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[scriver]

Which was going to happen through wagetaker funds in the 80's, but the reform unfortunately failed, and then socialism died.

[Cheesy Honkers]

Wrong. That is a liberal capitalist's distorted view of socialism, created to deappropriate the functional socialist systems of the world from the socialist ideology. One might as well claim in response that a country can't be liberal if it has laws, it's an equally preposterous statement.

Capitalism and socialism cannot coexist, scriver. Do I have to whip out the manifesto?

[scriver]

You're not acting as if capitalism and socialism couldn't coexist, though, you're acting as if capital and socialism couldn't coexist.

[Cheesy Honkers]

How so? I state that as long as property is owned privately then by no means can a country be described as socialist. I haven't previously mentioned capital and only stated that Sweden is not even state capitalist yet, but is capitalist still.

[Iduno]

You're not acting as if capitalism and socialism couldn't coexist, though, you're acting as if capital and socialism couldn't coexist.

It seemed more like capital held by oligarchs was the problem, not that capital exists.

[ChairmanPoo]

I am the senate

[scriver]

Okay, we need to back up a step here. Do you understand that the original point was that liberals have enacted next to no democratic reforms in Sweden, but that socialists have? And thus, because liberals have done nothing that stand in the way of democracy, it is more fitting to call it a socialist democracy? Do you understand that this line of thought does not in any way rely on Sweden being a 100% end-to-the-point realised socialist ideal?

[Naturegirl1999]

Okay, we need to back up a step here. Do you understand that the original point was that liberals have enacted next to no democratic reforms in Sweden, but that socialists have? And thus, because liberals have done nothing that stand in the way of democracy, it is more fitting to call it a socialist democracy? Do you understand that this line of thought does not in any way rely on Sweden being a 100% end-to-the-point realised socialist ideal?

Yes. I understand the reasoning and it makes sense

[Cheesy Honkers]

Okay, we need to back up a step here. Do you understand that the original point was that liberals have enacted next to no democratic reforms in Sweden, but that socialists have? And thus, because liberals have done nothing that stand in the way of democracy, it is more fitting to call it a socialist democracy? Do you understand that this line of thought does not in any way rely on Sweden being a 100% end-to-the-point realised socialist ideal?

Oh, thank you. I misunderstood you.

While I agree that socialists are responsible for furthering democracy in Sweden and liberals are not, I disagree that this means that Sweden is a socialist democracy. This is because the power is held by social democrats and their liberal ilk, and not workers or at least socialist parties. As long as the liberal establishment rules a country it shouldn't be called a socialist democracy.

[scriver]

While the Swedish social democrats are no longer socialists, social democracism == democratic socialism. The differentiation is another liberal construct to depropriate functional socialist states from socialist ideology.

[Cheesy Honkers]

Social democracy is, at best, socialism lite. Usually it is a facade to masquerade liberal policy. If a so called socdem decides that a coalition with liberal forces is beneficial, he might as well be a liberal. As the old saying goes, if a man sits with ten fascists in a room, there are eleven fascists.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Yeah, scriver I'm not sure how you can believe socdems are socialists when you yourself cited and live in the country of the biggest socdem shell game maybe in history.

I can believe that the early 20th century more radical socdems in Sweden and elsewhere were socialists, but the shift in the word is specifically because those more radical socdems were ousted and purged in all instances I can think of except the group who would later literally become the Bolsheviks.

[Reelya]

Those two things are not the same Scriver.

Social Democracy is a capitalist system with a safety net, while democratic socialism is communism but with elections.

[scriver]

Case in point

[Loud Whispers]

The phone in this metaphor obviously represents the speaker's - Jon's - own conscience. It lends a didactic flavour to the piece's conceptual deconstructionism. The gun represents his needless aggression, the use of which plunges him into fascism - a counter-intuitive political allegiance which perhaps ties into the subject's own internal turmoil. Structurally and textually, the piece is decidedly basic. From this, one may determine that this is an internalised thought process defined by profound symbolism which, alas, the mind itself was not capable of properly expressing. If intentional, this basic structure could further represent the subject's competent grasp of self-realisation techniques; if unintentional, the subject may be presupposed to be of a lower IQ.

In which case, this metaphorical mode of critiquing and assessing the subject's own personal reality is an incredible achievement.

I contest that the piece, though decidedly basic, holds additional value above the transcendental simplism which the protagonist - Jon, has been reduced to. If we examine the intertextual reference to the Italian literary copypasta canon, we may observe Jon is a recurring character in the Western class consciousness.

He first appears in the New Testament as Saint John the Apostle, writing in the book of revelations that the Anti-Christ would appear unto the Earth as its saviour, leading away the people from a moral Christian path whilst wearing the garb of Christ. This conundrum provokes protestant, even Albigensian fears of sola fide - the ultimate expression of American gothic horror. If faith alone is enough for salvation, then by faith alone may a soul be condemned? And if faith should take superiority over action or reason, then might such faith be deceived, even harnessed to the war chariot of one's destroyer?

The anonymous author of the successor text "and then Jon was the demons," takes this anxiety in the industrial West to its natural conclusion. As in Plato's cave, the allegory of Jon is a righteous man, a destroyer of demons who shot demons and doesn't afraid of anything. This archetypal masculine hero lives in the bliss of ignorance, wallowing in his suffering with a self-righteous martyr complex. Only when the phone rings does Jon realise that he, in fact, is the demon. The volta of this piece concludes the story heavily, forcing the reader to confront the Nietzschian idea that they are as Jon is - ignorant, defiant and hideously unaware of the danger they are in, of the danger they are. They exist as a puritan challenge to God, captain Ahab chasing his white whale, challenging God with satanic furore lest they pierce through the whale and find there is no God - just nothing, just as colour exists only as a painted illusion cast by light. Secondly we have the character of the phone. Unnamed, liminal and peripheral, yet pre-eminent and forcefully committed to the truth even if it means awakening their own destroyer to the reality of their very self-nature. This is a clear allegory to Plato's cave. Our anonymous author is like the anonymous caller on the phone, they are committed to the awakening of the listener and the reader alike. Who they are matters not, for in this text they become like John the Apostle, giving their revelations consentually or non-consentually, consequently awakening Jon the demon despite the active sin this generates in disobedience to the demiurge.

The current iteration of the piece strays from the religious symbolism to describe the political anxieties of the 21st century¹. The language has been entirely repurposed in this industrial world stripped of God and defenestrated unto materialism, with all its excesses and exploitations. The primary thesis of this text is evident in the mythologizing of what has become the Western world's foundational myth, her "original sin." Only in this instance, the original sin is not theological, but purely ideological, centred in the brutal forges of the 20th century fascist will to power. The demons have become the fascists.
Jon remains the archtypical hero, only now they stand for the forces of "centrism" within the systematic structural framework of capitalist liberal post-industrial society. Like Jon the demon, Jon the fascist is profoundly ignorant that despite their life being dedicated to the cause of antifascism, they do not see all around them that the system they are reinforcing makes fascists of us all.

One recalls images of lock-step police tear-gassing protestors in the wake of the 2008 Western financial crisis; would we have seen Jon there, owning the fascists with facts, logic and the baton? Would he have crushed the "fringe extreme", lurking in the borders of acceptable centrist orthodoxy, unaware that the legitimising of the exploitive industrial state by his hand will be the centrist boot stomping on the face of liberty forever?
It is in this fascist framework that the liberal ideology occupies the mind of Jon, eradicating all other modes of thinking as belonging to a foreign field, a foreign fringe. No longer in Jon's mind do other ideas remain as that - ideas to be entertained and critiqued. No, now those ideas are fascism to be eradicated, and all those who oppose are fascists. This deliberate irony exposes the contradictions in "ethical" capitalist liberalism; it advocates for the poor to vote for the candidates the rich have selected, it advocates for freedom, love and equality, yet seeks ought but power, profit and progress. Yet with each seeming milestone of progress; larger scales of economy, faster modes of communication and greater sums of profit - so too does the scale of human misery soar in this despoiled planet. In every metric Jon supports the exploitation of workers to support the ultimate demon of capital, yet Jon the fascist desperately clings to the delusion that they cannot be fascist, because they are an antifascist, and liberals who support liberal things cannot possibly be fascist.

In the end the phone - the quintessential symbol of the industrial era, delivers the revelation to Jon the Fascist.

Jon, you are the Fascist.

The transitive conclusion is complete, Jon's verisimilitude is broken and like a H.P. Lovecraft Outsider, he discovers in that moment of serene self-introspection, that systematic antifascism cannot be completed for as long as the fascist within is integral to their Western identity. Like a free, Western democracy, but free only for the wealthy. Welcome to everyone but the foreign. An admirer of progress in the face of tradition, but only if it maximises productivity and consumption in the face of human prosperity and welfare.

¹citation, me