Let people compare capitalism and socialism? We agree!

 
BY: Scott Hiley| January 20, 2021
Let people compare capitalism and socialism? We agree!
QCensorship of people’s thoughts or opinions of any form is inhuman. Instead, allow free people the opportunity to freely compare the merits of communism and democracy. Democracy will always win.
AWe’re counting on it! We would love, for example, for people to travel to Cuba and see that despite over 50 years of a crippling U.S. economic blockade, it still has universal health care and free education at every level. We want people to know that when Hurricane Katrina hit, Cuba had planes full of doctors and medical supplies loaded and waiting on the tarmac, but George W. Bush refused to let them help the people of New Orleans.  We wouldn’t mind word getting out that China, the world’s highest performing economy, has eliminated poverty and taken groundbreaking steps to curb air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions.  Or that Vietnam had only 278 COVID-19 cases and zero deaths—and actually exported PPE to the United States.  Also might be useful to shed light some of the many occasions where the United States has interfered with elections or backed violent right-wing regimes to prevent leftists from coming to power.

That’s the whole problem.  Most of the people of this country live in a fog of anti-communist propaganda, which is really difficult to overcome.  Except that now, capitalism’s failure is impossible to disguise.  Four hundred thousand people are dead of COVID-19 because forty years of “small government” and “free markets” and “deregulation” left the U.S. government incapable of putting together a coherent response.  For workers and small business people, this is the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression... but billionaires are getting richer, and the market just keeps going up.  A mob of fascist thugs stormed the Capitol to disrupt an election.  Capitalism is unable to fulfill any of its promises—prosperity, opportunity, democracy—so is it any surprise people are looking at alternatives?

Maybe you should take your hatred of censorship up with Facebook, Twitter, Fox News, CNN, the Washington Post, Google, and the rest of the for-profit media and communication companies who control what people see and hear in this country.  Maybe you should address yourself to the pharmaceutical companies, and agribusiness firms, and fossil fuel corporations who use their profits to drive the research agenda at universities.  While you’re at it, it might be good to ask whether the best standards for journalism, political analysis, and scientific research are based on what will be most profitable for shareholders. There is no group on this planet more skilled at, or more experienced with censorship and propaganda than the U.S. ruling class.  But even they can’t make people equate capitalism with democracy for much longer.

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