Democratically elected leftist president who enacted a minimum wage and was going to redistribute land owned by The United Fruit Company to the people, since they owned most of the nation’s land.
Couped with the support of the CIA and replaced by a dictator who went on to lead a genocide of the native people.
Hence why I said leftist, yes. It was an example of what happens to any leftist government, including but not limited to socialists.
Anyone who goes against the interests of capitalists is scary to them. They say (similar to what you said) that they must always fail. If this were true, they wouldn’t be so scared.
It’s important to take the broader context into account. This happened at the start of the Cold War, so anything that looked remotely connected to the USSR was suspect. Árbenz legalized a communist party, and that seems to be what pushed Eisenhower over the edge.
It had nothing to do with the actual ideology of the Guatamalan government, but suspected ties to USSR. At the time, “communism” meant “USSR,” and anyone that was sympathetic to communism in any form was suspected of being in league with the USSR.
If the Guatamalan Revolution happened just 10 years or so later, the US probably would’ve been an ally instead of an enemy of someone like Árbenz.
The justification doesn’t really matter. The point is this is the situation the makes “all socialist countries are bad” a belief people hold. It’s wrong. It’s “the only socialist countries who could survive capitalist intervention also did bad things. The ones that didn’t last are forgotten and we can’t know how they’d fare.”
The reason why the Cold War was happening at all was because the US shoved themselves into a role of preventing “communism,” which extended to any leftist government, from spreading. They needed to ensure socialism couldn’t achieve its goals, because if it could then other capitalist countries would see the benefits and follow suit. Obviously the owner class in capitalist nations couldn’t let that happen. You can even see it even within the US with the dismantling of leftist policy.
Socialism isn’t bad. It’s what capitalists forced socialism to be in order to survive that’s bad. Capitalists are the issue with socialism. To use it as an argument for capitalism seems pretty fucked up. It also ignores all the harm done by capitalism. This mostly happens outside of the rich countries though, so most of us don’t interact with it.
The reason why the Cold War was happening at all was because the US shoved themselves into a role of preventing “communism,”
That’s an unfair assessment. The USSR also placed itself into the role of defeating “capitalism” and intervened in a number of countries to encourage socialist/communist revolutions. The actual ideologies here aren’t particularly important, what is important is who has the most influence in those regions. The US didn’t particularly care what government was in power, provided it was more friendly to western countries than the USSR.
By the Cold War, the US was already more socialist than much of the world. We had just passed the New Deal, unions were quite common, and 34% of Americans were in a union in 1954, and we still have most of those institutions (though union membership fell to around 20% by the fall of the USSR and 10% today).
The opposition here wasn’t ideological, that was just how it was sold (the whole “red scare”). The opposition to socialism was to prevent further expansion of influence by the USSR. If the opposition was purely on ideological lines, surely politicians would have eradicated socialist institutions like Social Security and Medicare, but they instead expanded them (source is about SS expansions).
Socialism isn’t bad. It’s what capitalists forced socialism to be in order to survive that’s bad.
Blame whatever you want, but the facts remain that socialist countries by and large have been bad for the people living under them, whereas capitalist countries with a mix of socialist institutions have been good for people living under them. Those are the facts available to me, and until I see evidence that pure socialism is actually a net positive, I’ll continue to believe that it’s not.
It also ignores all the harm done by capitalism
Most of those harms have little if anything to do with capitalism itself. Capitalism is only an economy policy, not a political ideology, whereas socialism covers both. Most of the evils “under capitalism” can largely be tied to authoritarianism of some variety, and to me that’s the main issue w/ socialism as it tends to exist. The problems don’t necessarily come from the economic system, they come from the political systems in place.
Lol reread your comment and tell me you aren’t at least slightly influenced by propaganda.
You’re literally giving a pass, an asterix to something you just don’t wanna agree to.
If socialism has only existed for a short time, and really only considered during the cold war then has it really ever been actually tried since outside powers kneecap it at every turn?
Then I wanna ask, how many died from the introduction of capitalism/destruction of imperial European powers? We have no record of it but I’d bet my britches it’s a lot of people
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).
How about Guatemala.
Democratically elected leftist president who enacted a minimum wage and was going to redistribute land owned by The United Fruit Company to the people, since they owned most of the nation’s land.
Couped with the support of the CIA and replaced by a dictator who went on to lead a genocide of the native people.
For more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in_regime_change_in_Latin_America
Arévalo wasn’t socialist, he was actually anti-communist and generally pro-capitalist. He had way more overlap with FDR than Stalin or Castro.
That wasn’t “capitalists keeping the socialists down,” it was cronyism and FUD from United Fruit Company, which Eisenhower bought into.
Hence why I said leftist, yes. It was an example of what happens to any leftist government, including but not limited to socialists.
Anyone who goes against the interests of capitalists is scary to them. They say (similar to what you said) that they must always fail. If this were true, they wouldn’t be so scared.
It’s important to take the broader context into account. This happened at the start of the Cold War, so anything that looked remotely connected to the USSR was suspect. Árbenz legalized a communist party, and that seems to be what pushed Eisenhower over the edge.
It had nothing to do with the actual ideology of the Guatamalan government, but suspected ties to USSR. At the time, “communism” meant “USSR,” and anyone that was sympathetic to communism in any form was suspected of being in league with the USSR.
If the Guatamalan Revolution happened just 10 years or so later, the US probably would’ve been an ally instead of an enemy of someone like Árbenz.
The justification doesn’t really matter. The point is this is the situation the makes “all socialist countries are bad” a belief people hold. It’s wrong. It’s “the only socialist countries who could survive capitalist intervention also did bad things. The ones that didn’t last are forgotten and we can’t know how they’d fare.”
The reason why the Cold War was happening at all was because the US shoved themselves into a role of preventing “communism,” which extended to any leftist government, from spreading. They needed to ensure socialism couldn’t achieve its goals, because if it could then other capitalist countries would see the benefits and follow suit. Obviously the owner class in capitalist nations couldn’t let that happen. You can even see it even within the US with the dismantling of leftist policy.
Socialism isn’t bad. It’s what capitalists forced socialism to be in order to survive that’s bad. Capitalists are the issue with socialism. To use it as an argument for capitalism seems pretty fucked up. It also ignores all the harm done by capitalism. This mostly happens outside of the rich countries though, so most of us don’t interact with it.
That’s an unfair assessment. The USSR also placed itself into the role of defeating “capitalism” and intervened in a number of countries to encourage socialist/communist revolutions. The actual ideologies here aren’t particularly important, what is important is who has the most influence in those regions. The US didn’t particularly care what government was in power, provided it was more friendly to western countries than the USSR.
By the Cold War, the US was already more socialist than much of the world. We had just passed the New Deal, unions were quite common, and 34% of Americans were in a union in 1954, and we still have most of those institutions (though union membership fell to around 20% by the fall of the USSR and 10% today).
The opposition here wasn’t ideological, that was just how it was sold (the whole “red scare”). The opposition to socialism was to prevent further expansion of influence by the USSR. If the opposition was purely on ideological lines, surely politicians would have eradicated socialist institutions like Social Security and Medicare, but they instead expanded them (source is about SS expansions).
Blame whatever you want, but the facts remain that socialist countries by and large have been bad for the people living under them, whereas capitalist countries with a mix of socialist institutions have been good for people living under them. Those are the facts available to me, and until I see evidence that pure socialism is actually a net positive, I’ll continue to believe that it’s not.
Most of those harms have little if anything to do with capitalism itself. Capitalism is only an economy policy, not a political ideology, whereas socialism covers both. Most of the evils “under capitalism” can largely be tied to authoritarianism of some variety, and to me that’s the main issue w/ socialism as it tends to exist. The problems don’t necessarily come from the economic system, they come from the political systems in place.
Lol reread your comment and tell me you aren’t at least slightly influenced by propaganda.
You’re literally giving a pass, an asterix to something you just don’t wanna agree to.
If socialism has only existed for a short time, and really only considered during the cold war then has it really ever been actually tried since outside powers kneecap it at every turn?
Then I wanna ask, how many died from the introduction of capitalism/destruction of imperial European powers? We have no record of it but I’d bet my britches it’s a lot of people
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.
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.
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.
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).