>The point is that to many people, "free market" symbolizes what
>"socialism" used to - even though the actual practice is a far cry
>from the ideal.
Evidently it doesn't in France, Argentina, Brazil, Venezuela, and so on, and so forth. It's one thing to be unable to think of anything better than the defense of the status quo or at best reforms on the small scale; it's another thing to believe that the "free market" symbolizes what "socialism" used to be. I'd think that, unlike the 80s and the 90s, the power of the mystique of the "free market" ideology has now considerably dissipated in the minds of the peoples who have seen the Asian financial crisis, piqueteros and cacerolazos in Argentina, Enron, the discontent in Brazil that elected Lula, etc.
Yoshie