But how does that average compare to industrialized nations? Both rapidly industrialized during the period you linked to while many other countries were still left behind. One big change would be the expansion of medical care
You don’t want to account for too many variables, otherwise you no longer get the desired result.
So is industrialization something that just happens if you are lucky and has nothing to do with policy?
Capitalists industrialized Marxist Leninist also industrialized. At least compare something more apples to apples.
Life expectancy going up is always a good thing however. Now if only the Marxist leninist governments worked on their tolerance of speech. And the capitalist governments stop looking to the Marxist leninist governments for inspiration on how to crack down on speech.
capitalist governments stop looking to the Marxist leninist governments for inspiration on how to crack down on speech.
Capitalism had that figured out long before Marx had a beard.
That may be true. But the governments claiming to be a sub sect of the ideology have surpassed the capitalist in every way. Great firewall of China etc.
Yes both can achieve industrilization but communists had a better track record(higher percentage of countries(and population) that implemented communism industrialized and also with lower inequality) than capitalism when you look at africa and south america and india etc. https://www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/561htv/map_of_public_sector_employees_as_a_percentage_of/.
And through the comparison with the world avarage there was no comparison with apples and oranges.
That’s not a valid comparison. First there is the troublesome issue of sample size. Second there’s the issue of whats actually qualifies as communism or capitalism.
There has NEVER been a communist country. So that right there is a huge problem with any claims. Marxist Leninism is not, and never will be communism. Most frequently devolving into outright fascism(modern Russia) or oppressive dictatorial regimes, state capitalist (China) or otherwise (North Korea). As well, a country being west aligned, doesn’t make it capitalist.
This isn’t a defense of capitalism. Far from. Ideologically I trend libertarian(true libertarian the Déjacque kind) /anarco communist. So I criticize both heavily when they’re pulling their bullshit.
The western media during the cold war called communist countries countries that had more than 60% of the employees work for government owned enterprises. And according to that definion most of the world has not been communist for a long time(for longer than 10 years) except those few countries(eastern bloc, yugoslavia, china, cuba, north korea, vietnam, maybe i miss some countries). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_public_sector_size Cuba according to that definion would still today be a communist country. North korea went back to a semi-feudal system i have heard and china has still massive state ownership like 60% of all the wealth is owned by the goverment in china but they have privatized stakes in almost all state owned companies so in the statistic it shows only 8% of the employees work for the goverment. Yes i know the communists in the east didnt even call their countries communist countries they called themselves socialist countries. USSR is short for united socialist soviet republics. And they said they worked towards communism which they thought would take 100s of years.
Liberals pretend they are right wing libertarians. ML pretend to be communist. That doesn’t make it true. But it’s very humorous that you’re trying to use US government misinformation and propaganda to justify it.
Nationalization of industry isn’t a core ideology of communism. Having a nation or even a state isn’t required for that matter.
Industrialization is a big part of marxist thought and many countries around the world still havent industrialized to this day. For example countries in africa and india etc. . So that industrialization even happened is a good thing.
Edit: But to answer your question here are some industrialized countries added to the chart: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/life-expectancy?time=1870..latest&country=OWID_WRL~CHN~RUS~USA~GBR
Edit2: Income inequality was drastically reduced after the communist parties came to power: https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/14o601y/oc_how_well_the_richest_top_1_have_been_doing_the/
Edit2: Income inequality was drastically reduced after the communist parties came to power:
Are you talking about the 10-15 years after the revolutions? That chart shows that today China has income inequality similar to that of pre-1900 China, and higher income inequality than France, Sweden, and the UK. Even more interesting, the US only has 3% more income share going to the 1% than China does.
Also “share of income going to the top 1%” doesn’t really tell the whole story. I think individual purchasing power would be a much more informative statistic.
For china i am talking until mao died in 1976. For russia income inequality was low until 1991 when the communist party gave up power.
But that first graph pretty much proves my point?
Industrialization does not magically happen. There need to be active policies done to make it happen like tariffs on manufactured goods or state ownership or subsidies for manufacturing etc. . Those policies have not been done enough in todays 3rd world countries and they were done in russia and china when they were backward and they went from backward countries to industrialized countries while having low wealth and income inequality.
Edit: Yes it proves your point but also my point.
no, the industrialization didn’t depend on the type of governing body; only resources, opportunities, and localized wealth.
and russia and china didnt have this(only resources, opportunities, and localized wealth.) until the communist parties came to power?
they had this before and during communist parties. They had all 3, but opportunity and resources are time variables which was more governed (pun intended) by the rapid spread of industrialism itself.
why did it spread to south korea only in 1960? and not earlier? Why has it still not spread to africa and india today?
adding to this line of thought:
this is why some marxists idealized revolutionary socialism being conducted in already industrialized countries, not necessarily the undeveloped ones it ended up taking root in.
Capitalism has sabotaged and killed leaders of nations that tried to do better by their people to keep capital markets open for exploitation.
Our species grew/metastasized recklessly and without any consideration for equilibrium/homeostasis with the ONLY naturally hospitable habitat that our species will ever know.
How right you are, comrade Smith
We like to believe the truth about us is inspirational and uplifting. We kind of need to. That doesn’t make it true. Smith/the Wachowskis had our number in that monologue(and also in their Second Renaissance anime prequel about the war between humans and AI, humans do everything you’d expect, we weren’t the good guys). We don’t care about this world. We don’t care about the other species on it. We don’t even generally care about one another in anything more than empty feel good platitudes.
We just tend to want moooaaaar for ourselves in practice
There’s been a bunch of cultures that refute that idea, but they have a hard time fighting off moooaaaar types of cultures. Humans can be almost anything. Good or bad
“The Great Leap forward never happened”/s
I have not said it didnt happen and it doesnt make those statements in the meme wrong.
But it does make them irrelevant
Above the world average after WW2 was easy to achieve for countries that had not been bombed to oblivion, and in the case of the USSR, that had basically conquered Eastern Europe
Life expectancy also rose like that in the entire eastern block: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Life_expectancy_in_Hungary.svg https://www.statista.com/statistics/1041400/life-expectancy-poland-all-time/ etc.
Edit: Why is this downvoted? Do you not believe the stats?
Edit2: If it is so easy why was India and Africa after WW2 still below the world avarage?
Because you’re arguing in bad faith
And the billionaire owned media(fox news etc.) is arguing in good faith regards to communism?
Edit: If i wanted to argue in bad faith i would not have posted any statistic.
Ur meme gives the impression that USSR and PRC communism is good for health. I’m raising a counterpoint while attempting to maintain the tone of the meme.
I was just saying it cause some people might think that it cant be true when the great leap forward happened.
Correlation does not equal causation…
First, Russia and China are not communist. They are both dictatorships. Medical advances in all first world countries is the reason for life expectancy to rise.
Africa and South America have been prevented from improving medical care which in combination with the above accounts for Russia and China rising above the average.
If India went the path of the chinese in 1955 instead of democratic capitalism i think they would have had the same results as China today. You could argue China has been also prevented from improving medical care until the communist party stopped letting it happen.
When you systematically purge the crippled sick and war veterans or starve out anyone old and inform or sickly and weak that seems to happen who would have guessed.
they would be included in the death rate and russia had a high one before it went to above the world avarage cause of ww2.
While the Soviet system had obvious problems, they’re often exaggerated in favor of both painting communism as an ultimate evil, and obfuscate what communism (and capitalism) ultimately is, so they can continue to propagate the “right wing = small government; left wing = big government” lie.
Communism and Capitalism both suck. Mutualism is way better.
You might want to check out Robert Wolf. He’s a big advocate for worker co-ops, which are a type of communism. Of the cooperative principles, #6 is cooperation between Co-ops. It doesn’t get much more mutualist than that.
Worker co-ops are a type of Socialism. Communism is specifically the movement towards a global Socialist Republic free of a State, Class, or Money.
Worker Co-ops are great, but retain the state and money, and alone can allow the resurgence of class.
Communism is literally workers owning the means of production.
Worker co-ops have the workers owning the means of production.
Richard Wolf is a professor of economics. He talks a lot about the different ways a state can be communist. I’d recommend checking him out. (Misspelled his name in the above comment)
The main way he advocates is with democracy at work.Socialism is Workers sharing ownership of the Means of Production. Communism is a post-Socialist society where the remaining contradictions within Socialism have been resolved.
I’m familiar with Richard Wolf, his work, and that he’s a Socialist. I agree, he’s a great intro to Socialism for many people, but he doesn’t really advocate much for Communism.
A state can be Communist in goal, sure, as in with a stated plan or goal to eventually reach Communism, but Communism can only exist globally once the international proletariat has successfully taken control of all Means of Production.
I suggest reading Critique of the Gotha Programme. It’s an important Marxist work that is helpful to understand Communism vs Socialism.
The statistic https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/life-expectancy?time=1870..latest&country=OWID_WRL~CHN~RUS
Edit: And Russia went to below the world avarage after the communist party gave up power in russia in 1991.
Is there a chart that shows various countries that industrialized by different means (communism vs capitalism vs democratic socialism etc)? That seems like a little more accurate comparison, as opposed to comparing it to the global average, and saying the difference is definitely communism as opposed to industrialization.
Also, Communist China is the only country that has a specific drop in life expectancy so dramatic that it shows up on the chart of global life expectancy and needs its own special label. I feel like stuff like that is pretty relevant too.
