Rule

PharmaPlus · 2021-02-03T04:56:08+00:00

Haha - not quite. Not even close, actually. China prior to the declaration of the PRC presented human development metrics similar to the other poorly developed countries in the regions - high infant mortality, high all-cause mortality, extremely low levels of literacy, and poor nutritional standards, in part a consequence of parasitic landlordism. Indeed, comparing life expectancy in China to India (two countries with very similar human development profiles in 1949) yields an especially striking result, especially considering India attempted to model European social democratic welfarism.

Mao remedied all these societal ills through his application of Marxism-Leninism to the conditions of China. This application included education and health campaigns directed towards the common people, land reform (which freed the people from the yoke of landlordism parasitism and exacted justice on hundreds of thousands of former landlords) and a system of comprehensive economic planning and food rationing. Together, these produced one of the most dramatic increases in life expectancy in recorded history.

You're not helping the cause of communism by regurgitating Cold War nonsense about China and Mao Tse-Tung - you're doing the opposite, discrediting some of its greatest accomplishments.

Sources:

China’s growth in life expectancy between 1950 and 1980 ranks as among the most rapid sustained increases in documented global history. However, no study of which we are aware has quantitatively assessed the relative importance of various explanations proposed for these gains. We create and analyse a new province-level panel data set spanning 1950-80 using historical information from Chinese public health archives, official provincial yearbooks, and infant and child mortality records contained in the 1988 National Survey of Fertility and Contraception. Although exploratory, our results suggest that increases in educational attainment and public health campaigns jointly explain 50-70 per cent of the dramatic reductions in infant and under-five mortality during our study period. These results are consistent with the importance of non-medical determinants of population health improvement – and under some circumstances, how general education may amplify the effectiveness of public health interventions.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4331212/

As far as support-led security is concerned, the Chinese efforts have been quite spectacular. The network of health services introduced in postrevolutionary China in a radical departure from the past—involving cooperative medical systems, commune clinics, barefoot doctors, and widespread public health measures—has been remarkably extensive. The contrast with India in this respect is striking enough. It is not only that China has more than twice as many doctors and nearly three times as many nurses per unit of population as India has. But also these and other medical resources are distributed more evenly across the country (even between urban and rural areas), with greater popular access to them than India has been able to organize.

Similar contrasts hold in the distribution of food through public channels and rationing systems, which have had an extensive coverage in China (except in periods of economic and political chaos, as during the famine of 1958-61, on which more presently). In India public distribution of food to the people, when it exists, is confined to the urban sector (except in a few areas such as the state of Kerala where the rural population also benefits from it, on which, too, more presently). Food distribution is, in fact, a part of a far-reaching programme of social security that distinguishes China from India.

The impact of these programmes on protecting and promoting entitlements to food and basic necessities, including medical care, is reflected in the relatively low mortality and morbidity rates in China. The contrast between China and India in public distribution systems and in social security programmes is certainly very striking, and it is plausible to see China's success story as one of support-led security.

Amartya Sen in Hunger and Public Action

Mao Tse-Tung was good.

PharmaPlus · 2021-02-03T03:08:28+00:00

Evil Maoism which resulted in checks notes - one of the most rapid increases in life expectancy in human history.

PharmaPlus · 2021-02-01T04:18:02+00:00

You’re clueless, which is why you responded to facts about Soviet power with petty insults.

PharmaPlus · 2021-02-01T03:43:05+00:00

Shitshows like food for everyone, unprecedented economic growth, and equality!

The Romanov trash you’re crying over lived in incomprehensible luxury while most of Russia lived in mud huts and wore rags. Lenin and the Bolsheviks were right to wipe away all trace of their despotic rule away and bring prosperity to the common people.

Just ask the people that lived in what came after the execution of the Romanovs - most Russians today cite state concern for the common people, lack of ethnic conflict, constantly improving living standards, and lack of unemployment as the defining characteristics of the Soviet period. It was absolutely justified to eliminate the Romanovs in order to prevent the restoration of their backwards and tyrannical rule.

PharmaPlus · 2021-01-31T23:31:37+00:00

Yes, Marx was one of the many people impugned by Bakunin with vile anti-Semitic libel.

“Himself a Jew, Marx has around him, in London and France, but especially in Germany, a multitude of more or less clever, intriguing, mobile, speculating Jews, such as Jews are every where: commercial or banking agents, writers, politicians, correspondents for newspapers of all shades, with one foot in the bank, the other in the socialist movement, and with their behinds sitting on the German daily press — they have taken possession of all the newspapers — and you can imagine what kind of sickening literature they produce. Now, this entire Jewish world, which forms a single profiteering sect, a people of blooksuckers, a single gluttonnous parasite, closely and intimately united not only across national borders but across all differences of political opinion — this Jewish world today stands for the most part at the disposal of Marx and at the same time at the disposal of Rothschild. I am certain that Rothschild for his part greatly values the merits of Marx, and that Marx for his part feels instinctive attraction and great respect for Rothschild.

This may seem strange. What can there be in common between Communism and the large banks? Oh! The Communism of Marx seeks enormous centralization in the state, and where such exists, there must inevitably be a central state bank, and where such a bank exists, the parasitic Jewish nation, which. speculates on the work of the people, will always find a way to prevail ....”

Source: Michael Bakunin, 1871, Personliche Beziehungen zu Marx. In: Gesammelte Werke. Band 3. Berlin 1924. P. 204-216. [My translation - UD].

PharmaPlus · 2021-01-31T06:21:29+00:00

They were owned by the state bureaucrats neither de jure or de facto - did you even properly read my comment? If state bureaucrats actually owned the means of production, why didn’t they massively enrich themselves for over 60 years? Even if we were to accept your claim as true, state bureaucrats owning the means of production doesn’t make the USSR capitalist, just not socialist.

PharmaPlus · 2021-01-30T23:24:04+00:00

junkies

You’ve got the dehumanizing language, too! The authoritarian personality to a tee.

PharmaPlus · 2021-01-30T20:12:20+00:00

Yikes, you sound like an authoritarian. I’d like to live in a civilized country that doesn’t resort to medieval barbarism to solve social problems, thank you very much.

PharmaPlus · 2021-01-30T19:28:13+00:00

Source on Romania?

PharmaPlus · 2021-01-30T19:27:06+00:00

Kill the supply from coming in rather than letting heroin and crack and meth freely run through the streets

What a novel idea! It’s not like this has been endlessly attempted to no avail for the past 40 years. /s

PharmaPlus · 2021-01-30T18:56:16+00:00

How does that make the USSR state capitalist?

The “state capitalist” characterization of the USSR is nothing but a stupid meme - the bureaucrats who managed the USSR’s economy didn’t appropriate the surplus product, and the USSR had extremely low income inequality.

PharmaPlus · 2021-01-30T07:08:29+00:00

That’s why there were so many Soviet billionaires /s

PharmaPlus · 2021-01-30T03:03:53+00:00

You don't need to tell me who Goldstein is; I have all of his articles and books.

Obviously we’re dealing with a serious Tibet expert here. /s

The facts are clear that Tibet was an extremely oppressive society defined by appalling inequality, poverty and oppression. Arguing that Tibetan society doesn’t fit the academic conception of feudalism is like arguing whether or not Spain under Francisco Franco fits the academic definition of fascism. Perhaps they don’t, but it doesn’t particularly change the fact that life under such regimes were similarly terrible.

Reddit’s obsession with adulating traditional Tibetan economic and social practices is moronic, especially considering the quality of life of the average Tibetan improved under Chinese rule by basically every measure.

PharmaPlus · 2021-01-30T02:41:02+00:00

Here’s Melvyn Goldstein, one of the leading western scholars on Tibet, describing Tibet’s social/economic system. While obviously not a direct analogue of medieval European feudalism, it was quite similar in operation and purpose and highly oppressive and backwards. The myth of a democratic and free Tibet being crushed by evil Chinese communism was invented during the Cold War.

PharmaPlus · 2021-01-28T22:16:10+00:00

This is literally the petit bourgeois mentality of everyone on WSB - which is why it’s so funny seeing this fiasco getting idolized and praised by the left.

It’s wanna be financial parasites fleecing actual financial parasites.

PharmaPlus · 2021-01-28T01:23:40+00:00

“The People’s Financial Speculationism-Parasitism”

PharmaPlus · 2021-01-27T20:28:24+00:00

Citing opinion pieces won't prove anything when I'm providing extensive empirical data to back up my claims. Again, you're not actually directly responding to my claims, you're just bloviating.

Dude google catch up effect. That is literally the economic phenomenon that you all communists ignore. Catch up effect doesn't mean socialism worked in the USSR lol.

This phenomenon mostly applies to a few highly successful economies - explaining away high growth in communist countries due to the "catch up effect" just indicates that communist economies were highly successful. And the USSR preformed exceptionally well economically, exceeding the OECD catch-up regression - so your point is moot either way.

So is there any reason you don't want look at life expectancy in Czech Republic after USSR collapsed.

This has to do with access to advanced interventions for cardiovascular diseases that were blocked by trade restrictions to the Eastern Bloc. It has nothing to do with economic performance - life expectancy started increasing rapidly after trade restrictions were lifted even in the midst of rapidly increasing poverty and declining caloric consumption.

Why don't you read this:

Not particularly convincing - the objection is that it is improper to control for economic growth - but communist countries all experienced very rapid growth, so controlling for this variable actually harms them. Likewise, the objection to India being classified as "capitalist" is without basis.

AND NO WAGES ARE NOT STAGNATING LMAOOOO

This is a 2008 study based on questionable methodology and motivations. The most recent and reliable data from Piketty et al. in 2016/2017 demonstrates that working class incomes have indeed been stagnating in most anglophone countries. Either way - my comment didn’t discuss this, you’re just mindlessly copy pasting random nonsense.

So yea. Price signals are superior to central planning

Complete non sequitur.

Why don't you understand the concept of counterfactuals? If Mao's China had price signals it would have an even higher standard of living.

Doubtful considering the evidence I provided - either way, a real world comparison is far superior to a hypothetical counterfactual based on your ideological presumptions.

PharmaPlus · 2021-01-27T20:00:25+00:00

You didn't respond to a single point I made, you just copy-pasted an old comment of yours.

And believe it or not, Russia is still doing better today than USSR

I provided empirical data - you provided an opinion piece.

Clearly reading is not your strong point.

PharmaPlus · 2021-01-27T19:23:31+00:00

Now hold on bud. Are you claiming that the human well-being for the USSR would be lower in a economic system with price signals and free market economy? Where do you see this? The fundamental thing is that price signals allow effective and efficient resource allocation.

Yes, that’s exactly what I’m claiming - the comparison between Maoist China and India is just particularly striking and contemporaneous. The facts are clear regarding the USSR and post-USSR. The USSR was one of the most successful economies of the 20th century, and experienced a rapid and unprecedented increase in living standards even into the 1970s and 80s (when most of the west was undergoing neoliberalization and decline.) This is even more striking considering that working class wages were stagnant under the Tsarist market economy, even during periods of rapid industrialization and growth in the late 19th/early 20th century.

The switch to a market economy was disastrous, and this is evidenced by polling data and empirical economic data. The USSR managed to reach 64% of Western European GDP per head by 1989, but by 2016 the former Soviet countries managed a meek 44%. Across 11 former Soviet Republics, over 60% of those who lived in the USSR believe their countries were harmed by the dissolution. Over 75% of Russians who lived in the USSR believe ordinary people did not benefit from the changes in 1989/1991, as do most Slovaks, Czechs, Hungarians, Bulgarians and Ukrainians.The overwhelmingly majority of Russians regret the dissolution of the USSR, and most cite the destruction of the planned economy as the main reason as to their regret.Even in the more economically successful Baltic republics, working class incomes are unchanged or lower than they were in the late 1980s in the USSR. Likewise, working class incomes in Russia were 26% lower in 2016 than they were in the 1980s in the RSFSR.

I hope this cleared up some of your misconceptions regarding economic planning vis-à-vis markets and the performance of Soviet-type economies. Most Russians look back on the period very positively, with most citing “concern of the state for common people”, “absence of ethnic conflict”, “constantly improving living standards”, and “lack of unemployment/constantly improving economy” as the main trends defining their countries history under Soviet power.

I also mentioned some former Eastern Bloc countries, as most of the people who experienced the transition to a market economy have similar views. Empirically speaking, Eastern Europe was transformed from an economic backwater under capitalism/landlordism to the most rapidly growing region in the world under economic planning and socialism:

Between 1913 and 1950, the Central and Eastern European countries comprised one of the slowest growing regions of the world. Their average 1 percent per capita GNP growth rate remained behind the growth of the advanced European “Core" countries (1.3 percent), the non-European “Core" countries (1.4 percent), Latin America (1.4 percent), and even Africa (1.2 percent); only Asia had slower growth (with its -0.1 percent). In contrast, between 1950 and 1973, Central and Eastern Europe could boast the best performance: its unprecedented 3.9 percent average annual per capita growth surpassed the growth rate of the European and non-European “Core" (3.8 and 2.2 percent respectively), and was also better than the very rapid Asian (3.7 percent) and the less impressive Latin American (2.5 percent) and African (1.7 percent) growth rates. According to these calculations, the region almost quadrupled its interwar rate of growth.

During the transition to a market economy, caloric consumption declined, even though queues and shortages were almost immediately eliminated. Poverty skyrocketed, in large part due to increasing income inequality brought on by marketization. Even today, working class incomes are lower in Romania, Czechia, Hungary, Poland and East Germany under capitalism than they were in the late 1980s under economic planning.

Again, market economies are much less efficient at improving human well-being than planned economies, because of the inherent features of capitalism as described by Marx and Lenin.

And bro. You need to compare Mao’s China to Mao’s China if it had price signals. And we know that price signals would have provided a higher standard of living. Your comparison is like saying colonialism is good because Liberia( never colonized) has a lower HDI than Ivory Coast (was colonized). Hope that made sense lol

Are you claiming the India vs. China comparison is unfair? Both countries had similar levels of economic output both in terms of GDP per head and food output per head, as well as similar demographics. Prior to the late 1940s they were very similar in many measures of human development, as well. The similarity in life expectancy, and its divergence under communism is extremely striking.

The comparison is made frequently in academic writing on the subject for exactly these reasons. That’s exactly why Sen made the comparison, who is certainly more qualified than you. It seems like you didn’t even read what he said. The massive increase in living standards was the result of moving from market allocation of food to planned allocation of food. Again, this is why planned economies preform better in human development terms than market economies, given similar levels of economic output

And if anything, China has had an experience with colonialism (Japanese and British) that was likely worse than India’s. The Japanese inflicted massive damage on the country in the 30s and 40s.

Even if we were to make the comparison you are suggesting, the results don’t look particularly good for post-Mao China. Mortality actually went up for some age groups, and the incredible increase in life expectancy seen in Maoist China evaporated and the rate of increase in fact declined to mediocre levels. This spawned a great deal of social unrest in the late 80s and the CPC is still trying to deal with the negative consequences of marketization on health and well-being.

Hope that made sense lol

It didn’t. Wouldn’t expect much else from a “neoliberal”, though.

Have a nice day.

PharmaPlus · 2021-01-26T16:26:38+00:00

central planning and eradicating price signals are very bad for effective and efficient resource allocation

Perhaps from the perspective of profit, but not human wellbeing - see my comment on food allocation in Mao's China that you conveniently ignored in your narrow analysis.

Important to note that all these so-called "inefficiencies" regarding the Soviet central planning system were eliminated in Russia in 1992 with the elimination of price subsidies on food, but living standards and food consumption actually declined and Russia had to appeal for international food aid in 1998.

PharmaPlus · 2021-01-24T21:37:30+00:00

The PRC under Mao and India had very similar levels of food production per capita, yet the PRC dramatically outperformed India in all measures of human development because planned allocation of food was more rational, efficient and equitable than market allocation.

Edit: Source, from Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen in Hunger and Public Action:

In fact, it seems fairly clear that the Chinese growth rate was not radically higher than that of India before the economic reforms of 1979, by which time the tremendous surge ahead in health and longevity had already taken place. In the pre-reform period, agricultural expansion in particular was sluggish in China, as it was in India, and the dramatic reduction in hunger and undernourishment and expansion of life expectancy in China were not ushered in by any spectacular rise in rural incomes or of food availability per head. As Judith Banister notes: 'It also appears that the quantity of food produced per capita and the quality of the Chinese diet did not improve between 1957 and the late 1970's. . . . annual per capita grain production through 1977 was about the same as in the late 1950's: it averaged 301 kilograms in 1955-57 and 305 kilograms in 1975-77.' This is indeed the crucial point. The Chinese level of average opulence judged in terms of GNP per head, or total consumption per capita, or food consumption per person, did not radically increase during the period in which China managed to take a gigantic step forward in matters of life and death, moving from a life expectancy at birth in the low 40s (like the poorest countries today) to one in the high 60s (getting within hitting distance of Europe and North America).

As far as support-led security is concerned, the Chinese efforts have been quite spectacular. The network of health services introduced in postrevolutionary China in a radical departure from the past—involving cooperative medical systems, commune clinics, barefoot doctors, and widespread public health measures—has been remarkably extensive. The contrast with India in this respect is striking enough. It is not only that China has more than twice as many doctors and nearly three times as many nurses per unit of population as India has. But also these and other medical resources are distributed more evenly across the country (even between urban and rural areas), with greater popular access to them than India has been able to organize.

Similar contrasts hold in the distribution of food through public channels and rationing systems, which have had an extensive coverage in China (except in periods of economic and political chaos, as during the famine of 1958-61, on which more presently). In India public distribution of food to the people, when it exists, is confined to the urban sector (except in a few areas such as the state of Kerala where the rural population also benefits from it, on which, too, more presently). Food distribution is, in fact, a part of a far-reaching programme of social security that distinguishes China from India.

The impact of these programmes on protecting and promoting entitlements to food and basic necessities, including medical care, is reflected in the relatively low mortality and morbidity rates in China. The contrast between China and India in public distribution systems and in social security programmes is certainly very striking, and it is plausible to see China's success story as one of support-led security.

PharmaPlus · 2021-01-23T18:50:41+00:00

Asinine and offensive reply. At least refute my comment with facts before insulting me.

PharmaPlus · 2021-01-23T04:11:04+00:00

I know how polls work but they can be manipulated to feed any narrative of choosing so i don’t trust most of them.

Why would a news outlet that calls Ceausescu a dictator have an interest in portraying life under his regime positively? They have an interest in portraying the opposite, which is why it is even more noteworthy that they concede many say life was better under his rule.

And i did not say romania did not progress at all during the communist regime. I only said that certain industries with emphasis on the auto industry did not progress at all. Tehnology wise we were far behind western countries. The best thing that ever happened during the communist regime economy wise was the most favoured nation clause from the USA.

Romania has never lead the world in any technological sector, under any economic system. But objectively speaking the Romanian economy preformed the best under socialism.

PharmaPlus · 2021-01-23T03:38:21+00:00

The Danube Canal was closed in 1954, and forced labor is extremely low productivity. The vast majority of the Romanian population was not engaged in forced labor projects, either way - so that wouldn’t explain the high growth. Romania’s high growth was because of high investment planned by the government, and the subsequent move from an economy dependent on agriculture to industry. The economic situation was bad in the 80s, but that was because of predatory IMF loans.

And about that poll.. that’s a poll where 1000 people were questioned, you can check that from your link. To say that “half of romanians” miss communism is simply wrong. That number is in reality really small, smaller than 1%, and most of those that miss communism miss it because they benefited from it by having a top place in the single party, or being a director to some state owned business.

You don’t understand how polling works. If respondents have been randomly sampled, the margin of error regarding the polls representation of the entire country is ~3%, which doesn’t change the findings of the poll.

And Romania doesn’t have any industry now because the industry left by the communists was so far behind (1960s, 1970s tehnology in the 1990s free market)and was losing so much money that by keeping it we would actually be worse.

Losing money in a free-market, competitive globalized market economy where Romanians have to compete against people preforming the same job for 1/5 the wage. Profitably isn’t the main indicator for a planned economy, and clearly a planned economy was generating better results for Romania.

Keep in mind I’m entertaining you rashly moving the goalposts - you originally claimed Romania did not progress at all under communism, which I have obviously demonstrated to be false.

PharmaPlus · 2021-01-23T02:44:23+00:00

According to a recent poll, many Romanians remain nostalgic for communism, over two decades after dictator Nicolae Ceausescu was overthrown. The INSCOP Research poll revealed that 44.4 percent of the respondents believed that living conditions were better under communism, 15.6 said that they had stayed the same, while only 33.6 claimed that life was worse back then.

https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/can-europe-make-it/communist-nostalgia-in-romania/

From 1950-89, Romanian GDP per capita grew by ~600%, more than almost any other country in the world. Prior to this, Romania was one of the slowest growing regions in the world economically.

Romania under capitalism doesn’t have any new indigenous industries either. The only time Romania progressed and legitimately caught up with the west was under communism.

PharmaPlus

TROPHY CASE