Socialism without revolution is a fringe and hopeless endeavour. It requires fundamentally changing the mechanisms by which the economy functions.
Ethnic exclusion, racism, a wealth of natural resources, a small population, and no real geopolitical tensions to worry about (prior to joining NATO, at least). Hm.
I’m sure this is a robust and scalable model.
Yeah I was about to say. Like Scandinavia has a high standard of living, but it’s still capitalist/corporatist as fuck, still has a lot of the problems of right-wing and even far-right ideologies, and is 100% not ideal and probably not sustainable in the modern world (especially considering their welfare capitalism ended up getting people elected into office who are trying to dismantle the social protections and laws that make the countries successful in the first place). Welfare capitalism isn’t a good middle ground because it’s extremely likely to drift back towards regular old capitalism.
Yes, but we also have proportional representation in our parliaments. Making gradual ideological change realistic.
Keeping the working class healthy and productive is just good business, not equality.
Social democracy is the natural evolution of enlightened self interest from a ruling class, aka, well fed serfs are not only more productive than slaves or starving peasants, they don’t put your head in a guillotine.
But they are still serfs. As long as their well being is a privilege and not a right, or the reward of their own labor from means the worker themselves own, the ruling class is still in control, and can hold the threat of revocation above them.
It could even be reasonably argued that socdem countries, or maybe even broader speaking liberal democracies, already had the necessary revolutions we just need to get better at dismantling the remnants of the old by providing alternatives in ways that don’t risk other advances. Pretty much parallel to the Sudden Enlightenment, Gradual Cultivation doctrine you see in Zen: Neither is it guaranteed that you notice enlightenment (in the sense of realising that that’s what happened to you), nor is it in any way guaranteed that you suddenly cease to be a shithead. Nor will you find a way of gradual cultivation that makes you unlearn how to tie your shoes. Not going to happen.
Or, differently put: If you wish to convert a village to anarchism, one of the first things to do is figure out how to organise trash collection and water distribution. You might say “but it’s a state mandate that municipalities provide these things! We haven’t agreed to anything like that!”. My sibling in Discord you’re ready to abolish bedtime when you’re wise enough to voluntarily go to bed early, again. Don’t make theoretical principles the enemy of praxis.
