Your parent didn’t call the USSR “capitalism”, they called it “private capitalism”. I’ve never heard that term before so I’m guessing it was ad hoc. I’m guessi

Your parent didn’t call the USSR “capitalism”, they called it “private capitalism”. I’ve never heard that term before so I’m guessing it was ad hoc. I’m guessing the public capitalism / private capitalism has to do with where the ownership of property, concentration of human capital is, and there the market making prices are found. In that sense, the public/private dichotomy mostly works. Sure, Communists argue there is more virtue to their system than simply market making and state owned property, but those are effectively downstream / derived qualities. And Mao murdered tons of people (both directly and the way a mob boss would have) for many different reasons. He probably was the kind of person who might murder someone because he woke up on the wrong side of the bed. I don’t think that matters much in this discussion and I don’t think we should self-censor our thoughts because the ghost of a terrible person might hear us.