Marxism can elimimate global poverty

[RandFan]

I said something along those lines. Except in the Soviet Union there was usually an excess of bread.

Except of course when they had to come begging to the west for grain. So much for Kruschev's boast.

The argument for communism is that it did in fact solve some social problems, at the expense of creating a whole lot of far worse problems. Except that there are still some people out there who think that the trade offs are worth it. I personally think these people are full of it, but I can see how a poor rural Russian senior citizen might disagree. I would guess that the average Russian/Yugoslavian/Ukrainian/Czech is worse off than he was under communism, but that is completely a matter of what metrics you use--secret police vs. no more subsidized potatoes?

Communism is a system that is not self sustaining. End of story. It doesn't matter if some people think life was better. The money ran out and the bills came due and old mother hubbard couldn't find a bone.

Feelings don't fix tractors, harvest crops or provide the inovation to solve the problems of society.

It's a simple mathmatic problem. When needs far exceed resources and production then it is time to find something else.

Too bad the Soviet Union didn't have what China has, a portion of its nation involved in foreign trade and capitalism (see Shanghai, Shenzhen and Guangzhou).

 

[thinkingaboutit]

Thomas, just a note. The Fraser Institute is rather biased. I'd take their studies with a few grains of salt.

 

[ChristineR]

the tents I used in reference to Russia who did have to resort to tents as housing. as far as homelessness here there are shelters for people to go to and organizations that will help get people off the streets if they want to leave the streets I worked with some of the homeless when I was going to school in California. I saw many that once decided they actually wanted help get housing and jobs.

on the canadian healthcare system posting polls isnt really valid since most americans have no idea what the canadian system is actually like. they just like the idea of not having to pay for healthcare. checkout the magazine artical below it is by the christian science monitor and gives a more realistic outline on the state of medecine there. For instance did you know that Despite spending nearly C$100 billion (US$64 billion) per year on healthcare – the most per capita among countries that run a similar system – a study by the Fraser Institute, a public-policy think tank in Vancouver, shows that Canada ranks only slightly higher than Hungary, Poland, and Turkey in the quality of service its citizens receive.Canada is the last industrialized nation to rely solely on government funds for its core healthcare system. There's an emerging view that it, too, may abandon a system that has long been a symbol of its national identity.

"We are no longer the model," says Michael Walker, executive director of the Fraser Institute. "When you consider that equal access in a country as spread out as Canada would require a greater number of physicians and diagnostic equipment, we're clearly headed in the wrong direction."

http://www.csmonitor.com/2002/0828/p01s04-wogi.html

About 1/3 of the US homeless are employed. It's true that the majority of homeless are homeless secondary to other problems (i.e. drug addiction), but there are substantial numbers who simply can't afford a place to live.

I read that article. Mr. Walker's comments are more negative than the picture painted by the rest of the article. For example, Canada is superior to the US in cost, life expectancy, and infant mortality. I have to wonder what they are using as a basis for the claim that Canadian health care is only slightly superior to Hungary, Poland, and Turkey. Some of the common complaints made about the Canadian system don't really stand up to examination.

For example, in the US a large number of unnecessary MRIs are done for economic reasons, in Canada there is a long wait for MRIs. So it's not obvious which is better. If they are comparing the wait time for an MRI to the wait time in Hungary, maybe Canada is as bad as Hungary. But a better comparison would be to look at the outcome of conditions that are associated with MRIs. If the US patients don't come out any healthier, then Canada is right in restricting them and spending the money elsewhere.

 

[ChristineR]

Except of course when they had to come begging to the west for grain. So much for Kruschev's boast.

Communism is a system that is not self sustaining. End of story. It doesn't matter if some people think life was better. The money ran out and the bills came due and old mother hubbard couldn't find a bone.

Feelings don't fix tractors, harvest crops or provide the inovation to solve the problems of society.

It's a simple mathmatic problem. When needs far exceed resources and production then it is time to find something else.

Too bad the Soviet Union didn't have what China has, a portion of its nation involved in foreign trade and capitalism (see Shanghai, Shenzhen and Guangzhou).

Well, China's current system is anything but self-sustaining. Heck, our current system isn't self sustaining (e.g., our gasoline use), but at least it seems to be self-correcting.

 

[RandFan]

Well, China's current system is anything but self-sustaining. Heck, our current system isn't self sustaining (e.g., our gasoline use), but at least it seems to be self-correcting.

?

We easily can produce a surpluss of necesaties. We have plenty of resources, capital and productivity to meet our needs. Our dollar, the measure of stability, remains relatively strong. You will have to explain yourself.

As to china, they are easily on their way to being an economic powerhouse. Again, I think there is a problem in communication.

My usage of selfsustaining: The ability to produce more than the minimum to sustain an economy.

We have that in spades.

I'll grant you that we are borrowing at an ever increasing amount of our GNP but we are not at the break point and we won't be for awhile. The sky is not falling but we will need to have some financial backbone in the not too distant future and this will mean cutting spending and raising taxes.

 

[ChristineR]

?

We easily can produce a surpluss of necesaties. We have plenty of resources, capital and productivity to meet our needs. Our dollar, the measure of stability, remains relatively strong. You will have to explain yourself.

As to china, they are easily on their way to being an economic powerhouse. Again, I think there is a problem in communication.

My usage of selfsustaining: The ability to produce more than the minimum to sustain an economy.

We have that in spades.

I'll grant you that we are borrowing at an ever increasing amount of our GNP but we are not at the break point and we won't be for awhile. The sky is not falling but we will need to have some financial backbone in the not too distant future and this will mean cutting spending and raising taxes.

China is subsidizing their current economic growth by keeping the yuan artificially low and by exploiting, cheating, and repressing their rural population. They're using the worst of communism to prop up their capitalist ventures. Their economy is essentially still managed in a weird free market way. Population dissatisfaction is rising and there is increasing opposition to government programs. Most think that China will have to implement social reforms to keep the government stable; it's not clear what impact this will have on the economic system.

I guess I am confused by your use of self sustaining. Economies change all the time, they are not sustained. You seem to be referring more to government economic policies. Because our government has very laissez faire economic policies the economy is largely self correcting. But I would say our current economy is not sustainable. We are going to run out of gasoline for example. We are currently subsidizing our lifestyle with millions of years of stored solar energy.

I don't think that the government will collapse when the gas runs out, but there will be major changes. For example, housing prices will change when the cost of driving goes up.

 

[NoZed Avenger]

I'll get back to the rest of your post when I can. Kids are hungry.

Further proof that your system is far inferior: your kids are even now hungry!

 

[dann]

well i'm hoping that Dann's got some new arguments.....

we shall see.

Sorry, I just have the same old ones, which appear to be all right since you haven’t been able to criticize any of them. I won't repeat them, but here are some of the links:

”attempting to dispel doubts about the feasibility of an alternative to capitalist exploitation by painting the beauties or opportunities of a liberated society in bright colors is not just pointless but downright nonsensical.”

Why are many people in developing countries poor? (And not just there!)

Work and Wealth

… and much, much more.

 

[TriangleMan]

An Englishman, an American, and a Russian were all meeting for coffee in London. The Englishman arrives late, appologizes and says, "I had to stand in line for 30 minutes to buy a steak for dinner tonight."

The American asks, "What's a line?"

The Russian asks, "What's a steak?"

[sidetrack]I think this joke would work better if you used queue instead of line[/sidetrack]

As for the education issue, I'll try to look up the PISA studies (a multi-country comparison of educational standards) and see if Russia was involved in them. Once I find them I'll post a summary. I'm skeptical of the claim that the educational system in Russia is/was better than the US.

 

[andyandy]

wow....i turn around for 5 minutes, and this becomes a 100 post monster....

still no sign of JREF's Marxist though....funny that....

 

[TriangleMan]

Okay here's the link to the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) survey for 2000, testing 15-year olds on reading, science and mathmatics. 2000 was the earliest PISA survey so I chose that because these 15 year-olds would have the most exposure to the "old" Russian educational system, hopefully minimizing any post-Cold War changes.

Results: (numbers in brackets are standard error values)

Reading:
overall: US 504 (7.0) Russia 462 (4.2)
retrieving info: US 499 (7.4) Russia 451 (4.9)
interpreting text: US 505 (7.1) Russia 468 (4.0)
reflecting on text: US 507 (7.1) Russia 455 (4.0)

Mathematics:
overall: US 493 (7.6) Russia 478 (5.5)

Science:
overall: US 499 (7.3) Russia 460 (4.7)


Appears that the US is better in all categories, and looking at the standard error values I think to a statistically significant degree.

 

[Dr Adequate]

An Englishman, an American, and a Russian were all meeting for coffee in London. The Englishman arrives late, appologizes and says, "I had to stand in line for 30 minutes to buy a steak for dinner tonight."

The American asks, "What's a line?"

The Russian asks, "What's a steak?"

In England, it is not in fact necessary to stand in line for thirty minutes to buy a steak.

Do Americans not queue? How else do you determine the order in which people get served? Does it involve firearms?

---

I can't access your .pdf file for some reason, so can you tell me whether the statistics relate to a typical working week, or whether they take into account the fact that Germans have longer vacations?

 

[dann]

2000 was the earliest PISA survey so I chose that because these 15 year-olds would have the most exposure to the "old" Russian educational system, hopefully minimizing any post-Cold War changes.

I can see the logic in comparing impoverished, albeit capitalistic, Russia with the capitalistic USA, using a group of people who were pre-schoolers, thus having "the most exposure to the "old" Russian educational system" when the Russian leaders of state decided to try their luck with capitalism. (They did well, by the way, the population in general didn't.)
Very convincing!

 

[gtc]

On the question of homelessness in the Soviet Union. I recall reading about persons who remained homeless in Moscow for many years as their internal passports from their home towns had been stolen or lost while on a trip to Moscow. These persons could not access any Moscow based services as they were not residents but could not travel home either.

I have done a quick google search but can not find any more information.

To dann,
You appear to blame capitalism for the apparent decline in living standards in post-soviet Rusia. Others argue that the apparent decline is due to the lingering effects of the soviet system.

How do you think we can determine which is correct?

 

[BPSCG]

lol, thats because we sold them alought of the grain to make the bread. Soviet harvests under the communal farms were notoriously bad.

When the USSR was breaking up, Sam Donaldson was talking with George Will on one of those roundtable Sunday morning talking heads news analysis programs. The Ukraine was pushing to secede from the USSR, and Donaldson trotted out the old catechism we'd all learned in school: "The Ukraine is the Soviet Union's bread basket."

To which Will replied, "No, Kansas is the Soviet Union's bread basket."

 

[andyandy]

I can see the logic in comparing impoverished, albeit capitalistic, Russia with the capitalistic USA, using a group of people who were pre-schoolers, thus having "the most exposure to the "old" Russian educational system" when the Russian leaders of state decided to try their luck with capitalism. (They did well, by the way, the population in general didn't.)
Very convincing!

seeing as you're here....

Can Marxism eliminate global poverty?

 

[Alt+F4]

Which claims? That communist countries had full employment? Almost no homelessness? Universal basic health care? These are not exactly controversial.

Your claims regarding education.

 

[TriangleMan]

I can see the logic in comparing impoverished, albeit capitalistic, Russia with the capitalistic USA, using a group of people who were pre-schoolers, thus having "the most exposure to the "old" Russian educational system" when the Russian leaders of state decided to try their luck with capitalism. (They did well, by the way, the population in general didn't.)
Very convincing!

If you would take the time to review the PISA report you would find that while Russian childrens' scores did not compare favourably to the US the Russians did score higher in some categories than Greece, Portugal, Luxembourg, Italy and Spain, so I'm not sure if 'impovrishment' can explain the results. Also note the scores for other Warsaw Pact countries such as Hungary, Czech Republic, and Poland: better than Russia, comparable to many other countries (Czech literacy scores were slightly higher than Germany in 3 out of four categories) but all were worse than the US.

If you have data to support that Soviet education was better than US education, or that US education is significantly inferior to other Western countries, feel free to lay it on the table.

 

[Admiral]

Do Americans not queue? How else do you determine the order in which people get served? Does it involve firearms?

Trial by rodeo.

...

I think the joke was referring to fast food and large grocery stores (like Walmart) that have streamlined the process of waiting in line so that it's remarkably short.

Obviously, though, no American that's ever been to the Department of Motor Vehicles would be unfamiliar with what a line is...

 

[BPSCG]

seeing as you're here....

Can Marxism eliminate global poverty?

AA, that's really not a fair question, since, to date, nothing has eliminated world poverty.

Fairer questions would be:

• Can Marxism eliminate poverty anywhere?
• Has Marxism eliminated poverty anywhere?
• If so, where?
• If not, what success has Marxism had in eliminating poverty?
• How does Marxism compare in eliminating poverty with other economic systems?
• Has any of Marxism's successes (if any) in eliminating poverty come at an unacceptably high cost, e.g., environmental destruction, destruction of human life, etc.?

I think the verdict of nearly a century is beyond dispute: Attempts to impose Marxism have been catastrophic failures, resulting in little or no reduction in poverty, and imposing disasterous costs in terms of human life, human freedom, and environmental impact.

But maybe we should give it another shot.