monkey wrote: ↑Sun Jan 03, 2021 7:00 pm
Herainestold wrote: ↑Sun Jan 03, 2021 6:06 pm
monkey wrote: ↑Sun Jan 03, 2021 6:01 pm
You can call yourself what you want, but from what you've written there, I'd call you a Social Democrat.
What is the difference between a social democrat and a democratic socialist? I really don't get it. I'd consider myself to be a left wing socialist but not a communist or a marxist. Although I think communism gets a bad rap, which it doesn't wholly deserve.
For me at least, and I know others define things differently, a social democracy would be what Martin described: Capitalism with a democratic state taking the edge off things. Democratic Socialism has the democratic state, but the means of production are in some way socially owned. Social democracy might be seen as a step on the way to Democratic Socialism, so a Democratic Socialist might support a Social Democracy, but for them it isn't the goal, and I think that's where the difference is.
These boundaries are fairly fuzzy, though, if you include things like worker representation on corporate boards. In Denmark, for example, companies with over 35 employees have 33-66% board worker representation. Norway, Sweden, Finland, Germany, the Netherlands, France and even Luxembourg have similar policies (though outside Scandinavia the law typically applies only to very large companies with hundreds of employees). Nevertheless, that does represent a considerable democratisation of corporate power.
People don't tend to laugh at those countries and make jokes about collectivising farms, but there are clearly ways to do quite socialisty things using economic instruments rather than tanks. Which is much nicer all round. Quite a few of those countries also have things like wealth taxes (France, Netherlands, Norway and Switzerland have them, as do Italy and Spain), and they couple it with things like grants for students and cheap (or free!) higher education, improving participation in the modern economy.
In terms of this:
Martin_B wrote: ↑Sun Jan 03, 2021 11:18 am
I'm a capitalist, but think that the self-destructive excesses of capitalism should be restrained by government oversight and that taxation should be enforced, with the money collected going towards creation of opportunities for everyone, regardless of your status of birth. Government should be there to help all people, not a greedy few and their friends.
That's my basically my position too, with the exception that I think I wouldn't call myself "a capitalist": I think capitalism is best considered one of several tools for achieving a certain kind of end, rather than an end unto itself. I suppose if I earned my crust by investing assets I might use it as a job description, but at the moment I don't even earn enough crust to own any assets
