mea culpa?

I've just started reading Costas Panayotakis's "Remaking Scarcity", and I'm enjoying it.

Early on, he complains that by saying the money given to bankers amounted to "socialism for the rich", one unnecessarily let pass the assumption that socialism is bad.  It would have been better, he suggests, to simply state that this was an example of capitalism's injustice, or favoritism for a small class of people.

That's all correct enough, and he's right that it might be misunderstood as assuming that socialism were bad; but surely it need not be meant that way.  After all, the point is: if anybody here is getting help from the government (which is what "you"--capitalists and their apologists call socialism) then it's not us, but them.......

Otherwise put, as an ironic utterance, "socialism" is used in a way to echo the capitalist businessman's complaints; not in propria persona (apologies if the Latin is wrong).

And the context is that ordinary people are accused and abused for any help they might get from the government.

Initially, his point seemed to me to be right; however, now I'm not so sure.

At any rate, I am confident that the book will be worth reading.