If you believe food comes from a field, you will defend the field. If you believe the food comes from the supermarket, you will defend the supermarket.
They don’t even know socialism exists in the US.
Also what you say is more tied to political identity instead of your actual beliefs whether or not the belief falls anywhere close to truth.
Decades of intense cultural manipulation and suppression of any pro-communist media. Also, the whole economic base affecting the superstructure thingimajig.
or basically, we da baby and the ruling class are the fisherman:
Because the last 50-100 years of Western political-economic development (especially, but it goes back longer than that to a lesser degree, and is more prevalent in America) has “bourgeoisified” vast swathes of the population, to the extent that there is not even a handful of causes but an entire ecosystem of hundreds of them.
A proletarian is at it’s most basic a person who owns next-to-nothing. The archetypical proletarian rents an apartment, takes public transit, works without a contract, does not own his own tools, and holds no shares in stock. While peasant revolts did occasionally happen, even the minor allowances given to the peasant class in some countries - virtual land ownership; livestock, tool, and vehicle ownership; and a thriving middle class of landholding, employing peasants - were enough to completely neuter revolutionary sentiment among the peasants.
Policies which “buy common people into” the system of Capitalism are what lead them to supporting the system or, at least, opposing its complete dissolution. To avoid writing an entire essay, I’m just going to list some of the policies that I believe contribute to the bourgeoisification of Western workers:
(1). Invested retirement funds instead of pensions
(2). Suburban home ownership
(3). 13% of Americans are part of the employing class
(4). Car culture over usable public transit
(5). Valorization of the “small business owner”
(6). The death of shop-floor Union organizing in favor of “union-as-a-service”
(7). Domination of unions by labor-aristocratic forces, and the resulting ties to liberal political parties
(8). The offloading of economic extraction onto colonized peoples, including so-called “internal colonies” of racial minorities and immigrants, whose political rights are suppressed.
(9). Voter suppression more generally - it is more difficult for poorer people to vote than wealthier people
(10). Control of media, including social media, by the middle and upper classes. You are more likely to see bourgeoise perspectives reflected not only on legacy media but most forms of social media as well (think small business tyrants and their wives posting on NextDoor, Facebook, etc., or “influencers” on youth media).
And so many more reasons.
Those that benefit from it spend a lot of money on trying to make sure the majority of people don’t realise it’s fucking them over
They get told all those horror stories about ‘the others’ who hate us for our freedoms and want to rule the world, where they have to work real hard and still can’t afford a house, and the regeeeem is spying on them all the time.
We wouldn’t want to live like that would we?Stockholm syndrome.
Ironically enough, I wish we had stockholm Democratic Socialism while also suffering Stockholm Syndrome.
Because they think of themselves as temporarily embarrassed millionaires rather than wage slaves.
I haven’t read any theory yet but I’ve heard from other people that under communism, you can still buy and sell goods and services right? Usually capitalists point out that people are naturally greedy so they need to be able to consume goods and accumulate wealth.
You should probably read more, lol.
same reason they defend religion, indoctrination.
Because they’ve been taught it’s the best system and only one that works.
In America, we grow up to really cherish liberty and freedom of choice (even if it just the illusion of choice) and so we really idealize entrepreneurship.
Capitalism is the only economic system that allows upward class mobility
The examples of socialism/communism collapse are all within the lifetimes of most (or not far off for those of us under 40). Capitalism hasn’t quite failed yet (2008 hurt a lot and woke some people up to its failures).
It may not be popular with some of the instances on the fediverse but capitalism is the least flawed of all the flawed economic systems. The systems are flawed because they are ran by flawed humans. The best societies take strengths of each system and combine them to mitigate the flaws of each. Capitalism with strong social safety nets is probably the best that humans can do.
Capitalism requires brutal resource extraction, by force, from poor countries and that is usually done by killing, bombing, and using other forms of violence to enforce this extraction of resources.
We (USA) are literally doing it to Venezuela and other countries right now. I’m guessing you are American if you think capitalism with strong safety nets is the best.
You mean Capitalism with Strong safety nets for YOU. Not for people from South America, Africa, South Asia, etc. Americans (among other euro countries and some Scandinavian and east euro countries too) would have to give up a few apparatuses of luxury for the world to be able to afford even half of what we enjoy on a daily basis.
I agree with a lot of what you say. But I’m not sure that social mobility being desirable should be taken as self-evident.
I believe equality is good for us, so if social mobility results in greater inequality, for me that is bad.
And of course social mobility goes both ways when there are finite resources. It can go downwards. You recognise the need for social safety nets, and I would say that these are both more necessary and harder to supply in a more unequal and ‘socially mobile’ economy. At least that is what is happening in English-speaking countries like mine and yours.
The basic assumption is that we should be able to work our way from poverty to prosperity, but I’m saying that all of us should be kept somewhere roughly between the two.
That last sentence is a mixed economy system, which should probably be the best, current way of doing things. Taking the benefits of each successful economical system. Yes, communism was successful in converting Russia from am agricultural-servant nation to an industrial powerhouse. Also, communism didn’t collapse by itself, the USA made everything they could to boycott it, and they still do because they are afraid of it. They are perpetrating their own silent genocide in Cuba, just to ingrain in our brains that communism is sentenced to collapse.
Wait… So all of those rich and billionaires in socialist countries are just figments of imagination?
Also, have you looked at how terrible the US upward mobility rankings are now? Under Capitalism you aren’t likely to move anywhere unless you’re born into it.
Edit: I brought receipts: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Social_Mobility_Index
The rich and powerful in socialist countries were born into it.
I can’t argue with social mobility being harder than ever under capitalism now. But perception often lags reality which is why people defend the broken system
Except that’s not what the data shows: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Social_Mobility_Index
What exactly does the data show? The only socialist country on the list in China at #45 while the US is #27 (not great)
If you are saying that the US should be more like Northern Europe then I agree
The majority of people are resistant to change in general and can’t imagine a better world than what they know. The majority of people are focused on themselves without looking at the big picture.
People go with the information they are given. People don’t do academic research into these things before forming an opinion (myself included). Through cold war times, capitalism was advertised as a morally correct choice (and not just as one type of economic system). Even within this, the American flavour or neoliberal capitalism isn’t the only choice. There can be a more heavily regulated capitalism like in Europe with elements of strong social support. America’s economic success is taken as clear evidence that neoliberal capitalism is clearly the winning strategy and makes them the best.
These aren’t isolated economic theory concepts anymore. These are ideas linked to people’s identity, politics, social groups, morality and sense of justice/right and wrong. This is compounded by a false sense that we live in a meritocracy and just world. As if the world will give money and success to those who are right and good, so we shouldn’t stand in the way of that.
I think a lot of people does fine under it. They are also very vocal, because they are in a relative position of power. For example, little bosses in front of a couple of employees will make more noise than their employees regarding capitalism and entrepreneur values, while the employees will basically survive.
