Capitalism was most responsible for underdeveloping the global south. Europeans genocided the indigenous Americans and needed a large supply of labor, so they used their (at the time) minor technological advantage to trade high-demand commodities exclusively for slaves in Africa. This depressed African development and skyrocketed European development, and this expanded in colonialism.
Capitalism was progressive as compared with feudalism, yes, but it’s been socialist economies that have been most responsible of eradicating poverty. If you remove socialist countries, poverty has gone up in the last century.
I fully agree with the first part. Countries with already developed industry and trade got the boost, and that’s the major reason for the large difference in development between Underdeveloped and Developed nations.
If you remove socialist countries, poverty has gone up in the last century
I don’t get it. Remove in what way? Too vague to carry any meaning.
If you mean their political, economic, and ideological impact on surrounding nations then yeah, obviously. But the socialist countries themselves had to adopt some form of capitalism to continue to grow economically (see: china). The countries that didn’t move away from central planning eventually collapsed (eg. USSR*).
*I understand how the cause of the USSR’s collapse is not soley the inefficiency of central planning, but even if the country was allowed to continue unimpeded, it would have collapsed because of that one reason.
There’s several misconceptions here, but I’ll get to them after addressing the poverty point. When I said “when we remove socialist countries,” I mean the absolute poverty worldwide has primarily gone down when you include socialist countries in that statistic, if you only include capitalist countries then poverty goes up as compared to the total number, because poverty isn’t systematically targeted for alleviation in capitalism but instead is a requirement for it to function. That’s not vague, it’s clear-cut.
Onto the misconceptions. Markets and private property are not themselves capitalism. What distinguishes capitalism as a system from socialism as a system is whether private ownership or public ownership is principle, ie covers the large firms and key industries at a minimum. The USSR had some small degree of private property, and so did China even under Mao and later the Gang of Four. China opened up their capital markets to foreign investment while maintaining control of the large firms and key industries, and rely heavily on central planning to direct the economy. They are in the earlier stages of socialism, as shown here:
The reason for adopting controlled markets for the smaller and medium firms is because that form of ownership better suited China’s level of development. Public ownership works more effectively at higher levels of development, so it’s like a controlled fire for heat before replacing with an electric system when the tech advances. Out of control, the fire can be destructive, but by maintaining control of the large firms and key industries you maintain control over the rest of production.
As for central planning, that’s not why the USSR dissolved, and was actually one of its greatest strengths. The economy grew rapidly and consistently throughout the USSR’s existence:
Instead, what happened is that reforms such as those under Gorbachev created economic and political division against central planning, as well as problems such as nationalism in some of the SSRs and SFSRs, as well as the fact that the USSR had to dedicate tons of resources and production to maintaining millitary parity with the US Empire despite also needing to recover from the devastation of World War II.
There’s absolutely no basis for the idea that central planning induces collapse, China relies on it heavily as do other socialist countries like Cuba, and even megacorporations these days rely more on internal planning and minor cyberbetics than price signals as was traditional for earlier capitalism.
Capitalism was most responsible for underdeveloping the global south. Europeans genocided the indigenous Americans and needed a large supply of labor, so they used their (at the time) minor technological advantage to trade high-demand commodities exclusively for slaves in Africa. This depressed African development and skyrocketed European development, and this expanded in colonialism.
Capitalism was progressive as compared with feudalism, yes, but it’s been socialist economies that have been most responsible of eradicating poverty. If you remove socialist countries, poverty has gone up in the last century.
I fully agree with the first part. Countries with already developed industry and trade got the boost, and that’s the major reason for the large difference in development between Underdeveloped and Developed nations.
I don’t get it. Remove in what way? Too vague to carry any meaning.
If you mean their political, economic, and ideological impact on surrounding nations then yeah, obviously. But the socialist countries themselves had to adopt some form of capitalism to continue to grow economically (see: china). The countries that didn’t move away from central planning eventually collapsed (eg. USSR*).
*I understand how the cause of the USSR’s collapse is not soley the inefficiency of central planning, but even if the country was allowed to continue unimpeded, it would have collapsed because of that one reason.
There’s several misconceptions here, but I’ll get to them after addressing the poverty point. When I said “when we remove socialist countries,” I mean the absolute poverty worldwide has primarily gone down when you include socialist countries in that statistic, if you only include capitalist countries then poverty goes up as compared to the total number, because poverty isn’t systematically targeted for alleviation in capitalism but instead is a requirement for it to function. That’s not vague, it’s clear-cut.
Onto the misconceptions. Markets and private property are not themselves capitalism. What distinguishes capitalism as a system from socialism as a system is whether private ownership or public ownership is principle, ie covers the large firms and key industries at a minimum. The USSR had some small degree of private property, and so did China even under Mao and later the Gang of Four. China opened up their capital markets to foreign investment while maintaining control of the large firms and key industries, and rely heavily on central planning to direct the economy. They are in the earlier stages of socialism, as shown here:
The reason for adopting controlled markets for the smaller and medium firms is because that form of ownership better suited China’s level of development. Public ownership works more effectively at higher levels of development, so it’s like a controlled fire for heat before replacing with an electric system when the tech advances. Out of control, the fire can be destructive, but by maintaining control of the large firms and key industries you maintain control over the rest of production.
As for central planning, that’s not why the USSR dissolved, and was actually one of its greatest strengths. The economy grew rapidly and consistently throughout the USSR’s existence:
Instead, what happened is that reforms such as those under Gorbachev created economic and political division against central planning, as well as problems such as nationalism in some of the SSRs and SFSRs, as well as the fact that the USSR had to dedicate tons of resources and production to maintaining millitary parity with the US Empire despite also needing to recover from the devastation of World War II.
There’s absolutely no basis for the idea that central planning induces collapse, China relies on it heavily as do other socialist countries like Cuba, and even megacorporations these days rely more on internal planning and minor cyberbetics than price signals as was traditional for earlier capitalism.