Close, but I would say that socialists don't see it as close enough. Sweden holds a strong form of liberal egalitarianism, as propounded by Rawls in his less 'socialist' writings. But even then, the socialism is beyond its horizon. There is a 'property-owning democracy', and no egalitarian distribution. The capitalist parts of Rawls, without the public ownership of MoP socialist stuff.
The championing of liberal egalitarianism as "good enough" leaves other questions unanswered. Is social democracy still exploitative? Dominating? Alienating? Environmentally damaging? Inefficient? Those questions hold for any form of capitalism, defined as a society in which capital's self-valorization is predominant, and where there is wage labour.
So the question is what kind of argument would justify not only going beyond old school 20th c. death capitalism, but social democratic capitalism, too. Only if you look into whether (1) capitalist societies are exploitative (2) there is a normative reason to do away with it, and the same with alienation, domination and environmental concerns - then there is a good reason for socialism.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/jul/26/commun...
https://www.quora.com/What-has-killed-more-people-communism-...
And the death count for "socialism" usually includes Stalinist Russia, Maoist China, and Nazi Germany, all of which were primarily nationalist governments - in the same way that North Korea is actually a very old-fashioned hereditary absolute monarchy decorated with Stalinist branding.
The closest economies to real socialism are the high-taxation, high-spending Scandinavian social democracies, which score higher than the US on educational attainment, business opportunity, life-expectancy, and educational attainment - but don't do nearly as well at generating billionaires.
The real foundation of social democracy is aggressive wealth redistribution and broad democratic access to policy - not state control. In reality capitalism is far more controlled than social democracy because it operates as a plutocracy that privileges a small demographic. This demographic has exclusive control over policy through lobbying, "funding" of representatives, and the creation and propagation of economic (i.e. "moral") narratives that benefit them - irrespective of party labels.
Against this background, the fact that academics may be debating what exploitation means is very much a side issue.