It is not just the West. India is an excellent example of failure at attempts of social democracy.
Inherent to social democracy is that there is no significant dictatorship against capital and therefore any progression in achieving a good standard of living will either not happen or if it does happen will require surplus value extracted elsewhere to slow down the reduction in the rate of profit. And to protect itself capital will resort to fascism.
Despite the above there is sort of an exception to the above in our timelime and it started after the October Revolution and started getting significantly slowed down/reversed around the time of the fall of the Soviet Union; it is effectively what we consider why the West is “developed” (mainly the threat of domestic worker revolutions and to invest in “human capital” to faster climb the tech ladder due to USSR accelerated development in attempts again to maintain profit):
I hear this all the time but how are they currently doing this? What are some examples?
See my comment above:
https://lemmygrad.ml/post/7915209/6395016
I would also look at: (1) Torkil Lauesen’s (a swedish marxist) book: The Long Transition Towards Socialism and the End of Capitalism (2) Kyle Ferrana’s Why the World Needs China
Scandinavian Imperialism This paper is mostly focused on Sweden, towards the end you can read about the practices of some Swedish companies which are household names.
Torkil Lauesen, author of the paper, can also be found on YouTube, if you want a different format to learn about this.
Canadian mining industry sure is, look it up! They also have very evil names, it’s so on the nose.
I’m replying to myself I know but I had to post my two favorite name of canadian mining corporation which are currently destroying the global south:
Conquistador Mines Ltd
Da Capo Resources (today Vista Gold Corporation)
On. The. Nose.
Also this : The Corporate Accountability of Mining, Oil and Gas Corporations in Developing Countries Act, also known as Bill C-300, was defeated in a vote of 140 to 134 in the House of Commons of Canada in October 2010.[56] The Summary of the bill states:
The purpose of this enactment is to promote environmental best practices and to ensure the protection and promotion of international human rights standards in respect of the mining, oil or gas activities of Canadian corporations in developing countries. It also gives the Minister of Foreign Affairs and Minister of International Trade the responsibility to issue guidelines that articulate corporate accountability standards for mining, oil or gas activities and it requires the Ministers to submit an annual report to both Houses of Parliament on the provisions and operation of this Act."[57]
I know Canada is not in any way a social democracy but it’s close enough and would still do this if it became one.
Are Norwegian corporations more ruthlessly exploitative of other nations than US corporations? Perhaps they are, I don’t know, this is a genuine question. But somehow I have my doubts.
It’s the same colonial model, with the same type of results - exploitation of humans and natural resources in a country that can’t fight back due to governmental capture or the collaboration of its bourgeoisie. It’s pretty well documented, even wikipedia has artciles that didn’t get liberalwashed on it.
To speak about more or less exploitative in this context doesn’t really make sense. They’re all part of the same system. Just because one country plays “bad cop” and the other “good cop” doesn’t change the fact that they’re working together to further the same goal, of exploitation, resource extraction and unequal trade. European social democracy relies on the brute strength of American imperialism to clear the way and maintain the global system in which they operate.
