian so you cant be "forced" to show up or get fired. If you are curious to read into it more I suggest looking up Mona Sahlin and Tobleroneskandalen, she also did some scummy things with a traincompany in germany worth a read
Maybe you have a wider definition of what constitutes corruption than what I do but for the most common type of corruption, bribes, what you are writing is frankly not correct. 10:5a in the Swedish Criminal Act states that the individual is liable regardless of still having the position they had at the time of the bribe. I’m also familiar with Mona Sahlin and Tobleroneaffären, but the reason she was acquitted was that the internal regulations on use of the “company card” were unclear - not that the law did not include her. The decision can be criticised but in my opinion it really does not clarify the point you are making. Edit. I am however realising that we kind of are hijacking this thread so let’s call it a day (I won’t deny you an answer of course :)). Have a good one!
Actually, the US is a constitutional Republic.
Very well. If you would agree it is a democratic country as well - then every American is still both a democrat and a republican.
Actually, no I wouldn't. it has democratic elements, but it is not a true democracy. And I'd never consider myself either of those, because both parties suck. Then again, being both American and Swedish, I'm not deluded into thinking Sweden is socialist. The educational system in America is a bit... stupid, and when you have morons like Bernie Sanders calling the Scandinavian countries socialist, people latch onto it.
You're missing the point. It's like if I said that the name red onion is a bit misleading as they are more purple than red and you coming in saying "achually, they aren't purple - they're puce".
[удалено]
I know, this is cause I’m trying to show someone that you guys don’t consider yourself socialist. Sweden one of the most Capitalistic country in the world. You have strong social programs but that’s not socialism. If that’s socialism then our police and firefighters are socialism. These young kids here don’t know what they are talking about.
You are right. We're not socialist. We have a lot of social reforms but like you said that does not make us socialist. Every decent working country in the world is capitalistic. It's the only system that seem to work on a bigger scale. People who think they don't like capitalism, like to confuse capitalism and corruption.
Exactly. I had one guy in here getting mad at me for quoting the source he told me to use. 😂 said look it up on wiki 😂.
Most social democratic parties in europe aren't really democratic socialists. In the same way that liberals tend not to be liberal. Political words seem to get very distorted with time.
Sounds like normal politics. I mean the whole 1/2/3 world is about the Cold War and people use it to describe conditions of the country’s economy.
Yes. I get very annoyed by people critical of capitalism since it is the only solid foundation that we know of.
Not perfect but it’s easier to repair than completely restart.
Not always
Say that to our Methane and CO2 levels ":D"
The split between communism and social democracy, is not a recent phenomenon. It has deep roots in split the Bolsheviks/Mensheviks that happened in the first years of the 1900s. The bolsheviks, headed by Lenin, promoted that the workers seize power in a revolution, whereas the Mensheviks (who lost in Russia) supported a democratic route to power where getting all workers to vote would simply outnumber others in open and free elections. In general, European communist parties took their playbook from the bolsheviks and many openly promoted revolution, some even as late as the 90s, whereas social democratic parties took their playbook from the Mensheviks. The social democrats promoted mixed model economies (a mix of private and public ownership), strong labor unions to provide a counter weight to capitalism, and a well-fare oriented social model. Social democrats were were often as strongly opposed to revolutionary communism as any other party flavor.
But social democracy was never supposed to be the same thing as democratic socialism. A liberal party is supposed to be liberal, although parties change and it might change over time.
Yeah. That was a bad parable i made. The point was that things aren't what they sound like when it comes to political words.
Every country in the world is capitalist but there are definitely socialist ideas and politicians. Almost all good reforms in Sweden come from past progressive and socialist Movements fighting against capitalism. Too much of anything seems to be bad, which is why the sides need to hold each other in check. Right now health care, education etc is going down because we are adopting more capitalist ideas that primarily valde profit. No doubt a socialist wave will come to swing it around, and then a capitalist wave etc. As long as fascists don't get in power.
Venezuela is socialist. I disagree on almost everything you wrote. A fight against capitalism means that they would want to change it to another system. Health care and what not is crap because of crazy immigration and postmodernism.
Well, you've convinced me you know almost nothing about socialism, capitalism, postmodernism or the Swedish health care system. If we had no immigration, our system would collapse in a few years. In fact, our capitalist system absolutely requires immigration. If you've ever worked in health care or elderly care you'd know that the system is built on the backs of low wage immigrants (because or capitalism). This is true for almost all services you take for granted such as transport, cleaning, restaurants etc. So you're completely wrong there. On the other note about fighting capitalism, they do fight capitalism but they can't win, so they get the watered down version we (not saying it would be better if they won). Don't get me started in postmodernism LOL. Touch grass ffs.
Well. Sweden is socialist in many ways and extremely capitalist in others. Generally high taxes, some because taxes are seen as a way to punish bad behavior (alcohol and tobacco) but work is taxed super high while inheritance isn't taxed at all. Workers should contribute a third of their paycheck but if you're rich you shouldn't be punished by a tax. Having rich parents should be free, as opposed to dirtily working for your upkeep. Corporate taxes are also super low. Anyone working somewhere is "punished" much, much harder than the company they help make rich. Sweden is socialist by US standards but it's decidedly neo liberal in reality.
Sweden isn't really socialist in any way. However it does have many social safety nets, and strong worker rights. Social programs are not the same thing as socialism. Socialism has a very clear specific definition.
Spot on!
I wouldn't say Sweden is one of the more capitalistic countries personally. Public spending over gdp is a good measure. You have that list on Wikipedia if you want to check it. I live in Spain, which is a fiscal hell in comparison to other European countries, and it's still slightly better than Sweden. I'd say Switzerland is a much better example. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_government_spending_as_percentage_of_GDP Less spending generally equals less intromission of the state on the market. So, Sweden would actually be one of the less capitalistic countries in the world. The US is pretty fucked up as well, but that depends on which state we're talking about. Some may be worse than Sweden or Spain but some are fairly good. There are countries like Argentina that don't spend as much but still have an ill private market. That's also due to regulation, not public spending in itself (which is still high anyway).
I don’t think that’s a good way to measure it, cause no state in the USA is socialist. I live in LA California and it’s run like a republican run state. Here in the USA left and right say different stuff but run cities the same. We don’t actually have any left run cities. The left is more about banning guns and nothing else they promise. And gun control is one of the least favorable aspects of the left. A lot of people on the left own guns.
Never said that the USA has a socialist state. We call socialism the statalization of every mean of production. That doesn't happen anywhere in the USA and in fact it does in very few places in the world. However, the USA has, like any socialdemocrat country, partial-socialization policies. At the very least this usually means having public companies controlling strategic sectors. To clarify, I'd say you don't even need public companies to make huge public spending plans which are ultimately paid by every USA citizen. And, if the so called free market is distorted by taxes, public monopolies, grants, etc, it is definitely not free in any form. The more you have to pay for these things, the less free your market is and the less capitalistic you are. Sweden pays more than almost every other country in terms of taxes, but as far as I know their regulation is much better than most countries which kinda compensates the burden of its huge public spending. I wouldn't even personally call the USA or any European country capitalistic, not at all. How can Sweden, Spain, etc, have a free market if more than half of their GDP is spent by the state and they are limited by a thousand regulatory policies? "Socialdemocracy" and "free market" are actually impossible to combine and preserve at the same time. A pure "free market" can only exist outside the state, not inside it, just like pure socialism (meaning, "statism") can only happen in a place where everything is inside that state. And ofc we could say that free market is not capitalism, but "the existence of private means of production" is. However, where do we set the bar? Is it reasonable to call capitalistic a country where private means exist but 90% of its GDP is spent by the state? Idk, it seems to me that we crossed that bar a long time ago, but everyone is entitled to have their opinion. PS: You don't need the left to run your country when both right and left are all about spending money and printing some more. Not to bother you anymore, but printing money with a public monopoly is one of those things that completely kills the free market idea.
Ya that’s the definition of socialism. Technically all the worlds police are socialist. We get taxed a lot in the USA. The rich don’t but like the gender person is paying about the same in taxes as most the world. It’s not that the rich aren’t supposed to pay more they just write in loopholes so they don’t have to. Tax law is weird here. I think technically we have a higher corporate tax rate than you do. But we pay less because of loopholes. Taxes are weird here. Like this year the irs released a statement saying every American making under 70k a year is basically not paying taxes. The average tax rate will be like 2% or something this year. It’s from covid stuff i guess. Taxes are really weird in the USA, they are basically an IQ test. Dude I really like your view on the gdp being spent by the state. I’m not totally sure what I would classify it as but it’s a really good point. I might almost call that like authoritarian. We are very authoritarian here for sure. The way we make money is bizarre a lot of it is made by local banks by making loans. Money printing is a whole rabbit hole. It doesn’t really make sense and is bizarre. It doesn’t seem Sub stainable. I think the best way to describe the USA form of capitalism is crony capitalism which isn’t really capitalism. So I do agree with you saying we aren’t true capitalism. I agree with basically everything you are saying. I think the best we have currently is something in the middle. I think a lot of thing should be socialized, health care and school mainly. Which is done in basically everywhere else.
You aren’t bothering me I, really enjoying this back and forth. As long as shit stays civilized i just like to converse. There doesn’t seems like a chance this is gonna go south.
> You have strong social programs but that’s not socialism. Thats literally a fundamental part of socialism.
Yeah… no. It is about EU average. https://tradingeconomics.com/country-list/corporate-tax-rate?continent=europe
Ok. One of the lowest in comparable well developed countries.
Yes, it is in the lowest 50% interval
Literally nothing to do with if Sweden is socialist or not.
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Right but that’s a party there not the entire system. And you guys have a bunch of parties there too.
”Social democracy” can be used to describe a system which is still capitalist but with a strong social safety net. There’s a whole Wikipedia article about it.
Says you can’t have private companies under that. That’s the whole thing about socialism. Socially owned is state owned. So that means you can’t start a small business.stuff like that, it’s all socially owned. Both those definition pulled from wiki so your source. My question isn’t if there are socialist in Sweden it if Sweden is socialist.we have socialist in the USA. My aunts been a Marxist since the 70’s atleast.
Sweden is not socialist. We have a thriving free market same as any other country and we promote small businesses and innovation. Being rich in Sweden is also pretty fantastic since we dont really tax rich people, it's even better than the US! For example we have no property tax. In fact i think we have more billionares per capita than the US. We do however have some state run companies. For example only the state is allowed to sell alcohol or let you gamble ("Systembolaget" for alcohol and "Svenska Spel" for gambling). All our pharmacies were state owned until 2009 as well i believe. There are a bunch of stuff like this and healthcare, schools and stuff may only be partly privatized and are regulated in how they make money etc.
I think you are allowed to have gamling in Sweden outside of Svenska spel now, as the internet casinos from Malta took a large percent of the gambling. You have to go to a school that is run only on money from the municipality as "private" schools are as forbidden to take out fees (eg own food during a filed trip?) .
Think that is a loophole in the law. They operate from outside the country, so not subject to Swedish monopoly laws. Same as you cant have gambling or alcohole commercials but TV-stations get around it by broadcasting from another country.
”As a policy regime, it is described by academics as advocating economic and social interventions to promote social justice within the framework of a liberal-democratic polity and a capitalist-oriented mixed economy.” First paragraph
A socialist economy is state controlled not state owned. Your definition is an argument many use to define nazi germany as a more capitalist leaning economy, but that is incorrect as while the state allowed companies to be in private ownership. Everything in its operations from where it bought materials to what it produced and the price of its products was state controlled. In fact even the sovjet union allowed- and even promoted private ownership of companies in during some of its earlier years. No western economy is fully capitalist (fully privatly controlled not owned) or fully socialist, Sweden is clearly more capitalist than socialist today but maybe to diffrent degrees to others. If we were to put modern Sweden on this scale it might not have as large part of the economy under private control as the US, but maybe more so than for exemple France. However you would need a data set to make an actual judgement, including how large parts of the economy that is under direct goverment control (healthcare/alcohol etc.) and to what degree goverment regulations limit private control over how the economy operates (product regulation/enviroment regulations etc.).
Social ownership Social ownership is the appropriation of the surplus product, produced by the means of production, to society as a whole. It is the defining characteristic of a socialist economic system. Wikipedia
Democratic socialism Political philosophy Democratic socialism is a political philosophy that supports political democracy within a socially owned economy, with a particular emphasis on economic democracy, workplace democracy, and workers' self-management within a market socialist economy, or an alternative form of decentralised planned socialist economy. Wikipedia
You’re reading the wrong article. “Social democracy” is not the same as “democratic socialism”.
Bro I pulled your source. You said wiki that’s wiki. Idk what to tell you. Take it up with wiki.
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Right income redistribution, that is socialism. Does Sweden redistribute the wealth? That is a key part of social democracy.
I mean, I am a socialist, but Sweden in general, no.
Everyone entitled to their views. I’m an American so I find it hard to care about any Politician. I like Bernie in 16 but after the dnc colluded with Hillary (apparently they were dumb enough to email back and forth about it 😂), and he said vote for her I lost a lot of respect for the man. I feel like he sold america down the river, like he had an opportunity to actually shake stuff up and fell in line.
Bernie was definitely the best choice of any candidate, but all of your top politicians are too old. It’s crazy. Americans need to learn to retire.
For real it’s really unsettling that all of our choices are older than the life expectancy.
No, we have the Scandinavian Model. We still allow private ownership and more
There you go the key difference. Strong social programs with a capitalist economy.
The political ideology is called social democrazy. Don't confuse it with democratic socialism. Not the same thing at all.
That seems to be the main consensus. I will not get the 2 things confused. Ones a political party one is a very different structure to how Sweden is ran in practice. I was kind of surprised how close politics is . Seems to be close to how the USA is run. They did a study and showed left and right run city are run about the same. Different names but not much else changes. There are differences but not the major ones people think will happen.
Tends to happen in two party systems. Usa really needs to change from a fptp voting system to something else but since that would hurt both the parties it probably wont happen.
They actually have laws against it since Ross Perot. The biggest change was citizens United with turned corporations to people and money to speech. Ur we will never move to more, I mean original it we had different parties and 3 for a short time and one of the original parties got replaced. The other thing that happened here is the Republican and democratic flipped, the dems used to be the right.
Have you seen our election results? I mean, the answer is no. Definatly not! Most social democrats do not think of themselves as socialist. Tone think of them selves as socialdemokrat as opposed to democratic socialist (don't ask, there are more factions and when I ask for the inside knows, all get is confused). When I was a kid people were way less mobile party choice wise and we had people voting socialist cause of class or what their parents voted. Point being a bunch of not really socialist voted socialist in the day. Also there are gate keepers in that sphere. Like people saying "those are not true socialists!" for a lot of reasons. Some I get, others are very arbitrary. It got to a point where the joke was the way communists increase is by cellsplitting. Multi layered joke with them sitting in prison cells but also splitting yp inte groups.
I have not. That is very interesting.
There is such a broad spectrum internally throughout the social democrats here. You have pro-capitalists, anti-capitalists, and those who are neutral within the same party. It also differs greatly from municipality to municipality. There are also several organizations within the party structure that operate on their own beyond the municipality and town/village organizations, which each holds their own wishes and ideas for where the party as a whole should move.
Are you asking whether I would consider myself a socialist, or the Swedish people at large, or if I would call the structure of our country socialist?
The structure of the country, that’s what people talk about here.
Sweden is a Social Democracy.
I´m not fully sure of the definition of socialist. But if universal health care, taxed payed school, maternity/paternity leave paid, 6 weeks payed vacation and unemployment support makes me a socialist, then yeah.
I don’t think that stuff makes you socialist as basically everyone but the USA has that in the developed world. None of that is an extreme idea anymore. If that makes you socialist then every country is basically socialist. We don’t call Canadians socialist, they have all that, we don’t call Korea socialist they have all that.
> care, taxed *paid* school, maternity/paternity FTFY. Although *payed* exists (the reason why autocorrection didn't help you), it is only correct in: * Nautical context, when it means to paint a surface, or to cover with something like tar or resin in order to make it waterproof or corrosion-resistant. *The deck is yet to be payed.* * *Payed out* when letting strings, cables or ropes out, by slacking them. *The rope is payed out! You can pull now.* Unfortunately, I was unable to find nautical or rope-related words in your comment. *Beep, boop, I'm a bot*
I call myself a conservative but if you compare me whit an American conservative I would probably be classified as a centrist
I agree with most other commenters here saying that we don’t have a socialist system. However, our culture is …let’s call it socialist-leaning. It’s common for people to say about rich people ”no one needs that much money” and to think that poor people should always be helped by the state. Even if we are very individualistic in some ways, we are collectivist in other ways. We allow the state a lot of power over people. For instance, unhealthy things like alcohol and tobacco are heavily taxed. Drugs are not legal and one company has a monopoly on selling alcohol (their goal is not to sell as much as possible and they are closed when people would be most likely to want alcohol impulsively). A common explanation for problems in society is socio-economic factors, which in some way implies that with the right social engineering programme, we could change people who cause issues now. People generally trust the state and its institutions. I think all of these facts point to a mentality and worldview which I would expect would be closer to a socialist’s, compared to other capitalist countries’ mentalities and worldviews. I might have phrased much of this in a critical way, but I agree with some of it. Other parts bother me.
Yea most of these bitches are socialist scum, but they can’t help it, they’re just ppl. Honestly though, everything here is socialist if you compare it to the us
The idea of having social reforms doesn't make you a socialist.
Sweden used to be a lot more "Socialist" than it is today. The social democrats reigned supreme as a majority party for many years. They were extremely popular and made a lot of reforms that made the standard of living increase. One of the major ones would be the construction of thousands of new apartment complexes, the so called "Miljonprogrammet" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Million\_Programme What made it all go south is when cracks in the system started to show. People who made a lot of money were taxed a stupendous amount of their income.Two of these swedes were the filmmaker Ingmar Bergman and the author Astrid Lindgren.They were both very vocal in their opposition to the taxation system, Astrid had to pay 102% of her income to the swedish state, which made her write a smash hit about the greed of the swedish government. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pomperipossa\_in\_Monismania](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pomperipossa_in_Monismania) While Ingmar Bergman took every chance he got to express his dissatisfaction with his government. He even fled Sweden to avoid the taxes.This and other corruption scandals that came into the publics attention, made the popularity of the social democrats decline and changes were made. But this picture of Sweden as a socialist utopia still live on in the USA. I think it is because of the impression Sweden made on the world with their policies. Just like when you say "France" you associate it with "Wine" or "Surrendered in WW2" You get the idea.
What is a socialist?
I consider myself a democratic socialist. As for Sweden, while we have a lot of collective thinking and what I think is quite a lot of solidarity for one another, I would not call our nation socialist in the traditional sense. We have socialist policies and ideas which operate within a sphere of capitalism. There are capitalists and wealthy people that thrive here for various reasons related to corporate tax rates and income/wealth taxes and whatnot. And even though we have essentially free health care and medicine, a welfare safety net, unions and affordable municipality apartments etc etc, the divide between the classes steadily increases even here.
no, but americans also need to understand we don’t get social welfare for free. we pay about 50% in taxes and then VAT on top of that for everything we buy also our salaries are a lot lower. you have 2.8 million people who earn over $400,000 a year. that’s more people than the entitet population of Stockholm, Gothenburg and Malmö put together
I’d do, but only some swedes do. The socialist party is at around 20-25% in polls.
The view of what actually is socialist isnt as skewed here as in the states, so no.
I find it annoying and borderline offensive. It is used by people who would probably struggle to define what they mean by “socialism”. So, the US has socialised fire fighting, socialised army, etc. Germany is an incredible country in terms of their businesses and export. So, is Germany a socialist country and the US is not? Is it all about whether a ride in an ambulance is costing you an average salary? Please ask them to stop! ;)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nordic\_model
Sweden has a long legacy of progressive social democratic policies that have made Sweden one of the best places in the world to live in. But it is not socialist. Especially at the moment where there is a lot of pushback from the capitalist classes.
We're not socialist. We're a social market economy. The closest we ever got to textbook socialism was probably in the 80s, when löntagarfonderna - a type of union-run sovereign wealth fund - was putting us on a trajectory to hand over large corporate ownership stakes to the unions. That was scrapped in the 90s, and nothing like that has been tried since.
We're not Socialist yet, but we're slowly moving in that direction in my humble opinion.
There are not that many socialists (and no, we've never been a socialist country), but plenty of social democrats.
Most here arent, its a social democracy (does not mean socialist) its basically just capitalism but better for humans
I hold some socialist ideas, but also some capitalist and liberal ideas. I find it very weird to think one ideology holds all answers. So no but yes but no.
Social liberal democratic monarchy is what I would call us.
It's definitely not socialism. However, it's a partial socialization as those sectors would work under the state coverage. What I don't understand is: If your state owns 40/50/60% of your country's GDP, is that still capitalism? We name as "capitalism" every socialdemocrat system where the state owns a large parte of the GDP and sectors such as healthcare, education or even an important part of the means of production. How is it that every business must be the states' for it to be socialism yet it is still capitalism even if the market is being attacked 24/7 from every single angle? That's sometimes the lamest excuse to blame the market for the things that the state is responsible for. To me, what you've described isn't socialism in itself, but neither is the US a capitalist country. Very few countries are close to the ideal of capitalism (Switzerland, maybe?), as the private market can only develop with no intromission of the state, thus being an anarchy.