The UK is in an odd position really. We did put the effort and money into doing just that in 1945 – exactly when ‘modern’ thinking would say we could least afford such idealism.

Not particularly a socialist Government – in fact, I have an aversion to most ‘-ists’ and ‘-ites’.

I am all for a Government not getting in because people don’t want it, that is democracy. I am not for being told who is unelectable, by anyone including our press. If that were to work, that would be a corruption of democracy. The statement I picked up on in my first post made me concerned that this is what is happening.

I amended my last post to clarify – I’ll repeat here as it’s on the previous page. Corbyn doesn’t want a Marxist revolution. He wants to close tax loopholes. His politics are pretty close to the consensus in civilised, secure and content countries with both greater equality AND a higher average standard of living, such as Swden and Norway. Whatever the rights and wrongs of the policies, CD, what is so off-putting to us Brits about the model these countries use that makes someone proposing it here unelectable?

I am not saying ‘Vote Corbyn’. Just asking the question.

By which I mean, what’s so scary – beyond simple political viewpoints – that it makes a person actually appear unelectable for suggesting it?

True – I think that info is a bit old, but the point was they were successful under a Socialist leadership.

I think they would (with the exception of China) be happy to be called ‘Social Democracies’ – not anti-capitalist but with a consensus somewhere to the left of anything we have aeen in the UK for 40 years, and pretty much slap bang where Corbyn sits (he has called himself a ‘Democratic Socialist’ – the reason he didn’t use ‘Social Democrat’ is obvious).

Outside of that comfort zone of red-tinged capitalism, there were some nations that showed signs of developing successful purely Socialist economies and societies – Indonesia under Sukarno, Chile under Allende, Nicaragua etc. All were nipped in the bud through ‘outside influence’..

And no, I am not suggesting these nations revolutionary governments as a model! Norway, though…. or Sweden. Well, what’s so scary to us Brits? Serious question.

http://blog.peerform.com/top-ten-most-socialist-countries-in-the-world/

Yes, I probably am over-thinking it 🙂

In the light of that then CD I guess my question might then be re-phrased as ‘why hasn’t the United Kingdom elected an actual Labour government since 1974’?

Sounds like a naïve question, but then when you break it down, it’s trickier (and no, I don’t think ‘because Socialists are WRONG and people who vote Conservative are RIGHT’ is necessarily an answer to it).

I am getting the sense that the popular answer is the increasingly circular one ‘Because it’s 40 years since we did, therefore we shouldn’t’..

Yeah – I had to check, though. Of course, Marx then went on to say that the next and even more advanced stage was Socialism, but then he would. He was Marx, after all.

The thing about Marxist theory is that as an approach it is quite valuably clear-eyed and analytical. Unfortunately he then went on to speak his mind about his own political beliefs, and so the whole body of work has often since been appropriated and misappropriated by people who are anything but – a bit like Nietzsche and the Fascists*

*Saw them once, supporting the Sex Pistols