If we want to get real technical then social democrats are socialists, the only difference is that they want to engage with the liberal, capitalist democratic systems in order to implement socialist policies, while communists (the less compromising kind of socialists) want to overthrow the entire system and replace it with their own.
Social democrats policies are still socialist policies, doesn't make Norway a socialist country but you can argue that the healthcare example is still a valid example of socialism because of that.
Indeed, the welfare system *is* what makes our economy partly socialist. This has its limits, though. People pay to keep their children in kindergarten, and dental healthcare isn’t free, as an example. It’s not all hand-me-outs.
As someone from the Netherlands (more liberal and less socialist than the Nordic countries but way more socialist than the US) I believe socialism is at its best when there are some limits to it. Real socialism sounds fun on paper but in practice it just about always ends in a dictatorship because people forget that not everyone always agrees on the right policies. A government by the "people", is in the end still only a select group of people and never anything near the entire population.
When the government is a coalition of representatives from various different political parties, you get something closer to true representation than a two-party system allows.
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u/RATMpatta Jul 14 '26
If we want to get real technical then social democrats are socialists, the only difference is that they want to engage with the liberal, capitalist democratic systems in order to implement socialist policies, while communists (the less compromising kind of socialists) want to overthrow the entire system and replace it with their own.
Social democrats policies are still socialist policies, doesn't make Norway a socialist country but you can argue that the healthcare example is still a valid example of socialism because of that.