In Eastern Europe, Russia, China, Mongolia, North Korea, and Cuba, revolutionary communism created a life for the mass of people that was far better than the wretched existence they had endured under feudal lords, military bosses, foreign colonizers, and western capitalists. The end result was a dramatic improvement in living conditions for hundreds of millions of people on a scale never before or since witnessed in history.
State socialism transformed desperately poor countries into modernized societies in which everyone had enough food, clothing, and shelter; where elderly people had secure pensions; and where all children (and many adults) went to school and no one was denied medical attention.
Michael Parenti, Blackshirts and Reds, 1997.
Improvement of living conditions in the USSR for example happened not just for a massive number of people, but at a pace not seen before.
In the USA, a prime example of capitalism gone wrong, there’s poverty so bad that it’s the 4th leading cause of death (and worse, the poverty may even be underreported). There’s rolling back of social programs, overturning of child labor protections, destruction of the public education system, over-incarceration and for-profit slave labor-driven prison systems[1]. Try to make me a similar list of government-backed initiatives in the USA that are intended to lift people out of poverty rather than put them there or keep them there. There’s a lot of effort being spent on making sure people can’t get themselves out of poverty. The USA is much more interested in punishing and continuing to exploit the impoverished than helping them–helping them isn’t profitable.
Another thing you’re conveniently overlooking is the destruction of the rest of the world, that is, the ones not being supposedly lifted up in those capitalist states. Even if everyone in the capitalist states was lifted out of poverty, if the cost of that was destruction of other country’s economies and lives of the people therein, effectively putting them into or keeping them in poverty, then it’s a wash at best. Capitalism is great at externalizing negative costs: externalizing it not just onto consumers, but onto citizens of the world, and, worse, onto the future stability of the planet and its ability to host life.
If you take into account the number of people forced into and kept in poverty worldwide and compare that to the number of people truly lifted out of and kept out of poverty due to capitalism, I don’t think you’d be able to assert what you have.
And if you’ll remember, the only reason most of these social programs ever existed in a somewhat-useful manner in the first place was because the USA had to convince its populace that the existing capitalist system was better than the competing socialist/communist states it was waging economic and ideological war on. Once it was able to destroy the ideological competition, it could change its narrative as well: now, the failure of those socialist/communist states was due to inherent failures of the underlying ideology and not due to a concerted external effort to defeat it. Once there was no competition on the “treating-your-citizens-better-and-like-humans-deserving-of-empathy” front, tearing down of these programs sped up, and the money that was taken out of the taxpayer’s pocket that should have funded those programs was not returned to the taxpayer but instead funneled cleanly upwards. ↩︎
The end result was a dramatic improvement in living conditions for hundreds of millions of people on a scale never before or since witnessed in history
Should be pretty easy to provide some actual numbers then, doesn’t look good according to this:
I’m not even including North Korea as people are literally starving because of military spend, and Cuba may have free education and healthcare but it’s shit compared to any western European country
Is that data supposed to go back before 1990? Because it doesn’t on my end, and as such that data isn’t going to prove your point or disprove mine.
North Korea is confounded by the fact that Western sanctions are in large part responsible for famine: the region is notorious for not being very arable, and the USA’s meddling with the South Korean puppet state actively worsens the situation. Similarly in Cuba: not every fault can be blamed on the USA, but if you don’t think the continuous trade embargos aren’t partially at fault for the situation, I don’t think you’re honestly evaluating the situation.
Cuba may have free education and healthcare but it’s shit compared to any western European country
Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good. I would much rather have access to any sort of free healthcare than not have access to any, as is my current lot in life. I don’t care how good certain exclusive healthcare is, when the majority of the population has no access to healthcare. But frankly I think you have an unjustly negative view of the Cuban healthcare system:
Cuba has the highest ratio of doctors per inhabitant in the world. We have more than 100,000 doctors for a population of 11 million – 9.2 for every 1,000 inhabitants. We also have the highest ratio of health workers per inhabitant – 500,000 overall. But it’s not that we have leftover professionals. We don’t have so many doctors because we like training them, but because we have a health policy that employs all of them. This includes those who are in management positions and those who are committed to our international solidarity missions, our collaboration in health.
… and Cuba doesn’t hoard its medical professionals …
We do a lot of international collaboration. Cuba has been there to support others during all the major health disasters. During the Ebola crisis, Cuba was one of the very few countries that sent medical brigades in Africa. We are always present during earthquakes, fires, and floods. And we always favor communities where most of the time there are no health workers, or we go to places that lack healthcare services. This is the vision of Cuban medical collaboration, which is implemented through two main channels: health workers’ training and provision of care.
Notice that healthcare works differently when it isn’t purely profit driven. It works differently when incentive structures favor patient health over profit.
I mentioned this later in my comment: if you look at the suffering caused externally by capitalism, it’s at best a wash with the benfits caused internally by it. You’re also pointing to examples where things aren’t great because of USA’s interference. It’s disingenuous.
The USA loves to wage economic and ideological war and, when it makes some progress in tearing down its target, point to the downfall of the target and pretend that the downfall is purely due to internal conflict. And you’re buying in to that narrative.
The latter part of my comment was, in my opinion, more important than the first part. The proportion of the world’s population being hurt by capitalism, compared to the proportion of the world’s population helped by it, is massive; the fact that you’re putting more value on small benefits conferred to a small proportion of the population at the expense of the rest is unfortunate but to be expected in a defense of capitalism.
North Korea is confounded by the fact that Western sanctions are in large part responsible for famine: the region is notorious for not being very arable, and the USA’s meddling with the South Korean puppet state actively worsens the situation
If the place is not so arable, why is South Korea doing so well?
It’s almost as if communism leads to autocratic states in every country to try it…
Up close, things look different. According to a recent survey of 5,000 persons, 75% of 19-34 year old natives of the world’s 11th richest nation want out
Professor of Economic History, Robert C. Allen, concludes in his study without the 1917 revolution is directly responsible for rapid growth that made the achievements listed above possilbe:
Study demonstrating the steady increase in quality of life during the Soviet period (including under Stalin). Includes the fact that Soviet life expectancy grew faster than any other nation recorded at the time:
A large study using world bank data analyzing the quality of life in Capitalist vs Socialist countries and finds overwhelmingly at similar levels of development with socialism bringing better quality of life:
This study compared capitalist and socialist countries in measures of the physical quality of life (PQL), taking into account the level of economic development.
This study shows that unprecedented mortality crisis struck Eastern Europe during the 1990s, causing around 7 million excess deaths. The first quantitative analysis of the association between deindustrialization and mortality in Eastern Europe.
Meanwhile, hilarious for you to mention Cuba and DPRK given that your shithole excuse for a country has done everything possible to choke their trade with the world. Good thing that SWIFT is going the way of the dodo now.
Lol, you’re claiming one measure in physical quality of life means communism is great. Ignoring the fact that all of those countries have now either failed or have moved to a market based system in order to improve life.
Yeah, pretty hilarious that once these countries abandoned communism and switched to capitalism quality of life rapidly deteriorated. Thanks for underscoring my point.
Not according to actual data from the last 30 years, but you don’t actually accept facts so discussing anything with anyone as deluded as you is pointless
Why do you think 19th century ideology is relevant in the 21st?
And it’s the height of ignorance to think that communism is a 19th century ideology that hasn’t been successfully evolving for over a century. I knew that UK education system was bad, but holy shit that’s embarrassing.
Ah yes, Vietnam that US empire razed to the ground. Very intelligent comparison from a very intelligent person. Why don’t we compare with another communist country called China?
Michael Parenti, Blackshirts and Reds, 1997.
Improvement of living conditions in the USSR for example happened not just for a massive number of people, but at a pace not seen before.
In the USA, a prime example of capitalism gone wrong, there’s poverty so bad that it’s the 4th leading cause of death (and worse, the poverty may even be underreported). There’s rolling back of social programs, overturning of child labor protections, destruction of the public education system, over-incarceration and for-profit slave labor-driven prison systems[1]. Try to make me a similar list of government-backed initiatives in the USA that are intended to lift people out of poverty rather than put them there or keep them there. There’s a lot of effort being spent on making sure people can’t get themselves out of poverty. The USA is much more interested in punishing and continuing to exploit the impoverished than helping them–helping them isn’t profitable.
Another thing you’re conveniently overlooking is the destruction of the rest of the world, that is, the ones not being supposedly lifted up in those capitalist states. Even if everyone in the capitalist states was lifted out of poverty, if the cost of that was destruction of other country’s economies and lives of the people therein, effectively putting them into or keeping them in poverty, then it’s a wash at best. Capitalism is great at externalizing negative costs: externalizing it not just onto consumers, but onto citizens of the world, and, worse, onto the future stability of the planet and its ability to host life.
If you take into account the number of people forced into and kept in poverty worldwide and compare that to the number of people truly lifted out of and kept out of poverty due to capitalism, I don’t think you’d be able to assert what you have.
And if you’ll remember, the only reason most of these social programs ever existed in a somewhat-useful manner in the first place was because the USA had to convince its populace that the existing capitalist system was better than the competing socialist/communist states it was waging economic and ideological war on. Once it was able to destroy the ideological competition, it could change its narrative as well: now, the failure of those socialist/communist states was due to inherent failures of the underlying ideology and not due to a concerted external effort to defeat it. Once there was no competition on the “treating-your-citizens-better-and-like-humans-deserving-of-empathy” front, tearing down of these programs sped up, and the money that was taken out of the taxpayer’s pocket that should have funded those programs was not returned to the taxpayer but instead funneled cleanly upwards. ↩︎
Should be pretty easy to provide some actual numbers then, doesn’t look good according to this:
https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.PP.CD?locations=RU-CN-MN-EU-US
I’m not even including North Korea as people are literally starving because of military spend, and Cuba may have free education and healthcare but it’s shit compared to any western European country
https://academic.oup.com/heapol/article/33/6/760/5035053
Is that data supposed to go back before 1990? Because it doesn’t on my end, and as such that data isn’t going to prove your point or disprove mine.
North Korea is confounded by the fact that Western sanctions are in large part responsible for famine: the region is notorious for not being very arable, and the USA’s meddling with the South Korean puppet state actively worsens the situation. Similarly in Cuba: not every fault can be blamed on the USA, but if you don’t think the continuous trade embargos aren’t partially at fault for the situation, I don’t think you’re honestly evaluating the situation.
Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good. I would much rather have access to any sort of free healthcare than not have access to any, as is my current lot in life. I don’t care how good certain exclusive healthcare is, when the majority of the population has no access to healthcare. But frankly I think you have an unjustly negative view of the Cuban healthcare system:
Quoting Ileana Morales from the Cuban Ministry of Public Health,
… and Cuba doesn’t hoard its medical professionals …
Notice that healthcare works differently when it isn’t purely profit driven. It works differently when incentive structures favor patient health over profit.
I mentioned this later in my comment: if you look at the suffering caused externally by capitalism, it’s at best a wash with the benfits caused internally by it. You’re also pointing to examples where things aren’t great because of USA’s interference. It’s disingenuous.
The USA loves to wage economic and ideological war and, when it makes some progress in tearing down its target, point to the downfall of the target and pretend that the downfall is purely due to internal conflict. And you’re buying in to that narrative.
The latter part of my comment was, in my opinion, more important than the first part. The proportion of the world’s population being hurt by capitalism, compared to the proportion of the world’s population helped by it, is massive; the fact that you’re putting more value on small benefits conferred to a small proportion of the population at the expense of the rest is unfortunate but to be expected in a defense of capitalism.
If the place is not so arable, why is South Korea doing so well?
It’s almost as if communism leads to autocratic states in every country to try it…
This same South Korea? Almost, like you have no clue regarding the subject you keep attempting to debate here 🤡 https://asiatimes.com/2019/12/75-of-young-want-to-escape-south-korean-hell/
Young people want to travel, shocker.
Stop sending me polls, it’s boring.
Yeah, it’s so boring to hear what people living in the country have to say about it.
It is. Finally we agree. Good bye
figures you wouldn’t understand what sarcasm is, bye
yeah let’s look at some actual numbers shall we
Professor of Economic History, Robert C. Allen, concludes in his study without the 1917 revolution is directly responsible for rapid growth that made the achievements listed above possilbe:
Study demonstrating the steady increase in quality of life during the Soviet period (including under Stalin). Includes the fact that Soviet life expectancy grew faster than any other nation recorded at the time:
A large study using world bank data analyzing the quality of life in Capitalist vs Socialist countries and finds overwhelmingly at similar levels of development with socialism bringing better quality of life:
This study compared capitalist and socialist countries in measures of the physical quality of life (PQL), taking into account the level of economic development.
This study shows that unprecedented mortality crisis struck Eastern Europe during the 1990s, causing around 7 million excess deaths. The first quantitative analysis of the association between deindustrialization and mortality in Eastern Europe.
Meanwhile, hilarious for you to mention Cuba and DPRK given that your shithole excuse for a country has done everything possible to choke their trade with the world. Good thing that SWIFT is going the way of the dodo now.
Lol, you’re claiming one measure in physical quality of life means communism is great. Ignoring the fact that all of those countries have now either failed or have moved to a market based system in order to improve life.
Hilarious
Yeah, pretty hilarious that once these countries abandoned communism and switched to capitalism quality of life rapidly deteriorated. Thanks for underscoring my point.
Not according to actual data from the last 30 years, but you don’t actually accept facts so discussing anything with anyone as deluded as you is pointless
Why do you think 19th century ideology is relevant in the 21st?
Yes, according to actual data from the last 30 years. And of course, we can just see what the people who lived under both systems have to say:
And it’s the height of ignorance to think that communism is a 19th century ideology that hasn’t been successfully evolving for over a century. I knew that UK education system was bad, but holy shit that’s embarrassing.
Polls are not economic data
Here you go, Hungary versus the only mildly successful communist country in history, Vietnam
https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.CD?locations=HU-VN
Ah yes, Vietnam that US empire razed to the ground. Very intelligent comparison from a very intelligent person. Why don’t we compare with another communist country called China?