What should we call that? Totalitarian Capitalism?
"wiggle room" Exactly right.
I liken it to a control that you can turn to the left or the right. There are an infinite number of degrees in between.
My life experience seems to indicate that the control must be continuously tweaked, like a servo control, to keep a country working. Lock it one place and the system runs out of control.
Side bar hypothesis: Perhaps democracy works merely by chance in that it jerks the control back and forth never allowing a stationary position. (?)
It's typically referred to as "state capitalism"
https://asiatimes.com/2020/08/socialist-or-capitalist-what-i...
"Socialism" is all social security etc. So I actually agree with the parent comment.
So in US, "Communism"=="Socialism", in Western EU !=.
(the GDR didn't call itself a "communist country", because the party realized that the poor condition of the economy doesn't quite fit the utopian ideals of "communism", so they invented the term "real socialism" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real_socialism) as one of multiple steps towards a glorious communist future, which would be realized "really soon now, just work a bit harder and one day we'll be rewarded with communism" - or something like that at least, of course nobody believed this bullshit, not even the diehard communists themselves).
Not really the country like that, but the parties Christian Social Union and Social Democratic Party, we would name it "socialistic". Anyone in that party would be a "socialist", but not a "communist". So if they would deliver the Chancellor, we would say the country is run by a socialist.
I didn't know about "real socialism". So glad you're all part of EU now :).
Depending on the definition you want to use. If you want to use "socialism" as the opposite of "capitalism" then of course no, Germany isn't a "socialist country".
The being said Germany is a fairly "social" country in my book, very similar to France. They very often put the emphasis on the group rather than the individual (taxes, education, public infrastructures, health care, work/life balance, &c.)
But again we're mostly talking semantics and local usage of words here, the underlying principles are very easy to tell apart (I doubt anyone could tell with a straight face that Germany and the US are running on the same principles for example.) now some people use the word "socialism" to describe that or part of it
In France 20th century socialists fought a lot for workers rights, abolishing the death penalty, depenalizing homosexuality, warranting liveable minimum wages, earlier retirement age, paid vacations, paid parental leaves, &c, many of the rights we take for granted nowadays are direct or indirect achievements of socialists, which is logical since Europe (mostly invented and) soaked in socialism for the last 150+ years. That being said, yes modern France or Germany "socialism" evolved from their early definition but I still believe they're indefinitely more socialist than the US.
I feel like many people get trapped in the socialism = communism, communism = never worked, hence communism = bad, hence socialism = bad, as if it was a binary thing. I guess we could argue about the exact meaning of "socialism" in 2020 but I doubt we can argue that "socialism" deeply marked a lot of European countries