These discussions on communism vs capitalism that devolve into comparing the US with the USSR are like discussing feudalism vs liberalism in 1825, when the only perceptible legacies of the French Revolution were the Reign of Terror and Napoleon’s degeneration into monarchy.
If you’re sensibly anticapitalist, for the love of Marx do not argue in favor of states that rejected all pretension of wanting to let the economy be democratically managed, ultimately turning into party-controlled hierarchies rather than socialism. If you’re a liberal in 1825 and rather than arguing in favor of ending serfdom and enfranchising everyone you keep going on about how Robespierre wasn’t really that bad, you’re politically useless.
Humans are rationalizing creatures, much more than rational ones. Our first gut reaction is trying to make sense of why we think what we think and why we behave how we behave, rather than trying to figure out if it does actually make sense. If this natural tendency could be changed, the world would be far less of a shithole.
"I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein’s brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops"
Why are y’all in the comments trying to act like one or another universalist position has to fit like a sock to all situations? There are debates where one side is blatantly wrong and the other is blatantly correct, debates where one side is wrong and the other has some points right, debates where both sides have some points right, debates where both sides would do well to return to school and debates where no side can be objetively correct because they’re discussing something intrinsically subjective. The “enlightened centrist” meme is useful to mock the stupid position that “the truth is always in the middle”, but if you think you’re always going to find someone in any debate who has the right answer, you’re going to find yourself siding with stupid shit all the time.