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Should we attribute the massive increases in life expectancy that have occurred both in socialist and capitalist countries to their economic system (which is clearly ideological), or to technology and industrialization (more non-ideological)? 1/x
There is no question that industrialization, which raises a country’s income (as measured by real per capita GDP) is positively correlated with increases in life expectancy. So is it the latter?
This would be an answer that is correct on the face of it, but incorrect in the essence, a bit like saying the reason people starve is that they don’t have food.
On the one hand, who can deny it? On the other hand, it leaves unanswered (and unasked) the question of WHY they don’t have food
Industrialization means the development of the ‘productive forces’ in society, generally beginning with simple manufacturing (the classic e.g. would be textiles, the industry in which the first industrialization in England occurred),
and moving on to agriculture and more complex forms of manufacturing (e.g. machine tools, cars, electronics), as a country moves up the ‘value chain’ to higher value output
This is a pattern we see repeated in countries that industrialize later, but there is no guarantee that a country moves up the chain; it might face obstacles which prevent it from doing so
Because Marxists have recognized from the very beginning that industrialization is both vital & a continuing process, great emphasis has been placed on industrial dvlpmt in all socialist states (the only exception is the Khmer Rouge, an outlier for other reasons)
Here are some quotes from the Communist Manifesto to establish the importance of industrialization
Does this philosophical commitment to industrialization match the history of actually existing socialist countries? Yes, absolutely it does.
The Soviet Union made industrialization its top priority, and hence it industrialized faster than nearly any other nation in history, particularly when its unique challenges are taken into account
(early invasion by 13 capitalist nations, making a civil war far more devastating, WW2, then the Cold War); China has industrialized even more rapidly.
Both countries show the movement up the value chain, and both countries show the enormous challenges of industrialization, and how a country may, if it is not careful, stagnate in its development, either due to internal or external forces
But how does this relate to the question of human development? Economic development, after all, is useless if it doesn’t actually make peoples’ lives better.
In that regard, socialism has been massively successful.
In that regard, socialism has been massively successful.
Socialism has improved peoples’ lives by every conceivable measure, because socialism involves a conscious planning process for the economy.
Though it is true that making a plan is not enough to ensure the plan succeeds, not making a plan is hardly a guarantee of success, and indeed, generally makes success far less likely.
Socialist states such as the USSR and China make the improvement of the average person’s life a high priority. We see this is the massive investments made in the USSR in health, for example.
The health infrastructure under Tsarist Russia was undeveloped, and large parts of the countryside lacked access to medicine. The USSR changed this, making healthcare free and pouring resources into building hospitals and training doctors (including 100,000 women doctors,
a first for a time when in most capitalist countries women could not vote or own property). Is it any wonder that the country was able to produce one of the most rapid and dramatic increases in life expectancy ever seen? https://www.statista.com/statistics/1041395/life-expectancy-russia-all-time/
But of course life expectancy isn’t the end of it; there were massive reductions in infant mortality (of course these two statistics are highly related, as it is typically high infant mortality that makes life expectancy fall to low levels)
There were increases in nutrition and caloric intake, leading to increases in average height; the Soviets made college free (in fact they paid you to go to college, something we could stand to learn from in the US)
and poured resources into education, basically eliminating illiteracy in a country that had a low literacy rate under the Tsar. The Soviets abolished homelessness, as well as ending the periodic famines that had led to episodes of starvation among the peasantry for a thousand yrs
Here are some studies to support my points: https://www.jstor.org/stable/45131072
https://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/pdfplus/10.2105/AJPH.76.6.661
https://www.jstor.org/stable/25654070?seq=1
https://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/pdfplus/10.2105/AJPH.76.6.661
https://www.jstor.org/stable/25654070?seq=1
I find it ironic the charge that I hear from anti-communists, that socialist states ‘don’t care about people’. https://twitter.com/asatarbair/status/1356751003077406720
First, such a charge is unscientific -- a non-sentient system such an economy cannot ‘care’ or ‘not care’ for people -- second, if the policies of socialism weren’t motivated by caring for people, how does that even matter?
You can’t argue with the results (unless of course you are ignorant of the results, as far too many are)
Socialism has improved peoples’ material conditions of life by every conceivable measure known to social science
Yet the irony is that, due to US propaganda, we see socialism as a system that leads to poverty and starvation
Yet the irony is that, due to US propaganda, we see socialism as a system that leads to poverty and starvation
To say that you see no difference between an increase in life expectancy under capitalism and an increase in life expectancy under socialism is to deny the very different forces that produce these results, which appear in many other areas, as I mentioned above.
Socialism is focused on improving peoples’ lives first and foremost, and economic development is a tool toward that end. Capitalism is focused on profit, and improvements in the lives of workers, to the extent that they occur, are incidental.
Great if they happen, but no big deal if they don’t. That is why you have over 500,000 homeless people in the US https://endhomelessness.org/homelessness-in-america/homelessness-statistics/state-of-homelessness-report-legacy/
That is why 50 million people in the US (including 17 mil children) go hungry or face food insecurity at any given time, despite the great wealth in the US as a whole https://www.feedingamerica.org/hunger-in-america
That is also why medical bankruptcy is the single largest cause of bankruptcy, and that about 30 mil people lack health insurance in the US https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_insurance_coverage_in_the_United_States
Consider that 9 million people starve to death each year despite a global food surplus, because they cannot afford food https://www.worldhunger.org/world-hunger-and-poverty-facts-and-statistics/
As Engels points out in the Principles of Communism, slaves typically do not starve because it would be against their master’s interests for them to perish.
Would a sensible conclusion then be, in order to end starvation globally, we must enslave everyone?
That would be the kind of conclusion one might arrive at by saying improvements in life expectancy are due to ‘industrialization’ without considering the ideology that motivates it and the broader social and historical context out of which these statistics arise
