Although this can apply to multiple European countries, I’m going to pick on England. So there, take that England!
I’ve seen threads where someone has called England socialist, and for some reason it angers another poster. I find it odd because, while it can be used as an insult, there’s nothing wrong in and of itself with socialism.
Let me define the term the way I understand it, and see who agrees or not.
Back in the 80’s when I was going to school, the US was described as capitalist, the Soviet Union as communist, and European countries such as England were described as socialist. Socialist being in-between capitalism and communism.
Also, something I’ve been hearing since the 80’s, and have even heard to this day, is that taxes are higher in countries like England because it has so many social programs that pay more generously than those here in the US.
So, is this an accurate portrayal of England (and other European countries)?
Do you see England as socialist, or capitalist?
If capitalist, what’s the difference between England, and a country that you do consider socialist?
For instance, housing in Britain is treated like housing in the US - a market commodity; it’s used to make a profit, whether through rent or mortgage. And, like other commodities, it’s subject to the same booms and busts of the market - which is why right now Britain is going through the same housing market crisis as the US is. Sales are down to one a week for most real estate agents there, the slowest in thirty years.
Basic necessities like heating fuel and food, also being commodities and therefore subject to the same market pressures, have increased in price while unemployment has risen. In fact the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) has predicted that the UK is on the edge of recession, if not already there.
The UK may have some tax-supported social benefits that the US doesn’t, like the National Health Service, but the overall trend (arguably since the Thatcher government) has been towards privatization of those services - again, treating them as commodities from which profit is to be made and subjecting them to the same market pressures, and therefore vulnerable to the same booms and busts as housing, fuel, foodstuffs, and jobs.
I don’t consider any country socialist since even the most progressive countries (like Sweden) are still market-centered and driven by the profit motive rather than meeting human need. Granted some countries have a much better social network than others but they still are influenced by the world market. Here in Stockholm, for instance, there’s an effort by parties in the government to evict some 50,000 state-subsidized tenants from apartments downtown so as to sell them off to the highest bidder. Unthinkable under genuine socialism.
You still haven’t really defined “socialist”, other than it being something between communism and capitalism. All western countries have some kind of large scale social spending, so it’s really going to be a matter of degree. In the US, Canada, Ireland, and Australia, around 30% of national income is spent by the government. In Europe it’s more like 40%. But these are still market economies. I don’t think any reasoinable person would call them socialist countries.
(You mean Britain, not England, btw. As we never tire of reminding people, they are not the same thing.)
As Usram says, you need to define ‘Socialist’.
(Your school definition is weak - and by the way, England is part of the United Kingdom!)
Just to help things along (apologies for the historical confusion over boundaries)…
England has a recognised football/cricket/rugby team, but cannot enter the Olympics, except as part of the **Great Britain **team.
Great Britain means England, Scotland and Wales.
The **United Kingdom **means England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
Each of these has a football team. However **Northern Ireland **joins with the rest of Ireland for rugby. Northern Ireland Olympic athletes can join either the GB team, or the Ireland team.
So technically England shouldn’t be allowed to play any sport as a country. :smack:
The United Kingdom is a Monarchy, but effective power is in the hands of the Parliament in London. (There are also regional assemblies.)
The major parties are Labour (has big Trade Union support), Conservative (has a lot of business support) and the **Liberal Democrats **(formed by a merger which included the Social Democrats). The Labour party is currently in Government and would describe itself as Socialist.
All major parties agree on the National Health Service (at least in principle), there is a State Pension for anyone who has worked (or was married to such a worker) and the country has signed up to the European Human Rights legislation.
Now you see why you need a definition of Socialism!
One of Thatcher’s stupidities was to privatise British Rail (a natural Monopoly). The result is that the Government subsidies of the many private companies now forming the rail network have increased dramatically. No such railway company has ever broken even, let alone made a profit.
There were instant millionaires created when the privatisation took place, since Thatcher sold off British Rail assets far too cheaply. it wasn’t about the money, nor the markets - just political fanaticism. :rolleyes:
I don’t think most Americans know what ‘socialism’ means. It’s not just a matter of income redistribution. It has to do with who owns the means of production. Unless the nation’s industries are all being nationalized or collectivized, I don’t see how a country can really count as socialist.
The Labour party (the current governing party in the UK) used to have socialist principles (and still describes itself as a “democratic socialist” party), but in the 1980s it sort of abandoned them and turned into Conservative-Lite when it realised that nobody would actually vote for them.
There are very few true socialist powers in Europe. There are just ones that are more left leaning than the norm in the US.
For example the Irish State provides more protection for it’s people than the US in terms of state aid and free 3rd level education and would be defined as a very left leaning state if looked at by Americans from that one angle.
Socially a lot of Europe would be more liberal than the US but most of European countries are social democracies with free markets and strong capitalist spirit.
I don’t think picking the UK was a good choice, when talking about European socialism. It seems to me that the UK’s a lot more market oriented than the rest of Europe. YMMV, of course, but excesses like government ownership of off-licenses (like in certain Scandinavian nations) would cause an insurrection, here
Oh come off it. The railways are inordinately better now than what they were under BR. It’s amazing the number of people who look back upon BR with rose-tinted glasses, forgetting the terrible state of the rolling stock, massive delays all over the country whenever it snowed etc. etc.
Yeah, the SE has a load of problems, but really, who outside of the SE of England gives a shit? Everytime I’ve traveled, the train has been on time, clean and modern (Virgin trains)—and I travel long distances regularly.
And really, how can you class BR a natural monopoly? It’s easy to be cheap when there’s no investment in rolling stock and government is regulating ticket prices for private companies.
(I concede selling off railtrack was a mistake, though. That should never have been privatized.)
I’m not sure what they were teaching US kids in high school in the 1980s.
I went on vacation in the US during that decade and was asked by my friend who was in high school, with a defiant “hypocrites!” stance: “If England’s a socialist country, then why do you have a queen, huh?!”
My answer was the same then as now: “what on earth makes you think the UK is a socialist country?”
We’ve got the third-largest stock exchange in the world by turnover. Our economy is entirely market-driven, and latterly consumer-driven. Of late, many government functions themselves have been outsourced to private companies.
Sure, post-war there were many state-owned industries (e.g. British Leyland, which made those appalling cars; ICL [International Computers Limited] which is now part of Fujitsu, which, surprisingly was set up by true Socialist politician Tony Benn), but they have largely been dismantled and sold off now, some of which sellings off are regarded as entirely stupid by the general public (qv the aforementioned RailTrack). The NHS is a holdover from those days because nearly everyone in the country thinks it’s a worthwhile entity.
Anyway, for a very entertaining US conservative’s view of European “socialism” I strongly recommend Eat the Rich by PJ O’Rourke. He reviews Sweden, IIRC, in his “good socialism” section. And Albania in his “bad capitalism” one!
Using that traditional definition of socialism, you would have to go back twenty or thirty years, to when governments such as that of France and, yes, the UK did own or have majority stakes in many large companies, in industries such as transport, coal, steel, telecoms. In many cases, state monopolies. But state ownership has declined greatly since then, across Europe.
The railways now cost the taxpayer billions more.
They have a worse safety record and no private railway company will invest money in building any new track.
So the glorious ‘private’ railway relies entirely on Government subsidy for new track.
'Richard Branson’s Virgin Trains have a reputation for delays and poor service. They have topped the table of customer complaints. Excuses put forward include; “Run out of fuel” - - - “We can’t find a driver”- - - " Drivers door has fallen off".
Driver’s announcements over the on train speaker system have included; “Has any passenger got an adjustable spanner to lend me”! ’
**'Virgin Trains has had a poor reputation for punctuality **compared with some other transport operators.
…
% of trains arriving within 10 minutes of the scheduled times) figures for Virgin Trains (Cross Country services and West Coast services) are as follows:
2001-2 up to March 31 2002: West Coast 68.7%, Cross Country 62.5%
2002-3 up to March 31 2003: West Coast 73.5%, Cross Country 61.7%
2003-4 up to March 31 2004: West Coast 74.8%, Cross Country 72.2%
2004-5 up to March 31 2005: West Coast 72.1%, Cross Country 77.8%
2005-6 up to March 31 2006: West Coast 83.5%, Cross Country 80.9%
2006-7 up to March 31 2007: West Coast 86.0%, Cross Country 83.9% ’
These are trains arriving up to 10 minutes late - all the rest arrive later than that!!!
I think you’ve been incredibly lucky to travel on Virgin trains that are punctual.
My personal experience is travelling from Kings Cross to Oakham via Peterborough. Under BR, if the london train was delayed a few minutes, the connection waited. Now, because they are different companies, the connection leaves - and passengers have to wait an hour for the next one. Any complaints are met by “It’s a different company, Guv. Nothing to do with us”
‘The so-called privatised railway – which is in effect subject to far more state interference than at any time in its history – sucks up huge wads of money in a way that is largely unaccountable, thanks to its Byzantine structure.’
‘What had previously been an integrated network bound together in a hierarchical
bureaucratic structure with a few modern concessions to divisional decentralization now became an interconnected array of contracts linking companies accountable to their own shareholders and to regulatory bodies.
…
The result is that literally thousands of private companies have replaced British Rail under privatisation’s fragmented structure. In maintenance alone, for example, it is estimated that around 2,000 firms are involved.
…
Between 1996 and 2000, according to numbers provided by the Association of Train Operating Companies (ATOC), passenger journeys increased by 25 per cent and freight volume carried by 40 per cent. (The rise in passenger services over the same period was, however, only seven per cent, meaning that space inside trains was being used more intensively, a fact which has undermined service quality in many cases.) Ironically, however – and, indeed, significantly – the privatisation designers did not foresee any increase, which is a product of a number of exogenous factors as well as those endogenous ones already mentioned. The causes include Britain’s worsening road congestion
and rapidly rising petrol prices, coupled with economic growth in the London area (where most of the increased passenger usage has occurred).
…
Railtrack imposed thousands of speed restrictions on the TOCs after a high speed inter-city express travelling from London to Leeds was derailed at around 160kph because a section of a rail broke (into around 300 pieces) as the train passed over it. It was the third fatal train crash since privatisation, and the previous two caused a greater loss of life, killing a total of 38 passengers and crew. However, Hatfield’s broken rail became emblematic of the systemic failure as a whole, not least because Railtrack’s reaction to it produced the speed restrictions which led to a collapse of service reliability from a level already significantly worse than before privatisation. In 2001, the number of train cancellations rose to 165,000, nearly three times the level of 1999, and that number does not begin to count the hours lost in delays to the nearly one billion passenger journeys made by rail in Britain annually, nor to freight services that have become so unpredictable that even the Post Office – rail’s major customer – has switched more of its business to roads that are already the most congested in Europe.
…
Among the improvements since privatisation has been increased investment in new passenger trains, which are gradually replacing the old rolling stock. However, that process was already underway before privatisation, albeit slowly, and it could be argued that the process would have been accelerated under British Rail at lower overall costs had it enjoyed as much subsidy as the new train operating companies have received.
…
The privatised companies’ commitment to commercial secrecy is such that maintenance workers who would once make a virtue of sharing valuable information among themselves were ordered not to do so with employees of rival contractors.
…
Before privatisation, says Rayner, a former British Rail senior operating manager, ‘when an accident happened, everyone was dedicated to the task of finding its cause to prevent recurrence. Staff, trades union representatives and managers alike worked to this end. There was no doubt on the site of an accident who was in charge, and no delay in clearing the lines. Over the years, lessons were learnt from each accident; each one brought about an improvement in equipment or procedures.’
The changing ethos in British railways after privatisation undermined these processes of vertical and horizontal dissemination of information and experience. Severing the ‘wheel-rail interface’ by separating responsibility for the system’s infrastructure from responsibility for operating services was one major factor in this, but the 100-plus companies that immediately resulted from the break-up represent only the tip of the iceberg. Underneath, the privatised maintenance system soon rested upon layers and layers of sub-contractors, each making money out of hiring the next down the food chain until, at the base – where the work is and done where the greatest strength is needed – labour is casualized and individualized.’
Right. European nations in general seem to be characterized by the following:
Private control of capital
Significant income redistribution from wealthy to poor
Significant gap between wealthy and poor (although not as significant as in the US, of course)
Countries characterized in this way aren’t socialist, #2 notwithstanding.
Billions more in real terms, or in comparison with spending from 20–30 years ago (i.e. ignoring inflation)? How much does a new Pendolino or Voyager cost? As I said, it’s easy to be cheap when there’s no investment in rolling stock—do you not remember the BR cattle wagons that they used to call passenger carriages?
And investment in track? Isn’t that the job of Railtrack (now Network Rail), the company that I conceded should not have been sold off?
Nationalization alone doesn’t make a country Socialist, nor does state ownership (as Usram mentioned). Both can and have occurred in capitalist countries, e.g. Saudi Arabia nationalizing its oil industry. In this case oil and other petrochemicals are still extracted and refined to generate a profit, not meet the world’s oil needs.
Socialism, to me, is the global overthrow of the wages and profit system and its replacement with democratically planned production and distribution of goods and services.
You kiddin’ me? I get a wider variety of great beer at good per-bottle prices here. It certainly never takes me as much hunting to find choice brew (and I can do it online before I ever leave the house to know which branch to raid) here in Sweden as it did back in the States!
OK, I have to ask… how did we get an Olentzero from Sweden? Is it a reference to the Basque coalmaker that brings presents in Midwinter or does it happen to be one of those cases where two words from different languages have completely different origins and meaning?
Are you limiting that statement to European countries? If not, what about Venezuela where Hugo Chavez says he’s implementing “21st century socialism”?
Besides what I offered, I guess there’s the dictionary definition where in capitalism, the means of production are owned by private individuals; in communism, the means of production are owned by the state; and then in socialism, some are owned by individuals, and some by the state.
Yeah, like I said in the OP, I know it’s not just “England”, but I was just narrowing it down.
That’s pretty interesting, thank you.
Jjimm and Usram, you make it sound like maybe at one point England/Britain/the UK (whatever term will make people happy :)) could have been described as socialist, but not any longer?
Well again it comes back to how you define socialism. The state in Britain, France and elsewhere controlled or was heavily involved in industry on a big scale, but there was still a huge private sector. I don’t have the figures but I don’t think the state sector was ever bigger than the private. And the state-owned companies weren’t all monopolies, so some had to at least attempt to be competitive. It was not like there was a national Five Year Plan or anything. It was as much to do with trying to sustain employment as with idealistic notions of “from each according to their ability, to each according to their needs”. And in the end, it just didn’t work.
First guess on the money. I picked up this nick after taking a semester course in Basque at Georgetown.
Nobody: I don’t consider Venezuela socialist either, but Chavez is definitely progressive. I don’t know if this is the right thread to go into an in-depth analysis of his claims to be implementing socialism but I will say he’s coming up against the limits of what he can do as leader of his country.
