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It surprises me so that any functioning democracy isn't automatically socialist.
It infuriates me that our countries are called „democracies“. Why is our economy not democratic than? The economy is mostly ruled like any feudal empire.
Well, it just goes back to the root of the word. Ancient Greece, where the word democracy comes from, was far from what we would call a democracy nowadays.
Not only did they own slaves (who obviously could not vote) but the only people that could vote, as far as I remember, were landed men. If you were not a man, or did not own land, you could not vote.
But yeah, I agree with your point.
That's the central question of Reform or Revolution, and why the majority of Leftists believe Reform to be too unlikely to outright impossible, and therefore Revolution the correct path. Rosa Luxemburg wrote about it in Reform or Revolution.
But why is reform not happening?
To greatly simplify a complex and still contested issue, Capitalist States are designed to prevent it. Using the US as an example, the two party FPTP system is designed to prevent third parties from winning, leaving the only 2 parties that can gain the bulk of Capitalist support. Even in the event of Leftists winning, the Military will often coup the leader with the help of the US, like Allende in Chile.
Because the bourgeois were happy to get power when they were excluded from it in the monarchy, but they are very much not happy to leave peasants get any power.
Francr history is very telling of this. The question of how the elections should be made was a hot topic. Representative democracy is something the bourgeoisie wants because it allows it to stay in power. Because the bourgeois are better armed to be elected than the people. Rousseau warned of this even before the first French revolution.
I'm sure the US revolution went the same way. The crazy US voting system looks very much like it was crafted for the bourgeois to stay keep all the power.
Most of them are, to limited degrees. America has the Post Office, interstate roadways, public education for children, public libraries, and many other government services that are fundamentally socialist in nature.
We don't call them that because of propaganda. And many in government (especially on the right) work very hard to destroy those systems because they are socialist and empower workers.
The idea of letting the "free market" manage these things is insane and always leads to bad outcomes, we have tried this before. People who say "economic planning doesn't work" only exist because economic planning allowed them to live freely and be educated enough to form those big words instead of being locked to the land they were born on as peasant workers.
Words I can agree to.