Stas Bush wrote:In which case why did you even waste your time? Because my point was exactly that there were nations with quite inferior performance, and to a great degree it was determined by prior industrialization or lack thereof. And yes, prior existing industrial level matters a lot. India, Africa, Latin America, huge swaths of Asia are still in the shitter, and that is to a large degree because of the situation which was formed in the XIX-XX century, which we today call "imperialism", wherein the industrialized nations started growing rapidly and left everyone behind. The initial claim of mine was that there are some very poor nations which have the social order described by stormthebeaches (democracy), and thus the reasons for their poverty must lie elsewhere.
My goal was to show that above and beyond any individual screw ups capitalist and communist countries had as a whole communist countries showed far worse performance when compared to similar capitalist countries. You took issue with that and claimed the comparisons were not fair and we should compare the likes of USSR with the likes of Mexico hence the entire discussion.
As you say yourself India, Africa and to an extent Latin America were the victims of imperialism while USSR wasn't, it itself was an imperialist country. This is in addition to large population growth, density and tribal and ethnic conflicts in the places you mentioned.
Clearly democracy doesn't inevitably lead to prosperity but communism as it seems does inevitably lead to low economic performance and communism is the title of the thread.
Stas Bush wrote:I see. But the problem is, the gap was already rising between Eastern and Western Europe. GDP/capita for Eastern Europe to Western Europe went from 57% to 43% during 1820-1940, and the gap was rising faster in the XX century than it was in the XIX. So you'd have to separate unique factors from the general lagging of Eastern Europe. Austria and Czechslovakia, in fact, are not following the general trend here - whereas the gap was rising overall, it was contracting between Czechoslovakia and Austria.
Not all Eastern European and Western European countries are the same so the data won't be as clear as comparing a country to country. Secondly a drop from 57% to 43% over 120 years is nowhere near as severe as a drop from 43% to 32% that happened in 1950-1990. Since Western Europe lost their empires one would expect the Eastern Europe to at least maintain the percentage.
Finally I already pointed out that Czechoslovakia was closing the gap and in fact had a greater GDP per capita than Austria post WW2. That only helps my argument because after the institution of communism the country begins a rapid decline.
Stas Bush wrote:They can. I said industrialization required ardous hard labour during the first stage when machine tools were few. And they are extremely hard to create without outside help, yes - this is why industrialized nations took such an enormous lead and left what, 90% of the world's population in the shitter while only 10% or so fully enjoys the benefits of First World industrialization?
Yes that is true. It doesn't change the fact that the percentage would be higher if there was no communist revolution in China or Deng Xiaopang's reforms came in 1959 instead of '79.
Stas Bush wrote:Cuba's economy collapsed in 1991 - isn't it more fair to look at the period when the COMECON was still active, i.e. before 1990? Because as you understand, those other nations did not lose their main trade partners overnight. Cuba did.
I did. Again look at my chart. You can clearly see EL Salvador and Dominican Republic gaining on Cuba while Honduras maintains a roughly equal percentage. Nicaragaua starts to fall drastically after the revolution.
Stas Bush wrote:Really? Why was the gap still widening between Eastern and Western Europe between 1820 and 1940? Quite obviously, in the case with industrialization the biblical proverb "For whoever has, to him will more be given, and he who doesn't have, even that which he has will be taken away from him" is all too true, sadly. The nations which took the lead in the XVIII, XIX and early XX century basically got such a huge gap created between them and others...
As I showed the rate of decline was nowhere near as fast as after communism was introduced and that was after the West Europe lost its empire. Nor does it explain why Eastern Europe started to gain on the West after communism was abolish ed.
Stas Bush wrote:So technology transfer, industrial restoration and finally, trading with an unscathed superpower does not factor in?
Of course it does. Just not to the point that US can singlehandedly make Japan and Western Europe as huge of economies as it did.
Stas Bush wrote:You see, it would be relevant if I ever made such a claim. Find it. What I said was that the first stage of industrialization proceeded with enormous labour-intensive projects, and was driven forward by a great many things we call vices today (yes, that includes slavery, fencing and colonialism). I did not say that it was the sole reason for the richness. Besides, if you are so willing to discuss outside the box, why not note that in 1990, the USSR ranked 22nd in the UN HDI rankings (1990 HDR)? This means that by HDI it left a rather great majority of nations behind. And quite certainly it did leave Brazil - an example you said displayed some remarkable performance vs. the USSR - behind by HDI indicators (I already examined it once in a debate with Iosef Cross). At the same time, at no point I made the claims you insinuate I did.
I did say that without these vices, industrialization could not process and frankly, try and show me it could. I have found ample examples, even in the very heartlands of industrialization - Britain and North America, for once - of massive and deadly labour-churning projects.
"a smart Marxist would also argue that slavery was fundamental in the accumulation of capital"
"without this period of accumulation of capital and all the associated vices (slavery, dispossession, fencing, colonial exploit and what people call "robbery of the colonies") modern capitalism could not have been born"
There you go. You clearly say that slavery and colonial exploitation are "fundamental" to capitalism and that without it capitalism could not have been born.
You never explicitly stated that this is why capitalist countries are richer but if you claim that they couldn't even exist without it that claim is implied.
My point is that capitalism generates richer countries even if all of the slavery and colonial exploitation is removed. Certainly they won't be as rich as with them but still above communist countries.
You then backpedalled and focused on "hard and cheap" labor within an emerging capitalist country. Apparently you believe that subsistence agriculture on a small patch of land and with 4 sons waiting to inherit their own even smaller patches of land was heaven on Earth so moving on to work hard and cheap in a factory was some kind of additional suffering.
Regarding Brazil you'll notice that I never claimed Brazil was better off than USSR in 1990 in absolute terms. My original chart taken from Maddison's date clearly shows that in 1990 USSR's per capita GDP is above that of Brazil so there is no issue there. The point, like in Eastern Europe, is that the gap between USSR and Brazil was rapidly closing and that was while Brazil's population climbed from being 3.7 times smaller than USSR in 1946 to being 1.9 times smaller in 1990.