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I wonder why the fear of socialism always cropped up in American media. Is it an early strawman? If socialism "doesn't work" why fear it? Or if capitalism is be

I wonder why the fear of socialism always cropped up in American media. Is it an early strawman? If socialism "doesn't work" why fear it? Or if capitalism is better why fear socialism?

aaomidi 6y ago
Some people legitimately believe that Capitalism is the only way for humanity to prosper, and they have the sacred job of protecting it from other systems of economy. There is a lot of interesting religious aspects that come to play (especially in Protestantism)
- grugagag 6y ago
  I think it's the people who benefit the most out of the current system. They pass down that dogma and shove it down our throats. The reality is a bit different though, the US is a mix of both capitalism and socialism, but they'd never want to plainly admit to that, they'd rather bash socialism as the biggest strawman they've ever made. Not to mention that for them the terms of socialism and communism are the same thing, conflated with other feared ideas.
gowld 6y ago
Socialism led to the USSR and modern China, the USA's greatest rivals, due to their combination of large population, non-trivial wealth, and expansionist tendencies. Hence, the association of "socialism" with USA's enemies.
- grugagag 6y ago
  >Socialism led to the USSR and modern China, the USA's greatest rivals, due to their combination of large population, non-trivial wealth, and expansionist tendencies. Hence, the association of "socialism" with USA's enemies. China doesn't have a classical communist type of centrally planned system and it has a very large private sector. Isn't that very much like capitalism? USA's greatest rivals actually kept USA in check from ever expanding and it's funny how you phrased that in terms of socialism. You have no idea what socialism is and mix it freely with whatever sounds good to your point. And don't forget, it's our western capitalistic system which gave China everything on a tray in the pursuit of profit with no regards to long term goals. It is our western capitalism who shipped tens of millions of jobs to China with no regard to national security.
  - pessimizer 6y ago
    The point of the comment is that the most important competitors to the US during the period of its strongest anti-communism both called themselves communist. It's not whatever one thinks "real" communism is or should be.
    - grugagag 6y ago
      So communism and socialism are now the same thing?
pessimizer 6y ago
Preservation of largely hereditary status quos. The Russian Revolution was a major threat to Anglo-European order. Tired from WWI, they failed to strangle it in its crib, but all cooperated in order to try. America was very much not involved in this, and had mixed feelings, but after WWII it was an easy prejudice to glom onto in order to antagonize the nation that was the only significant threat left to its newborn hegemony. Helping countries around the world murder all of their communists (and anybody who was sympathetic to any form of sharing) was the best way to guarantee that the "self-determination" of those cleansed nations would bring them within US orbit. This couldn't work in most of Europe for obvious reasons, so the US allowed them to have (or even imposed) extensive social democratic policies to "prove" that European capitalism would have the safety net of socialism without the privation (or the Stalin) of communism, and its intelligence services put almost every public intellectual, writer and modern (the less figurative the better) artist on the payroll either directly or indirectly in order to pump out some sort of liberatory anti-communism to contrast with the Socialist Realism and recapitulation of Hitler's "Degenerate Art" thing that Stalin was imposing over the USSR. Internally, however, the US had no interest in allowing any more social democratic policies (other than what FDR had done after the Russian Revolution had proved a success.) Labor strength would slow the growth of US companies. Instead, a rise of transfer payments to the professional and management classes in the form of subsidized homeownership and education would create a barrier between the working and middle classes that would protect the ownership classes from any sort of restraint. Another factor was encouraging (or forcing) stock investment among the middle class, in order to tie their interests to the interests of the very, very wealthy. The trick to control the middle class was (and is) to overpay them, then overtax them. They would live in the lap of luxury, but be constantly insecure. The luxury they would ascribe to the success of the company they worked for, and the companies they invested in; the insecurity they would ascribe to taxes, which would be completely ascribed to transfer payments to the poor. A large proportion of those taxes would also be refunded in the form of middle class subsidy, though, while another huge and increasing portion would go to the military, in the name of preventing a socialism that would take away their suburban luxury through increasing transfer payments. > If socialism "doesn't work" why fear it? The US as an institution has never been interested in what does or doesn't work for people in general, just in preserving and expanding the interests of the people who make its decisions (just like every other institution.) edit: Yes, it really is amazing what you can read on the internet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allied_intervention_in_the_Russian_Civil_War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allied_intervention_in_the_Rus...

I wonder why the fear of socialism always cropped up in American media. Is it an early strawman? If socialism "doesn't work" why fear it? Or if capitalism is better why fear socialism?

aaomidi 6y ago

Some people legitimately believe that Capitalism is the only way for humanity to prosper, and they have the sacred job of protecting it from other systems of economy. There is a lot of interesting religious aspects that come to play (especially in Protestantism)

grugagag 6y ago
I think it's the people who benefit the most out of the current system. They pass down that dogma and shove it down our throats. The reality is a bit different though, the US is a mix of both capitalism and socialism, but they'd never want to plainly admit to that, they'd rather bash socialism as the biggest strawman they've ever made. Not to mention that for them the terms of socialism and communism are the same thing, conflated with other feared ideas.

gowld 6y ago

Socialism led to the USSR and modern China, the USA's greatest rivals, due to their combination of large population, non-trivial wealth, and expansionist tendencies. Hence, the association of "socialism" with USA's enemies.

grugagag 6y ago
>Socialism led to the USSR and modern China, the USA's greatest rivals, due to their combination of large population, non-trivial wealth, and expansionist tendencies. Hence, the association of "socialism" with USA's enemies. China doesn't have a classical communist type of centrally planned system and it has a very large private sector. Isn't that very much like capitalism? USA's greatest rivals actually kept USA in check from ever expanding and it's funny how you phrased that in terms of socialism. You have no idea what socialism is and mix it freely with whatever sounds good to your point. And don't forget, it's our western capitalistic system which gave China everything on a tray in the pursuit of profit with no regards to long term goals. It is our western capitalism who shipped tens of millions of jobs to China with no regard to national security.
- pessimizer 6y ago
  The point of the comment is that the most important competitors to the US during the period of its strongest anti-communism both called themselves communist. It's not whatever one thinks "real" communism is or should be.
  - grugagag 6y ago
    So communism and socialism are now the same thing?

pessimizer 6y ago

Preservation of largely hereditary status quos. The Russian Revolution was a major threat to Anglo-European order. Tired from WWI, they failed to strangle it in its crib, but all cooperated in order to try. America was very much not involved in this, and had mixed feelings, but after WWII it was an easy prejudice to glom onto in order to antagonize the nation that was the only significant threat left to its newborn hegemony. Helping countries around the world murder all of their communists (and anybody who was sympathetic to any form of sharing) was the best way to guarantee that the "self-determination" of those cleansed nations would bring them within US orbit. This couldn't work in most of Europe for obvious reasons, so the US allowed them to have (or even imposed) extensive social democratic policies to "prove" that European capitalism would have the safety net of socialism without the privation (or the Stalin) of communism, and its intelligence services put almost every public intellectual, writer and modern (the less figurative the better) artist on the payroll either directly or indirectly in order to pump out some sort of liberatory anti-communism to contrast with the Socialist Realism and recapitulation of Hitler's "Degenerate Art" thing that Stalin was imposing over the USSR. Internally, however, the US had no interest in allowing any more social democratic policies (other than what FDR had done after the Russian Revolution had proved a success.) Labor strength would slow the growth of US companies. Instead, a rise of transfer payments to the professional and management classes in the form of subsidized homeownership and education would create a barrier between the working and middle classes that would protect the ownership classes from any sort of restraint. Another factor was encouraging (or forcing) stock investment among the middle class, in order to tie their interests to the interests of the very, very wealthy. The trick to control the middle class was (and is) to overpay them, then overtax them. They would live in the lap of luxury, but be constantly insecure. The luxury they would ascribe to the success of the company they worked for, and the companies they invested in; the insecurity they would ascribe to taxes, which would be completely ascribed to transfer payments to the poor. A large proportion of those taxes would also be refunded in the form of middle class subsidy, though, while another huge and increasing portion would go to the military, in the name of preventing a socialism that would take away their suburban luxury through increasing transfer payments. > If socialism "doesn't work" why fear it? The US as an institution has never been interested in what does or doesn't work for people in general, just in preserving and expanding the interests of the people who make its decisions (just like every other institution.) edit: Yes, it really is amazing what you can read on the internet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allied_intervention_in_the_Russian_Civil_War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allied_intervention_in_the_Rus...