cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/51582749
this post was submitted on 06 Sep 2026
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Social democracy is not socialism by any metric, socialism starts at ownership of the means of production by workers, and a state that works for the proletariat and not capitalists. That's the starting point, from there you can then add whatever social programs on top, but if you don't start from there you're still in a bourgeois democracy
I disagree, socialist institutions or services can still exist within a capitalist government, even if it is piecemeal. There doesn't have to be a threshhold to pass for some aspect to be considered socialism.
To expand upon you: examples of such institutions or policies would be free healthcare, universal basic income, but also places like libraries. You could even call (financial) support for housing & children, as well as progressive taxes socialist - despite the system in which they exist being capitalist.
And often times it's capitalists implementing (slightly) social policies to take arguments away from their opposition.
Germany has the oldest socialized healthcare system in the world (and it shows its age) because Otto von Bismarck needed to take that talking point away from the left.