Comment on History Channel
anachrohack@lemmy.world 2 days agoNo. Capitalism is the primary engine for human development. Thanks to capitalism, fewer people now live in extreme poverty than don’t. This means that, starting in the 1970s and accelerating today, less than half the world (and the number continues to decrease) lives in extreme poverty.
Swedneck@discuss.tchncs.de 2 days ago
Keeponstalin@lemmy.world 2 days ago
If one starts from the assumption that extreme poverty is the natural state of humanity, then it may appear as good news that only a fraction of the global population lives in extreme poverty today. However, if extreme poverty is a sign of severe social dislocation, relatively rare under normal conditions, then it should concern us that - despite many instances of progress since the middle of the 20th century - such dislocation remains so prevalent under contemporary capitalism. Depending on the subsistence basket one uses to measure poverty, as of 2008, between 200 million and 1.21 billion people live in extreme poverty (Moatsos, 2017, Moatsos, 2021; see also our discussion in Appendix VI).18 While direct comparisons with the wage data are difficult because of the variety of baskets used, this suggests that under contemporary capitalism hundreds of millions of people currently live in conditions comparable to Europe during the Black Death (Figure 4, Figure 5), the catastrophes induced by the American genocides (Figure 7) and the slave trade (Figure 9), or famine-ravaged British India (Figure 11). To the extent there has been progress against extreme poverty in recent decades, it has generally been slow and shallow.
Conclusions
In sum, the narrative that the rise of capitalism drove progress against extreme poverty is not supported by empirical evidence. On the contrary, the rise of capitalism was associated with a notable decline in human welfare, a trend that was only reversed around the twentieth century, when radical and progressive social movements sought to gain some control over production and organize it more around meeting human needs. As for the condition of extreme poverty, it cannot legitimately be used as a benchmark for measuring progress. Extreme poverty is not a natural condition, but an effect of dispossession, enclosure, and exploitation. It need not exist anywhere, and certainly should not exist in any just and humane society. It can and must be abolished immediately. If our goal is to achieve substantive improvements in human welfare, progress should be measured against decent living standards and access to modern amenities. Capitalism currently shows no signs of ever meeting this objective, and imperialist dynamics in the world economy seem actively to prevent it. As we have seen, the historical record is clear that public planning and socialist policy can be effective at delivering rapid economic, technological, and social development. Rediscovering the power of this approach will be essential if Global South governments are to increase their economic sovereignty and mobilize production to ensure decent lives for all.48 Achieving this objective requires building political movements of the Southern working classes and peasantries powerful enough to replace governments that currently are captured by political factions aligned with national or international capital; reducing reliance on core creditors, currencies, and imports; and establishing South-South alliances capable of withstanding any retaliation. Progressive formations in the core should be prepared to support and defend these movements.
anachrohack@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Wow, it’s horrible that so many people live in extreme poverty. It’s also fantastic that most people on earth no longer live in extreme poverty, thanks to capitalism and free trade!
Keeponstalin@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Given these issues, it is clear that the standard public narrative about the history of extreme poverty needs reassessment. In this paper we assess this narrative against three indicators of welfare (real wages, human height, and mortality) for five world regions (Europe, Latin America, sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, and China) from roughly the 16th century onward. These datasets point to three conclusions:
First, it is unlikely that 90% of the global population lived in extreme poverty prior to the rise of capitalism. Historically, unskilled urban labourers in all regions tended to have wages high enough to support a family of four above the poverty line by working 250 days or 12 months a year. Extreme poverty seems to arise predominantly in periods of severe social and economic distress, like famines, wars and institutionalized dispossession, particularly under colonialism. Rather than being the natural condition of humanity, extreme poverty is a symptom of social dislocation and displacement. It is important to emphasize that the data here focuses on extreme poverty, as it is defined in the relevant literature, not the higher consumption thresholds that are required to achieve “decent living” today (e.g., Edward, 2006, Kikstra et al., 2021).
The second conclusion is that the rise of capitalism coincided with a deterioration in human welfare. In every region studied here, incorporation into the capitalist world-system was associated with a decline in wages to below subsistence, a deterioration in human stature, and a marked upturn in premature mortality. In parts of Latin America, sub-Saharan Africa, and South Asia, key welfare metrics have still not recovered.
Our third conclusion is that in those regions where progress has occurred (as opposed to recovery from an earlier period of immiseration), it began much later than the Ravallion/Pinker graph suggests. In the core regions of Northwest Europe, welfare standards began to improve in the 1880s, four centuries after the emergence of capitalism. In the periphery and semi-periphery, progress began in the mid-20th century. Further research is needed to establish the causal drivers of these improvements, but existing data indicates that progress was achieved with the rise of organized labour, the anti-colonial movement, and other progressive social movements, which organized production around meeting human needs, redistributed wealth, and invested in public provisioning systems
anachrohack@lemmy.world 1 day ago
To be frank, I don’t take anything economic commentary by “An Independent Socialist Magazine” seriously lol. Socialism has been so thoroughly discredited that anybody who willingly accepts such a label is inherently not a serious person
NotSteve_@lemmy.ca 2 days ago
What do you think most younger people not ever being able to afford their own property? Or the fact that grocery costs have been skyrocketing to unaffordable levels even if you make good money? All while billionaires are hoarding unfathomable amounts of wealth? Extreme poverty might not be as high globally but regular poverty is gaining traction at record speeds.
You might say that the inequality can be fixed with more regulations, but we started with more regulations (in Canada and the US at least) and they’ve been slowly torn apart by the wealthy over time. How do you guard against that when having vast wealth enables you to trick people into voting against their best interests?
I wouldn’t call myself a communist but capitalism ends in the extreme poverty that you say it solves.
anachrohack@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Housing prices are extremely expensive because of government intervention in the market. Local governments have artificially restricted the supply of new housing in order to intentionally make it more expensive. Unironically: the free market would make housing less expensive, like it did when our parents’ generation were buying houses.
Food inflation would not be solved by state intervention. I don’t think there’s any serious economist who will tell you that food inflation is caused by unfettered capitalism.
Wealth inequality is gaining traction. The standard of living of the average poor American is better today than it was in the 1960s. What has changed is how we feel about it. Wealth inequality makes us mad, but it has not resulted in worse overall living standards on an absolute scale.
I think we should solve specific problems. Some problems can be solved with more regulation (dismantling monopolies, safeguarding elections) and others can be solved by reducing regulation (taking away authority from local zoning boards, reducing the amount of legal hurdles for building public transportation).
But none of these problems are caused intrinsically by the existence of private property. Various European liberal democracies manage to provide high quality of life for their people without resorting to socialism
There is no evidence to support your claim. To the contrary, the evidence suggests that since 3rd world countries began liberalizing their markets from the 1970s/80s onward, it has resulted in huge increases in quality of life for their poorest citizens.
The same cannot be said of socialism, which experienced a worldwide delegitimization from the 70s onward as it collapsed under its own inherent contradictions and failed to provide for the people living under it.
denshirenji@lemmy.world 1 day ago
You should look into the Pinkerton’s and a lot of the horsecrap that was going on in the 1800s in a more purely capitalist system. There are systems that mix “socialism” with “capitalism” that work out pretty well. Socialist systems brought the broken capitalist systems out of the destitute poverty people were in, systems like Unions, New Deal policies and so many others. Regulation saved children’s lives in the early 20th century.
I agree that socialism has never worked, but neither has capitalism. It has ALWAYS been a mixed system that flourishes.
anachrohack@lemmy.world 1 day ago
I think you’re mixing terms. Capitalism is the private ownership of property. Socialism is the worker’s ownership of property; often managed by a state (which in theory should be run by the workers). None of the things you mentioned are examples of socialism.
sugarfoot00@lemmy.ca 1 day ago
How you can manage to speak with your head so far up your own ass is an amazing magic trick. Wealth has been decoupled from productivity for more than 50 years now. That’s just facts.
anachrohack@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Tell me why that’s a bad thing? Why should I care?