2016 Postmortem
In reply to the discussion: America is a centrist, capitalist country. We are not and will never be socialist. [View all]forjusticethunders
(1,151 posts)And really, it's honestly not an economic system (neither is capitalism), it's a political outlook in terms of who has power, the capitalists or the workers. Socialism in America would, even if every other country went socialist, be more market based most likely (for example I could see a formally socialist United States still having Wall Street, even if it's still 10% of the power and influence it currently has). That's why social democracy and market socialism exist. This is why we call fascist states in the 30s capitalist even though businesses were highly regulated by the state, and we callled states like the pre 1980s UK socialist, despite having markets and corporations, because the state was directed more towards human needs.
That's why it's incoherent to say that Scandinavia isn't socialist or even that we weren't moving in a socialist direction in 1960-1970 (granted Vietnam fucked it up) because we were seeing that people power was starting to become a powerful counterweight to corporate power (though the racism of the white working class fucked it up too)
That's why I consider socialism and capitalism more of *political* outlooks than social ones.