Doug wants to refer to socialist countries, but none exist.
I'm pushing the concept of socially responsible capitalism which exists and has proven successful throughout the world. And they don't and haven't fallen to dictatorships.
We musn't allow the topic to be hijacked.
Trump rose to popularitity because he promised to change the system for the benefit of the working class American. And there was even an attempt to take down the government cats by force!
See Tommy Douglas's Mouseland.
Hmm... the Original Poster said we must aim for 'fully socialist societies'. Of course we can call capitalist societies with a developed welfare state 'fully socialist', just as we can call ribeye steaks green salads, but then we lose ourselves in confusion.
Of course, there have never been 'fully' socialist societies. Even in the old Soviet Union, there was, in every town, a 'reenok', where people sold things grown on the little private plots they were allowed to have on the collective farms. If you had somone over for dinner, you did you shopping at the 'reenok'.
But there was a huge difference between the economies of the Soviet Union, and those of Europe, the US, and most of the world.
Finally, the leaders of the Soviet Union, as the leaders of China had done a decade earlier, figured out that their economic system was not working. Everyone was fed, everyone had basic necessities, many admirable social goals were fulfilled -- but the economy moved in slow motion.
When I lived in Kharkov in the mid-80's, you could not get cheese. People who visited other cities would come back with bags full of cheese. No one I asked knew why. I assumed it was because the page of the National Plan which directed how much cheese was going to go to Kharkov had gotten lost ... or the bureaucrat responsible had been bribed to send it somewhere else.
When I visited Cuba about 20 years ago, you could not get bars of soap in Santiago. Why? I don't know.
Under a capitalist system, someone -- probably a dozen people -- would have instantly started making soap. (It's not difficult.) But do that under Communism and .... watch out!
This insane system -- where you go to prison for meeting human needs -- is best represented by a Russian joke:
...
During the Brezhnev reign in the USSR, a group of leftist British school teachers visits Moscow on a 'cultural exchange'.
They go to one of the special language schools, where the children are taught in English.
The headmistress there is very proud of her school, and says to them, "Go ahead. Walk into any classroom and question the children in English."
They head down the corridor, and pass a mathematics class... and ask if they can observe it.
The teacher welcomes them in, and says, "Go ahead ...ask the children a math problem in English."
So one of the British teachers says, "Now boys and girls ... if I bought twenty apples for three kopecks each, and then sold twelve of them for six kopecks each ... what would I get?"
A young boy's hand shoots up, and she calls on him.
He says, "Comrade teacher ... five years, minimum!"
