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Is Africa a country?
[WS:] Of course, not. But there is a concept of "African socialism," popular in several African countries, which was fundamentally a local variant of populism that I was referring to in my post. And it basically ended up as kleptocracy, pogroms, wars and genocide.
If you want to look at it from a Marx's point of view - capitalism builds foundations for socialism in the form of developing modern "superstructure" - the legal system, the system of governance, science, education, culture, civil society etc. These are not mere superfluous appendages to the production, but the factors that make a qualitative difference between liberal democracy and feudalism or slavery.
Socialism simply takes over these foundations and builds something else on the top of them - namely redistributive mechanisms that are absent form a capitalist system. Without those foundations, socialism is at best a house of sand, and edifice on clay feet that is bound to crumble. More often, it is merely populist rhetoric to mobilize the populace behind a leader, or to legitimize autocracies. That is why there is no Third World socialism in any true sense, only rhetorical claim to cover up autocratic practices.
It may sound paradoxical, but the US, EU or Israel - with solid foundations of democratic institutions are closer to socialism than nominally 'socialist' or populist Third World or Arab countries which lack such foundations.
Wojtek