Yeah, and that’s just normal human behaviour. We tend to focus on things that are going wrong, and take things that are going well for granted. The reason there’s a resurgence of genuine interest in socialism in the West is because capitalism is failing huge numbers of people. People are seeing their material conditions degrading before their eyes, and they’re starting to wonder what went wrong.
Michael Parenti raises this point when he discusses the collapse of the Soviet Union. He talked to one of his pro-capitalist Russian academic colleagues about it, asking “what about the free high quality education, the job guarantees, the universal healthcare and the housing?” to which the Russian responded “that’s funny, no one ever talks about those”.
Yeah, and that’s just normal human behaviour. We tend to focus on things that are going wrong, and take things that are going well for granted. The reason there’s a resurgence of genuine interest in socialism in the West is because capitalism is failing huge numbers of people. People are seeing their material conditions degrading before their eyes, and they’re starting to wonder what went wrong.
Michael Parenti raises this point when he discusses the collapse of the Soviet Union. He talked to one of his pro-capitalist Russian academic colleagues about it, asking “what about the free high quality education, the job guarantees, the universal healthcare and the housing?” to which the Russian responded “that’s funny, no one ever talks about those”.
Yeah, he talks about this problem in detail in Blackshirts and Reds. Grass is always greener on the other side of the fence.