What a shittily written article, staining the Adam Smith name.
Nationalising a bunch of critical industries isn't "socialism" and the article utterly fails to explain how it is or why it's related. Historical UK, and modern France, Russia, UAE, Saudi Arabia also had multiple crucial industries which were fully nationally owned. Were they socialist too?
Private companies needed to obtain license [0] from the govt to start or to expand.
Some companies were even prosecuted for producing more than what was allowed. This was at least Nehru's (first Prime Minister) version of Democratic Socialism.
That's still not what socialism means. Absurdly tight government control over the economy, and the existence of a private market economy, doesn't mean that workers owned the means of production.
Nationalising a bunch of critical industries isn't "socialism" and the article utterly fails to explain how it is or why it's related. Historical UK, and modern France, Russia, UAE, Saudi Arabia also had multiple crucial industries which were fully nationally owned. Were they socialist too?