I am too young for Hungary and too old for Venezuela to have disillusioned me. I think it was a growing sense of “Meet the new boss. Same as the old boss.” Socialism was supposed to be transformative. But the leaders all wore coats and ties. Publicly owned utilities behaved the same as private ones. Etc.
I think often of your observation about the USSR, "if there's really a revolution over there, why are they still wearing suits?"
The utilities thing is particularly interesting. I think often of my Latin American Studies coursework, which touched on Bolivia's Water War. As part of a suite of neoliberal reforms, the city of Cochabamba was going to privatize its water supply. Locals flipped out and it was part of a broader movement that toppled the neoliberal government and elected socialist and activist Evo Morales. There's a Gael Garcia Bernal movie that dramatizes the events called "Even the Rain," as in "they're even privatizing the rain." This was taught to me as an example of how the US pushes much more intense neoliberal reforms on other countries than it takes on itself.
But something was omitted in that story that I only learned recently. You know who else has private water utilities? England and France! And... no one's freaking out about it. The Netherlands and Germany keep them public. It doesn't seem to me that there's clear evidence that one vastly outperforms the other. Inconvenient for everyone's narrative.
So, Venezuela was your Hungary. I wonder what regime leftists will idolize next and repeat the cycle in that generation? I can't think of a socialist country being held up...perhaps a new one will arise from a revolution somewhere.
Good point -- slim pickings right now. I think that right now that kind of energy is diffused between (1) Palestine, which fills the "anti-Imperialist" imagination, and (2) China, which receives plenty of projection from Left and Right.
That one occurred to me. But frankly, the goals there are so much less ambitious and revolutionary than the other comps here. Opening five government-run grocery stores, expanding rent control that already exists.
I am too young for Hungary and too old for Venezuela to have disillusioned me. I think it was a growing sense of “Meet the new boss. Same as the old boss.” Socialism was supposed to be transformative. But the leaders all wore coats and ties. Publicly owned utilities behaved the same as private ones. Etc.
I think often of your observation about the USSR, "if there's really a revolution over there, why are they still wearing suits?"
The utilities thing is particularly interesting. I think often of my Latin American Studies coursework, which touched on Bolivia's Water War. As part of a suite of neoliberal reforms, the city of Cochabamba was going to privatize its water supply. Locals flipped out and it was part of a broader movement that toppled the neoliberal government and elected socialist and activist Evo Morales. There's a Gael Garcia Bernal movie that dramatizes the events called "Even the Rain," as in "they're even privatizing the rain." This was taught to me as an example of how the US pushes much more intense neoliberal reforms on other countries than it takes on itself.
But something was omitted in that story that I only learned recently. You know who else has private water utilities? England and France! And... no one's freaking out about it. The Netherlands and Germany keep them public. It doesn't seem to me that there's clear evidence that one vastly outperforms the other. Inconvenient for everyone's narrative.
So, Venezuela was your Hungary. I wonder what regime leftists will idolize next and repeat the cycle in that generation? I can't think of a socialist country being held up...perhaps a new one will arise from a revolution somewhere.
Good point -- slim pickings right now. I think that right now that kind of energy is diffused between (1) Palestine, which fills the "anti-Imperialist" imagination, and (2) China, which receives plenty of projection from Left and Right.
Maybe a Mamdani New York? Though it's too small and porous to fully illustrate the perils of socialism, which requires folks to be locked inside
That one occurred to me. But frankly, the goals there are so much less ambitious and revolutionary than the other comps here. Opening five government-run grocery stores, expanding rent control that already exists.