Carl Bildt (former Prime Minister of Sweeden) said "Bernie Sanders was lucky to be able to get to the Soviet Union in 1988 and praise all its stunning socialist achievements before the entire system and empire collapsed under the weight of its own spectacular failures." [0]
Lars Løkke Rasmussen (former Prime Minister of Denmark) said "I know that some people in the US associate the Nordic model with some sort of socialism. Therefore I would like to make one thing clear. Denmark is far from a socialist planned economy. Denmark is a market economy" [1]
Seems like they both reject the idea of them being socialist countries. They are both non-socialist countries that have market economies. They just happen to have a larger welfare state than a lot of countries. Having a large welfare state has nothing to do with socialism though.
>Sanders, in particular, suggested that the US could adopt a socialist system by emulating Scandinavia. “I think we should look to countries like Denmark, like Sweden and Norway, and learn from what they have accomplished for their working people,” said the US presidential candidate, who identifies himself as a “democratic socialist.”
But Danish prime minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen, speaking at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government this week, says Sanders got more than a few things wrong.
“I know that some people in the US associate the Nordic model with some sort of socialism. Therefore I would like to make one thing clear. Denmark is far from a socialist planned economy. Denmark is a market economy.”
No Nordic country describes itself as socialist. The Nordic welfare model is made possible by free markets and private enterprise: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nordic_model
Those EU and Nordic countries are not democratic socialist though. The Prime Minister of Denmark repudiated Bernie's comments saying so. They even say they are capitalist with strong safety nets, which is not socialism.
Denmark is also a capitalist country. Social democracy (having a free market while also having nationalized healthcare and a strong social safety net) isn't the same thing as socialism (where the state is run by the proletariat and exists to eradicate the bourgeoisie). Right now, there isn't a single socialist government in the world.
>As far as definitions go, my definition of "socialism" is actual socialism, not social democracy.
Again, most Americans will disagree with you. The definition of a word is whatever most people agree it is.
>This quote is overused at this point, but Danish PM Rasmussen explicitly clarifies
No one in Denmark has any authority to define a word in the English language as used by Americans.
>Adding central planning to ameliorate some of the rough edges of market economies does not create a socialist state.
According to Americans, it absolutely does.
>So no, free market capitalism is not indistinguishable from crony capitalism.
Again, according to many Americans it is.
Here's a challenge for you: pick out 100 different rural counties across America. Go to each county, and take a poll, asking them, "Is Denmark a socialist country?" I guarantee you that a clear majority of those polled will answer "yes".
I'm not a Bernie supporter, but Bernie is quite explicit in his desire for Scandinavian style democratic socialism. Conflating it with what happened in the soviet union is disingenuous at best.
This whole approach of trying to understand Nordic and European countries from the angle of "Socialism" is just stupid. The link between these countries and historical Socialism (i.e. USSR) is so weak that the term Socialism just serves to scare and mislead.
We are talking about capitalist democracies with some government run social services, like health care and unemployment, for example. We are not talking about socialist or communist countries which have a dash of capitalism. The policies in these countries, like affordable healthcare and education are also very popular in America once you drop the BS "socialism" framing.
Such as whom? Bernie Sanders is a politician clearly lying about the definition of socialism, while those he claims to want to imitate deny they are socialist.[1]
In America, the general view seems to be that any move from politicians to move towards economies like Denmark and Sweden are "socialist". Therefore they conflated to have no difference between Denmark and Venezuela and the USSR.
It's an extention of the absolutism in politics that has grown more and more, especially I think since 2008.
It should be mentioned that Denmark, which has often been pointed to as an example of a successful socialist country is not socialist. The country's politicians vociferously protest against this label and going by Engels' own definition, the country is not at all socialist.
It is extremely capitalist with classical hierarchies of business ownership. High tax, free healthcare and free schooling does not make a country even remotely socialist.
Have you been to Sweden or other Nordic countries, which Sanders openly claims as his models for many of his social-democratic (not socialist) ideas? They are free countries and at the top of most measures of human welfare. Most of Western Europe embraces more social democratic concepts than the U.S., and their standards of living are at least as high as America's.
The USSR said it was implementing communism (not socialism), but really implemented a brutal totalitarian dicatorship.
If you define socialism as "having social programs better than the US", then the Nordic countries are socialist. If you define it as "social ownership and democratic control of the means of production" (as Wikipedia does), then the Nordic countries are not socialist, nor anything close.
I'd argue that the data shows that the first kind of socialism works reasonably well, and the second does not.
In this case, you can't argue that it's not right.
>The libertarian case for Bernie Sanders is simply that Bernie Sanders wants to make America more like Denmark, Canada, or Sweden … and the citizens of those countries enjoy more liberty than Americans do.
So, those countries are more libertarian than the United States, despite imposing top-heavy government on its people with the goal of taking a sizeable percentage of their income. Right...
In any case, the author himself then seems to conclusively answer No, without explicitly saying "no":
>The lesson Bernie Sanders needs to learn is that you cannot finance a Danish-style welfare state without free markets and large tax increases on the middle class. If you want Danish levels of social spending, you need Danish middle-class tax rates and a relatively unfettered capitalist economy. The fact that he’s unwilling to come out in favor of either half of the Danish formula for a viable social-democratic welfare state is the best evidence that Bernie Sanders is not actually very interested in what it takes to make social democracy work. The great irony of post-1989 political economy is that capitalism has proven itself the most reliable means to socialist ends. Bernie seems not to have gotten the memo.
If you buy the author's argument that Denmark's brand of democratic socialism is the closest to the libertarian ideal we have in the world, then the logical conclusion is that Bernie doesn't understand what makes Denmark's brand of democratic socialism work, so there is no libertarian case for Bernie Sanders.
Carl Bildt (former Prime Minister of Sweeden) said "Bernie Sanders was lucky to be able to get to the Soviet Union in 1988 and praise all its stunning socialist achievements before the entire system and empire collapsed under the weight of its own spectacular failures." [0]
Lars Løkke Rasmussen (former Prime Minister of Denmark) said "I know that some people in the US associate the Nordic model with some sort of socialism. Therefore I would like to make one thing clear. Denmark is far from a socialist planned economy. Denmark is a market economy" [1]
Seems like they both reject the idea of them being socialist countries. They are both non-socialist countries that have market economies. They just happen to have a larger welfare state than a lot of countries. Having a large welfare state has nothing to do with socialism though.
[0] https://twitter.com/carlbildt/status/1100039769810235393 [1] https://www.thelocal.dk/20151101/danish-pm-in-us-denmark-is-...
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