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Comment by Aardwolf | Hacker News Reader

What is called red in the US is laughable compared to the socialism going on in Europe. Discuss.

Socialism going on on Europe? What socialism? Americans... You mean Welfare State (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welfare_state), which is NOT socialism. If you exclusively mean the economy of Scandinavian countries, some people call it socialism, this can be discussed. AFAIK there's no such state-owned banks in Europe. Most state banks do a similar role than US Federal Reserve.

The difference between Europe and USA comes from WW2. Europe was devastated by the war, impoverished. To avoid revolutions (like Russia), (US-imposed... we can argue about this too) governments on West Europe had to find a mixture between private property and state-owned economy (with the help of US money through the Marshall Plan). This was called Welfare State. The USA did not have war on its home land, so it needed no welfare state, and anyway, McCarthy was there to deter any left-wing thinking/movement into the country, which continues until today.

The UK government currently owns the majority of the shareholding of one very big bank, and a large minority holding of another; RBS https://www.google.com/finance?q=RBS (£2.5B assets), and Lloyd's Banking Group https://www.google.com/finance?q=LON%3ALLOY (£1.2B assets). Now admittedly the Government was basically forced into buying that stock to prop up those banks, but still own them they do.

I’m always annoyed when Norway is called socialist. It’s social democracy (which I think could be called socialst-capialist democracy). I think the same applies to many european countries.

To be fair - half the political parties in Norway like to spit out the word socialist in debates with the social democrats and let the image of Stalinist oppression and Gulags hang in the air. When even the conservatives here in Norway are that immature, you can't expect more nuance from American conservatives.

Stalinism is no socialism. I don't care what Stalin liked to call it. Even Khrushev denied his policies.

Denying communism and introducing capitalist reforms was kind of Nikita Khrushchev's thing to be fair.

Khruschev introduced no capitalism. He simply stopped Stalin's terror policies. And there's no such thing as communism in the whole history of humanity. All that has been "attempted" was socialism. Communism means NO STATE whatsoever.

Well, the Hutterites practice what could be called small-scale non-state communism. But I take your point.

I say this as a Maoist: Nikita Khrushchev was a revisionist striving for "peaceful coexistence with capitalism".

I would also include countries who are striving to attain Full Communism in the definition of communism.

"Social democracy" is a capitalist invention to make look "socialism" as tyranny. Socialism is democratic by its very own definition. What people did in the name of socialism is up to those people, not to socialism.

I disagree that socialism is democratic by its very definition. The definition usually includes ownership and operation of the means of production by the 'community' or by the 'state.' But both the community and state have leaders (except in extremely small communities like some instances of Occupy Wall Street where members engaged in group voting on everything - direct democracy), and those leaders are selected somehow.

Even if the representatives resulting from the selection process (which, in pure socialism, is usually a non-democratic process conducted by political elites) were to truly represent the entire population, there may be conflict and a variety of opinions on how to proceed on any given issue. Those who win these conflicts might be called leaders, and they are not engaging in direct democracy.

Direct democracy is one exception to this.

Sorry, I think you're wrong. Socialism, as a means to obtain equality, must be intrinsically democratic. All socialist parties I know about are democratic. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_centralism

As I said, "socialism" is well defined. If some people like to attribute this "adjective" to their policies/country/whatever that's up to them, not to real socialism meaning.

And this is why debating words is idiotic, when we should be debating ideas.

In Belgium, if you have studied engineering at university for 5 years, you get a pay not that much higher than those who immediately start working without university, at least in technical/programming jobs. It's, after taxes are removed, not that much higher than the minimum wage in fact. Except that you have had 5 years less of pay due to the studying. You also pay 60% income taxes, when taking everything into account. And where does it go to? Definitely nothing that benefits the people who actually work. Definitely not roads and other public infrastructure, because when driving from another country into Belgium you immediately notice the difference in road quality and trains are unreliable. If those who want to work, those who study to work more complex jobs, do not get appreciated, while not working gives you benefits, and in some cities they have a "tolerance policy" for criminals, then tell me how that isn't socialist. Quality of schools is dropping, because there is more equality if the curriculum is lowered. They still call Flanders a "knowledge economy". I think they're not seeing something.

It's even worse here in France, to give you an idea, many rich here move to Belgium which is already pretty socialist.

"In Belgium, if you have studied engineering at university for 5 years, you get a pay not that much higher than those who immediately start working without university, at least in technical/programming jobs."

And in the US, whatever extra pay you get by virtue of having a degree gets eaten up by the loan debts...

Sshh. Benefits that I get are human rights. Benefits that other people get care socialism.

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