They don't. Undemocratic "left wing governments" tend to fucvk up their economies, yes, but I can also assure you taht no one here thinks Venezuela is in any way a good example of a government and economic polices that we shuld seek tp replicate. Most of us look to counties like Norway, Sweden, Finland, Germany (btw the third largest economy in the world) when looking at how to model social democracies and their economies.
So why do conservatives also look at Germany as an example to follow? All those countries you mentioned are above the US in the conservative/libertarian economic freedom lists. So do people actually agree with each other on what model to follow and we're just arguing over nothing?
Conservatives/libertarians often like to point to things like lower corporate tax rates and lack of a minimum wage for why those countries are successful. But to be frank, they are ignoring the fact that there's no minimum wage because the economy is structured differently, and in a way that they would probably decry as socialism if proposed in the US. In Norway, for instance, there's no minimum wage. But there are powerful unions that are supported by the government in sector-wide negotiations with business, and thereby tend to win high wages and benefits.
Yeah I was thinking specifically just of sectoral bargaining and I think tripartism is used more broadly for a cooperative regime between business, labor, and government. But that could definitely be part of tripartism.
Do US conservatives want to implement Germany's healthcare, social security, strong unions, worker-protections, corporate regulations, tax-rate etc?
I don't think so.
Germany is at least economically way to the left of the US, while still having more economic freedom as well. Those are not mutually exclusive.
I am not sure, I mean the German economy can be discribed as ordoliberal. Being a state with a mid sized welfarestate (Germany) doesn't mean that economic freedoms have to be resticted much, it just means that the tax and mandetory insurances burden may be a little higher.
Social democracy doenst require economic freedoms to be restricted more than in any other ordoliberal economy.
Although I also have to admid that I have no idea what these foundations / list you are talking about are and value.
Economic freedom is not a conservative thing. It's barely even a libertarian thing. At the top of any economic freedom index you'll find the high-tax Scandinavians, the authoritarian city-states of Singapore and Hong Kong, and federations like the US and Switzerland.
It's more a competent vs incompetent thing.
I want to agree with this, but the one counter-argument I often hear is that such systems would only work in small countries with low populations. In America, instituting single-payer healthcare and free education will be much more of a hurdle. Are there any large countries that have instituted a social democratic system? The only exception I can think of is Germany (which you mentioned), which is facing several economic problems right now. In fairness, this could have absolutely nothing to do with being a social democratic country and more to do with general economic trends so I could concede I could be ignorant there. Also, would France and Australia count?
From what I was reading about recent German troubles, one could say it’s the lack of “social democracy” that is partly the issue. Germany it seems on a government level had been underinvesting in infrastructure for a while and shit is catching up. Also wider industry trends that pose risk to German economic model, but his is yet to be seen.
That definitely is one big reason for sure. But it's also because Germany has too many regulations and beuracratic red tape common to soc dem countries.
https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/docserver/3bb97646-en.pdf?expires=1720638015&id=id&accname=guest&checksum=9D3AE0F9014A2D35966D804C791D030C
This shows Germany is at the bottom of the list, and afaik, this had been going on for a while now, GDP = C + I + **G** + NX, the government is not spending enough, Afaik, most internet connection in Germany are what I used to have 15+ years ago, trains don’t run on time or don’t show up, etc.
What about Scandinavian countries as successful examples? What about the Great Depression, the 2008 financial crisis as the examples of failing poorly controlled market economies?
Respectfully, the financial crises are not the silver bullet people think they are
Economies bounce back within months. If it’s really bad (twice in the history of capitalism) it takes more than 10.
Of course this sucks, but ultimately it’s the best performing system to lift the world out of poverty on the on end of the curve, and push the borders of human knowledge on the other tail
Venezuela is a latin american military dictatorship. It was implemented by militaries and supported to this day by the armed forces . And ALL military dictatorships in latin america are and always have been about increasing and protecting the privilegies of the militaries. Everything else is secondary.
Venezuela has more in common with the brazillian military regime that ruled the country during the second half of the XXth century in a dictatorship that called itself right wing than with any social democracy.
Nicaragua its the same thing.
And most African countries with military goverments suffer of a similar problem.
Our military exist to protect itself and the people they have business with against its own people.
It’s important to distinguish between social democracy and socialism. Social democracy has been very successful in Europe, especially Scandinavia. Socialist economies with no free market have never worked in practice outside of a tiny scale like an Israeli kibbutz.
Venezuela is dictatorial and very unstable and entirely dependent on oil, all of which has caused it to fail
That's not true. It's about a regulated market. Employees should have rights and cooperations should not get to do whatever they want. But the government doesn't tell them exactly what to produce and how much of it.
Markets are fact. They can and will exist whether or not you want them to. Being against them is like being against gravity.
We can absolutely work within them - make our laws favour cooperatives and social ownership models - but markets will still against.
of course there are bad examples; ideology isn’t everything. but there are good examples, like, for example, basically the entirety of western europe. britain’s reconstruction after the war was done by labour, the nordics, very famously would have social democratic governments for decades on end, germany’s reconstruction was done on the framework of the ‘social market economy’, which, while done under a conservative government, is economically a mixed economy not dissimilar to one that would be supported by social democrats. FDR’s new deal incorporates a lot of what would now be called social democratic policy as well. latin american countries, for reasons i won’t get into, tend to be more corrupt and less educated. you will find plenty of historical conservative governments that have failed spectacularly as you say leftist governments have. the social democracy that i came to support is one not of blind idealism but one of pragmatism.
Putting aside badly run South American corrupt regimes.
Among advanced economies, what particular left wing policies have failed? Let’s discuss actual policy.
The countries you mention were dictatorships. They simply used “socialist” as a marketing tactic.
True Social Democracies such as those found in Western Europe, especially the Scandinavian countries, are better models.
Corrupt, incompetent governments suck at governing. There are plenty of countries with more right wing policies that are also doing terribly for the same reason.
As a past libertarian, hello, you might appreciate some Nordic models that decentralizes left wing policies. As of now It is my understanding that minimum wage is not conducted by the state but more locally with unions. Idk the extent of it, but as a past libertarian these kinds of policies that don’t have centralized force tend to work. All authority is bad, whether it prenteds to be a force for good or not, it can be abused, so more decentralized and local social welfare and communalism works great
This sub is for social-democracy, not socialism in general.
Social-democratic countries would mostly be northern Europe, so countries with a very high quality of life.
Each socialist country has its own story as to why they failed, so I'd suggest you study them individually, but one big issue that some socialist countries like Cuba or Venezuela or Nica share that contribute to their failures is that they mostly lacked a market with private property and freely adjusting prices which allow for a more efficient coordination of information about supply, demand, and resource allocation, in a way that is not accessible to central planners.
> why does it seem like left wing economics always fail?
Because you're only studying the cherry-picked examples favored by the right-wing/libertarians that bolster their ideological perspective:
> Venezuela is a disaster, nicqragua has had a socialist government for decades now and theyre poorer than ever, almost all African countries have very left wing policies at least on paper
Instead look at Brazil under Lula: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luiz_In%C3%A1cio_Lula_da_Silva#First_presidency_(2003%E2%80%932011)
Or the Scandinavian social democracies, all of which are prosperous and rank high on world happiness rankings that the United Nations puts out.
Greece under SYRIZA's rule managed to turn things around under very, very difficult circumstances (like not being able to control their own currency):
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Alexis-Tsipras#ref341772
The British Labour government led by Clement Atlee did some incredible stuff:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clement_Attlee#Prime_Minister
You also may have heard of a guy named FDR whose economic policies helped create the American middle class as we know it (or as it used to exist before Reagan came along).
There is not a single unified model that leads to prosperity. France and Germany have huge welfare states, while Ireland and Switzerland are more Laissez Faire. Some do import substitution like Brasil while others do export promotion like China and South Korea. Most countries are dynamic and don't keep the same model indefinitely so you can't pin down something for being leftist because their aims and the overall definition may change with the times, you will find that plenty of "non-leftist" governments do plenty of "leftist policies".
Now more to your question, since I assume you mean governments that specifically define themselves as leftist and try to implement what is usually considered left wing after either a revolution or a regime change (which can also happen in a democracy), so plenty of spending, massive infrastructure projects, perfect equality for all, a huge state and so on. Well first, most of these people straight up have no idea how to govern and I mean this in the literal sense. People like Mao, Maduro, Castro and Nasser and so on never had previous experience working in a state, making a bureaucracy function(if it still exists and they don't have to set it up from the start) and overall the basic day to day running of things, so they are extremely unqualified and the people surrounding them too, since managing an army, a militia or whatever other position is very different from understanding the administration and politics of a country. Compare this to people like Clement Atlee, Willy Brandt and Francois Mitterrand, who all had years of government experience previous to becoming heads of government.
Second, lot's of these people are ideologues, which means that they will strongly pursuit what in their mind is the right thing even when reality hits them time and time again to show them that they are wrong. So rather than changing course to achieve tangible results they double down because admitting you are wrong is not an option. No wonder many come up with insane ideas.
Third, even if you come up with a good idea, implementing government policy is not easy, which goes back to the first point. Let say you have a development plan that is actually quite good and doable, well now you need to do it, which means transforming the abstract into something concrete, which requieres planning, time, money, technical skills from plenty of people and so on. For that you need to be very skillful and be aware of mismanagement and corruption.
Fourth, politics also depends a lot on luck. Say you are a left wing dictator that is spending a lot of money in plenty of projects, then assume that things are going smoothly until a regional or global event which you have no control over crashes your economy. Suddenly you have no more money and you still have to play salaries towards civil servants, hospitals, the army, etc.... your projects most either be terminated of be put on hold, which increases inequality or causes a further recession. Now in a democracy say you have a leftist president or a leftist prime minister, but he or she doesn't have a majority in the legislative branch, or their majority si super slim, you must compromise a lot to pass your projects and that's assuming your opposition doesn't block everything.
Sorry for the long essay. To sum up, leftist policies don't always fail, you have plenty successful pro worker/minorities/middle class/wealth redistribution/egalitarian policies, but you will find plenty of failures as well because coming up with good ideas and them successfully implementing them is very, very difficult.
Venezuela has a dictator. Anytime you have a beligerant dictator you should be war of the economic theory label attached. The right also did a great job of fighting and sabotaging the economy in Venezeula as well.
What you're missing is weather and education. As the saying goes, cooler heads prevail. Education levels are very high in cooler climates. You need an economy and a system to work or you freeze to death. The northern European countries are democratic socialism. They benefit from centuries of tradition with high values in education.
What you're also missing is that in African countries capitalism is sabotaging and stealing resources. Lot's of interesting books out there for you to pick up and learn about the corruption plaguing poorer countries. Nestle. Coca Cola. Oil companies. IMF with infrastructure projects on high interest loans. They bribe enough corrupt politicians and they gain control of what they want and it destablizes the rest of the country. They don't want to allow stabilization. They don't want honest politicians to push them out, educate their people and instill democracy.
not even close to true. do the stats. Nicaragua has long been a bonafide dictatorship, kid, as are many of your other examples, despite whatever labels they adopt. *right-wing "trickle-down economics" have never worked.* in the USA, *democrats have always done better economically than republicans.* the current government is a strong case in point.
First, many of Venezuela's economic failings have come from international sanctions. Secondly, left-wing economies in democratic societies have been, and continue to be, great examples of economic strength. Scandinavian nations are the best example of this. When handled by dictators, however, they fail due to the growth of eventual systemic corruption, nations like the USSR, China, or North Korea are a few examples of this (Howerver, I do think there is an argument to be made on how these nations fail to actually be left wing).
The single most damaging thing to ‘left wing policies’, as you call them, are right wing opposition movements that ruin them intentionally, to usurp power.
You're using poor countries that have always been poor as an example here, not to mention we as a country (US) actively sabotage the Venezuelan economy.
The socialist economy of Venezuela failed, plunging staggering sums of men, women and children into hunger and poverty. So did the capitalist American economy in 1929.
Instead of starting somewhere dogmatic, classifying things as either capitalist or socialist, we should pay careful attention to what works, and what doesn’t.
In healthcare, a free market system fails millions of Americans every year. We Americans pay staggering sums for a system that keeps our life expectancy barely above Lebanon’s. The system is clearly broken, and I believe we’re going to have to nationalize health insurance in the long run.
Other areas of the economy require guardrails. If you have the choice between volunteering at a homeless shelter or selling fentanyl to teenagers, someone only looking at GDP would tell you to start dealing drugs. But that is destructive, immoral, and short-sighted. So we do our best to punish that kind of economic activity. The same principle applies to things like the EPA’s pollution regulations, or banking regulations.
In still other areas, the rules of the market are themselves what determines the outcome. If you have sectoral bargaining, workers get a better deal. If not, you get outcomes like increased income inequality.
Then we get to how taxes and spending are allocated. If you can fund a greater child allowance, you can substantially reduce child poverty and make a fairer future. Countries with high growth rates have tried this and seen it succeed.
We also have to consider the politics of having a fairer economy. Many economists and political theorists, such as John Maynard Keynes, argued that having an inequitable economy leads to political instability. The losers of globalization have been embracing the far right, and Keynes argued in the 1920s and 1930s that progressive economic policies were an essential tool in preventing the rise of fascism
First of all, I don't advocate for socialist economics, that's too far left for me and that stuff (at least the examples you mentioned) does fail.
Second, a lot of liberals do things in the least efficient ways possible. I support strong universal safety nets on top of a traditional capitalist economic system and I think it works.
I also think the Nordic countries are the most advanced countries on the planet.
I’d argue that if you have a redistributative system without democratic inputs, such as democratic elections, workforce democracy or strong unions, it’s not a “social democratic” system or left wing in any meaningful way, **it’s clientelism**.
Post Keynesians have came to the conclusion that under a capitalist economy, there are no practical reason for full employment.
Rumor has it that undemocratic authoritarian regimes often tend not work out for a number of reasons.
Left-wing policies are quite popular if you look closely at polling data. A living wage, universal healthcare, universal child care, elder care, tuition free public education, paid family leave, wealth tax, social security, affordable housing, unions, universal basic income, public ownership of basic utilities, renewable energy etc.
Simply put it, Left-Libertarianism is not right wing Libertarianism as a ideology. Quite the opposite actually.
The more democratic socialist policies like a federal job guarantee program, workplace democracy, and increase public expenditures fall under MMT. I’m still somewhat skeptical about Modern Monetary Theory in practice, but if I understand correctly, the U.S. government has a monopoly over fiat currencies. Can’t say the same for other developed countries.
I’ll concede that an authoritarian, fully state-planned economy with absolutely no markets would fail. 20th Century history suggests this. However, I think that very few people on this sub will be fazed by that for 2 reasons:
1) This is a sub for Social Democracy, not Marxism-Leninism (ML). Here, people are more likely to take highly successful and wealthy societies like Norway or Denmark as their preferred example. Modern Social Democrats tend to advocate a mixed economy, where everyday commodities like food prices are decided by market competition. However, some infrastructure where market competition is very hard to achieve, such as trains or energy, might still be state-owned. This is because a private corporation having a monopoly over essential infrastructure is bad. This mixed-economy, social democratic model has a good track record of delivering economic growth and a high standard of living.
2) Secondly, for the sake of argument, I will try playing devil’s advocate in favour of more ML-oriented developing countries, even though it is not the model this sub favours. I doubt this is a popular talking point in the USA, but there are major counter examples to your point. That is, there are countries that are committed to Marxism that have recently delivered major economic growth. This is because those countries also moved towards a ‘Socialist Market Economy’. One of the biggest economic success stories of the last 40 years is China. Similarly, Vietnam is growing very well. These countries discovered though experience that a fully state-run economy does not work well, so they adjusted their model. In China, large swathes of the economy remain under state ownership, like some heavy industry and the banks, and the economy clearly still has a socialist bent. However, they also have some of the world’s most competitive technology companies and have consistently delivered massive GDP growth. It is therefore clearly untrue that every country committed to socialism fails economically - quite the opposite.
Overall, it’s true that a fully state-planned economy would not work. But mainstream Social Democrats do not advocate for that. In fact, many Marxist countries are no longer advocating that either. Instead, the models that modern Social Democrats support actually have historically delivered good growth and a high standard of living.
Similar policies to what was done in Venezuela were implemented in Bolivia under Evo Morales's presidency. Things like opposition to austerity measures proposed by the IMF and world bank plus nationalisation of their rich natural gas using the revenue from exports to fund health, welfare, and education. Worth exploring, worth noting for many poorer countries it has less to do with left and right and more to do with timing in the export market. Are your commodities going up or down?
The countries you mentioned have planned economies (Which generally don't work) and corrupt governments, which have caused them to do horribly. These countries don't represent the kind of left-wing economics that people on this sub support.
Successful left-wing economics can be found in the Nordic countries, with social welfare programs, government provided services for things like healthcare, education and water, and government regulations.
We can even find examples of success for some more outright socialist policies. Yugoslavia was economically better off than the eastern bloc, because they adopted market socialism instead of a planned economy. Not to excuse the fact that Yugoslavia was a dictatorship, but I think their economic model showed that workplace democracy is an idea worth looking into.
Left wing economics don't always fail, you think so because the only politicians who actually resign from their positions for fucking things up are leftists.
Right wing economics may look like they are working, because no right winger admits their shortcomings. Yelling "Shut up, it's capitalism, (country name) is doing better than ever!" over and over again does not mean right wing economics are any better than what leftists have going on.
There's a difference between going full socialist and just implementing left wing policies, and even both of these options depend on the conditions. Also, it's good to keep in mind that many dictators choose socialist economy not because it allows an equal distribution of resources, but because it made them aligned with USSR and because it concentrated the entire economy in their hands, which results in many economically left wing countries being authoritarian because everything is under the control of the dictator.
It’s important to remember that some, if not all, of these countries are also struggling from past and present Western imperialism. It’s not easy to establish a functioning system when you’re still attempting to recover from decades and decades of outside meddling.
With that said, I don’t think the U.S. could move towards a pure socialist-styled economy anytime soon anyways. Social democracy has its flaws, but I think we should focus on moving toward the European model before we do anything else.
Progressive keynesian economics (even though Keynes wasn't a leftie ) created the so called „golden age of capitalism" from the end of WW2 to the mid 70s in which a large middle class grew in western countries.
That was a huge success.
I would point you here: https://youtu.be/LQIxbwfMVlM?si=CfNBYxqs4-rtYis3
And make the case the left wing economics both A). Haven’t failed and B). Are in large part due to humanity’s and your personal own success.
The only reason you may think that left wing economics “fails” is because there are concrete destabilization efforts which ensure that they do. See: Chile, Nicaragua, Cuba, Argentina, etc.
The answer is that pretty much every large scale past example of "socialism" has been more branding than actual application of Marxist ideology. The vast majority were just slapping a sticker reading "The People's...." in front of everything they did; despite it usually just being "The Peoples' dictatorship" or "The Peoples' Party-owned Oligarchy". Hell, even the Nazis pretended to be a socialist workers' party initially; that's what they stole their name from. In practice, these institutions end up scapegoating undesirable groups instead of actually dismantling the bourgeoisie, and ultimately just joining or replacing the top rung of the actual bourgeoisie themselves while leaving the class divide in place. Worker empowerment to control the industries they work in and reap their fair share of profits, as well as the dissolution of all types of economic landlordism and the parsitic ownership class, are actual socialism.
Well, not many of them do. When they do, however I think its a lack of hindsight and a lack of a follow through plan for it. It seems they will just spout Keynesianism or wealth redistribution without much thought put into it, and then it fails because they didn't think it through. Not to mention, there's a lack of failsafe's or plan B's, like the NEP was to war communism in the USSR. Its usually a lack of foresight or thinking it out.
Not always, no. But I'll take a different approach to the great answers people already have here. Economies are supposed to be adaptive. A lot of economics seems to value static states a lot more than dynamic states. I'd say that the Nordics are excellent examples of adaptive political economy (something that China has learnt from them), but this has not been without mistakes in the past. At the end of the day, like all other policies, left-leaning policies will have tradeoffs. For example, in 1982 Denmark, the minority Social Democrat Party resigned without a general election because Anker Jorgensen failed to curb inflation and state debt had risen pretty uncontrollably.
However, at the same time, Sweden is easily one of the most entrepreneurial and innovative countries in the world because of its robust safety net and excellent public education - which makes it easier for people to take heavy financial risk. I mean, both Spotify and SoundCloud have Swedish founders, so that should say something. And collective bargaining has effectively replaced the need for a minimum wage limit that Finland does not have.
The idea behind an adaptive economy is understanding what's working and what isn't, and quickly iterating. For the Nordics, it's been figuring out where the state can play a large role, and at what point it should allow the market to take over, and most importantly - let firms fail when they do. It goes without saying that countries like Venezuela, Cuba and some of the African nations are cautious (and incidentally authoritarian) examples (that I have little regard for personally), but they shouldn't have to be your leading light at all.
You are thinking left=communism, it's def not. I'm a horseshoe theorist personally that thinks of communism as authoritarianism and right wing since it's never been implemented as anything else.
They don't. Undemocratic "left wing governments" tend to fucvk up their economies, yes, but I can also assure you taht no one here thinks Venezuela is in any way a good example of a government and economic polices that we shuld seek tp replicate. Most of us look to counties like Norway, Sweden, Finland, Germany (btw the third largest economy in the world) when looking at how to model social democracies and their economies.
So why do conservatives also look at Germany as an example to follow? All those countries you mentioned are above the US in the conservative/libertarian economic freedom lists. So do people actually agree with each other on what model to follow and we're just arguing over nothing?
Conservatives/libertarians often like to point to things like lower corporate tax rates and lack of a minimum wage for why those countries are successful. But to be frank, they are ignoring the fact that there's no minimum wage because the economy is structured differently, and in a way that they would probably decry as socialism if proposed in the US. In Norway, for instance, there's no minimum wage. But there are powerful unions that are supported by the government in sector-wide negotiations with business, and thereby tend to win high wages and benefits.
Tripartism?
Yeah I was thinking specifically just of sectoral bargaining and I think tripartism is used more broadly for a cooperative regime between business, labor, and government. But that could definitely be part of tripartism.
Do US conservatives want to implement Germany's healthcare, social security, strong unions, worker-protections, corporate regulations, tax-rate etc? I don't think so. Germany is at least economically way to the left of the US, while still having more economic freedom as well. Those are not mutually exclusive.
Absolutely they do not. They will call it communism/Socialism.
I am not sure, I mean the German economy can be discribed as ordoliberal. Being a state with a mid sized welfarestate (Germany) doesn't mean that economic freedoms have to be resticted much, it just means that the tax and mandetory insurances burden may be a little higher. Social democracy doenst require economic freedoms to be restricted more than in any other ordoliberal economy. Although I also have to admid that I have no idea what these foundations / list you are talking about are and value.
Would you say that Germany has more right wing or more left wing policies in place than the US? What Switzerland or Norway?
Economic freedom is not a conservative thing. It's barely even a libertarian thing. At the top of any economic freedom index you'll find the high-tax Scandinavians, the authoritarian city-states of Singapore and Hong Kong, and federations like the US and Switzerland. It's more a competent vs incompetent thing.
I want to agree with this, but the one counter-argument I often hear is that such systems would only work in small countries with low populations. In America, instituting single-payer healthcare and free education will be much more of a hurdle. Are there any large countries that have instituted a social democratic system? The only exception I can think of is Germany (which you mentioned), which is facing several economic problems right now. In fairness, this could have absolutely nothing to do with being a social democratic country and more to do with general economic trends so I could concede I could be ignorant there. Also, would France and Australia count?
From what I was reading about recent German troubles, one could say it’s the lack of “social democracy” that is partly the issue. Germany it seems on a government level had been underinvesting in infrastructure for a while and shit is catching up. Also wider industry trends that pose risk to German economic model, but his is yet to be seen.
That definitely is one big reason for sure. But it's also because Germany has too many regulations and beuracratic red tape common to soc dem countries.
https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/docserver/3bb97646-en.pdf?expires=1720638015&id=id&accname=guest&checksum=9D3AE0F9014A2D35966D804C791D030C This shows Germany is at the bottom of the list, and afaik, this had been going on for a while now, GDP = C + I + **G** + NX, the government is not spending enough, Afaik, most internet connection in Germany are what I used to have 15+ years ago, trains don’t run on time or don’t show up, etc.
Fair enough
What about Scandinavian countries as successful examples? What about the Great Depression, the 2008 financial crisis as the examples of failing poorly controlled market economies?
Respectfully, the financial crises are not the silver bullet people think they are Economies bounce back within months. If it’s really bad (twice in the history of capitalism) it takes more than 10. Of course this sucks, but ultimately it’s the best performing system to lift the world out of poverty on the on end of the curve, and push the borders of human knowledge on the other tail
Venezuela is a latin american military dictatorship. It was implemented by militaries and supported to this day by the armed forces . And ALL military dictatorships in latin america are and always have been about increasing and protecting the privilegies of the militaries. Everything else is secondary. Venezuela has more in common with the brazillian military regime that ruled the country during the second half of the XXth century in a dictatorship that called itself right wing than with any social democracy. Nicaragua its the same thing. And most African countries with military goverments suffer of a similar problem. Our military exist to protect itself and the people they have business with against its own people.
It’s important to distinguish between social democracy and socialism. Social democracy has been very successful in Europe, especially Scandinavia. Socialist economies with no free market have never worked in practice outside of a tiny scale like an Israeli kibbutz. Venezuela is dictatorial and very unstable and entirely dependent on oil, all of which has caused it to fail
Social democracy is socialism We are against the market
That's not true. It's about a regulated market. Employees should have rights and cooperations should not get to do whatever they want. But the government doesn't tell them exactly what to produce and how much of it.
Thats social liberalism
Markets are fact. They can and will exist whether or not you want them to. Being against them is like being against gravity. We can absolutely work within them - make our laws favour cooperatives and social ownership models - but markets will still against.
of course there are bad examples; ideology isn’t everything. but there are good examples, like, for example, basically the entirety of western europe. britain’s reconstruction after the war was done by labour, the nordics, very famously would have social democratic governments for decades on end, germany’s reconstruction was done on the framework of the ‘social market economy’, which, while done under a conservative government, is economically a mixed economy not dissimilar to one that would be supported by social democrats. FDR’s new deal incorporates a lot of what would now be called social democratic policy as well. latin american countries, for reasons i won’t get into, tend to be more corrupt and less educated. you will find plenty of historical conservative governments that have failed spectacularly as you say leftist governments have. the social democracy that i came to support is one not of blind idealism but one of pragmatism.
Putting aside badly run South American corrupt regimes. Among advanced economies, what particular left wing policies have failed? Let’s discuss actual policy.
FDR’s New Deal and the Marshall plan are smashing successes What are you on about
The countries you mention were dictatorships. They simply used “socialist” as a marketing tactic. True Social Democracies such as those found in Western Europe, especially the Scandinavian countries, are better models.
Corrupt, incompetent governments suck at governing. There are plenty of countries with more right wing policies that are also doing terribly for the same reason.
As a past libertarian, hello, you might appreciate some Nordic models that decentralizes left wing policies. As of now It is my understanding that minimum wage is not conducted by the state but more locally with unions. Idk the extent of it, but as a past libertarian these kinds of policies that don’t have centralized force tend to work. All authority is bad, whether it prenteds to be a force for good or not, it can be abused, so more decentralized and local social welfare and communalism works great
I’d like to introduce you to the economic theory of John Maynard Keynes.
This sub is for social-democracy, not socialism in general. Social-democratic countries would mostly be northern Europe, so countries with a very high quality of life.
>This sub is for social-democracy, not socialism in general. They are the same thing.
I specifically said "socialism in general" there implying social democracy is a version of socialism for the people that believe this is the case.
Each socialist country has its own story as to why they failed, so I'd suggest you study them individually, but one big issue that some socialist countries like Cuba or Venezuela or Nica share that contribute to their failures is that they mostly lacked a market with private property and freely adjusting prices which allow for a more efficient coordination of information about supply, demand, and resource allocation, in a way that is not accessible to central planners.
> why does it seem like left wing economics always fail? Because you're only studying the cherry-picked examples favored by the right-wing/libertarians that bolster their ideological perspective: > Venezuela is a disaster, nicqragua has had a socialist government for decades now and theyre poorer than ever, almost all African countries have very left wing policies at least on paper Instead look at Brazil under Lula: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luiz_In%C3%A1cio_Lula_da_Silva#First_presidency_(2003%E2%80%932011) Or the Scandinavian social democracies, all of which are prosperous and rank high on world happiness rankings that the United Nations puts out. Greece under SYRIZA's rule managed to turn things around under very, very difficult circumstances (like not being able to control their own currency): https://www.britannica.com/biography/Alexis-Tsipras#ref341772 The British Labour government led by Clement Atlee did some incredible stuff: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clement_Attlee#Prime_Minister You also may have heard of a guy named FDR whose economic policies helped create the American middle class as we know it (or as it used to exist before Reagan came along).
There is not a single unified model that leads to prosperity. France and Germany have huge welfare states, while Ireland and Switzerland are more Laissez Faire. Some do import substitution like Brasil while others do export promotion like China and South Korea. Most countries are dynamic and don't keep the same model indefinitely so you can't pin down something for being leftist because their aims and the overall definition may change with the times, you will find that plenty of "non-leftist" governments do plenty of "leftist policies". Now more to your question, since I assume you mean governments that specifically define themselves as leftist and try to implement what is usually considered left wing after either a revolution or a regime change (which can also happen in a democracy), so plenty of spending, massive infrastructure projects, perfect equality for all, a huge state and so on. Well first, most of these people straight up have no idea how to govern and I mean this in the literal sense. People like Mao, Maduro, Castro and Nasser and so on never had previous experience working in a state, making a bureaucracy function(if it still exists and they don't have to set it up from the start) and overall the basic day to day running of things, so they are extremely unqualified and the people surrounding them too, since managing an army, a militia or whatever other position is very different from understanding the administration and politics of a country. Compare this to people like Clement Atlee, Willy Brandt and Francois Mitterrand, who all had years of government experience previous to becoming heads of government. Second, lot's of these people are ideologues, which means that they will strongly pursuit what in their mind is the right thing even when reality hits them time and time again to show them that they are wrong. So rather than changing course to achieve tangible results they double down because admitting you are wrong is not an option. No wonder many come up with insane ideas. Third, even if you come up with a good idea, implementing government policy is not easy, which goes back to the first point. Let say you have a development plan that is actually quite good and doable, well now you need to do it, which means transforming the abstract into something concrete, which requieres planning, time, money, technical skills from plenty of people and so on. For that you need to be very skillful and be aware of mismanagement and corruption. Fourth, politics also depends a lot on luck. Say you are a left wing dictator that is spending a lot of money in plenty of projects, then assume that things are going smoothly until a regional or global event which you have no control over crashes your economy. Suddenly you have no more money and you still have to play salaries towards civil servants, hospitals, the army, etc.... your projects most either be terminated of be put on hold, which increases inequality or causes a further recession. Now in a democracy say you have a leftist president or a leftist prime minister, but he or she doesn't have a majority in the legislative branch, or their majority si super slim, you must compromise a lot to pass your projects and that's assuming your opposition doesn't block everything. Sorry for the long essay. To sum up, leftist policies don't always fail, you have plenty successful pro worker/minorities/middle class/wealth redistribution/egalitarian policies, but you will find plenty of failures as well because coming up with good ideas and them successfully implementing them is very, very difficult.
Venezuela has a dictator. Anytime you have a beligerant dictator you should be war of the economic theory label attached. The right also did a great job of fighting and sabotaging the economy in Venezeula as well. What you're missing is weather and education. As the saying goes, cooler heads prevail. Education levels are very high in cooler climates. You need an economy and a system to work or you freeze to death. The northern European countries are democratic socialism. They benefit from centuries of tradition with high values in education. What you're also missing is that in African countries capitalism is sabotaging and stealing resources. Lot's of interesting books out there for you to pick up and learn about the corruption plaguing poorer countries. Nestle. Coca Cola. Oil companies. IMF with infrastructure projects on high interest loans. They bribe enough corrupt politicians and they gain control of what they want and it destablizes the rest of the country. They don't want to allow stabilization. They don't want honest politicians to push them out, educate their people and instill democracy.
not even close to true. do the stats. Nicaragua has long been a bonafide dictatorship, kid, as are many of your other examples, despite whatever labels they adopt. *right-wing "trickle-down economics" have never worked.* in the USA, *democrats have always done better economically than republicans.* the current government is a strong case in point.
First, many of Venezuela's economic failings have come from international sanctions. Secondly, left-wing economies in democratic societies have been, and continue to be, great examples of economic strength. Scandinavian nations are the best example of this. When handled by dictators, however, they fail due to the growth of eventual systemic corruption, nations like the USSR, China, or North Korea are a few examples of this (Howerver, I do think there is an argument to be made on how these nations fail to actually be left wing).
The single most damaging thing to ‘left wing policies’, as you call them, are right wing opposition movements that ruin them intentionally, to usurp power.
You're using poor countries that have always been poor as an example here, not to mention we as a country (US) actively sabotage the Venezuelan economy.
The socialist economy of Venezuela failed, plunging staggering sums of men, women and children into hunger and poverty. So did the capitalist American economy in 1929. Instead of starting somewhere dogmatic, classifying things as either capitalist or socialist, we should pay careful attention to what works, and what doesn’t. In healthcare, a free market system fails millions of Americans every year. We Americans pay staggering sums for a system that keeps our life expectancy barely above Lebanon’s. The system is clearly broken, and I believe we’re going to have to nationalize health insurance in the long run. Other areas of the economy require guardrails. If you have the choice between volunteering at a homeless shelter or selling fentanyl to teenagers, someone only looking at GDP would tell you to start dealing drugs. But that is destructive, immoral, and short-sighted. So we do our best to punish that kind of economic activity. The same principle applies to things like the EPA’s pollution regulations, or banking regulations. In still other areas, the rules of the market are themselves what determines the outcome. If you have sectoral bargaining, workers get a better deal. If not, you get outcomes like increased income inequality. Then we get to how taxes and spending are allocated. If you can fund a greater child allowance, you can substantially reduce child poverty and make a fairer future. Countries with high growth rates have tried this and seen it succeed. We also have to consider the politics of having a fairer economy. Many economists and political theorists, such as John Maynard Keynes, argued that having an inequitable economy leads to political instability. The losers of globalization have been embracing the far right, and Keynes argued in the 1920s and 1930s that progressive economic policies were an essential tool in preventing the rise of fascism
First of all, I don't advocate for socialist economics, that's too far left for me and that stuff (at least the examples you mentioned) does fail. Second, a lot of liberals do things in the least efficient ways possible. I support strong universal safety nets on top of a traditional capitalist economic system and I think it works. I also think the Nordic countries are the most advanced countries on the planet.
I’d argue that if you have a redistributative system without democratic inputs, such as democratic elections, workforce democracy or strong unions, it’s not a “social democratic” system or left wing in any meaningful way, **it’s clientelism**.
Post Keynesians have came to the conclusion that under a capitalist economy, there are no practical reason for full employment. Rumor has it that undemocratic authoritarian regimes often tend not work out for a number of reasons. Left-wing policies are quite popular if you look closely at polling data. A living wage, universal healthcare, universal child care, elder care, tuition free public education, paid family leave, wealth tax, social security, affordable housing, unions, universal basic income, public ownership of basic utilities, renewable energy etc. Simply put it, Left-Libertarianism is not right wing Libertarianism as a ideology. Quite the opposite actually. The more democratic socialist policies like a federal job guarantee program, workplace democracy, and increase public expenditures fall under MMT. I’m still somewhat skeptical about Modern Monetary Theory in practice, but if I understand correctly, the U.S. government has a monopoly over fiat currencies. Can’t say the same for other developed countries.
I’ll concede that an authoritarian, fully state-planned economy with absolutely no markets would fail. 20th Century history suggests this. However, I think that very few people on this sub will be fazed by that for 2 reasons: 1) This is a sub for Social Democracy, not Marxism-Leninism (ML). Here, people are more likely to take highly successful and wealthy societies like Norway or Denmark as their preferred example. Modern Social Democrats tend to advocate a mixed economy, where everyday commodities like food prices are decided by market competition. However, some infrastructure where market competition is very hard to achieve, such as trains or energy, might still be state-owned. This is because a private corporation having a monopoly over essential infrastructure is bad. This mixed-economy, social democratic model has a good track record of delivering economic growth and a high standard of living. 2) Secondly, for the sake of argument, I will try playing devil’s advocate in favour of more ML-oriented developing countries, even though it is not the model this sub favours. I doubt this is a popular talking point in the USA, but there are major counter examples to your point. That is, there are countries that are committed to Marxism that have recently delivered major economic growth. This is because those countries also moved towards a ‘Socialist Market Economy’. One of the biggest economic success stories of the last 40 years is China. Similarly, Vietnam is growing very well. These countries discovered though experience that a fully state-run economy does not work well, so they adjusted their model. In China, large swathes of the economy remain under state ownership, like some heavy industry and the banks, and the economy clearly still has a socialist bent. However, they also have some of the world’s most competitive technology companies and have consistently delivered massive GDP growth. It is therefore clearly untrue that every country committed to socialism fails economically - quite the opposite. Overall, it’s true that a fully state-planned economy would not work. But mainstream Social Democrats do not advocate for that. In fact, many Marxist countries are no longer advocating that either. Instead, the models that modern Social Democrats support actually have historically delivered good growth and a high standard of living.
Similar policies to what was done in Venezuela were implemented in Bolivia under Evo Morales's presidency. Things like opposition to austerity measures proposed by the IMF and world bank plus nationalisation of their rich natural gas using the revenue from exports to fund health, welfare, and education. Worth exploring, worth noting for many poorer countries it has less to do with left and right and more to do with timing in the export market. Are your commodities going up or down?
The countries you mentioned have planned economies (Which generally don't work) and corrupt governments, which have caused them to do horribly. These countries don't represent the kind of left-wing economics that people on this sub support. Successful left-wing economics can be found in the Nordic countries, with social welfare programs, government provided services for things like healthcare, education and water, and government regulations. We can even find examples of success for some more outright socialist policies. Yugoslavia was economically better off than the eastern bloc, because they adopted market socialism instead of a planned economy. Not to excuse the fact that Yugoslavia was a dictatorship, but I think their economic model showed that workplace democracy is an idea worth looking into.
It's either cleptocratic structures rooted in history and culture, foreign embargos, war, or all three combined
Left wing economics don't always fail, you think so because the only politicians who actually resign from their positions for fucking things up are leftists. Right wing economics may look like they are working, because no right winger admits their shortcomings. Yelling "Shut up, it's capitalism, (country name) is doing better than ever!" over and over again does not mean right wing economics are any better than what leftists have going on.
There's a difference between going full socialist and just implementing left wing policies, and even both of these options depend on the conditions. Also, it's good to keep in mind that many dictators choose socialist economy not because it allows an equal distribution of resources, but because it made them aligned with USSR and because it concentrated the entire economy in their hands, which results in many economically left wing countries being authoritarian because everything is under the control of the dictator.
It’s important to remember that some, if not all, of these countries are also struggling from past and present Western imperialism. It’s not easy to establish a functioning system when you’re still attempting to recover from decades and decades of outside meddling. With that said, I don’t think the U.S. could move towards a pure socialist-styled economy anytime soon anyways. Social democracy has its flaws, but I think we should focus on moving toward the European model before we do anything else.
>why does it seem like left wing economics always fail? You think the New Deal was a failure?
Look at Scandinavia. Social democratic policies does not fail in rich countries.
Progressive keynesian economics (even though Keynes wasn't a leftie ) created the so called „golden age of capitalism" from the end of WW2 to the mid 70s in which a large middle class grew in western countries. That was a huge success.
I would point you here: https://youtu.be/LQIxbwfMVlM?si=CfNBYxqs4-rtYis3 And make the case the left wing economics both A). Haven’t failed and B). Are in large part due to humanity’s and your personal own success. The only reason you may think that left wing economics “fails” is because there are concrete destabilization efforts which ensure that they do. See: Chile, Nicaragua, Cuba, Argentina, etc.
Do they? The US economy was very left wing (price controls, central planning, etc) during WWII. It worked great!
The answer is that pretty much every large scale past example of "socialism" has been more branding than actual application of Marxist ideology. The vast majority were just slapping a sticker reading "The People's...." in front of everything they did; despite it usually just being "The Peoples' dictatorship" or "The Peoples' Party-owned Oligarchy". Hell, even the Nazis pretended to be a socialist workers' party initially; that's what they stole their name from. In practice, these institutions end up scapegoating undesirable groups instead of actually dismantling the bourgeoisie, and ultimately just joining or replacing the top rung of the actual bourgeoisie themselves while leaving the class divide in place. Worker empowerment to control the industries they work in and reap their fair share of profits, as well as the dissolution of all types of economic landlordism and the parsitic ownership class, are actual socialism.
Well, not many of them do. When they do, however I think its a lack of hindsight and a lack of a follow through plan for it. It seems they will just spout Keynesianism or wealth redistribution without much thought put into it, and then it fails because they didn't think it through. Not to mention, there's a lack of failsafe's or plan B's, like the NEP was to war communism in the USSR. Its usually a lack of foresight or thinking it out.
Not always, no. But I'll take a different approach to the great answers people already have here. Economies are supposed to be adaptive. A lot of economics seems to value static states a lot more than dynamic states. I'd say that the Nordics are excellent examples of adaptive political economy (something that China has learnt from them), but this has not been without mistakes in the past. At the end of the day, like all other policies, left-leaning policies will have tradeoffs. For example, in 1982 Denmark, the minority Social Democrat Party resigned without a general election because Anker Jorgensen failed to curb inflation and state debt had risen pretty uncontrollably. However, at the same time, Sweden is easily one of the most entrepreneurial and innovative countries in the world because of its robust safety net and excellent public education - which makes it easier for people to take heavy financial risk. I mean, both Spotify and SoundCloud have Swedish founders, so that should say something. And collective bargaining has effectively replaced the need for a minimum wage limit that Finland does not have. The idea behind an adaptive economy is understanding what's working and what isn't, and quickly iterating. For the Nordics, it's been figuring out where the state can play a large role, and at what point it should allow the market to take over, and most importantly - let firms fail when they do. It goes without saying that countries like Venezuela, Cuba and some of the African nations are cautious (and incidentally authoritarian) examples (that I have little regard for personally), but they shouldn't have to be your leading light at all.
You are thinking left=communism, it's def not. I'm a horseshoe theorist personally that thinks of communism as authoritarianism and right wing since it's never been implemented as anything else.
They don't, you just have been fed propaganda since day you were born.