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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Dale Baker who wrote (21326)	6/17/2006 12:52:57 PM
From: Suma	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 541430

Thanks for the update. From an article I read I thought Chavez was forming alliances with Columbia... and Mexico...leading to Socialism.. However, as Communism has become more chameleon... (Is China really Communistic )? more countries are as you say... that countries realize it is in their best interests to have a Capitalistic bent...

To: Dale Baker who wrote (21326)	6/19/2006 1:25:02 PM
From: TimF	Respond to of 541430

If you exclude the "socialist" parties that are really just social democrats in the European mold (not advocates of big state control of the economy, just a strong welfare net) If the social welfare net is sufficiently big or strong its existence and operation amounts to the state controlling a sufficiently large part of the output of the economy that I wouldn't have a problem calling it socialist even if its not classical socialism with state owned industries playing a significant role. Of course that's rather a vague statement mostly because it doesn't define how extensive the government social programs would have to be. I'm not sure I have any hard line, I would just say the more state control there is the more socialist the economy. Extreme cases would be fairly obvious but many cases would not be so obvious. The point has been raised that a Canadian single payer health care system shouldn't be called socialist medicine because the state doesn't actually own or run the system providing medical care. I suppose that is technically correct but than instead of directly having socialized medical care, you have socialized health insurance.