Which countries practice the closest thing to Socialism today, and what has been the outcome?
No country in the world practices socialism today. You can’t come “close to socialism” in one country. what you get is perversions of socialism like the former Stalinist countries, China and Cuba. Socialism is pure like water, one drop of deadly poison might not change the appearance to the unsuspecting casual observer but it’s no longer water http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;… http://www.wsws.org/exhibits/castro/inde… The socialist revolution is international in scope. As Trotsky wrote, “The socialist revolution begins on the national arena, it unfolds on the international arena, and is completed on the world arena.
there is no real black and white, most countries are capitalist free market economies but a gov is not a business, a gov is for the good of the people, so there must be a social conscience to the gov and it must provide social services to the people, so most are a mix of capitalism and social policies..even the US has social assistance, unemployment insurance etc, those are safety nets that a compassionate society provides to it’s citizens, in Canada our healthcare is socialized in that we don’t leave anybody without health insurance…all one way or the other doesn’t work…
Some countries, like Cuba and China, are utter failures. Others, like much of the EU, are very successful. The countries that fail are usually marxist socialist countries, which means they supress free speech as well. However, countries like Belgium, Germany and France tax their richest citizens very heavily, and help ou tthe less fortunate for it, and everyone is happier and better off in the end.
