Politics and socialism

marx needed over 3000 pages to tell us why socialism is the right way to govern society, and that was just the economy part, i can't even begin to explain all the reasons to why i'm a socialist in detail, but since you ask i will try to make a shorter summary. I'm most certainly not ashamed of being a socialist and i don't agree with you when you say that socialist regimes have failed in a greater extent then any other kind of regime. The question of wether or not a regime "fails" depends on your definition of what "works" would be. If "works" is defined as "the majority of people live decently, and have at least the bare minimum" then i believe that almost all regimes that are or have been socialistic (not necesserily those who have called themselves socialistic) have succeeded way superior to that of the current regime of the united states. however if you define "works" as keeps the country going and the people under control" like most people do, you can say that almost any way of governing "works". I would even dare to say that the idea of socialism would be superior to the one of liberalism because the socialistic state can more easily regulate it's own market, public sector etc etc, whilst liberalism's hands are tied down because you have the whole thing of "non-interference" from the state. now to why i'm a socialist. I believe that the most important thing in the world is equality. People should always have access to the base needs no matter of ethnicity, gender, or income. In my country we have free education for all, free healthcare for all, and the maximum price for medicines in a year is just under 300$. This is all possible since we let our tax money pay for our welfare instead of other things, like killing millions of people over oil in iraq. We also have a system to reduce the social differenses between the "Rich" and the "Poor" essentially meaning that if you earn more money, you pay a slightly higher percentage in taxes. If you can afford to contribute a little more to the common wealth of all, then i believe that you should. Of course there are still people in my country who have got way more money than other people, i'm not trying to deny that, but we have a system where everyone in society have access to what's needed to make a living and a life, i'm thinking mostly of free education and free healthcare. And another important thing we have is what we call the "Socialbidrag" or the social contribution in english. That's an economic support that you get from the state if you suddenly become unemployed or lose your income for any other reason. It's not very much, but it's definitly a superior system than that you have in america, and have you ever driven down skidrow in LA on christmas day, you will be glad that your country has this social ensurances to make sure that no person falls "out of the grid". But for the past 5 years sweden has had more liberal goverment than previously, and we have seen a great fall in the common welfare. The social contribution is way smaller and harder to get approved, the public schools (that used to be 90% of all scohols) recieve less funding to ensure that the private schools will offer the best education (education is still free though,whatever school you attend). The working conditions for every working person in sweden has greatly deminished over the past five years, and that is all due to the liberalist/conservative regime we have today. And if you've ever left your own country and gone to a less fortunate nation, like china, india, thailand etc. you will find that the global capitalist system has a great dark backside that we prefer to ignore. Millions of people living in poverty and under the extreme poverty line (1$/day) all due to the huge corporations in america and europe trying to make more and more money by paying them less and less for more and more work. Ao in conclusion, im a proud socialist, not an ashamed one! And when it comes to failing i believe that all regimes that have ever had just a little piece of solidarity and socialism in them, including the more extreme regimes of the soviet unions, combined have not failed as much as the global capitalism is doing today! but that's just my opinion...

I've been to america a few times myself and i think that you've got a point when you say that many people don't have a clue about what socialism is, more than perhaps high taxes and a smaller chance of becoming a billionaire, but if you look at statistics the average american spends a higher percentage of his income to pay for what we swedish people get from our tax money, and that's because we let people who have more money pay a little higher taxes, if they can afford to contribute a little more to the common wealth of the masses they should. Where do you stand on this? You say you are not an anti-socialist, does it mean you might acctually be a little bit pro-socialism?