As Russian I only recently started to understand that russian government was at wars for a lot of its existence from USSR times: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_involving_Russia#.... Many invasions and wars in places Russia should have no business in. Most of them not publicized in the country. Unlike US it was not spreading liberal values of individual freedom and against violent dictatorships, actually maybe the other way around
Then look up Latin America’s history, where the US actively worked to install and support such violent dictatorships.
Some under the guise of protecting countries from the threat of communism - like Brazil, Argentina and Chile, and some explicitly to protect US company’s interests - like in Guatemala
Well, at least protecting Latin American countries from the threat of communism was a nice thing for us to do, wasn't it? Communism would certainly have done more harm than we did.
The lesson of present-day America is that democracy is too important to be left to the people.
Ehhh… don’t forget that I wrote “under the guise”.
Lots of US companies got a lot of money out of those US-supported dictatorships, while destroying local businesses and torturing and killing people. Those were also the era of closed-off economies, hyperinflation and environmental destruction, so what the local people got out of it?
So yeah, thanks for protecting us from the dictatorship of the proletariat and fucking up our economies for decades. And I’m not also defending USSR and their imperialistic practices disguised as making the people as equal as possible - fuck them as well!
There’s an old book called “Confessions of an Economic Hitman” that gets into some details of how the US supported those dictatorships under Project Condor and other CIA programs. Is it 100% truthful? Maybe not, but the gist of it is.
The proles have let us both down. All my life, I was led to believe that a "dictatorship of the proletariat" would involve a bunch of morons wearing red hats, casting one last vote against their own interests to tear down the established order. So at least that turned out to be technically correct.
You don't have to hold a gun to someone's head to get them to practice capitalism. People will trade labor, goods and services voluntarily unless you go out of your way to stop them.
And spare us the false equivalence bullshit that we all know is coming.
capitalism is using capital (money, materials, and employees/work) as inputs to produce finished products with the goal of re-investing those profits into said production or into other markets
simply trading or rendering services can be done without the need for constant growth/profits or investment as capital over time (e.g coops, traditional businesses etc)
> You don't have to hold a gun to someone's head to get them to practice capitalism. People will trade labor, goods and services voluntarily unless you go out of your way to stop them.
This is an important point. The only way communism "works" is top down enforcement.
