France is socialist?

[Lacrimi de Chiciură]

my social studies teacher said that it was. is this true?

[Iepilei]

It's more so than the rest of the world, yes. Of course, many people consider the UK to be "socialist" as well.

[Comrade Ceausescu]

what nonsense.If you are thinking about their "opposition" to the war against Iraq,it was done for economic reasons.

[synthesis]

Ask her what her definition of 'socialist' is.

It's certainly not Marxian socialism.

[Lacrimi de Chiciură]

i think what she meant was that they have high taxes and big vacations and health care...

[synthesis]

Mmm...


Ask her if high taxes and big vacations qualify France as a dictatorship of the proletariat.

[Jesus Christ]

you cant just keep dismissing these countries as horrible just because they arent communist or totalitarian
France, Sweden, Norway, Canada etc. are making great strides in socialism, and taking the NATURAL path towards socialism without even knowing it, or knowing it, but welcoming it
yea, big business still exists, but eventually it will be overrun, as it is now in these countries

[redstar2000]

...you can't just keep dismissing these countries as horrible just because they aren't communist...

Why not?

True, the behavior of U.S. imperialism dominates our discussions for many obvious reasons.

But any suggestion that any European countries are "socialist" or "moving towards socialism" is completely absurd.

If the United States didn't exist, we'd be talking about French imperialism in Africa, German imperialism in central Europe and the Balkans, Russian imperialism in eastern Europe and Asia, etc.

Because those things exist.

It is always a mistake to think that welfare systems are, in any sense, a "step towards socialism". Remember that the first welfare system was established by Otto von Bismarck and he did it to fight socialism.

http://anarchist-action.org/forums/images/smiles/redstar.gif

The RedStar2000 Papers (http://www.anarchist-action.org/marxists/redstar2000/)
A site about communist ideas

[Pete]

Canada? Hardly. Our politics are taking a sharp turn to the right with Paul Martin coming into power on Dec 12. He claims to be a Liberal, but that is a farce. Liberalism is not socialist anyways.

[Hoppe]

Under Mitterand was an socialist experiment during I believe 1982-1984 where a lot of companies were nationalized. This was however disastrous and crippled the economy.

Redstar,

I think you're right in saying that welfare states aren't necessarily socialist, because most conservatives want to have a safety net as well. But you cannot deny that there was a breach in the socialist movement between those who wanted to get to their goal by revolution and those who wanted to go the democratic way?

A lot of european companies in key sectors a still owned by governments and there is a huge amount of intervention going on.

by the way, pleasure to meet u :)

[Bolshevika]

Sorry El Zapatista, but your Social Studies teacher is extremely uninformed. Yes, France (along with GB, U.S., and other western imperialist states) has some social-democratic policies, but no way are they socialist. I bet your teacher probably thinks China is communist.

[cubist]

france's opposition to the war was because cheraq is a wanted felon, he can only escape prison by being leader and to do this he must keep the people happy, france has a very broad political spectrum but certainly in recent years socialism is grwoing especially trotskysm

[Hoppe]

Originally posted by [email protected] 24 2003, 09:15 PM
france's opposition to the war was because cheraq is a wanted felon, he can only escape prison by being leader and to do this he must keep the people happy, france has a very broad political spectrum but certainly in recent years socialism is grwoing especially trotskysm
France opposition to the war is not because he's a felon but more because France has enormous interests in Iraq. But since most politicians are very opportunistic this lawsuit might also be important or he might just want the people to remind that France was once a worldpower. Never seen the pictures during the eighties of Chirac being showed the nice ieactors build by the French?

They do have a lot of marxistlike unions which are quite large actually compared to other nations.