From now on, you’re the Hilarious Nonsense guy to me.
CapitalismScience has been the cause of the greatest reduction in poverty and decrease in mortality the world has ever seen.
FTFY
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I can confirm this from personal experience.
10 years ago I hoped to find some way to do some good in the world despite my disabilities. At that time I was too ill to do much, I had recently dropped out of a course because I was too exhausted to carry on (there were other reasons too, but they aren’t relevant). About five years later I finally felt strong enough to try another part time course, only now all the disability benefits and grants were being cut so I had no way of funding it.
I can only come to the conclusion that the Tories, Lib Dems, DUP and third way Labour MPs want me to sit at home doing nothing. Unfortunately for me I have never wanted that.
The next time the Sun/Daily Mail/Daily Express do a hate piece on disabled “scroungers” they might want to bear that in mind.
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Science. Sanitation, medicine, agriculture, industrialisation.
These are all requirements, but they’re not sufficient.
If they were then Communism wouldn’t have lead to widespread poverty and increased mortality (including infant mortality). There was some initial success in the European parts of the Soviet Union (which wasn’t hard seeing as they were transitioning from a quasi-feudal society, not a mercantile society like most of the rest of Europe and elsewhere), though this happened alongside genocidal famines which killed millions, and then things started trending back downwards after the 60s, and only started improving after the fall of Communism. In China it was a different story, they were one of the world’s most advanced economies prior to the rise of Communism, and things went downhill fast and only started to recover once they implemented their economic reforms in the late 70s.
The development of economies all across Europe and elsewhere backs this up as well, so it’s not just about Capitalism vs. Communism. Protectionism led to economic stagnation, poverty, mass emigration, and the following opening up of markets and the creation of a globalised free-market economy resulted in rapidly rising living standards. This is very easy to see, because it didn’t happen all at once (which might have indicated other factors as a cause), so you can see in one decade where one country implements reforms and succeeds, where it’s neighbours continue to stagnate until they eventually follow suit later on and they reap the same benefits, this pattern continues up until relatively recently with the re-integration of the former eastern block states into the EU (post communism it took time for them to fully implement the reforms).
Also, all of these aspects you mention were fueled by the economic growth created by capitalism. And virtually all of the discoveries and technological advancements were taking place in the capitalist world anyway, with the eastern block being little more than a parasitic organism attempting to feed on the west.
The partial recovery of the global south from the impact of imperialism.
The recovery of the global south is a simple result of globalisation. Quite ironic that the greatest redistribution of wealth seen in the history of the planet was caused by capitalism, not socialism. Countries which, broadly speaking, embraced free trade with the west, and within their own borders, saw the biggest and most rapid reductions in poverty.
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Not that I necessarily disagree with everything you said but since not “embracing free trade with the west” pretty much equalled “being subject to Western sanctions and trade embargoes”, it’s not really saying much.
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Holding up the USSR as your straw man talisman and ignoring all the vile and stupid shit that’s built into capitalism from the ground up might be enough to kid yourself and millions of others, but not most folks around here.
Without a strong government regulating things, you get… America. Everybody bending over for the rapists in pinstripes, dying in the gutters for the sake of another bauble for someone who’ll barely notice it, a million disenfranchised slaves rotting in private prisons, factories churning out death, the ground and sky soaked in poison, and a dead-set moron in charge of the whole shebang, put there by a vast multitude of dupes raised on ignorance and propaganda.
Nice fucking work. What’s your next trick?
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You could get Rojava, but that requires popular participation which the USA’s ruling class has worked hard to stop for decades.
It’s the same in the UK, that’s why we ended up with shit like Brexit happening, a protest vote from the psychologically disenfranchised which won’t fix a thing and will make things worse.
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That’s not an accurate at all. There have been many many countries without free trade agreements with western states (and many countries within the west without free trade agreements with other countries in the west), none of which were subject to sanctions or trade embargos, they were subject to tariffs of course, but they were also levying their own tariffs, so that’s fair enough really. Countries suffering from sanctions and embargos were doing so for reasons other than economic ones, e.g. apartheid, the cold war, being in a state of war, espionage, terrorism, despotism, etc. You could probably argue a few cases where sanctions weren’t justified, but mostly they’re used in extreme and mostly justified cases.
Holding up the USSR as your straw man talisman and ignoring all the vile and stupid shit that’s built into capitalism from the ground up might be enough to kid yourself and millions of others, but not most folks around here.
It’s not a straw-man, everything I said about them was accurate, appropriate to the discussion, and I wasn’t holding them up as the only example.
Without a strong government regulating things…
Now you’re the one straw-manning, I said nothing about weak government, laissez-faire, or libertarianism…
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Carne Ross used to believe the same thing.
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Good for him.
Considering he was voting for the sanctions in the UN, I consider it important.
He now considers the whole thing one big Milgram experiment, except with actual harm done to the victims.
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Pointing to a single example which falls within the parameters I already described doesn’t really do much to challenge my position though.
Taking your list:
apartheid - not really suffering as such (at least not the government), sanctions being a bit more of a 'nod, nod, wink, wink" situation rather than actual sanctions, because why? Staunch anti-communists of course.
the cold war = being socialist/communist
being in a state of war = only an issue if we didn’t support the ‘government’ side for which generally see the cold war above.
espionage = cold war = being nominally socialist/communist or otherwise anti-capitalist west
terrorism = cold war = being nominally socialist/communist or otherwise anti-capitalist west.
despotism = cold war, as in appears to only have been a problem if nominally socialist/communist.
Exceptions apply although I’ll admit I can’t think of any but I think the general gist of the above holds good.
It’s hard to make an honest case that communism or socialism don’t work economically in the context of sustained efforts to make sure it doesn’t work from both outside and internal parties.
They may not work but I don’t think one can take past history as being a fair experimental demonstration.
Likewise one can’t really say capitalism does or doesn’t work given that everywhere in the world is in fact some degree of capitalist-flavoured social democracy, some less socialist (the US, Russia), some more (most of western Europe).
The fact that every population seems to feel the need to include some element of socialism in its economic and political system would seem to indicate that socialism is doing a bit better than pure, unbridled capitalism - just not so well in the PR stakes.
After all its just as easy to say economic freedom tempered by social fairness and mutual support systems raise more people out of poverty than anything else.
Well alright maybe not quite as easy, it is a bit of a mouthful. 
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A single example who happens to have been a diplomat working for the Foreign Office and the UN.
I would quote from The Leaderless Revolution, but the qoutes would lose their context. The whole of Chapter 5 is the relevant section.
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A single example which falls within the parameters I already described. It doesn’t matter where he works if I largely agree with him (on the specific point about the Iraqi sanctions, which he seemed to agree with in principle, just not how they were specifically implemented).
Huh? the sanctions against South Africa were a big part of what brought the regime down. The biggest shame is that they weren’t implemented quickly enough, and not everyone took part, even at the end (e.g. Switzerland).
the cold war = being socialist/communist
Being communist wasn’t just a matter of having a different economic system and being willing to happily coexist and trade with the west (the USSR eventually came around to this position, but it was too late, all trust had been lost by then, and it never had a huge amount of support from within in the first place). Do remember that it was an enterprise founded on literal world domination, that China broke away from the Russians when they talked about not wanting to take over the world any more and how Stalin mightn’t have been such a great guy. And when China themselves decided to open up to the world, the west was eager to help, even in the beginning when the reforms were relatively minor. The west would also have been happy to re-engage with Russia under a more cautious pace of reform had Gorbachev stayed in power as well. Relations with Cuba should have been improved before Obama, but they were improved. Sanctions against Venezuela were entirely justified, and weren’t implemented until 2014, the US was Venezuela’s largest export target for Oil prior to that, hardly the kind of thing that makes sense in your imagined world where sanctions are solely a force of economic oppression to crush socialism.
being in a state of war = only an issue if we didn’t support the ‘government’ side for which generally see the cold war above.
That didn’t have anything to do with the cold war, I was referring to North Korea.
espionage
I was actually referring to Russia in recent years here, and it’s various nefarious goings on around the globe. These sanctions have been highly targeted against the regime as well.
terrorism = cold war = being nominally socialist/communist or otherwise anti-capitalist west.
I’m sensing a pattern here, again, nothing to do with communists or socialists, but with violent theocratic radicalism. Staying in the region: the Kurds are socialists, the west doesn’t seem to have a major problem with them, and in fact gives them lots of money (though we should do more by officially supporting their right to self determination).
despotism
Again, not referring to Communism specifically (though they were certainly despotic under Stalin), but Iraq. And sanctions were certainly justified there, and obviously preferable to war, even if they ultimately failed, largely because they were implemented poorly, and the neocons probably didn’t want them to work anyway (but not because they were capitalists, it was because they were assholes).
Exceptions apply although I’ll admit I can’t think of any but I think the general gist of the above holds good.
So your list didn’t actually hold good at all, and your list also ignored the other main point I made, which was that it wasn’t a case of “play with unrestricted free markets or get the sanctions” like you claimed (“pretty much equalled”), but free markets with bi/multi-lateral trade deals in some cases, otherwise lots of countries trading under WTO tariffs or their own (implementing all kinds of varying internal economic policies), and then a minority of cases where there have been sanctions for various (and usually justified) reasons.
Likewise one can’t really say capitalism does or doesn’t work given that everywhere in the world is in fact some degree of capitalist-flavoured social democracy, some less socialist (the US, Russia), some more (most of western Europe).
The fact that every population seems to feel the need to include some element of socialism in its economic and political system would seem to indicate that socialism is doing a bit better than pure, unbridled capitalism - just not so well in the PR stakes.
I wouldn’t class any of the cases of social-democracy in the west as socialist at all. Socialism for me means public ownership of the means of production, and centralised control of the economy, none of which exists to any serious degree in any western (social democratic or otherwise) country.
I’ve never advocated for “unbridled” capitalism, I’m perfectly happy with “economic freedom tempered by social fairness and mutual support systems”, none of which is incompatible with capitalism.
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Apartheid introduced 1948. Sanctions first suggested 1962. First actual sanctions voted in 1977. And happily ignored/ worked around with the connivance of western governments, UK to the fore. Apartheid regime ended 1991. Not exactly a ringing endorsement of the imposition of sanctions.
That is not what I said at all. I merely pointed out that it’s rather hard to have a working economy when most of the world won’t trade with you.
So North Korea has nothing to do with the cold war. So noted.
Ditto Russia.
Uh huh. Violent theocratic radicals seemed to be a-ok when they were fighting communists. Oddly enough when they start saying that maybe the West sucks too, they are no longer ok.
Oddly (and probably more nominally than anything else) Saddam’s Iraq was supposedly socialist.
Possibly because I don’t care about distinctions between your version of free trade or WTO tariffs or whatever. The difference I see is countries we like or need which we trade with. And countries we don’t, which we don’t trade with.
You say justified reasons. I say maybe so but we ignored (and continue to ignore) plenty of equally justified reasons where it suited/suits us.
As for your definition of socialism I can’t help that. I’m glad we can agree on the tempered economic freedom thing which I say is not incompatible with my definition of socialism.
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Those aren’t the only choices. Your whole wall of text falls apart with that as the foundation.
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Brexitus letalis.
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