"they all have property rights enshrined into the core of their economies, they all allow for the vast accumulation of wealth without forced redistribution"

I disagree. These nations do not allow vast accumulations of wealth. They have significant taxes that actually prohibit vast accumulations of wealth, by design. It's also a form of forced redistribution, because you are required to pay excessive tax rates..and if you don't, you be sent to prison or be subjected to some form of punishment.

In fact, if you look at the average wages across all industries in a country like Sweden, they are relatively the same.

Here are some stats: http://lostinstockholm.com/2012/01/10/average-salaries-in-sw...

Why are they the same? Because the government will tax the money away before you can ever get to those higher amounts.

"The nations you refer to, are actually welfare states, not Socialist - there is a very big difference."

I feel like this is the 'no true scotsman' argument all over again. At a certain tax rate, the government owns the means of production.

We can keep playing semantics and call it 'socialist' or 'welfare state', but the reality is that no matter what you call it, high taxes and excessive government regulations is not something that is conducive to a prospering nation.

Even look at California as a small example: The high tax rates and regulations have started squeezing out the middle class and in many parts of the state, you only have two classes of people: poor and rich.

The Nordic countries implement "social democracy" in some form or other. At least they used to, as you mention Sweden has seen its economy liberalized far beyond the US in some sectors these days (Schools, for example).

In the end it's just a question of whether Social Democracy with a free market is half socialism or if it isn't. Not really a useful debate. The roots of social democracy just like all other forms of socialism of course is the workers movement and Marx is very present still in the Social democratic parties' program declarations.

Social democrats accept the market economy. They are socialist in the sense that they are proponents of redistribution/wealth equality, and workers influencing or even owning the means of production (The former through unions having seats in corporate boards, the latter through later scrapped ideas like workers owning corporations through funds, "wage earner funds").

These social democratic ideas try to adapt Marxist theory to a liberal democracy and market economy. Is social democracy socialism despite accepting a market economy? Depends on who you ask. It's simpler to just use the term social democratic instead of socialist. Having a large welfare state is really orthogonal to how the money for said welfare state is raised (Norway for example could in theory have supported its welfare state without much social democracy or socialism).

Is this why IKEA, which is one of the largest non-state owned Swedish companies is set up as Netherlands-based entity (INGKA Holding), ostensibly for tax evasion purposes?

Sweden does have a lower corporate tax rate than the U.S., though the U.S. tax code offsets this by providing a multitude of different deductions for business expenses. Among other things, government imposed fines are tax deductible as per the U.S. Tax Code. When it comes to personal tax rates, Sweden's rate is much higher than the rate in the U.S. (http://taxfoundation.org/blog/how-scandinavian-countries-pay...)

Not debating the validity of your larger point here, but your assertion re Sweden being economically free as compared to the U.S. isn't that accurate. It is a very much a socialist nation that is also very prosperous.

I never argued that Sweden was more economically free than the US (although frankly they may be at this point, US federal regulations have increased drastically in the last 40 years, the regulatory burden is far larger than it used to be). I said that Sweden was in a two decade long economic slump, and only climbed out of it courtesy of de-regulation and de-taxation of their economy. I'd be happy to link to several articles covering this historical fact; the Swedish architects of that event have talked openly about how and why they did it.

Can you name the ways in which Sweden is a Socialist nation? I'm aware of very few things that can even be argued to define them as such. Quite the opposite, their overwhelming characteristics economically are that they heavily rely on the market economy determined by individual business owners and investors rather than a command economy dictated by the State.

- Do they allow private ownership of property, including the means of production? Yes, Sweden's economy is almost entirely driven by private businesses.

- Does nearly all of their economy function around private business ownership? Yes.

- Do they allow the existence of so called capital classes? People whose wealth is primarily existent in capital, investment, real estate, etc.? Yes.

- Do they force the redistribution of wealth, so as to attempt to prevent the existence of rich and poor classes? No.

- Do they allow the private ownership of real estate, farm land, etc? Yes.

- May the government arbitrarily nationalize your wealth, investments, or business? No, that would be a rare event in Sweden.

- Do they primarily function via the free market economy of non-coerced trade? Or is all trade primarily dictated by the State? Right, almost entirely free trade.

- Does the State determine all investment priorities for all businesses? No, quite the opposite, businesses are free to set their own priorities, build new products at will, choose how they allocate capital.

- Does the State dictate most allocations of capital? No, the opposite.

Things like healthcare, slightly heavy economic regulation, education - are the primarily arguments I'm aware of regarding Sweden, however those define them as a welfare state, not a Socialist state. The US for example has vast free healthcare, housing, and food systems, along with a massive entitlement system, which is why the US is also a welfare state (and not primarily a Capitalist nation as it was a hundred years ago).

> - Do they allow private ownership of property, including the means of production? Yes, Sweden's economy is almost entirely driven by private businesses.

Government spending as % of GDP is an excellent metric re size of the government relative to the private economy. This assumes that as a nation is more socialist, the size of the government will increase.

Sweden slightly over 50% (http://www.tradingeconomics.com/sweden/government-spending-t...) U.S. 20% (https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/FYONGDA188S)

I don't doubt that private property ownership is permissible in Sweden, but the government dominates GDP as compared to any single private sector.

> - Do they force the redistribution of wealth, so as to attempt to prevent the existence of rich and poor classes? No.

Sweden has higher personal tax rates than the U.S. I dispute your "No." here.

> - May the government arbitrarily nationalize your wealth, investments, or business? No, that would be a rare event in Sweden.

It depends. The Swedish government is a highly functional one and will not act capriciously. I believe they will step in and nationalize wealth/real property if doing so was important to the wellbeing of the nation, whereas the U.S. even during the bailouts of 2008 went through great pains to avoid direct government ownership / control, even to the point of handing private equity firms free risk-adjusted money.

> - Does the State determine all investment priorities for all businesses? No, quite the opposite, businesses are free to set their own priorities, build new products at will, choose how they allocate capital.

Given the GDP % stated above, this is debatable.

> - Does the State dictate most allocations of capital? No, the opposite.

Same as the previous point.

You can stick your fingers in your ears and scream so that you won't hear reasonable people using the word "socialist" to mean things you don't mean when you say it, but that doesn't change the fact that reasonable people disagree with you about whether "socialism" implies "command economy".

That's entirely unnecessary and silly. Instead I'm going by the word of the very people that were instrumental in creating and spreading Socialism and its intellectual foundations to begin with: Marx, Engels, Hitler, Mussolini, Lenin, Trotsky, etc. No need to rely on arbitrary speculation.

To argue that Socialism means something other than a command economy, you have to disagree with all the major players that were actually responsible for defining Socialism to begin with. I choose not to do that and I accept their elaborate, very well documented descriptions of what it is. And I'm not referring to associationism or the cooperative movements, I'm talking about Socialism.

Reasonable people disagree with you that Marx, Engels, Hitler, Mussolini, Lenin, and Trotsky have defined the word "socialism" with the precision you feel it now has.

Invoking Mussolini this way is a particularly telling example.

So is Hitler. Why not just simplify your argument to "The Nazis were National Socialists. Check and mate!"

> the very people that were instrumental in creating and spreading Socialism and its intellectual foundations to begin with: Marx, Engels, Hitler, Mussolini, Lenin, Trotsky, etc.

Its worth noting that your examples include:

(1) two members of the same early subset of socialism (Marx and Engels) and two later people known for involvement in the same descendant of the form of socialism embraced by the earlier two (Lenin and Trotsky), and

(2) two other people that aren't recognized as having an important involvement in anything recognized as a branch of socialism, though one of them was involved in a political party with "socialist" in the name (Hitler and Mussolini).

Its hardly a broad sampling of "the very people that were instrumental in creating and spreading Socialism and its intellectual foundations to begin with".