And yet they continue to succeed nearly perfectly. Nobody in the world is as afraid of the very word “socialism” as Americans are. No amount of evidence of the better health care, public services, and institutions in every other democracy will convince most Americans that it isn’t still somehow evil. There’s a sort of manufactured national PTSD about it that is hard to fully characterize.
American Exceptionalism on display again. If this statement were true, every other world democracy would be as afraid, or close to as afraid, as Americans of it. However the rest of the developed world is at fear level 2 and Americans are an 11.
Presumably because rivers are public land, and publicly maintained for all.
American Exceptionalism on display again. If this statement were true, every other world democracy would be as afraid, or close to as afraid, as Americans of it. However the rest of the developed world is at fear level 2 and Americans are an 11.
Although not very many people in other countries are obsessed with Marx and claiming capitalism is evil as a certain fraction of the American left still is. This is why the term socialism is problematic here. You can be for a social welfare network and for the right to unions and for increased progressive taxation without romanticizing Marxism. Which, for example Western Europe largely does. Unions are just accepted as part of doing business, as are social welfare systems and tax revenue to support them.
What? Entire South American countries are. France has a substantial Communist party. Canada’s NDP says lots of Marxist things. Every democracy’s left has a far end that flirts with such notions, many much more so than America. Canada’s entire political system is pretty much left of Obama. I think your perspective is very skewed. America is a deeply conservative place that doesn’t seem to realize it is.
I think your perspective is very skewed. America is a deeply conservative place that doesn’t seem to realize it is.
Have you lived outside the US? I have, including five years in Canada, so I suspect I may have a rather more informed opinion on these matters. There is nothing “Marxist” about the NDP, although yes, they are largely to the left of any American politicians, and want that Canada be more like Scandinavia. And, yes, there is still a French Communist party with a handful of seats in the National Assembly even today, but it is a relic of another time and doesn’t look like it will ever return to be a serious contender.
Well, they are more interesting than doctrinaire Marxism or the “real, existing socialism” that the Eastern Bloc had certainly, but still, yes, while maybe the Mondragón cooperative works reasonably well, why doesn’t it seem to be replicated around the world? Idealists have idolized it for decades.
Ideas don’t get tried if powerful people put time, effort and money into them not being tried.
The long version is very long.
It is interesting how the goalposts have moved from “Capitalism is the best option that has been tried” to “there must be reasons why the other ways haven’t been tried”.
I get it, capitalism is failing most people and it terrifies you. The question is what do you want when it finally collapses? Neo-feudalism where the billionaires have their fiefdoms and you are a serf, or something else. And since going back to capitalism won’t be an option, what do you want that something else to be?
BTW, there aren’t that many doctrinaire/orthodox Marxists around now. Most are Marxist-Leninists of one form or another, who all diverge significantly from orthodox Marxism. Last year in the UK we had an M-L party come in a strong third place in a by-election, so I suspect they are a bigger problem here than they are in the US.
it is interesting how the goalposts have moved from “Capitalism is the best option that has been tried” to “there must be reasons why the other ways haven’t been tried”.
Or, more plausibly, they are one and the same argument.
I get it, capitalism is failing most people and it terrifies you. The question is what do you want when it finally collapses?
People have been predicting the imminent “collapse of capitalism” for well over a century. Like the supposed collapse of Western civilization or the Christian Rapture, the fact these events are supposed to happen and never do raises interesting questions about the psychology of the people waiting for them.
Yet there must be infinite growth forever. Liz Truss says there must so it must happen! Why don’t you go and look at the psychology of that?
I do not know what this winter will bring in the UK. Things are well and truly fucked here, and we have free-market capitalist sociopaths running the country. Wages are stagnant, costs are soaring, people cannot make ends meet. We have seen this happen before just before certain points in history.
Maybe nothing will happen, maybe there will be revolution, maybe it will be something in between. The long range forecasts are predicting a cold winter here, and with fuel prices being so high and the Tories being so unpopular and out of touch I would not bet on a peaceful winter.
Maybe that explains my psychology right now. Capitalism has had a decade to save us, unrestricted from socialism. It has failed and only made things worse year after year. It is past time for a change.
I don’t quite get what your stance is here. Are you saying capitalism is inherently durable and won’t collapse? Or do you mean capitalism is the best system we can hope for?
Thinking of environmental stuff, people started pointing out the damage caused by environmental degradation at least 100 years ago, and the specific risks of rampantly burning fossil fuels at least 50 years ago. Nothing (or very little) was done about in the US on a national level, but that doesn’t mean those predictions were wrong. It just means vested interests stood to gain huge profits so prevented positive changes from happening until we’re where we are now. Arguably past the tipping point…
The same might also be said of our current capitalist system.
