this post was submitted on 09 Mar 2024
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Capitalism defenders think that every capitalist state should have a standard of living like the west and those that don't are just doing capitalism wrong. The idea that the suffering of the Bangladeshi clothes factory worker and the Guatemalan banana plantation farmer and the Congolese cobalt miner are necessary for capitalism doesn't cross their minds.
Or, they think what Bangladesh et al are experiencing is their “bad” phase of capitalism, and eventually living conditions will rise and all the suffering will be worth it. “The US/UK had to go through that phase, but so does every capitalist economy. Eventually you get to where we are now”. They say something similar about the former USSR - the socialist economy was so warped that they had to go through the horror of the 90s in order to reap all the wonderful benefits of capitalism.
They ignore the fact that the British working class had to fight for some of those improvements. But really, it was when British imperialism got supercharged in the late 19th c. that things actually did get better for the English working class.