After the collapse of the socialist economies in the Soviet Union and the Eastern bloc in the late 1980s and China’s transition to capitalism, leftists in the West needed a new real-world example to stoke their utopian longings. North Korea and Cuba, the only two remaining communist states, didn’t quite fill that gap. Then along came Hugo Chávez, who many hailed as a new messiah.
Of course, we now know precisely how this experiment of “socialism for the 21st century” ended: the same as every other socialist experiment over the past 100 years—in disaster. Many people have forgotten these failures 30 years after the collapse of socialism. In many Western countries, “capitalism” has become a dirty word, while socialism is a new attraction. This is even true of the United States, where Democrats are calling for drastic taxes on the rich (70 percent) and using sharp anti-capitalist rhetoric.
Above all, anti-capitalists complain about growing inequality. They ignore the fact that no other era in human history has seen so many people escape poverty in such a short time as over the past 30 years.
https://fee.org/articles/amid-the-revival-of-socialist-sentiment-don-t-forget-the-power-of-capitalism/
Of course, we now know precisely how this experiment of “socialism for the 21st century” ended: the same as every other socialist experiment over the past 100 years—in disaster. Many people have forgotten these failures 30 years after the collapse of socialism. In many Western countries, “capitalism” has become a dirty word, while socialism is a new attraction. This is even true of the United States, where Democrats are calling for drastic taxes on the rich (70 percent) and using sharp anti-capitalist rhetoric.
Above all, anti-capitalists complain about growing inequality. They ignore the fact that no other era in human history has seen so many people escape poverty in such a short time as over the past 30 years.
https://fee.org/articles/amid-the-revival-of-socialist-sentiment-don-t-forget-the-power-of-capitalism/