Therefore I would like to make one thing clear. I know that some people in the US associate the Nordic model with some sort of socialism. In response to Americans frequently referring to his country as socialist, the prime minister of Denmark recently remarked in a lecture at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, What Sanders and his supporters confuse as socialism is actually social democracy, a system in which the government aims to promote the public welfare through heavy taxation and spending, within the framework of a capitalist economy. While it is true that the Scandinavian countries provide things like a generous social safety net and universal health care, an extensive welfare state is not the same thing as socialism. In the Scandinavian countries, like all other developed nations, the means of production are primarily owned by private individuals, not the community or the government, and resources are allocated to their respective uses by the market, not government or community planning. Social Democracy Is Not Democratic Socialism However, the Scandinavian countries are not good examples of democratic socialism in action because they aren’t socialist. His solution? America must embrace “democratic socialism,” a socioeconomic system that seemingly works very well in the Scandinavian countries, like Sweden, which are, by some measures, better off than the United States.ĭemocratic socialism purports to combine majority rule with state control of the means of production. Sanders has convinced a great number of people that things have been going very badly for the great majority of people in the United States, for a very long time.
Even if he does not win the Democratic nomination, his impact on American politics will be evident for years to come. Bernie Sanders has single-handedly brought the term “ democratic socialism” into the contemporary American political lexicon and shaken millions of Millennials out of their apathy towards politics.
0 kommentar(er)
