we actually might be witnessing the death of socialism!

[Filuwaúrdjan]

I'm not really sure I should take your post serious,because it's either the purest form of sarcasm I have ever seen, or a rather ignorant post. So I apologise for taking it serious if it was sarcasm.

It emerged on another thread that Wonkish had not heard of Willy Brandt before. I'll let that sink in for a moment...

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Given that Rajoy is an incompetent doofus, I wouldn't be surprised if the Socialists managed to return to power in Spain by 2015/2016 or so.

This. Oh god, this.

Anyway, this thread is yet another example of why Jmfcst should simply be barred from talking about other countries.

I would like to associate myself with the above posts, as they do speak The Truth. The funniest thing about this thread (ingemann's posts - have we ever had a bad poster from a Scandinavian country, btw? None come immediately to mind - absolutely excepted) is the seriously weird (and gloriously inconsistent) definitions of certain political terms.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

You have to admit though the average American has no clue about European political history at all. I'm much better than the vast majority of Americans on this front.

That may be so, but then the average American does not hold forth as an authority on the issue...

[Filuwaúrdjan]

But at least they know who Franz Kafka was.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Besides, isn't it more or less the same thing?

Well, no. Because one would be discussing a very real thing happening at the moment, while the other would be arrogant masturbation.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Besides, isn't it more or less the same thing?

Well, no. Because one would be discussing a very real thing happening at the moment, while the other would be arrogant masturbation.

Still not seeing the difference.

Between what and what?

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Besides, isn't it more or less the same thing?

Well, no. Because one would be discussing a very real thing happening at the moment, while the other would be arrogant masturbation.

Still not seeing the difference.

Between what and what?

Between a very real thing happening at the moment and arrogant masturbation, of course.

Ah, yes. Of course.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

I made an off the cuff very general remark referencing European socialist parties between 1940s and 70s. A remark that was true.

Except that it wasn't, dear. The whole point was that it wasn't.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Actually yeah it was. I essentially said that period was an example of something. That is a general statement.

The problem was that it was an inaccurate general statement. There was a big difference between the sort of policies advocated and (when possible) pursued by social democratic parties in the 1940s and the sort advocated and pursued (when possible) by social democratic parties in the 1950s and (especially) 1960s. This was especially true regarding nationalisation, which is why those names were mentioned.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Dude, I'm not going down this road again with you. I made a general statement that was true. I then added to a range of 40s to 60s(instead of 60s off the cuff) to get rid of any ambiguity.

This is like something from one of those delightful little novels by that nice Mrs Franz Kafka.

Anyways, the point is that your 'general statement' was not actually true, as I believe I demonstrated (with a reasonable degree of success) at the time. I don't entirely understand why you are so keen to insist otherwise when, as you yourself point out, you are not any kind of expert on the subject.

You must be logged in to read this quote.

That's not fair; I have no interest whatsoever in evolutionary psychology.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

So between the 1940s to 1960s no member of any European socialist, labour, or social democrat party advocated the nationalization of a business or industry let alone succeed in pulling it off?

Ah, the incredible moving goalposts.

Well, in the 1940s almost all socialist governments nationalised large sections of the economy (though not always for ideological reasons) and almost all socialist parties who were not members of governments advocated doing so. This was at a time when capitalism (however defined) had been discredited by the events of the preceding two decades and when it was also clear that only the state could rebuild the shattered remains of the continent. One big exception was Sweden where there was no great wave of post-war nationalisation despite the country having a socialist government (and it's probably not a total coincidence that there had been no war there either).

But this changed in the 1950s and (especially) in the 1960s as the economy boomed and as socialist parties started to struggle electorally. Revisionism returned to favour for the first time in decades and most social democratic parties adopted the position that the correct socialist thing to do was to use the money generated by (carefully planned and controlled) capitalist growth to fund social programmes and to boost working class living standards. Some, most famously the SPD in 1959, abandoned nationalisation entirely. Others that did not do so in theory (even if they generally debated it) did so in practice; Harold Wilson might have opposed Hugh Gaitskell's attempt to drop nationalisation from Labour's long-term goals, but he did so (in his own words, somewhat paraphrased) that you 'don't remove Genesis from the Bible' not because he actually supported nationalising vast sections of the private sector. Indeed, the 1964-1970 Wilson government followed the revisionist approach fairly strictly and nationalised hardly anything. And the Wilson government was to the left of most of its close contemporaries.

Of course there were always those who continued to believe in nationalisation and in replacing capitalism (rather than seeking to control it), but in most social democratic parties (especially the ones that actually formed governments from time to time) these people were in a distinct minority from the mid 1950s onwards. There was only really a resurgence in that approach after the 'Golden Age of Capitalism' ended in the early 1970s, and even then it never really reached some social democratic parties in a big way (most notably the SPD).