A simpler explanation is that Americans have succumbed to consumerism to such an extent that the absence of it feels enlightened.
Of course the reality is just that the US has become the axis of evil, and perhaps always was, it just had the best PR.
I think you're doing yourself a disservice by belitting Asian cultures and what insights they may have, that are apparently incomprehensible as more than a trope to Americans.
> Of course the reality is just that the US has become the axis of evil, and perhaps always was, it just had the best PR.
Sigh.
Yes, the Soviet Union really was the worker's paradise with free, prosperous, happy people!
Can we get away from the sophomoric idea the USA was ALWAYS the ONLY source of badness in the world, just because right now it's the most powerful nation in the world and also a complete mess?
I suspect that the communist project has lived under constant fear of the US, that the economy ultimately was bankrupted from having to defend itself against the US war machine.
The US has waged war in virtually every country around the world, for example Afghanistan, Vietnam, and Korea, which were significant threats to both Soviet and China. China has virtually been besieged since the 1950s, with Americans present in Thailand, Philippines, Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea.
How would you feel if the Soviet installed weapons systems in Canada, Hawaii, Mexico, Greenland, and Cuba? And then started a tariff war to hopefully bankrupt your economy?
Wasn't communism influenced heavily by being anti-capitalist? They fundamentally disagreed with the tenants that the United States stood on. Your comment, if I'm understanding it correctly, makes it look like the communists were just trying to do their own thing in their own countries and the big bad U.S came in and bullied them out of existence.
I'm not defending either sides here. I'm not a Reaganot. But to think most communist regimes were not hellbent on the destruction of western capitalism would seem a bit misleading to me.
That is fair; I think the reality is nuanced and that different opinions existed at the same time and were warring internally in the Soviet Union.
In particular, IIUC, Trotsky thought that "a socialist revolution must spread internationally to succeed and cannot be confined to one nation" (OpenAI) - but he was also assassinated by Stalin's order, and the assassin was honored by Brezhnev. Stalin was assassinated as well.
It's a great tragedy if they felt threatened by capitalism, and capitalism by communism, in a self-perpetuating way that could have been avoided.
But I would argue that capitalism has its roots in aristocracy, imperialism, and private ownership (i.e. slavery, colonialism, and systemic exploitation), to an extent that it is fair to say that capitalism cannot co-exist with communist ideals.
But yes, European countries were heavily influenced by communist ideology, which continues to shape our values today, about well-regulated free markets, fair taxation, public service, and so on, which directly threatened capitalist interests, and arguably that's why we're seeing a rise in fascism, in an attempt to remove these communist ideals.
To be clear, I am confused on this matter, but I do think that the Europeans have been foolish to follow US doctrine for the last 50 years (since Reagan/Thatcher), and especially the last 10-20 years have been devastating on virtually every sector of the economy.
> But yes, European countries were heavily influenced by communist ideology, which continues to shape our values today, about well-regulated free markets, fair taxation, public service, and so on
So this is the first time I've seen well-regulated free markets and fair taxation as being associated with communist ideology. Granted, I'm not well-studied here, but I recall being taught quite the opposite.
I did some preliminary research uisng Gemini Research to see if I could surface anything that might suggest this has been universally regarded as true and it came back with the opposite on the first (well-regulated free markets) and ambiguity on the second (not universally associated with communism).
Would you be able to reference a place where I can learn more about these relationships?
I don't remember the original argument anymore. Something about communism being justification for US warmongering.
Personally I think 19th century communism was context-specific to the 19th century; we now have AI, and central planning could be done with the same computational efficiency as the stock market.
For me, communism is more about fundamental beliefs. Like "Do you believe in Jesus Christ as your savior?", the fundamental question is: do you believe that the state should serve all mankind, and that private ownership should never extend over more than what an individual can reasonably consume? Which then necessitates public service infrastructure and market places.
I think "social democrats" have more thoughts on practical applications. "Communism" is more about fundamental beliefs, i.e. the right to nationalize and collectivize private ownership.
For example, it is increasingly clear that Microsoft, Amazon, etc. are becoming tyrants. They should have been broken up into smaller companies years ago.
Imagine if Windows, Office, Xbox, Azure, etc. were each produced by fully independent companies?
And if those companies were fundamentally obligated to serve the public market.
America is the best because citizens can do basically whatever they want all the time. The latest complaints are people took it too far (rampant drug use, camping on sidewalks, and shitting everywhere in San Francisco, etc.).
But if you want to buy a rural cabin on a beautiful mountain, it’s available, and cheap. You don’t need to go to Asia to live like a hermit.
Obviously America refers to the continent, so I'll use the shorthand country name "the US" instead.
> is the best
That may be true, but I do wonder if it was a lucky accident. What if the Irish famine hadn't happened? What if WW2 had been averted (but maybe the EU wouldn't exist...).
> rural cabin
That's nice, but what value is it if the forest burns down, the lake is polluted, the wild life is dead, and there's nothing left but neighboring land full of fracking wells? Glory to god.
Consider New England, where in its early days most inhabitants consisted of farming families. Where there were farms and cow pastures, there is now mostly forest.
There are a few farms remaining in New England, yes, but in general farmers consider the soil there not worth farming compared to places like Iowa and Southern Illinois (where all the land really is utilized for farming) even though in the past most the (sizeable) population of New England made a living farming.
We know that most of the forest in New England is suitable for farming because there are still stone walls running through it: these wall were made of stones encountered by farmers while plowing (when the forest was farmland).
Ehh US farmland usage has been dropping for many decades. That said, it is only because we are more than ever reliant upon fossil fuel derived fertilizer and over utilize a lot of arid/desert farming
Of course the reality is just that the US has become the axis of evil, and perhaps always was, it just had the best PR.
I think you're doing yourself a disservice by belitting Asian cultures and what insights they may have, that are apparently incomprehensible as more than a trope to Americans.