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I disagree. When I moved from Finland to the US, I was surprised to find how popular actual "abolish private property" style socialism was among young Americans
by jltsiren 25d ago
I disagree. When I moved from Finland to the US, I was surprised to find how popular actual "abolish private property" style socialism was among young Americans. I hanged out with leftist people when I was a student, and I kind of knew many of the people who eventually ended up running the Left Alliance (the main left-wing party). My impression was that they had all accepted free markets as a necessary evil, rather than advocating for the socialism of their predecessors. But it looks like Finnish students have started adopting American socialist ideas in the recent years.
Bernie is probably the most well-known democratic socialist in the US, but he is not a member of DSA. By his political positions he would be either in the left wing of Finnish Social Democratic Party or in the mainstream of the Left Alliance. He would probably choose the Left Alliance, since it is more like a coalition of like-minded activists, while the party is the primary actor for the Social Democrats.
AOC, another well-known democratic socialist, would also fit in the Left Alliance. She is part of the moderate wing of DSA. But if you start looking into the ideological wing, you find plenty of actual socialists who would make Finnish mainstream leftists uncomfortable.
- 9dev 25d agoI would argue that the USA suffers from its bipartisan system in a lot of ways; among them the problem of two parties having to span an incredibly wide range of political positions that are often so far apart to be almost irreconcilable. I'm pretty sure you will find some people with uncomfortable positions at the fringe seams of the Left Alliance as well, they are just organised in a very different system compared to the US and do not have the momentum to rally around these positions right now.
- jltsiren 24d agoFringe groups tend to start new political parties in the Finnish system. There are still two communist parties left, both offshoots of the pro-Soviet minority of the original communist party. One of them even has the official status of a political party, but probably not for long, as it lost its last seats in the 2021 local elections.