CORBYN IS VICTORIOUS! VICTORY FOR SOCIALISM!

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Today is the day when Jeremy Corbyn retained his leadership of the Labour Party, despite relentless opposition from the Centre-Right. Dank Socialist Memes have prevailed against the Media lies, and if the Labour Party has any sense it will unite. The stupidest thing to do at the moment is to split, but I am concerned that the Blairites will form a new political party to split the vote and because of our shit First Past The Post electoral system which is not a real democracy if we had real democracy, we would have Proportional Representation, like they do in the DPRK, the Tories will win because the vote will split between the Socialist and Capitalist Labour Parties in that scenario. Then what would happen is the media will start blaming Corbyn even though it was not him who wanted a split. But the Tory-Lites and Tories are bedfellows anyway and that is why Corbyn is treated unfairly. But I am optimistic that Corbyn will nevertheless succeed and become Prime Minister of the country.

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European socialism is dead by definition. The welfare states are slowly being dismantled, and realistically we'll end up with something like the American model with self-paid health care and education, gated communities and all the rest of it. Ironically, this change has mainly been brought on us by the socialists themselves

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European socialism is dead by definition.The welfare states are slowly being dismantled, and realistically we'll end up with something like the American model with self-paid health care and education, gated communities and all the rest of it.

(note that when I say "liberalism" I am referring to the rightist European ideology, which is similar to what Americans would call "libertarianism".)

You're right that socialism and social democracy are in the decline in Europe, but I would not call them dead, and certainly not by definition (nothing about the definition of socialism says it's dead). Saying socialism is dead because the welfare states are changing (in many ways; from care to activation, from goverment to governance, from expansion to management) is like saying European liberalism is dead because the night-watchman state is gone, or saying that the European far right is dead because we have thousands of immigrants in our countries. Just because the particular ideology's ideals are currently not where the world is going, does not mean the ideals are not there, not getting votes, or not having influence. Socialists and social democrats still have huge influence on policy all over Europe, even if it's getting smaller gradually.

And I do not agree with your assessment of Europe's future. I assume that by "the American model" you're referring to welfare policies similar to those during the Bush years (because during Obama's rule the things you mentioned have been in the decline, moving towards rather than away from something like a European welfare state).

In politics, there's always a sort of ebb an flow; the parties that are not currently in power tend to be seen as more favorable, because people have ridiculous expectations of elected officials. They do not understand the need for compromise in politics, and the dominanty incremental nature of political progress. They turn to the non-ruling parties because they are yet to fail to meet expectations (or have done so less recently). I think it's fair to say we are currently in the "ebb" of socialism and social democracy, but that does not mean a "flow" will not come soon.

(Ironically, these expectations were much more realistic in the prime days of the welfare state. Parties in power, back then, had incredible power to bring about change. Nowadays they're very dependent on NGO's, companies, agencies, etc.)

We have good reasons to expect a popularity increase of leftist parties in the coming years. The main reasons are climate change and AI. As people start to experience the consequences of these long-term issues (in the case of AI: huge increases in unemployment) small government will start to decrease in popularity. Calls for better climate action (hopefully: nuclear) and unemployment aid (hopefully: basic income) will get stronger and stronger. These calls do not necessarily lead to socialist and social democratic parties being elected, but these ideologies are more welcoming to such 'big government' policies than other ideologies, such as liberalism, populism and confessionalism. Green or pragmatist parties may be the response to these calls too. In the Netherlands at least, these are the parties that most favor a basic income and are most concerned with the environment. Let's hope that they'll at least drop their nuclear phobia.

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I hope you're right, but I'm a lot less optimistic :z

I think the welfare state will be rolled back substantially, and there will be a big increase in spending on military and law enforcement just to maintain the same amount of protection we got previously for less money (both already seem to be happening.. here at least). All that simply because of demographic changes (aging native population + increase in immigrant population.. more specficically, the Muslim population). The Muslim minority are doing horribly in the education system, crime statistics and in terms of workplace participation -- so the welfare state would not be sustainable if they were the majority.... but they will become the majority just as a function of their rate of reproduction.