Sorry I didn’t know which other community to post this on😅. So let me take example of my country, Well so what most people don’t know, is that India is a socialist democracy by the constitution, and I must admit before I start that yes, there’s plenty of problems with this country, but I was surprised by how deep socialist roots go in this country, so I thought a few of India’s policies would make an excellent case study.
Firstly, a subtle one, existence of MRP, maximum retail price, on everything you buy. Packet of lays, coke, medicine, everything has an MRP, over which you cannot sell the product for. Enforcement had been weak historically, but even then you would only see people selling above MRP in amusement parks or movie theatres, for everyday shopping, you are almost always likely to pay the MRP price. I was surprised to know that such law doesn’t exist in the west, though feel free to correct me.
Second, India’s medicine patent laws. India has strict ‘non evergreening’ laws, which means a patent of a medicine cannot be extended unless you made the medicine better. Also government can give orders to bypass medicine patents if deemed necessary.
Third the farming in India. A nice rabbithole to dig in, but I am picking one example, Amul, the most popular brand of milk in India, is less like a company and more like a co-operative society, where they co-operate with regional dairy farms. Most of the money made by selling the milk actually goes back to the farmers.
Plenty of examples, but just these few I could think of. Infact MRP does not even exist in China, so in that policy, India is literally more left than China.
Yeah again, Indian laws in practice are riddled with corruption, but I think the template they work in are interesting, and I think west would tackle those problems a lot better.
Any more examples of socialist democracies?
Many people like Canada compared to the USA for its more socialist policies like healthcare and social safety nets. These systems aren’t perfect in Canada but are certainly better than not having them. The problem is we can’t call it socialism because many on our far right will twist anything with socialism included in it to equal literal nazis. A lot of those same far right also push for more police power, deportation, and overall a national “white Canadians” world view. Its fucking stupid.
To be clear there is no such thing as “socialist” or “capitalist” policy, both are merely modes of production, where socialism is where public ownership dominates and workers control the state, and capitalism is where private ownership dominates and the capital-owners control the state. In other words, socialism is a workers’ dictatorship, capitalism is a dictatorship of capital. Canada falls under the capitalist mode of production. Although welfare is a very big part of socialist theory.
Healthcare isn’t a “socialist policy,” socialism is a system itself. You cannot slice up a capitalist system and designate parts of it as capitalist and parts of it as socialist. Socialism is, quite simply, a system where the working classes control the state, and public ownership is the principal aspect of the economy. Canada is an imperialist state controlled by capitalists and founded on settler-colonialism.