Red herring? There never WAS any true communist countries. And for all I know socialism (which isn't the same as communism) hasn't even been claimed to have been implemented. Since it's supposed to be communism reached by peaceful means (social reform and the likes) I kinda don't think that's been implemented either.
Eh? The soviet union claimed to be in some transitory socialist state of development while on the way to the merry communist utopia. I am fairly sure that the USSR's (really, what do you think those S's stand for??) satellites followed suit. That gives you 20 countries or so. Chaves calls his system socialist, as does Castro.
EDIT: Another definition of socialism from the dictionary:
a stage of society in Marxist theory transitional between capitalism and communism and distinguished by unequal distribution of goods and pay according to work done
Your definition of socialism is closer to early 1900s social democratic
reformism. After the Russian revolution there was a split between communists and reformists. The former wanted violent revolution, the latter wanted to reach the classless society through gradual reform, working within the bounds of parliamentary democracy. The second group contains the ancestors of our modern social democratic parties.
Note that this does not mean the system you claim is socialist isn't bad systems. They're just not what most self proclaimed socialists/communists in Sweden wants to implement.
I'm not really sure what they want to implement in the long term. I do know that some of our self-proclaimed socialists (Göran Greider should be quoatable for this) dream of a planned economy. I do also know that the Left party, as well as the more radical far-lefties, see private property and private enterprise as great evils.
And I also know that since the active politicians are constrained by acting in a real world they arent pushing for those ideals in the near term
Of course you do, if you do that you can demonize the politics of Lars Ohly and the Left Party, claim they're extremists who wants to turn Sweden into the Soviet Union and that way avoid meeting their actual arguments. And that way you don't have to think about whether what the Swedish left says might actually work or not.
I think Ohly is a despicable person (worse than his party), but I dont think he wants to turn our country into a Soviet state. His positions on policy are fairly predictable:
There is no need for fiscal responsibility.
There is no reason for the state to prioritise among it's duties.
There is no practical upper limit to taxation (this is what makes the first two points feasible in left party lala-land).
Private enterprise is evil and can be covered in red tape and paperwork at zero loss to society
It is too easy to become rich in Sweden
USA is the great Satan and should be contained
That policy is enough for me to not listen to those reckless populists. They fail to understand basic concepts such as marginal utility and personal incentives, or maybe they envision an ideal human to whom these concepts dont apply.
That aside I do find their leader particularly despicable, with his history as the Moscow mouthpiece during the 80s. When more open-minded lefties pointed out that unions were suppressed in East Germany he wrote a lovely article along the lines of:
"We should counter the bourgeois lies about the socialist countries rather than spread them"
Yet he finds his membership in the liberal youth organisation in the 70s more embarassing than his role during the 80s
The economical scale doesn't have capitalism on one end and socialism on the other. Socialism isn't an economic system, it's a political ideology. The scale goes from capitalism to planned economy. Socialism isn't synonymous with planned economy either (nor is planned economy a requirement for socialism).
Socialism is
both.
On the political side it an umbrella ideology of which social democracy (a workable ideology), communism (a useless and unfortunately pretty dangerous ideology as it promotes an unreachable goal), and a few others are subsets. These ideologies have common roots in 19th century marxism, and tend to focus on various degrees of redistribution as the solution to societal problems.
On the economic side it does mean (to quote the link I provided)
any of various economic and political theories advocating collective or governmental ownership and administration of the means of production and distribution of goods
Or collective ownership of the means of production. This tends to mean central planning as a decentralised collective is pretty rare
A bunch of collectives collaborating via bartering would be closer to actors on a market