What did Stalin do with all the means of production in his hands? Must've been how he got that comically large spoon :thonk:

deleted by creator

How democratic would you say, for example, Cuba is when compared to the U.S.? What boxes does a country have to check to be considered democratic?

https://www.telesurenglish.net/analysis/Scandinavias-Covert-Role-in-Western-Imperialism-20170320-0022.html

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/1/11/fashion-brands-paid-less-than-production-cost-to-bangladesh-firms

Very socialist to exploit third world countries to maintain a social safety net in a capitalist economy.

The ‘Nordic Model’, as it has come to be known is hardly a system that we should look to for inspiration. No model, system, or structure that depends on the exploitation and domination of others can be ethical. Western nations and their people — if they are to be taken seriously by the rest of the struggling world — must begin to think about developing socialist political and economic structures that are internationalist and crucially, anti-imperialist at their foundations.

The social gains won by Western nations cannot and should not be made at the expense of exploited nations and people in the Global South. This social-imperialist dynamic seen in Scandinavian nations will ultimately fail in the long-run as it is harming much more people than it is benefiting. Those most likely to deal a deadly blow to capitalism today are those in the most dreadful conditions, which find the current Nordic Model directly in the way, rather than in the lead, of world progress.

As others have pointed out, and assuming this isn't a bit, it's not worth talking about any existing capitalist country's social safety nets because they're all based on decades (often centuries) of exploitation. It's a totally false comparison, and as the world moves past the aftermath of WW2 and the sole-superpower dynamic that defined it we'll see these countries regress in time. Maybe they'll manage to vote in socialists to keep things stable for 99,% of the populace, most likely doing so will just lead to the same spiral of foreign intelligence activity that socialist nations have faced historically.

Eg CIA will finance terrorism inside their borders, destabilize and propagandize its populations with only the best, unsustainable outcomes of capitalism. They'll use NGOs and a class of collaborators & agents to try to change the legal and regulatory framework, and impose austerity. If the tamping down of those agents is just a bit too reasonable, the "repression" will be weaponized in the press to browbeat them for authoritarianism, to get them to roll back and allow the takeover, or if they double down to "justify" military occupation.

More likely than not though, the liberals in those Nordic states will simply align with fascists as soon as the gears start grinding and they have to figure out which individuals of ethnic and political minorities to imprison for forced labor to keep things moving.

You clearly don't live in any of those nordic countries

:michael-laugh:

I wish there was both historic examples of why this wouldn’t work and theory analyzing that situation…. Ah well lol