>
> Do you consider Sweden and the other Scandavian countries socialist, or
> mixed economies? They seem to have as reasonable governments as any anywhere.
> I have heard them called mixed economies, and also socialist.
>
I think they are capitalist, as most of the economy is privately
owned, and what isn't is still used in propagating the system.
Mixed economy is capitalism. You can check it out, as soon as there
was the firs hint of economic crisis, straight away the relatively generous social
provision was attacked first in Sweden.
Norway can afford to be generous in social provision as they
can rely on the profits of north sea gas - they seem to
manage it much more wisely, than Thatcher was doing in the UK.
Still, if the economy is mostly privately owned and not
democratically controlled i.e. multinationals have a free reign, the
place is not socialist by definition.
The point is, that until the old capitalist structure is in place,
all social gains for the population can be taken away at the next
economic crisis. So such dreams as a step-by-step change to socialism
are not practicable. Unfortunately.
Social-democrats are a firm believer in capitalism, they have no
plans for a change to socialism. Even so called socialists eg Blair
and Co can be more conservative than the Conservatives - check out
their present policies on cutting benefit for one-parent families and
introducing student tuition fees - even Thatcher didn't dare to
do these things, though no doubt she would have loved to.
Seems that the term "socialist" must be publiclly appealing despite
of 100+ years of bad press, as so many is using
it for purely demagogueic or PR reasons. (Worst example: Hitler,
who was ofcourse put in power by the largest private businesses of
Germany, who were frightened of the socialists. Totalitarianism is
usually created in a temporary void of power. I could further
elaborate but this post is getting too long.)
> People on the other side of the argument always want to pick the unsuccessful
> countries!
>
>
> At 07:21 PM 12/10/97 GMT, you wrote:
> >
> >>
> >> And in which of the world's 200 countries has socialism yielded (1)
> >> democracy and/or (2) prosperity?
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >
> >
> >None of them had a chance yet to establish socialism
> >in a reasonable literate place to start with with reasonable
> >economic base. The inadequate initial conditions caused
> >the lack of democracy which made success more or less impossible.
> >
> >Which doesn't mean that with the right conditions it wouldn't work.
> >Capitalism couldn't exist for a good few thousand years,
> >until the new geographical discoveries, new technologies etc.
> >gave for it the right start up.
> >[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> >
> >
>
> Elinor Mosher
> Paradise, Nova Scotia
> Canada B0S 1R0
>
> Here's freedom to him that wad read,
> Here's freedom to him that wad write!
> There's nane ever feared that the truth should be heard
> But they wham the truth wad indite.
> Robbie Burns
>
>
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
