The problem is you’ve crafted a just-so narrative in your mind that allows you to keep believing the things you do without having to align them with the real world. The fact that there still are capitalist components in social democracies means neither that the socialism is fake or that the capitalism is the “real source” of the wealth. Let’s take Norway for example. I would genuinely call Norway the most socialist economy in the world. Its state-owned enterprises are worth almost 90% of GDP (in the US, it’s less than 1%). Those enterprises are creating wealth all the time, and they’re owned collectively, and Norway actually invests the profits from its state owned oil company into a giant wealth fund, where $250,000 per citizen is owned collectively. About a third of Norway’s workers are employed by the government. It’s simply not the case that the private sector makes the wealth and then it’s moved around socialistically. They have huge amounts of social wealth creation. They also have very high unionization rates as well as codetermination laws, where workers have a say in who sits on company boards. And finally, Nordic welfare states are socialist institutions that directly address the problem of poverty that capitalist economies create.
Just as I said there are plenty of bad examples, but I think pretending the example of social democracy proves nothing at all about socialism is far too convenient. The institutions of social democracy were not created, for the most part, by people whose final goal was a “mixed economy.” They were created by socialists who wanted to peacefully transition to democratic control over the economy. It’s not hubris to say that we can do better because better is already being done. I’m quite incredulous at your claim that American socialists are more akin to Venezuela or Cuba. Notice that none of the nationally elected socialist politicians in America are trying to bring Bolshevism. They’re trying to bring the basic early reforms of social democracy. They’re not putting people’s heads under guillotines, they’re campaigning for public health insurance.
So why don’t the democratically elected socialists who are peacefully contending for their vision of society and succeeding in bringing about robust steps toward a social economy count in your story of “it never works?” I’m sincerely not talking about anything else when I say I’m advocating for socialism.
As a side note—I don’t think your account of how bad socialist economies fail is correct. The USSR, for example, was able to dramatically increase its productive power in a short amount of time. The biggest issues with their economy were 1) that they were so focused on capital production and not nearly focused enough on producing consumer goods, and 2) the planning councils set way too ambitious plans and people basically lied about their production numbers, and 3) whenever an industry underperformed, they would just hurl more labor and resources at it until it hit performance targets, which led to inefficient production. That plus the obvious political problem—that it was an authoritarian state—is why the economy fell, not necessarily that there was worker disincentive because you’re gonna get the same thing no matter what (that problem exists for salaried employees in capitalist countries too). It’s important to note that both before and after socialism, Russia has not been a great place to live economically. It’s now basically an aristocracy again; the privatization of industry was massively unequal there, and capitalism has not miraculously saved them. Do I think modern Russia is the best example of capitalism? Of course not. I think that would be marvelously unfair.
