Capitalism has sabotaged and killed leaders of nations that tried to do better by their people to keep capital markets open for exploitation.
Our species grew/metastasized recklessly and without any consideration for equilibrium/homeostasis with the ONLY naturally hospitable habitat that our species will ever know.
How right you are, comrade Smith
We like to believe the truth about us is inspirational and uplifting. We kind of need to. That doesn’t make it true. Smith/the Wachowskis had our number in that monologue(and also in their Second Renaissance anime prequel about the war between humans and AI, humans do everything you’d expect, we weren’t the good guys). We don’t care about this world. We don’t care about the other species on it. We don’t even generally care about one another in anything more than empty feel good platitudes.
We just tend to want moooaaaar for ourselves in practice
There’s been a bunch of cultures that refute that idea, but they have a hard time fighting off moooaaaar types of cultures. Humans can be almost anything. Good or bad
“The Great Leap forward never happened”/s
I have not said it didnt happen and it doesnt make those statements in the meme wrong.
But it does make them irrelevant
Above the world average after WW2 was easy to achieve for countries that had not been bombed to oblivion, and in the case of the USSR, that had basically conquered Eastern Europe
Life expectancy also rose like that in the entire eastern block: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Life_expectancy_in_Hungary.svg https://www.statista.com/statistics/1041400/life-expectancy-poland-all-time/ etc.
Edit: Why is this downvoted? Do you not believe the stats?
Edit2: If it is so easy why was India and Africa after WW2 still below the world avarage?
Ur meme gives the impression that USSR and PRC communism is good for health. I’m raising a counterpoint while attempting to maintain the tone of the meme.
I was just saying it cause some people might think that it cant be true when the great leap forward happened.
Correlation does not equal causation…
First, Russia and China are not communist. They are both dictatorships. Medical advances in all first world countries is the reason for life expectancy to rise.
Africa and South America have been prevented from improving medical care which in combination with the above accounts for Russia and China rising above the average.
If India went the path of the chinese in 1955 instead of democratic capitalism i think they would have had the same results as China today. You could argue China has been also prevented from improving medical care until the communist party stopped letting it happen.
While the Soviet system had obvious problems, they’re often exaggerated in favor of both painting communism as an ultimate evil, and obfuscate what communism (and capitalism) ultimately is, so they can continue to propagate the “right wing = small government; left wing = big government” lie.
Communism and Capitalism both suck. Mutualism is way better.
You might want to check out Robert Wolf. He’s a big advocate for worker co-ops, which are a type of communism. Of the cooperative principles, #6 is cooperation between Co-ops. It doesn’t get much more mutualist than that.
Worker co-ops are a type of Socialism. Communism is specifically the movement towards a global Socialist Republic free of a State, Class, or Money.
Worker Co-ops are great, but retain the state and money, and alone can allow the resurgence of class.
Communism is literally workers owning the means of production.
Worker co-ops have the workers owning the means of production.
Richard Wolf is a professor of economics. He talks a lot about the different ways a state can be communist. I’d recommend checking him out. (Misspelled his name in the above comment)
The main way he advocates is with democracy at work.Socialism is Workers sharing ownership of the Means of Production. Communism is a post-Socialist society where the remaining contradictions within Socialism have been resolved.
I’m familiar with Richard Wolf, his work, and that he’s a Socialist. I agree, he’s a great intro to Socialism for many people, but he doesn’t really advocate much for Communism.
A state can be Communist in goal, sure, as in with a stated plan or goal to eventually reach Communism, but Communism can only exist globally once the international proletariat has successfully taken control of all Means of Production.
I suggest reading Critique of the Gotha Programme. It’s an important Marxist work that is helpful to understand Communism vs Socialism.
The statistic https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/life-expectancy?time=1870..latest&country=OWID_WRL~CHN~RUS
Edit: And Russia went to below the world avarage after the communist party gave up power in russia in 1991.
Is there a chart that shows various countries that industrialized by different means (communism vs capitalism vs democratic socialism etc)? That seems like a little more accurate comparison, as opposed to comparing it to the global average, and saying the difference is definitely communism as opposed to industrialization.
Also, Communist China is the only country that has a specific drop in life expectancy so dramatic that it shows up on the chart of global life expectancy and needs its own special label. I feel like stuff like that is pretty relevant too.
