• sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works
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    21 days ago

    Lol reread your comment and tell me you aren’t at least slightly influenced by propaganda.

    It’s impossible to escape, and I imagine you are also quite influenced by propaganda. The best I can do is look for multiple sources for information and avoid the worst offenders.

    You’re literally giving a pass, an asterix to something you just don’t wanna agree to.

    No, I’m just saying the situation in Guatamala is completely different because they weren’t even socialist, and the elected President was openly capitalist. Eisenhower was an idiot here and gave in to United Fruit Company.

    has it really ever been actually tried since outside powers kneecap it at every turn?

    The context in the past 100 years was the USSR, which was the main rival and enemy of the US, so it absolutely makes sense for the US to attempt to stop any expansion by the USSR, and vice versa. Most of the interventions by the US into countries going through a socialist revolution were actually proxy wars w/ the USSR, like Korea and Vietnam. I don’t think it would particularly matter if the USSR was socialist/communist or fascist, the they would butt heads over any expansion. Both the US and the USSR wanted to be the top superpower, and that’s what all the interventionism was about.

    Look at socialist revolutions after the fall of the USSR, there are far fewer, and those that happen have little if any opposition by western powers. Why is that? The USSR doesn’t exist, and China doesn’t seem particularly interested in backing socialist/communist revolutions, so they’re generally left to resolve themselves. One significant counter example is the revolution in Nepal, but China also opposed that regime change, so it has little to do with socialism and more to do with how friendly the new regime would be to our (or China’s) interests.

    how many died from the introduction of capitalism/destruction of imperial European powers?

    The proper answer to this would have to be in percents, not absolute numbers, because populations at the time were much lower. But yeah, I don’t have a good figure for this.

    One especially tricky part of this is that casualties of capitalism are much harder to associate with any particular group because capitalism is largely decentralized, whereas socialism/communism tends to be centralized. A failure under socialism/communism is much easier to assign a cause to than a failure under capitalism. The clearest examples are slavery in the Americas, but that actually started under mercantilism and was quickly abolished in the northern colonies after getting independence (i.e. the areas with higher development).

    That said, liberalism and capitalism together have done wonders to improve the lives of the average person. There’s a good reason why China has pivoted from socialism/communism to capitalism in recent decades, and it’s because it works. Socialism seems to work best when paired with a capitalist system, such as in most developed economies (i.e. a robust social safety net, support for unions, etc).