Well, here in America, we don't believe that Capitalism and "society" should coexist together. The people help sustain Capitalism - not the other way around. Also, we don't believe in providing such communist things as healthcare for everyone, because we strongly believe Capitalism does NOT benefit from a strong and healthy workforce.

Haha, in America we think it's important to sacrifice society to capitalism. Funny because it's too true.

There’s some Baptists-and-bootleggers nonsense going on between right-wing Republicans tarring center-left policies as “socialist” and avowed socialists doing the same to bait-and-switch voters into supporting them.

Seriously? What's up with people who couldn't even list the basic tenets of various political systems suddenly being for this or against that, on the basis of name alone?

Minor rant, but the greatest tragedy of recent American politics (1980+) has been convincing people they're dumb and will never be as smart as others. It's set up a terrible cycle of (1) listen to "experts," (2) forget that one can do one's own thinking, (3) parrot expert views back to your peers, (4) feel secretly ashamed of your own ignorance, (5) become more strident in "your" views, GOTO (1).

It really frustrates me these days when almost everything has to have a pro or anti identity. The extent to which the population has divided itself thanks to this excessive labelling is truly mind-boggling.

Is it really that difficult to discuss something without having to choose what fucking side you're on, or having it chosen for you based on a series of shallow value judgments?

Sorry. But I am Pakistani. From my perspective, if the government is providing free health coverage, subsidized accommodation to students, free education [0], and good public transit, then it is fulfilling the ideals of socialists. However, the label of the actual system might be different, which is totally fair.

[0] I think Finland is now charging a small tuition fee, at least for non-EU students.

A lot of these were advocated for and often implemented by (originally) socialist democratic parties so I can see where you're coming from, but I think that a 'real' socialist democracy would be going a good step further.

The ideals of socialism are that the means of production are owned by the community. So it owns all industry as well.

Communism says that there isn't any individual property.

Scandinavian countries have never been socialist.

The rate of state ownership of capital is fairly high in the Nordics, though. In that sense, they're relatively socialist countries.

Maybe they're not "really socialist", but then by that standard, is there a "really capitalist" country? Even the US, which is probably the most capitalist "developed" country, has some state ownership of production.

state ownership and community ownership aren't the same thing either, to be fair. But given existing systems it's probably the closest one can get.

Its not "free" its free at the point of use, its paid for out of general taxation.

Otherwise Bismarck's 19th century Prussia would be socialist