Originally Posted by
CoccoBill
That's true only if you look at communist regimes. Marx's view of socialism was that when there's enough production and prosperity to comfortably take care of everyone, it is the key to ensure everyone a good life. Of course, this requires there to be enough production and prosperity, and that's why Marx saw capitalism as the necessary step towards socialism. Soviet Union, for example, tried to take a shortcut straight to communism, and with poverty and rampant corruption that didn't end so well. They were all intents and purposes dictatorships, not liberal in any way. The countries that most closely follow social liberalism's principles nowadays are probably the Nordic states, which seem to be doing pretty well in most metrics. I guess in the US the most notable social liberal was FDR with his New Deal.