marquis_de_bayonet [none/use name]

  • 9 Posts
  • 39 Comments
Joined 4 years ago
Cake day: July 30th, 2020
  • marquis_de_bayonet [none/use name]toMain•Effortpost - /u/hongtuzi - What do you think when people say that communism doesn’t work?
    ·
    4 years ago

    (2/2)

    Ever since the financial crisis in 2008, the vast majority of capitalist countries on the planet have had absolutely no growth. They’ve been collectively frozen in time, so to speak, for more than a decade. The entire European Union has a smaller GDP today than it did in 2008.

    What about the great capitalist success in Japan? Japan has actually been frozen in time since 1995 with absolutely no growth. It is only further proof of the failures of capitalism.

    What was the second largest economy in the world in 1990?

    Eastern Europe arose from an incredibly poor place to the second largest economy in the world within only a few decades. What did the return of neoliberal capitalism do?

    THE ‘WASHINGTON CONSENSUS’, which for nearly a decade put the best face it could on Russia’s mis-transition, is showing signs of crumbling. It is now acknowledged that the Russian Federation’s post-communist depression was deep and painful, causing immense physical hardship and psychological stress. After reporting unemployment in the low single digits during the first half of the 1990s, it turns out that more than 17 million are seeking work or have left the labour force after years of discouragement…the physical hardships, social disruption and psychological distress associated with a 44% decline in Russia’s GNP caused millions of premature deaths, in addition to any adverse impact they may have had on fertility. The exercise reveals that there were 3.4 million Russian premature deaths in 1990–98 plausibly attributable to the travails of post-communism.
    — “Premature Deaths: Russia's Radical Economic Transition in Soviet Perspective”, Europe-Asia Studies

    Look at what the transition to capitalism did to eastern Europe.

    Russia did not even recover its 1991 GDP until 2013, and even then its economy has been stagnant ever since due to massive de-industrialization and also has had trouble growing since 2008.

    After the USSR dissolved, many of its factories were largely abandoned, Russians stopped buying Russian products and started buying western products. Western clothes, cars, etc. There is an interesting article 15 industrial wastelands in Russia that are truly apocalyptic (PHOTOS) that is just photos of abandoned industrial sites in Russia. 1 2 3 4 5

    Here is another article discussing The Deindustrialisation of Contemporary Russia.

    While it is true that the USSR had economic slowdown before the neoliberal policies destroyed the country, it is clear free market capitalism was not the solution to their problems. Meanwhile China did not implement neoliberal free-market policies but instead put its best Marxian economists to work, like Chinese economist Xue Muqiao and Su Shaozhi who also revisited other Marxian economists like Soviet economist Nikolai Bukharin to fix their economic system not from a neoliberal classical perspective, but from a Marxian perspective, and came to the conclusions of the socialist market economy, which I explain how they came to these conclusions in this answer. China is an economy dominated by public ownership and one of the most controlled markets in the world, where 50% of the entire labor force works in the public sector, which comprises most finance and heavy industry, alongside a private sector that is one of the most controlled in the world.

    It appears that the CPC’s integration policy towards private enterprises has effectively utilized both ‘top-down’ organizational infiltration and ‘bottom-up’ political integration. In doing so, the CPC maintains its control over private enterprises. Not only does it consolidate the governing legitimacy of the Party, it also enables private businesses to fulfil its social function. The policy helps the Party successfully prevent the formation of non-institutionalized powers outside the system.
    — “The Chinese Communist Party’s integration policy towards private business and its effectiveness: An analysis of the Ninth National Survey of Chinese Private Enterprises”, Chinese Journal of Sociology

    The capitalist road was tried and found wanting. Reformism, liberalism, social Darwinism, anarchism, pragmatism, populism, syndicalism—they all were given their moment on the stage. They all failed to solve the problems of China’s future destiny. It is Marxism-Leninism and Mao Zedong Thought that guided the Chinese people out of the darkness of that long night and established a New China; it is through socialism with Chinese characteristics that China has developed so quickly. — Xi Jinping

    In response to China’s successful socialist market economy model, which both allowed China to negate the problems of capitalism and the problems the USSR’s economy was facing, Vietnam adopted a similar model they call the socialist-oriented market economy.

    You want to talk about how great first-world capitalist countries are doing, let’s just compare the response they had to COVID between the US and Vietnam and China. Compare the numbers.

    China's successful control of COVID-19

    U.S. Image Plummets Internationally as Most Say Country Has Handled Coronavirus Badly

    The only Asian economy besides China, Vietnam, is set for growth this year, and its GDP just rose 2.6%

    3 Months Of Hell: U.S. Economy Drops 32.9% In Worst GDP Report Ever

    The claim that capitalism is the best model when it is failing even first-world countries now is just funny to me. I don’t know if you realized, but the US isn’t even top anymore. China is.

    The fact is liberal economics is a failure for everyone. Marxian economics provides the way out for poor countries. The west at this rate is going to fall behind the east if they do not reform. Labor productivity growth is grinding to a halt, which is something Marxian economics predicts will eventually happen in any capitalist economy.

    The problem has gotten so bad that the GDP per capita of much of Europe and even the US is predicted to decline if there is nothing done about it.

    Something needs to be done about it. The solution is not to worship the markets and hope they will solve it on their own. The era of free market anarchy solving all your problems is long gone. While capitalism is failing all around the world, socialism has consistently been succeeding.

    In 30 of 36 comparisons between countries at similar levels of economic development, socialist countries showed more favorable [physical quality of life] outcomes...The data indicated that the socialist countries generally have achieved better [physical quality of life] outcomes than the capitalist countries at equivalent levels of economic development.
    — “Capitalism, Socialism, and the Physical Quality of Life”, International Journal of Health Services