What are Socialist Democracies?
The best examples are the Scandinavian countries, such as Norway, Sweden, Denmark, and Finland, also the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg. https://people.howstuffworks.com/democratic-socialist-countries.htm
They have strong social safety nets, robust democracies, healthy and competitive capitalist systems, longer life spans, higher per capita incomes, greater personal happiness, lower crime, less incarceration, and far less income inequality than the US. Their political parties range the spectrum from left to right. They all have universal health coverage, free childcare for all families, free higher education, strong retirement systems, strong supports for families and better protections for their workers. These systems work well for their citizens and thus have a great deal of electoral support from voters. They are the antithesis of Trump’s America.
Who are Democratic Socialists?
Democratic Socialists by contrast want to replace capitalism with socialism, where the workers or the government would own and run the companies. They want to do so through the popular vote i.e. democratically, not by a revolution overthrowing the government. They could try to do so selectively – i.e. where there is a profound market failure and it might make sense to bring in a government or worker owned corporation, or they could seek to do so more extensively and broadly. To give an example, in a “medical desert”, government could open up a public clinic. Likewise, in a “food desert”, government could open a well-stocked but affordable grocery store. Thinking more broadly, they could seek to nationalize the oil and gas industry.
Government already owns and maintains the roads and highways, bridges and canals, the parks and open spaces, and the postal system. This is not a foreign concept, and it has been in place since the nation’s founding. That’s socialism.
Advances in technology have rendered government operations of the postal system (a key concern of the nation’s founders) for communications far less significant than our cell phones and the internet services, as examples. Our cell phone communications are regulated capitalism (the phone company) while our old fashioned letters through the post office are socialism. Government ownership and operation of airports, the FAA monitoring of landings, take-offs, approaches, and the nation’s vast skies are now crucial to the nation’s transportation safety, an utterly unimaginable development to the nation’s founders. That’s socialism of the airports and air traffic controllers mixed together with the capitalism of the airlines — a hybrid that has worked quite well.
Democratic Socialists are definitely not Communists who believe in the violent overthrow of governments, the dictatorship of the proletariat, and the suppression of political dissent and dissenters. Many Democratic Socialists went to jail for their political views, including pacifism for some during World War I. In fact, the political partisans recently seeking to overthrow our nation’s government through violence were Trump’s minions. And now the Trump-led DOJ, FBI, ICE and DHS are actively seeking to suppress dissent, to jail, beat up, prosecute, sometimes kill, and otherwise oppress those dissenters who do not agree with the sitting President and his policies.
By socialism, the Democratic Socialists mean that the government owns and runs certain aspects of our economic systems, rather than private capitalism. Democratic socialists differ quite radically from traditional Democrats like a John Kennedy, Bill Clinton or Barack Obama who are typically capitalists to the core and embrace free market competition where it is feasible, but they do share very important common goals of reforming the worst excesses of capitalism and the free market failures and protecting the public
The British National Health Service employs the doctors and owns the hospitals that provide health care to British citizens. That’s socialism. By contrast, the private doctors and private hospitals in Canada are reimbursed by the Canadian government for their care to Canadian citizens. That is not socialism, because the delivery systems of care are private. In the United States, some insurers, drug companies and hospitals profit greatly from the serious flaws in our exceedingly complicated, hybrid health system. That’s flawed capitalism, and it has been extremely difficult to correct because of the large profits and political contributions involved in protecting the status quo.
Democrats and Democratic Socialists share common goals in fixing these flaws and in assuring universal and affordable health care and coverage. However, they may differ widely on the health system’s redesign. Democrats would typically support expanding Obama Care or a Canadian style single payer system to get the nation to universal coverage. Whereas Democratic Socialists would support a British style National Health Service or a Canadian style single payer that eliminates private insurance to get to universal coverage or a public option to compete with private insurers. Let’s remind ourselves that the rest of the developed world gets much better health outcomes, much better access to doctors, much less out of pocket, with universal coverage at about half the price of our own system.
In our nation’s earlier days, communities taxed themselves (local property taxes) to establish and support government operated hospitals (public hospitals and district hospitals) and clinics to care for the poor and those living in rural communities with no ready access to hospitals or doctors. That’s a “socialist” health system for the poor and for rural communities. Some Republican-governed states like Texas and Florida still use this model which effectively segregates health care for the poor and uninsured in particular hospitals, clinics and other health institutions. For profit hospital chains have been buying up many of these small, rural, financially distressed facilities, cannibalizing and closing them to reduce competition and to assure local monopolies of higher priced health care.
In Los Angeles, our water, gas and electrical power, sewage systems and trash collection were provided by the LA Department of Water and Power, a public corporation. That’s socialism. It dates back over a century when the city of Los Angeles began to build aqueducts and import water from the Colorado River and the Owens Valley to the growing city. It works well (if you don’t live in Owens Valley). Sacramento has a similarly effective public system, SMUD.
By way of contrast, in rural Sonoma County, our electrical power is provided by PG&E; our propane gas is delivered to our propane tank by one of three competing natural gas companies; the trash hauling is done by a private corporation contracting with the county, and many must rely on their own private septic tanks and wells (regulated by the county for safety). That’s well-regulated capitalism.
This system has had its challenges as PG&E operates as a natural monopoly. Governments have needed to regulate it both to curb its pricing excesses and to assure safety for its customers and the broader community. Governments have needed to subsidize and regulate it, to make it available and affordable in poorer communities and in rural communities with a smaller less profitable customer base for the essential utility monopoly. This is a tightly regulated monopolistic capitalism.
In many countries the rail system is fully or partially nationalized. https://www.britannica.com/topic/national-railway The rise of nationalized rail was due in part to the popular revolts against monopolistic and oligopolistic practices associated with the vast growth of rail transportation in the 19th Century. Read Frank Norris’ The Octopus if you are interested. National rail networks work well, are much more efficient, and are less polluting than large numbers of individual, gas-powered cars driving on frequently overcrowded and slow moving public highways during rush hours – the US transportation model. One could argue that the rail systems would naturally work better in China, Europe and Japan due to their greater population densities as contrasted to the vast expanses and large distances of the continental US. One cannot argue that we have the best public transportation system in the world; in fact we rank poorly.
In the US, Amtrak, a public company operates most passenger trains (they lose money and they mostly operate effectively on the densely populated eastern seaboard), and private companies own and operate most freight trains (they are highly profitable and very efficient for moving vast amounts of freight). In this sense, the US operates its trains and railways on the principle of “lemon socialism” (public ownership of unprofitable but essential services like passenger trains, public hospitals, or public housing) and private ownership of the most profitable services (like freight trains, luxury condos or well-endowed suburban hospitals). https://peoplesworld.org/article/railroad-workers-say-nationalization-of-rails-is-what-democracy-looks-like/
In a few American cities like New York and San Francisco, we can enjoy highly developed subway systems, in others well run city bus systems; in some we have both. That’s socialism. In some cities, public transit is primarily used by the poor and those with mobility challenges. In other communities, it’s widely used and is well maintained. https://alltransit.cnt.org/rankings/ I really liked and frequently used the “T” while living in Boston, but I rarely used the attractive new subway system in LA (it was far less accessible for where I needed to go). In my memory banks, none compared to the Paris Metro. As a nation, we rank very poorly in public transit systems, with a few notable municipal exceptions. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_transportation_in_the_United_States
Our nation’s energy system is distorted and plagued by lemon socialism, now being exacerbated and badly mismanaged by President Trump and his corrupt bargains with prominent energy producers. Our nation’s energy is produced by oil, gas and coal, and by nuclear, geothermal, solar, wind, and hydroelectric. https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/us-energy-facts/data-and-statistics.php We use it to generate electricity, fuel transportation, power our industries and operate our homes and businesses. We have been developing less costly and less polluting forms of energy production like solar, wind or geothermal to replace the dwindling and polluting fossil fuel sources of energy.
Coal, the dirtiest of our energy sources, has been in steady decline since the 50’s while natural gas, nuclear, and more recently alternative energies like solar have been growing substantially. https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/us-energy-facts/ Trump committed to his wealthy donors to favor the oil, gas and coal industries while discouraging the uses of renewable energies; he has followed through by disabling wind energy, defunding alternative energies, and further subsidizing the oil, gas and coal industries. https://www.reuters.com/legal/litigation/trump-unveil-700-million-coal-support-plan-using-emergency-powers-2026-06-04/ and https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jul/10/bills-trump-clean-energy-coal
Basically, Trump is using the most expensive and dirtiest ways to produce energy at the expense of the cleaner and less costly sources. https://www.statista.com/chart/35117/levelized-cost-of-energy-generation-by-source/?srsltid=AfmBOopbJCmMK0uxi2M7x-5mHf1tA8dL0odD3_-VH9MZm0DKvENg4UNj This shows up in our monthly utility bills, our nation’s health, the planet’s dangerous warming, and our nation’s reduced competitiveness. This is corrupt lemon socialism, aka Trumpism.
At the other end of the energy spectrum is Norway, powered by hydro-power, owned by the state. Its oil and gas reserves are also owned by the state, and their revenues are invested in the nation’s sovereign wealth fund and used for the betterment of all Norwegian citizens. https://www.iea.org/countries/norway The US also uses public hydro-power generated at Grand Coulee Dam, Hoover Dam, the Tennessee Valley Authority, and Niagara Falls. https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/hydropower/where-hydropower-is-generated.php That’s socialism at work. See https://www.tva.com/about-tva/our-history and https://www.nwcouncil.org/reports/columbia-river-history/grandcouleehistory/ To date, Trump’s greatest building projects have been tearing down the East Wing of the White House to start building a gilded ballroom, and fouling the Reflecting Pool with algae.
So let’s start to pay some serious attention to what Mayor Mandami and his fellow Democratic Socialists have to say to all of us.