Social justice, the West and the USSR

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

From the early 20th century to the late 1980s, the West was forced to develop with an eye on the competing idea of social justice. Thanks to this competition, inequality was reduced everywhere in the capitalist countries. Moreover, without passing into socialist egalitarianism.

Completely in vain quarter of centuryago, Westerners rejoiced at the fall of the Berlin Wall, the collapse of the socialist camp and the collapse of the USSR. With the end of the Cold War, global security threats did not diminish, and even the main winner, the United States, for the first time since Pearl Harbor suffered several painful blows to its territory. In a material sense that is closer to the Western understanding, individual benefits associated with robbing the losers are now more and more noticeably covered by indirect losses.

And the main loser is the middle class.

From the early 20th century to the late 1980s, the West was forced to develop with an eye on the competing idea of social justice. Thanks to this competition, inequality was reduced everywhere in the capitalist countries. Moreover, without passing into socialist egalitarianism.

But after the defeat of the USSR and the socialist countries became obvious, everything turned back.

First of all - in the Anglo-Saxon world. In the USA, Great Britain, Canada, inequality in the distribution of national income began to grow at a very fast pace. Continental Europe, this cradle of socialist ideas, held out longer, but it could not stand it either.

The rise in inequality was particularly striking in the United States: in 1980 1% of the highest income recipients in the United States earned only 8% national income, but by 2012 their share had already increased to almost 20% … Moreover, if you look at narrower groups - 0, 1% the richest, and even 0, 01%, where the increase in income is calculated dozens and hundred percent for the period.

Of course, many factors came into play here. The rapid growth of the financial sector, thanks to two liberalizations (1987 and 1999), led to a redistribution of income in favor of bangsters. The Internet boom has sparked a surge in salaries in the IT industry. The proliferation of options fashion, coupled with the rise of the stock market, has made top and middle managers in public companies rich. Finally, the global competition for talent has also contributed to increasing bonuses for valuable employees.

But still, the feeling does not leave that the USSR will survive in some kind of modernized form, if it continues to declare to the world its values of social security, equality and justice, income growth at the top 1% would not be so arrogant.

Meanwhile, the main victim of the emerging deepening inequality is the middle class, whose share in the structure of modern society is steadily declining. Moreover, in large part due to the transition downward in terms of consumption and quality of life.

Well, that is, it was those who most disliked the Soviet Union who eventually became the ones who lost most of all from its collapse. And, probably, it will lead - already it will! - to the renaissance of socialist ideas, which are often called populist by the media.

It turns out that the USSR even threatens its winners from the grave?