2016 Postmortem
In reply to the discussion: Please, Democrats: Don’t Attack Bernie Sanders for Joining Your Party - Joan Walsh [View all]blackspade
(10,056 posts)By the way, I appreciate your measured responses.
1) How is Denmark not a market-based socialist country? It is irrelevant that the PM, who is the head of state due to a parliamentary coalition, thinks that his country is not a type of socialist state. The facts are, as they say, facts. He might not like the characterization, but that's too bad for him.
2) Socialism has several different types as I have stated before. The bulk of Europe are market driven socialist states.
Non-market socialism has not really been tried in any real sense. What you are describing as the "collective, political ownership of the means of production and distribution" is actually state capitalism, not socialism.
As for the rest we will have to disagree. Human history is full of different forms of social and political structures and most of these do not fit into neat categories.
I am also a liberal, but we are a society, and in a society we do not go it alone as individuals. I don't feel that my prosperity needs to come at the expense of impoverishing my neighbors. That is why democratized work places and collective ownership of companies by workers not the government or shareholders seems to be a far more preferable economic structure to me than the free market capitalism that has caused so much social, economic, and ecological devastation over the last 150 years or so.