For GenX much more than later generations, they were exposed to propaganda as children saying that the main alternative to capitalism was tankies. So if you criticize capitalism, then you must support Stalin.
It still seems to be a thing, that the only possible communism is post Stalin USSR (or 21st century China).
Not discussed often is the degree to which western industrialist interests aggressively acted to sabotage efforts for societies to form an egalitarian socialist democracy. Both the British empire and the US empire are guilty of this, often to the point of brutally overthrowing such governments in favor of puppet dictatorships.
So one criticism of communism might be that they are susceptible to intervention by larger bullyish states, but that’s true of any society, regardless of how it’s organized.
Or because school was actually well taught, back in the day, and Gen X learned that prior to capitalism there were other economic systems, like feudalism / manorialism, that were even worse than capitalism.
Capitalism may be bad, but it’s not the origin of all those terrible things. If anything, it took baby steps towards addressing some of them.
People who say “that isn’t because of capitalism” aren’t necessarily defending capitalism. They’re simply annoyed by the less well educated who want to believe that everything bad is because of capitalism.
![It's a mystery [Rule]](https://slrpnk.net/pictrs/image/938aa210-416c-4a17-ad70-05c988f810f3.png){kind=link}
For GenX much more than later generations, they were exposed to propaganda as children saying that the main alternative to capitalism was tankies. So if you criticize capitalism, then you must support Stalin.
It still seems to be a thing, that the only possible communism is post Stalin USSR (or 21st century China).
Not discussed often is the degree to which western industrialist interests aggressively acted to sabotage efforts for societies to form an egalitarian socialist democracy. Both the British empire and the US empire are guilty of this, often to the point of brutally overthrowing such governments in favor of puppet dictatorships.
So one criticism of communism might be that they are susceptible to intervention by larger bullyish states, but that’s true of any society, regardless of how it’s organized.
Or because school was actually well taught, back in the day, and Gen X learned that prior to capitalism there were other economic systems, like feudalism / manorialism, that were even worse than capitalism.
Capitalism may be bad, but it’s not the origin of all those terrible things. If anything, it took baby steps towards addressing some of them.
People who say “that isn’t because of capitalism” aren’t necessarily defending capitalism. They’re simply annoyed by the less well educated who want to believe that everything bad is because of capitalism.