See also: 'asylum seekers' as a euphemism.

*smugest

Honestly, Peter, it's the worst of all worlds. One of the slimiest, suggest people history has known.

Maybe I'm making a slightly normative point as well as empirical. We should make a distinction as well as me thinking there is one. Anyway that's all clear (as mud) now, I trust? 😅

There is also the historical legacy of democratic socialism also meaning something different vis. USSR and post 91, which complicates things further

I also acknowledge that my distinction here isn't universally shared (putting it nicely!). There's also significant overlap because both camps believe in reformism (to varying extents) and working with what we have now.

DemSocs and SocDems in UK - historically little difference. Mamdani is not advocating for the end of capitalism and historical Nordic social democracy is more radical than a lot of continental and Anglophone democratic socialism, for example.

I think, put simply, in contemporary times democratic socialists are more likely to want to transcend capitalism while social democrats' ambitions remain within the boundaries of capitalism.

Now, I'm not saying this is a neat and clear distinction! There are cultural and national contexts ofc >>

I get what you're saying (SPD, Russia, changes in meaning and levels of radicalism, Nordics Vs continental Vs Anglophone), but I think that political distinction is still important. Though I suppose this is the same debate since the beginning ad nauseam.

(and not wealth for everyone, just wealth for some, in case that wasn't clear)

Simply put: The priority is Wealth, not Wellbeing.

Everything is built around growth, competitiveness, GDP and their defence. In my own field, welfare states have long departed from even flawed notions of market correction and work in service of labour markets, efficiency, competition, and supporting 'sound' fiscal policy.

So far attempts to temper the growth discourse is dismissed as socialist delusion. Calls for degrowth dismissed as climate scaremongering. The capitalist class require growth to hoard wealth, and have managed to build an entire world system based on it - so publics think it necessary too.

Capitalism (like all systems) finds ways to defend and perpetuate its existence. I think we can look at Musk, Trump, some developments in North/Western Europe, all pointing to an overall slide into more open authoritarianism as a symptom of this.