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.
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.