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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.
I am not justifying anything. I am just describing one use of the word "communist country". In the dictionary you will often see many uses listed of a word. And that was the use of the western media. The actual communists had a different use of the word. But most people, who dont read deep into communist ideology, are more used to the use of the western media thats why i used it that way in this thread.
What is a core ideology of communism is socialism. Understood as seizing most of the means of production from capitalists. And the MLs interpreted that as nationalizing most of it and using it as vanguards for the benefit of the working class. Thats were the more than 60% of employees working for the state comes from.
This, this is the height of something. That's for sure. An ML trying to gaslight a communist about what a communist nation is. Using US Government misinformation/propaganda.
ML are not communist. Marxist leninism was designed and intended as a stopgap. To industrialize Russia and bring it to a point where then magically through some mechanism they never managed to figure out. It would switch over to a communist structure.
Just because some authoritarian or dictatorial structure nationalizes all major industry in a country. Does not make it communist. Just because something has been nationalized does not mean it belongs to the people.
What really matters is that it is clear what MLs want and what anarchocommunists want and that it is clear what they mean when they use the words "communism" and "socialism". And if what anarchocommunists mean with "communism" is real communism and what MLs mean is fake communism then so be it. Thats something i dont care about. I was not trying to gaslight you.
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?
I think there is a lot more going on in those regions than I can account for their lack of industrialism. short answer is I don't know.
longer response is the whole opportunities, resource triad thing can be broken by cultural and other barriers. let's use Amish folks as that example.
the Koreas had a slightly isolationist time during the broader revolutions and since have different outside influences so they have different periods of growth.
Can culture get changed through policy? I think so. The soviet union was very heavily isolationist and still industrialized cause it was in their central plan to do it.
Edit: if you look at the export and import to gdp ratios https://www.reddit.com/user/nerbert123/comments/1czws2d/soviet_union_statistics/#lightbox
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.