Discussion about Communism continued

[stormthebeaches]

Due to Thanas's request I have taken the debate between me and Stas about Communism to the history board.

The level of flawedness is usually a question of richness of a given society (as signified by per capita income) than its particular social order. There's more than a few dirt-poor liberal democracies, whose citizens are living in a society far more "flawed" than, say, that of the former USSR simply by virtue of poverty and very low incomes. However, we were speaking about the theoretical ideal of communism, which is basically a classless society. I am not sure why this shifted to a discussion of practical communism.

We need to define what it is we are discussing here. To me, it seems that we are discussing both traditional Communism and Marxist Communism. In my opinion both these ideologies are too flawed to be put into practice. Marxist doctrine is full of holes. It calls a dictatorship with perverse amounts of power and then trusts this dictatorship not to abuse the power that it has been given. The saying "absolute power corrupts absolutely exists for a reason". Marxism also calls for persecution of foreigners and ethnic minorities, abolishing national culture and the removal of property rights. These are all things I am opposed to. Traditional Communism is a little better than the Marxist variant because it doesn't call for an all powerful state. However, the idea of the world's population living in small, isolated Communes could never work. Even with a massive improvement in technology it still wouldn't work because the world's economy is reliant on resources being distributed across the globe. Not to mention, freedom of travel would probably be restricted and these small isolated communes would soon become new nations in their own right. What I'm trying to say is that of the two main forms of Communism that I am familiar with, neither seems ideal. Marxism is a repulsive ideology even in theoretical terms. Traditional Communism is nice theoretically but is impractical and could never be applied in today's world.

You mention that theoretical Communism would be about setting up a classless society. I object to this because Communism does not have a monopoly on the ideology of setting up a classless society. Most forms of anarchism and some extreme forms of socialism also favor classless societies. Not to mention the idea of a classless society isn't all that great. A system where a Doctor earns the same amount of money as a guy who cleans the streets is not a system that I would want to live in.

I might point out that the studies on the efficiency of slavery in the South show that it was economically efficient in at least some sense. I'd refer you to Time on the Cross by Fogel and Engerman.

Slavery was economically viable in the South because the South was a largely agricultural society. However, I was talking about the North. Unlike the South, the North did not stay warm all year round which meant that agricultural practices were much harder and the North became more industrial as a result. In an industrial society, slavery was not as economically effective as a free laborer. Unless you want your slaves dropped dead in six months you have to feed and cloth a slave and provide them with a place to sleep. With a free laborer you just need to provide them with a sum of money for their services. Ultimately, this meant that in an industrial society it was much cheaper to use free labor than to use slave labor. This is the main reason why slavery never caught on in the North.

Then I'd point out that 1855-1875 is an arbitrarily selected 25-year period.

It's a twenty year period. And I chose it because you wanted an example of rapid industrialization. Whilst it wasn't as fast as industrialization under Stalin, the period I chose shows that industrialization still happened very quickly.

The death tolls of the industrial revolution were undeniably quite large. I have not counted every worker who died building every factory and every canal, but I did look over some major projects and it often happens that they have a hefty death toll. I have also looked into the living conditions at the time, and I found out that they were remarkably similar to the conditions in Stalin's new industrial towns (e.g. Magnitogorsk) - very crammed spaces (often less than 1 m square per person), lacking sanitary facilities, etc. I know more about the conditions in the colonies, because I've looked into the construction of colonial railroads, and none of them were particularly easy to build; thousands of people died to build them (if not dozens of thousands, as was the case with the Free Congo State).

Firstly, the industrial revolution refers to Europe and North America. It doesn't refer to industrial projects in every far flung colony. Secondly, as I said before, comparing Stalin to the worst of colonial rule hardly absolves Stalin. I find it amusing that you brought up the Congo as an example considering how Belgium's brutality in governing that area is well know. Regardless, this is all a red hearing. You mentioned that rapid industrialization always has a rapid death toll. In response I pointed out that the Industrial revolution that hit Europe and North America, whilst not quite as rapid as Stalin's industrialization, had a far smaller death toll.

No, I mentioned the Irish in connection with the canals like the Rideau, etc. Not in connection with the Panama canal. Likewise, I only objected to the Suez labourers being called "free".

You originally brought up the Panama canal and the Suez canal in defense of Stalin's construction projects. Remember this:

Suez and Panama channels were large-scale engineering feats done by Western companies (or governments, in case of the USA in Panama) at a tremendous human cost. Suez cost roughly 100 000 lives, while Panama cost about 28 thousand. Industrialization, especially rapid and done in a none-developed territory, tends to have huge human costs, regardless of who guides the process.

Now, I was wrong about the Suez canal, but the Panama canal was built with free labor to the best of my knowledge. When I pointed out that the Panama canal was built using free labor your response was that the destitute Irish would object to being called free labor. This implies that the destitute Irish built the Panama canal.

Your response to this:

However, the big difference between these projects and the Soviet projects is that many Soviet projects were done using slave labor whilst Panama and Suez used volunteer workers who would be aware of the risks.

Was this:

Erie Canal, Rideau Canal, the list can go on and on. I'm not sure you can say penal labour is "slave" labour, and I'm not sure corvee in Egypt that the Lesseps company used was "free labour", that's fucking bullshit, it was a system of forced labour. The destitute Irish who died building some canals in the New World would also object to their labour being called "free", you know.

Whilst you were right to correct me about the slave labor used by the Lesseps company, your wording seemed to imply that the Irish built the panama canal. This is because no one brought up the other canals but yourself suddenly mentioning them as well as acting like I said that the destitute Irish were free laborers. This can be confusing. You need to make yourself more clear.

The abolition of slavery in Europe par se means little in my view, when the hideous death tolls were being racked up in colonial construction projects here and there. I don't give a fuck how good a place to live Belgium was - the real suffering came in the Free Congo State, where 30 or even 60 thousand people died building Leopold's railway, and in a multitude of other places. In Canada, for example, where the construction of the railway by Chinese immigrants who were given a pathetic ration below the necessary and several thousand of whom perished. And such examples are ubiqutous and numerous across the world.

Again, no one endorses the nature of the colonial construction projects. However, this goes back to the original problem with your defense of Stalin. Cherry picking examples of colonial atrocities committed by various government's and private entities over a century does not absolve Stalin. I don't endorse colonialism. I don't endorse unregulated capitalism. Please stop acting like I do.

Actually, the Soviet government also initiated a wide flurry of relief measures and food supplies, however, none of them were enough to alleviate the situation. The drought was pretty bad, and it became worse due to overreporting by local officials. Your claim that "three times more food was brought into Ireland" seems to be false if this is true:

How bad was the drought, could I have some numbers? Same with these relief measures, could have I some numbers there as well? I find the idea of relief hard to believe because most studies of the holondor show that Ukraine was not receiving the relief that other famine stricken areas of the Soviet Union were receiving. Combined with the mass exports and sealing up the borders so people couldn't feel the famine it's not hard to see why historians agree that Stalin's policies were the root cause of the famine.

As for the Irish potato famine:

In fact, far more grain entered Ireland from abroad in the late 1840s than was exported-probably almost three times as much grain and meal came in as went out.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/vi ... e_01.shtml

I think we can both agree that the BBC has more credibility than wikipedia.

Indeed, I know all that. However, there is a certain segment of the idiotic-patriotic population who start jumping the gun when I use this comparison. All too often, alas - I was just checking we're using the same standards.

I know that you are drawing comparisons to the Indian famine in 1943 and the Ukraine famine. However, I would point out that the cause of that famine was local mismanagement (you could say the same thing in Ukraine, however India was halfway round the world, Ukraine wasn't). Also, the biggest cause of the famine was that Japan had conquered Burma, which cut of India's traditional supply route. Whilst Churchill did oppose bringing in food from other areas it is important to remember that Britain was in the middle of the largest war in the 20th century. In comparison, the Soviet Union was not at war when the Holondor occurred.

I don't endorse everything Churchill did mind you, the man endorsed some horrible things (he wanted to gas the Kurds) and he showed a strong desire to cling to power. However, he has less responsibility for the Indian famine than Stalin does for the Ukraine famine.

On a side note, can you imagine what would happen if Churchill had the same amount of power that Stalin did? The results would not be pretty. Thankfully, a liberal democracy has checks and balances in place to stop one man getting too much power.

Even speaking about people deported out of the country, the USA deported 1,3 million illegal Mexican immigrants out of the nation. The deportations can be external and internal as well.

Illegal immigrants. People who have come to the country illegally. There is a difference between that and deporting people who had been living in the country for generations.

[K. A. Pital]

We need to define what it is we are discussing here. To me, it seems that we are discussing both traditional Communism and Marxist Communism. In my opinion both these ideologies are too flawed to be put into practice. Marxist doctrine is full of holes. It calls a dictatorship with perverse amounts of power and then trusts this dictatorship not to abuse the power that it has been given. The saying "absolute power corrupts absolutely exists for a reason". Marxism also calls for persecution of foreigners and ethnic minorities, abolishing national culture and the removal of property rights. These are all things I am opposed to. Traditional Communism is a little better than the Marxist variant because it doesn't call for an all powerful state. However, the idea of the world's population living in small, isolated Communes could never work. Even with a massive improvement in technology it still wouldn't work because the world's economy is reliant on resources being distributed across the globe. Not to mention, freedom of travel would probably be restricted and these small isolated communes would soon become new nations in their own right. What I'm trying to say is that of the two main forms of Communism that I am familiar with, neither seems ideal. Marxism is a repulsive ideology even in theoretical terms. Traditional Communism is nice theoretically but is impractical and could never be applied in today's world. You mention that theoretical Communism would be about setting up a classless society. I object to this because Communism does not have a monopoly on the ideology of setting up a classless society. Most forms of anarchism and some extreme forms of socialism also favor classless societies. Not to mention the idea of a classless society isn't all that great. A system where a Doctor earns the same amount of money as a guy who cleans the streets is not a system that I would want to live in.

First of all, "dictatorship" of the proletariat as Marx envisioned it was a fundamentally democratic rule by the workers (like the Paris Commune), through elected councilors. Next, the improvement in technology can be radical enough to permit on-spot production given enough energy. Finally, I never said these societies are some sort of ideal, merely that they represent an improvement. Communism may not have a monopoly on the idea of a classless society (and in fact I never said it does, I just stated this is the ideal of communism), but it is the main ideology advocating such, and, in fact, this is one of the main differences between socialism and communism - the former rarely advocates a full abolition of the class system or (in Marxism) is seen as a stepping stone towards a classless society. Besides, I have no idea why you think that "classless" means that all people get the same amount of money. This is not so. Class in Marxism is defined by the ownership of the means of production. A doctor and a street cleaner are both in the same class (worker class). A classless society does not envision everyone to be paid the same (in fact, such has never existed even in states with Communist parties in power). In fact, there was a great difference between the pay of a menial worker and that of a nuclear scientist. I believe you know as much. To summarize - I do not see anything wrong with the ideal of a classless society, because this is not a society where everyone is paid the same. And "the ideal of classless society" means the ideal of communism, it does not mean a classless society is ideal as in "flawless". You have not adressed the fact that regardless of the social order, very poor nations with a liberal-democratic government have had an inferior living standard to richer, but dictatorial nations like, say, the USSR, which was also a key argument of mine (that the "flawedness" of a society is more than anything determined by relative richness) - if you gave the USSR a first-world per capita GDP, you can bet a great majority of its flaws would be gone.

Ultimately, this meant that in an industrial society it was much cheaper to use free labor than to use slave labor. This is the main reason why slavery never caught on in the North.

Essentially you say that climate meant free labour was better suited for sustaining the worker than slave labour. Not some sort of fundamental superiority of free labour over slave labour. I am not sure what this is supposed to prove. Besides, a smart Marxist (and let's pretend I am one) would argue that slavery was genuinely inefficient and "free labour" is what is necessary for capitalism to exist - i.e. that capitalism itself is the destroyer of slavery (and I do hold the same opinion). For capitalism, to function, requires a free market of labour force. However, a smart Marxist would also argue that slavery was fundamental in the accumulation of capital, i.e. in the creation of the class divide between the dispossessed who became the workers, and those who controlled the means of production, the capitalists. Slavery allowed to create a vast reserve of cheap labour which poured into the factories upon emancipation, and concentrate the means of production in the hands of the very few. It was a fundamental part of the history of capitalism and, indeed, 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, a smart Marxist would say. And so would I.

Firstly, the industrial revolution refers to Europe and North America. It doesn't refer to industrial projects in every far flung colony. Secondly, as I said before, comparing Stalin to the worst of colonial rule hardly absolves Stalin. I find it amusing that you brought up the Congo as an example considering how Belgium's brutality in governing that area is well know. Regardless, this is all a red hearing. You mentioned that rapid industrialization always has a rapid death toll. In response I pointed out that the Industrial revolution that hit Europe and North America, whilst not quite as rapid as Stalin's industrialization, had a far smaller death toll.

Rapid industrialization in North America (in the post-colonial epoch) had quite big a death toll, at least in what concerned canals and certain railroads (Erie and Rideau are just two I recalled straight away, as is the trans-Canadian railroad). Sure, it might have been smaller than in Russia, and climate can partly account for that too (it is far milder in Western Europe and North America than in Russia). Besides, I do not see a reason to arbitrarily exclude certain territories and necessary industrial projects (like e.g. the Suez Canal) from the overall process of industrialization. Because I could do the same trick and say that the White Sea Canal, for example, was built in a remote area of Russia that could technically amount to a useless and under-developed colonial territory (in fact, it was exactly that way, the territory was underdeveloped, the climate extremely harsh). But that would be fundamentally dishonest, would it not? Or I could say that the USSR's behavior resembled a colonial empire, and thus, for example, the famine in Ukraine could be described as a fundamentally colonialist vice.

Let me further note that in my reply I mentioned the Irish in connection with Rideau and Erie, not in connection with the Panama Canal. You said that all canals were built using free labour. I mentioned several which were not, and which had a remarkable enough death toll at the construction.

Again, no one endorses the nature of the colonial construction projects. However, this goes back to the original problem with your defense of Stalin. Cherry picking examples of colonial atrocities committed by various government's and private entities over a century does not absolve Stalin. I don't endorse colonialism. I don't endorse unregulated capitalism. Please stop acting like I do.

I do not endorse Stalin, but I do not endorse hypocrisy as well. Cherry picking? How can one "cherry pick", if the examples are ubiqutous and many? If they were not, it would be hard to find them. The extreme ease of finding a construction project with death tolls in the thousands in America and elsewhere in the world, in places where there never was any trace of Stalin or communist power in general, is what should be bothering you. I never said it "absolves" anyone.

How bad was the drought, could I have some numbers? Same with these relief measures, could have I some numbers there as well? I find the idea of relief hard to believe because most studies of the holondor show that Ukraine was not receiving the relief that other famine stricken areas of the Soviet Union were receiving. Combined with the mass exports and sealing up the borders so people couldn't feel the famine it's not hard to see why historians agree that Stalin's policies were the root cause of the famine.

This is just one document on the relief measures:
http://www.hrono.ru/dokum/193_dok/19330218ck.html
But there's far more - here are all the documents on the hunger of 1932-1933:
http://www.rusarchives.ru/publication/h ... tent.shtml
Here are all the recently declassified documents about the famine relief:
http://www.diary.ru/~katerina-0906/p87069809.htm
You could use any free OCR to read them, then use Google translate.

This page has some fundamental works on grain stock balance in 1932-1933:
http://www.as.wvu.edu/history/Faculty/Tauger/soviet.htm
It has works by Tauger (and some by Wheatcroft and Davies).

Drought, rain, and infestations destroyed no less than one-fifth of the harvest, what is disputed by historians is whether this, on its own, would be enough to cause a famine of such proportions.

In fact, far more grain entered Ireland from abroad in the late 1840s than was exported-probably almost three times as much grain and meal came in as went out.

I can believe that, but I was speaking about the overall food balance. Was grain, fundamentally, the main food crop in Ireland? I thought it was the potato. If there was a lot of grain entering Ireland, but grains were not the main food crop, and still more food crops left Ireland than were imported, the overall net balance would be below zero. I believe you should provide some evidence that Ireland was not a net exporter of food, because most sources do say it (not just Wikipedia, as I checked, but also some history books). However, knowing how much bullshit modern history books carry, I am not sure I can believe it. Maybe you know more.

I know that you are drawing comparisons to the Indian famine in 1943 and the Ukraine famine. However, I would point out that the cause of that famine was local mismanagement (you could say the same thing in Ukraine, however India was halfway round the world, Ukraine wasn't). Also, the biggest cause of the famine was that Japan had conquered Burma, which cut of India's traditional supply route. Whilst Churchill did oppose bringing in food from other areas it is important to remember that Britain was in the middle of the largest war in the 20th century. In comparison, the Soviet Union was not at war when the Holondor occurred. I don't endorse everything Churchill did mind you, the man endorsed some horrible things (he wanted to gas the Kurds) and he showed a strong desire to cling to power. However, he has less responsibility for the Indian famine than Stalin does for the Ukraine famine. On a side note, can you imagine what would happen if Churchill had the same amount of power that Stalin did? The results would not be pretty. Thankfully, a liberal democracy has checks and balances in place to stop one man getting too much power.

The biggest causes of famine were British requisitions of food crops - as much as the natural factors. The harvest of 1943 was the same as that of 1941. If Britain did not behave the way it did, the famine could have been averted. Churchill, aside from his support for gassing the Kurds, also thought that Indians are lowly beastly people saved from "perishing which is their natural fate" only by their fertility, and that he didn't give a flying fuck if Indians died. He repeatedly displayed this attitude. And yes, he has less responsibility for the famine, but he also had less power as you yourself noted. More power means more responsibility, it is the backside. However, it seems that no checks and balances prevented the famine, even if they did make Churchill less responsible for it. However, the little or big responsibility of Churchill means jack shit as to the outcome, which is the same.

Illegal immigrants. People who have come to the country illegally. There is a difference between that and deporting people who had been living in the country for generations.

The vastest majority of Soviet deportations were internal, rather than external. According to your own logic, that is better than kicking people out of the country, no? In any case, the USA deported legal immigants as well, in case you did not know:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mexican_Repatriation
That was a massive deportation, of whom 60% were U.S. citizens. I think you know too little about the history of your own nation which conducted such a massive deportation of its own citizens. If in the 50's America deported a million illegals, in the 30's it deported its own citizens and illegals, and in similar numbers. Now, what was your point again? The USSR being the only nation to employ massive population transfer, or something more subtle? If you think that other major powers are free of such actions, why not remember the British Empire and such a stellar act as the deportation of Acadians or various deportation in the territories it ruled? Or, for that matter, the Russian Empire and its million-high deportation of Jews and Germans?

[Kane Starkiller]

You have not adressed the fact that regardless of the social order, very poor nations with a liberal-democratic government have had an inferior living standard to richer, but dictatorial nations like, say, the USSR, which was also a key argument of mine (that the "flawedness" of a society is more than anything determined by relative richness) - if you gave the USSR a first-world per capita GDP, you can bet a great majority of its flaws would be gone.

Comparing a 22 million km2 nation to tiny countries from Latin America and Indochina hardly seems fair. The isolate the variable of communist impact on economic performance we need to find countries which had similar history and have similar geography and then compare their performance after the establishment of communism.
For example comparing Poland to Germany, comparing Hungary and Czechoslovakia to Austria, comparing North to South Korea, comparing Bulgaria to Greece.
Taking information Angus Maddison's data I created several charts which compare per capita GDP of various communist countries expressed as a percentage of GDP of capitalist countries:
1. Polish per capita GDP as percentage of German per capita GDP


2. Czechoslovakian and Hungarian per capita GDP as percentage of Austrian


3. North Korean per capita GDP as percentage of South Korean


4. Cuban per capita GDP as percentage of Puerto Rican, Haitian and Dominican GDP


5. Burmese per capita GDP as percentage of Thai GDP


6. USSR per capita as percentage of US, Japanese and Brazilian GDP



As we can see the performance of communist countries ranges from poor to fucking abysmal and that's not counting psychos like Khmer Rouge.
Even against Japan which was also devastated in WW2 and and which, in 1970 for example, had 20 times less arable land per capita USSR fares poorly.
North Korea really requires no comment and the only positive example is Cuba managing to outperform Haiti, the poorest carribean nation and one which lagged behind Cuba even before the revolution.
Looking at chart 5 we see that Burma rapidly declines in comparison to Thailand until 1988 when protests brought about economic reforms.
Again: the performance of communist regimes was consistently inferior to comparable countries which had capitalist economies. Thus the promise of the communist party that it will bring better life in return for violent assumption of power, dictatorship and repression was a lie. It monopolized power, engaged in massive reengineering of society and brought nothing new or better to the table.

For capitalism, to function, requires a free market of labour force. However, a smart Marxist would also argue that slavery was fundamental in the accumulation of capital, i.e. in the creation of the class divide between the dispossessed who became the workers, and those who controlled the means of production, the capitalists. Slavery allowed to create a vast reserve of cheap labour which poured into the factories upon emancipation, and concentrate the means of production in the hands of the very few. It was a fundamental part of the history of capitalism and, indeed, 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, a smart Marxist would say. And so would I.

And I would disagree. My own father spent 20 years as a worker in a large state company and then after economic reforms used money he saved to start his own small company. Eventually he earned enough money to buy the machine tools necessary for all his products thus he now owned all the "means of production". It's still a small family business but he would still be classified as "capitalist" and it is concievable that such a small company can continue to expand. This is anecdotal evidence but enough to disprove this notion that capitalist societies cannot succeed on people's own hard work and frugality and require some outside "cheap" labor.
The idea that capitalism requires an era of "slave labor and colonial exploitation" to come to pass is a very worn out excuse used by communists throughout Eastern Europe to explain away why the West is so much more wealthy.

[K. A. Pital]

Comparing a 22 million km2 nation to tiny countries from Latin America and Indochina hardly seems fair. The isolate the variable of communist impact on economic performance we need to find countries which had similar history and have similar geography and then compare their performance after the establishment of communism.

I am not sure Indochina is a bad example with giant nations such as India. I do not see a reason why 22 million square kilometers are an asset more so than a liability, most of it in the extreme North. I do not see a reason why you chose to cherry-pick examples, because, for example, Cuba until 1991 outperformed almost all nations in the Carribean even by the simplest GDP/capita measure; and by HDI it outperformes more than one nation of Latin America. I am not sure why you compare Poland, a former Russian Empire dominion, with Germany, which was one of the industrialized nations even during World War I. As for Japan and South Korea, I readily acknowledge that these nations made the very rare leap to a First World living standard. I am not sure where I have said something else. I am further baffled by the inclusion of US and Maoist China-sponsored Khmer Rouge as an example, whereas Latin America was somehow excluded from comparison by yourself.

Again: the performance of communist regimes was consistently inferior to comparable countries which had capitalist economies.

The USSR was comparably as industrialized per capita as Mexico or Argentina in the 1900s. It "consistently" outperformed these nations. I am not sure what you wanted to prove. First World nations are not, in fact, apt comparisons for Second World nations for the very reason that the richness of the hegemon also matters; especially in modern capitalism, where economies are so interdependent. You should know and understand that more powerful economies would tend to create a wealthier economic zone.

And I would disagree. My own father spent 20 years as a worker in a large state company and then after economic reforms used money he saved to start his own small company.

What a load of crap, a person in a second world nation with prior created vast industrial capital circa 1990 and a pre-industrial society with necessary cheap labour for very labour-intensive early industry? Are you really comparing these pre-conditions? Sorry, but "a person can be cool in a modern industrial economy without requiring lots of cheap labour" is not relevant to the historical facts that cheap labour was used and was required for early labour-intensive projects. This anecdotal evidence is pure bullshit. Could your father build a Trans-siberian railway in an era where machine tools were scant few just by "frugality" and "own hard work"? That's bullshit and you know it. I don't know why you chose to pollute a serious discussion with idiocy, but please, refrain from doing so in the future.

[Kane Starkiller]

I am not sure Indochina is a bad example with giant nations such as India. I do not see a reason why 22 million square kilometers are an asset more so than a liability, most of it in the extreme North. I do not see a reason why you chose to cherry-pick examples, because, for example, Cuba until 1991 outperformed almost all nations in the Carribean even by the simplest GDP/capita measure; and by HDI it outperformes more than one nation of Latin America. I am not sure why you compare Poland, a former Russian Empire dominion, with Germany, which was one of the industrialized nations even during World War I. As for Japan and South Korea, I readily acknowledge that these nations made the very rare leap to a First World living standard. I am not sure where I have said something else. I am further baffled by the inclusion of US and Maoist China-sponsored Khmer Rouge as an example, whereas Latin America was somehow excluded from comparison by yourself.

I never said that all 22million km2 are perfect. Certainly US has more usable territory. It doesn't change the fact that you continue to insist on comparing USSR with mountainous Mexico. Not to mention that while population of USSR increased by a factor of 2.3 population of Mexico increased by a factor of 6.2. Even with far higher population growth it maintained roughly the same per capita GDP ratio of 125%. Population of Argentina rose 8 times since 1900 and is again a much smaller country than USSR. The only one cherry picking examples here is you comparing the largest and most powerful communist country with medium sized, high population growth countries.
I never said that Poland perfectly matches Germany but the two countries are certainly more similar than USSR and Mexico. Not to mention that my chart shows performances after WW2 after which Germany was devastated. The same goes for Austria compared to Hungary and Czechoslovakia which have a long and common history as well as being landlocked and similarly sized and populated.
Why wouldn't I used Khmer Rouge as an example? It is an example of an extreme I never actually compared its performance with another country if you recall. I also didn't avoid using Latin American countries contrary to your claim. I only said that comparing USSR to countries like Mexico is unfair since they are very dissimilar and we cannot isolate the variable of communism and capitalism and there are factors like geography, population and population growth which muddy the issue.
I also don't understand your Cuba objection: I compared a caribbean island with other caribbean islands of similar size. If you compare Cuba to Mexico per capita GDP ratio steadily falls from 93% in 1929 to 50% in 1990 and then to 33% in 2000 to rise to 47% in 2008. Comparing it to Jamaica it osscilates between 150% in 1950 to 50% in 1966 to 101% in 1985, back to 50% in 1995 to 102% today. What countries has Cuba outperformed?

The USSR was comparably as industrialized per capita as Mexico or Argentina in the 1900s. It "consistently" outperformed these nations. I am not sure what you wanted to prove. First World nations are not, in fact, apt comparisons for Second World nations for the very reason that the richness of the hegemon also matters; especially in modern capitalism, where economies are so interdependent. You should know and understand that more powerful economies would tend to create a wealthier economic zone.

As I have shown above you are using vastly dissimilar countries and then pretending you are certain USSR's greater success was because of communism as opposed to despite communism.
It is not my fault that not a single communist country managed to come close to First World nation, that's the fault of communism. Also it's funny you think that comparing Hungary with Austria is unfair but comparing USSR with Mexico is OK.
Say again: I compared countries of similar size, location and history to eliminate them from equation and communism consistently underperforms. Western Europe and Japan were destitute after 1946. Why did they outperform the communist block? Because of US? Did US make them all outperform COMECON? Capitalism must be better than I thought.

What a load of crap, a person in a second world nation with prior created vast industrial capital circa 1990 and a pre-industrial society with necessary cheap labour for very labour-intensive early industry? Are you really comparing these pre-conditions? Sorry, but "a person can be cool in a modern industrial economy without requiring lots of cheap labour" is not relevant to the historical facts that cheap labour was used and was required for early labour-intensive projects. This anecdotal evidence is pure bullshit. Could your father build a Trans-siberian railway in an era where machine tools were scant few just by "frugality" and "own hard work"? That's bullshit and you know it. I don't know why you chose to pollute a serious discussion with idiocy, but please, refrain from doing so in the future.

Don't backpedal. You said that capitalism was impossible without slavery and colonial robbery. That is not the same as cheap labor. Obviously if one is building a huge project which requires vast amounts of unskilled labor the labor is going to be cheap. My example was an attempt to show that a man can come to posses means of production without exploiting anyone. Your objections that my father wouldn't be able to buy machine tools in 1900 completely misses the point: he would've bought cows to make cheese or something back then. Then he would've been subcontracted to cater the workers on the railway. Or would be a part of several hundred businessmen founding the Siberian Railway corporation which would have enough capital to begin construction or whatever. The point is about obtaining "means of production" which according to communists are in the hands of exploiters and cannot possibly be obtained by workers through savings. Which is bullshit excuse to explain away the greater prosperity of the West.

[Simon_Jester]

Couple of minor points:

-The Marxist definition of "class" is a bit tricky for people not familiar with the Marxist model. Moreover, it is a persistent anti-communist line that in a communist society everyone will be made to have the same income and all, by theft from productive individuals if necessary. This line has been repeated so many times that most people outside the communist world have a strong tendency to believe it.

It's a predictable twist on the idea of levelling "ownership of the means of production," and quite effective at convincing the upper income brackets (those who do not "own means of production" in Marxist terms, but are nonetheless much richer than a menial laborer) that they don't want anything to do with communism.

-Kane, all your GDP graphs start after World War Two, and continue past 1990; isn't that a bad idea if you're looking at communism? For example, you will note that Russian per capita GDP as a percentage of US per capita GDP plummeted in the 1990s and has only begun to recover recently, likewise to per capita GDP of the USSR compared to Brazil. That may say nothing about communism and everything about the transition process by which the oligarchs looted the Russian economy.

Why did you include data past 1990 in countries that blatantly stopped being communist after that point? Likewise, why didn't you include data prior to World War II? I for one would be interested to see a plot of Russian and Brazilian per capita GDP starting in the Czarist era.

[Kane Starkiller]

-Kane, all your GDP graphs start after World War Two, and continue past 1990; isn't that a bad idea if you're looking at communism? For example, you will note that Russian per capita GDP as a percentage of US per capita GDP plummeted in the 1990s and has only begun to recover recently, likewise to per capita GDP of the USSR compared to Brazil. That may say nothing about communism and everything about the transition process by which the oligarchs looted the Russian economy.

Why did you include data past 1990 in countries that blatantly stopped being communist after that point? Likewise, why didn't you include data prior to World War II? I for one would be interested to see a plot of Russian and Brazilian per capita GDP starting in the Czarist era.

Communism didn't exist in Eastern Europe other than USSR before WW2. Secondly all countries were devastated in WW2 so it's a relatively fair starting point.
The fact that post 1990 the countries were no longer communist doesn't change the fact that from 1950-1990 their gdp per capita was consistently decreasing when compared to similar capitalist countries. What post 1990 data shows is that post communist and reformed countries are catching up to capitalist countries even beyond the recovery from 1990-1995 crisis. Data for Czarist era Russian Empire is scarce but in 1820 Russian Empire's GDP was 106% of Brazil, in 1870 132%, in 1900 182%, in 1913 183%.
Then between 1928 and 1940:
1928-118%
1929-121%
1930-128%
1931-145%
1932-141%
1933-138%
1934-142%
1935-162%
1936-161%
1937-172%
1938-168%
1939-177%
1940-171%
Then there is no data again for WW2 period and it starts with 1946. Maximum Czarist is 183% while maximum communist reached 194% in 1967. On one hand USSR went through devastating wars on the other Russian/USSR population grew by a factor of 1.5 between 1913 and 1967 while Brazilian population grew by a factor of 3.7 so there was a much greater influx of mouths to feed. Also USSR's economy started to underperform drastically from 1970s onwards which can't be explained by WW2.

[K. A. Pital]

Communism didn't exist in Eastern Europe other than USSR before WW2. Secondly all countries were devastated in WW2 so it's a relatively fair starting point. The fact that post 1990 the countries were no longer communist doesn't change the fact that from 1950-1990 their gdp per capita was consistently decreasing when compared to similar capitalist countries.

No, that's not a "fair starting point" because the nations were in different stages of industrialization even prior to World War II, and World War II did not level the cards at all. On the contrary - it turned the world into bloc one and two, where the relative power and economic abilities of the hegemon played a great part in the development of the entire bloc. The USA was completely unscathed in World War II and at peak industrial capacity, while the USSR was a war-battered hegemon. It was unspeakably more easy to restore war-ravaged nations for the USA than for the USSR, which had to restore itself and then promote the development of satellites. The USA faced no such task. Besides - at no point was Poland, a former Russian Empire territory, equal or similar to Germany, unless you'd be willing to prove it with numbers showing that Poland's per capita industrialization reached a level comparable to the German one. You can see at the graphs I have provided below that Eastern Europe started lagging behind Western Europe and the USA far earlier than the USSR even came into existence, or far prior to the starting point of Soviet industrialization (1928). In fact, the huge differences between W. and E. Europe were already manifest in the 1900s. Even between W. Europe and S. Europe, a huge difference in development was present, and that one persisted even post-1950.

I never said that all 22million km2 are perfect. Certainly US has more usable territory. It doesn't change the fact that you continue to insist on comparing USSR with mountainous Mexico. Not to mention that while population of USSR increased by a factor of 2.3 population of Mexico increased by a factor of 6.2. Even with far higher population growth it maintained roughly the same per capita GDP ratio of 125%. Population of Argentina rose 8 times since 1900 and is again a much smaller country than USSR. The only one cherry picking examples here is you comparing the largest and most powerful communist country with medium sized, high population growth countries. I never said that Poland perfectly matches Germany but the two countries are certainly more similar than USSR and Mexico. Not to mention that my chart shows performances after WW2 after which Germany was devastated. The same goes for Austria compared to Hungary and Czechoslovakia which have a long and common history as well as being landlocked and similarly sized and populated. Why wouldn't I used Khmer Rouge as an example? It is an example of an extreme I never actually compared its performance with another country if you recall. I also didn't avoid using Latin American countries contrary to your claim. I only said that comparing USSR to countries like Mexico is unfair since they are very dissimilar and we cannot isolate the variable of communism and capitalism and there are factors like geography, population and population growth which muddy the issue.
I also don't understand your Cuba objection: I compared a caribbean island with other caribbean islands of similar size. If you compare Cuba to Mexico per capita GDP ratio steadily falls from 93% in 1929 to 50% in 1990 and then to 33% in 2000 to rise to 47% in 2008. Comparing it to Jamaica it osscilates between 150% in 1950 to 50% in 1966 to 101% in 1985, back to 50% in 1995 to 102% today. What countries has Cuba outperformed?

Once again, I was merely comparing nations which had a similar per capita industrial production and level of machine tool penetration and the like in the 1900s. Because that's the "starting point". If you think climate and landscape matter so much, most of Russia is utterly unusable and the climate so harsh that without industrial tooling, people would never be even able to support such high populations in cities in Siberia and extreme North. So what you did is just arbitrarily select First World nations and compare them to Second World nations. I did the other side - pick a few Third World nations and compare them to several Second World nations. How are Poland and Germany "more similar" than USSR and Mexico in the 1900s? Poland at the time was a part of non-industrialized Russian Empire, whereas Germany was an industrialized nation. Nothing could be more of a dissimilarity. As for Cuba:


If you think that there are other variables which make comparisons between nations that have had similar per capita industrial output and machine tool penetration indicators in the 1900s, then perhaps the whole thing is an exercise in futility, because there would always be enormous variables. For example, the farther into Eastern Europe you go, the worse is the climate, and Russia has a far worse climate compared to Westen Europe and the USA period. However, I do not care much about that. If India's problems can be said as not relevant to its social order, and a mere byproduct of colonial history, disease, climate and population, I'd say that a great deal of Russia's problems stem from similar factors.

As I have shown above you are using vastly dissimilar countries and then pretending you are certain USSR's greater success was because of communism as opposed to despite communism. It is not my fault that not a single communist country managed to come close to First World nation, that's the fault of communism. Also it's funny you think that comparing Hungary with Austria is unfair but comparing USSR with Mexico is OK. Say again: I compared countries of similar size, location and history to eliminate them from equation and communism consistently underperforms. Western Europe and Japan were destitute after 1946. Why did they outperform the communist block? Because of US? Did US make them all outperform COMECON? Capitalism must be better than I thought.

I am sorry, but what sort of fucking joke is that? "Similar size"? I compared nations with similar industrial indicators per capita, which is more important than size. But if you are so willing, why not compare Germany and Mexico? Similar population size, heh, both have an average territory. But hey, maybe that "comparison" is a pile of shit because Mexico was not industrialized in the 1900s while Germany already was? Yeah - and so are your "comparisons", which you decided to derail this debate with. Western Europe was not "destitute" after 1946.

Japan was, and I already said that several SEA nations outperformed the USSR.

And yes, do you really fucking think they could have done it without the USA? Because that's what happened with nations that were doing it "without" the USA in post-1945 period:

Especially troubling is the fact, as you can see, that South cone nations of Latin America were performing better than the USSR until the 1950s. Other nations started losing out since 1928.

S.E. Asia was almost at the same GDP/capita level in 1928, but it failed to achieve a similar level of development, too. No miracles happened in India.

Don't backpedal. You said that capitalism was impossible without slavery and colonial robbery. That is not the same as cheap labor. Obviously if one is building a huge project which requires vast amounts of unskilled labor the labor is going to be cheap. My example was an attempt to show that a man can come to posses means of production without exploiting anyone. Your objections that my father wouldn't be able to buy machine tools in 1900 completely misses the point: he would've bought cows to make cheese or something back then. Then he would've been subcontracted to cater the workers on the railway. Or would be a part of several hundred businessmen founding the Siberian Railway corporation which would have enough capital to begin construction or whatever. The point is about obtaining "means of production" which according to communists are in the hands of exploiters and cannot possibly be obtained by workers through savings. Which is bullshit excuse to explain away the greater prosperity of the West.

"Backpedalling"? You're the one who is doing that. I said that slavery, fencing and other well-known processes that we now decry as vices were necessary to create huge masses of destitute people who would then be used as cheap labour. Because without these huge masses, where exactly would the large numbers of unskilled workers come from? They needed to be torn off the land and put into cities with burgeoning industrial machinery so that they could work, or to be sent to massive construction projects. Under the prior existing agrarian system such was impossible. The colonies were necessary for the resources to fuel the industrialization of Britain and, creating a huge loop where large colonial empires required naval bases, navies and controlled coal depots, colonialism itself was a major driving force in the first period of industrialization. Either you admit this, or you continue to tell the tale about your father, which has fuck nothing to do with what I just described. Buying cheese won't help you to build a railroad through very bad climatic conditions. However, using cheap labour with huge human losses certainly would help you. Besides, it does not matter if a hundred businessmen exploit cheap workers who die building Project X or just one. So forgive me, but I was speaking about the fact that historically the means of production happened to be concentrated in the hands of a very small class. The fact that people can change their class - workers can become small bourgeois and small bourgeois can become large capitalists (like drops trickling up, because all workers obviously can't be capitalists, especially at a time when industrial capital was scarce) - that all is absolutely irrelevant, because the system itself operated in the XVII-XIX century with great numbers of destitute workers and few rich exploiters, regardless of how these people became the exploiter or the worker; and in that general system millions of workers were exploited to build the industrial capital which in turn created all the goods that we enjoy now. You may not like this fact and hide behind goody-tales about people who became small capitalists using their pitiful savings, but frankly, I already said - this is irrelevant and historical reality is such that hundreds of thousands of workers toiled to build the Suez Canal and a good hundred thousand of them gave up their lives. Not the frugality of the small businessman selling cheese, but the brutal exploit created that most important trade artery that was worth going to war for even in the XX century. And these examples, like I said, are not few and far between, but ubiqutous and many. So pardon me, I am not impressed by your irrelevant hijack.

[TC Pilot]

And yes, do you really fucking think they could have done it without the USA? Because that's what happened with nations that were doing it "without" the USA in post-1945 period:

Quite right. Japan's post-war economy only started to take off because American investment started to pour in as a result of the Korean War and the determination made in Washington after Mao's victory in China that the Japanese would serve as one of the great anti-communist bulwarks of the Cold War. Minor things like not having to spend any money on a military and having your security guaranteed by a benign foreign overlord tend to help these sorts of things, too.

Edit - at the risk of further derailing this discussion, I must say I'm curious as to what extent the introduction of social welfare programs in Western nations (policies either introduced during this so-called Golden Age of Capitalism by socialist parties like Labour in Britain or co-opted by liberal democrats elsewhere) were responsible for increases in living standards, as oppossed to, say, 'natural' capitalist development processes.

[K. A. Pital]

One of stormthebeaches' points was that workers didn't die massively inside the First World nations themselves, e.g. Europe and America, during industrialization. However, I have seen enough to challenge that point head-on. For example, inside Britain itself, it was not unusual for 50-60 workers to die building some railway object in the XIX century. Examples? The Woodhead Tunnels (at least 60 workers dead), the Forth Railway Bridge in Scotland (57 workers dead), I also read that the Manchester Ship Canal had quite a death toll (although few to no information could be found). And Western offshoots? 16 builders died as late as the 1930s in a construction of the Sydney Harbor Bridge in Australia. What about the gruesomest story of the New Basin Canal, inside the mighty-and-high USA themselves? It was truly on par with the deadliest canals ever built. And how pathetic, really, it is that a death toll of nearly ten thousand or perhaps even more was needed to build a five-kilometer long canal, don't you think? The Irish and the Chinese in the USA were poor and destituted and used as cheapest, expendable labour, dying in the thousands to build some great industrial projects that the USA, Canada and North America in general, needed. Even more interesting, the deaths at say New Basin Canal were poorly recorded (unlike the later projects like the Panama Canal or the Soviet White Sea Canal, where deaths were recorded meticulously). Which means for a large part of First World construction projects with poor records, little information about their deadliness would be present.

I am sure that people will try to chalk all these deaths up to malevolence; and in a certain way that is true, but much more it is true that when technology is primitive and labour is cheap, and projects are made with huge human effort by hand and primitive tools, the deaths are many. This is why colonial projects continued to be deadly even in the XX century, whereas few deaths occured in the First World itself - a lot of heavy construction machinery was produced by the time and unskilled labour made way for skilled workers operating with tools.

[Kane Starkiller]

No, that's not a "fair starting point" because the nations were in different stages of industrialization even prior to World War II, and World War II did not level the cards at all. On the contrary - it turned the world into bloc one and two, where the relative power and economic abilities of the hegemon played a great part in the development of the entire bloc. The USA was completely unscathed in World War II and at peak industrial capacity, while the USSR was a war-battered hegemon. It was unspeakably more easy to restore war-ravaged nations for the USA than for the USSR, which had to restore itself and then promote the development of satellites. The USA faced no such task. Besides - at no point was Poland, a former Russian Empire territory, equal or similar to Germany, unless you'd be willing to prove it with numbers showing that Poland's per capita industrialization reached a level comparable to the German one. You can see at the graphs I have provided below that Eastern Europe started lagging behind Western Europe and the USA far earlier than the USSR even came into existence, or far prior to the starting point of Soviet industrialization (1928). In fact, the huge differences between W. and E. Europe were already manifest in the 1900s. Even between W. Europe and S. Europe, a huge difference in development was present, and that one persisted even post-1950.

You ignore the fact that Poland and Germany were not the only comparisons: Czechoslovakia vs Austria, North Korea vs South Korea. Were they all less industrialized? Czechoslovakia had greater per capita GDP after the war. Not to mention that the issue is not merely that Poland couldn't overtake Germany nor did I expect it to but that it rapidly declined in comparison to a country that lost eastern prussia, Eastern Germany and had to take in refugees from former eastern territories.
Yes USSR was batttered in WW2 and US wasn't. But USSR actually manages to slightly close the gap between 1945 and mid 1970s as it recovers from the war. But since then it again begins to drop as percentage of US. Don't pretend this is because of WW2. Furthermore I compared US and USSR more because they were both leaders of their respective blocks. I also compared it to Japan and Brazil and it isn't stellar.
When you have a counter point that doesn't involve picking a single nation let me know.

Once again, I was merely comparing nations which had a similar per capita industrial production and level of machine tool penetration and the like in the 1900s. Because that's the "starting point". If you think climate and landscape matter so much, most of Russia is utterly unusable and the climate so harsh that without industrial tooling, people would never be even able to support such high populations in cities in Siberia and extreme North. So what you did is just arbitrarily select First World nations and compare them to Second World nations. I did the other side - pick a few Third World nations and compare them to several Second World nations. How are Poland and Germany "more similar" than USSR and Mexico in the 1900s? Poland at the time was a part of non-industrialized Russian Empire, whereas Germany was an industrialized nation. Nothing could be more of a dissimilarity.

Because "level of machine tool penetration" can change over the years through government or private investment. Geography is static and cannot be changed by a government. So if communists claim that they will bring about a much better form of government that will make people live much better than capitalist governments then I expect USSR to start outstripping Mexico and closing the gap between USSR and similarly sized capitalist countries. The fact of the matter is that Mexico which has much less arable land, is heavily mountainous which impedes transport, few navigable rivers and had a much larger population growth maintained a level GDP ratio with USSR. Therefore communist system was clearly inferior as they couldn't put much better geography and demographics to good use and there is no justification for one party rule and repressions it undertook in the name of communism.
Say again: I never implied that Poland should've overtaken or closed the gap with Germany. Maintaining a level GDP would've been nice although it still wouldn't justify communist repression and one party rule in the name of better future. What happens however is a drastic drop in GDP per capita.

As for Cuba:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/c ... -Carib.png
If you think that there are other variables which make comparisons between nations that have had similar per capita industrial output and machine tool penetration indicators in the 1900s, then perhaps the whole thing is an exercise in futility, because there would always be enormous variables. For example, the farther into Eastern Europe you go, the worse is the climate, and Russia has a far worse climate compared to Westen Europe and the USA period. However, I do not care much about that. If India's problems can be said as not relevant to its social order, and a mere byproduct of colonial history, disease, climate and population, I'd say that a great deal of Russia's problems stem from similar factors.

Yes Eastern Europe has worse climate than Western Europe. I never claimed otherwise. I never claimed all comparisons are perfectly equal but that they compare countries with similar "fixed" conditions that cannot change. "Machine tools penetration" on the other hand can change and if communist goverment was at least as competent as Mexico's they should've outstripped Mexico seeing the massive geographic and demographic disadvantages.
What exactly does the Cuban chart prove? Cuba had by far greatest per capita GDP in 1945 which was before revolution. Then as years pass by other countries overtake it or close the gap. The only two countries which had a markedly worse performance are Nicaragua, which also had a revolution, and Haiti which I already acknowledged. I don't see any kind of jump after the revolution, no justification for Castro's and communist grip on power.

I am sorry, but what sort of fucking joke is that? "Similar size"? I compared nations with similar industrial indicators per capita, which is more important than size. But if you are so willing, why not compare Germany and Mexico? Similar population size, heh, both have an average territory. But hey, maybe that "comparison" is a pile of shit because Mexico was not industrialized in the 1900s while Germany already was? Yeah - and so are your "comparisons", which you decided to derail this debate with.

No "industrial indicators" are not more important than arable land, navigable rivers and geographical location if you are comparing the performance of a government over a large period of time since presumably a better government would use its natural resources more effectively to increase the "industrial indicators". It can't turn Rio Grande into Volga.
Why should I compare Germany and Mexico? Neither of them were communist and I don't remember saying that all capitalist governments and societies are equally capable or successful. Not to mention that USSR doesn't actually manage to drastically outperform Mexico and only manages to maintain 125% per capita GDP level.

Europe was not "destitute" after 1946.
http://www.ljplus.ru/img4/h/i/himmelwerft/allen-b5.gif
Japan was, and I already said that several SEA nations outperformed the USSR.

What exactly does this chart prove? USSR was outperformed by everyone other than Eastern Europe. Exactly as I said. Western Germany was certainly destitute and a rump state and it also drastically outperformed USSR. But that's OK because it had more machine tools in 1900.

http://www.ljplus.ru/img4/h/i/himmelwerft/allen-b4.gif
And yes, do you really fucking think they could have done it without the USA? Because that's what happened with nations that were doing it "without" the USA in post-1945 period:
http://www.ljplus.ru/img4/h/i/himmelwerft/allen-b3.gif
Especially troubling is the fact, as you can see, that South cone nations of Latin America were performing better than the USSR until the 1950s. Other nations started losing out since 1928.

Done what? Rebuild somewhat or outperform USSR the way they did? US could certainly help somewhat but in no way does it explain why Western Europe and Japan left USSR in the dust.
You managed to find worst performing medium and small sized capitalist countries in Latin America and then compared them to the largest and most powerful communist countries and you think it proves something. Maybe I should compare US to Cambodia and call that the proof of capitalist system? By the way according to Maddison in 1989 USSR had 113% of Chilean per capita GDP and 109% of Argentinian. The chart you put up makes the difference seem larger more like 150%.

http://www.ljplus.ru/img4/h/i/himmelwerft/allen-b2.gif
S.E. Asia was almost at the same GDP/capita level in 1928, but it failed to achieve a similar level of development, too. No miracles happened in India.

South East Asia which also contains Burma, Cambodia and Vietnam? Not to mention that you keep using charts which show the absolute values so as the absolute values increase the difference seems much larger when it isn't necessarily.
For example "USSR" GDP was 155% of Thai in 1870, 177% in 1913, 174% in 1928, 260% in 1938.
Then from 1950 onwards:

How many machine tools did Thailand have in 1900?
I'm not even going to comment your attempts to make USSR, the most powerful communist country, look good by comparing it to Middle East or Sub saharan Africa.
China was also communist by the way so it doesn't prove anything.

"Backpedalling"? You're the one who is doing that. I said that slavery, fencing and other well-known processes that we now decry as vices were necessary to create huge masses of destitute people who would then be used as cheap labour. Because without these huge masses, where exactly would the large numbers of unskilled workers come from? They needed to be torn off the land and put into cities with burgeoning industrial machinery so that they could work, or to be sent to massive construction projects. Under the prior existing agrarian system such was impossible. The colonies were necessary for the resources to fuel the industrialization of Britain and, creating a huge loop where large colonial empires required naval bases, navies and controlled coal depots, colonialism itself was a major driving force in the first period of industrialization. Either you admit this, or you continue to tell the tale about your father, which has fuck nothing to do with what I just described. Buying cheese won't help you to build a railroad through very bad climatic conditions. However, using cheap labour with huge human losses certainly would help you. Besides, it does not matter if a hundred businessmen exploit cheap workers who die building Project X or just one. So forgive me, but I was speaking about the fact that historically the means of production happened to be concentrated in the hands of a very small class. The fact that people can change their class - workers can become small bourgeois and small bourgeois can become large capitalists (like drops trickling up, because all workers obviously can't be capitalists, especially at a time when industrial capital was scarce) - that all is absolutely irrelevant, because the system itself operated in the XVII-XIX century with great numbers of destitute workers and few rich exploiters, regardless of how these people became the exploiter or the worker; and in that general system millions of workers were exploited to build the industrial capital which in turn created all the goods that we enjoy now. You may not like this fact and hide behind goody-tales about people who became small capitalists using their pitiful savings, but frankly, I already said - this is irrelevant and historical reality is such that hundreds of thousands of workers toiled to build the Suez Canal and a good hundred thousand of them gave up their lives. Not the frugality of the small businessman selling cheese, but the brutal exploit created that most important trade artery that was worth going to war for even in the XX century. And these examples, like I said, are not few and far between, but ubiqutous and many. So pardon me, I am not impressed by your irrelevant hijack.

So the prior existing agrarian system was a paradise on earth? There wasn't anything like overpopulation, droughts etc. which made peasants look for other work even without someone forcing them to go to cities or exploiting them?
My tale demonstrates that it is perfectly possible for a worker to become capitalist something that communists denied and didn't allow all the way to 1990.
Yes life in 1900 was much tougher. Human work was used to build large projects so the accident rate was higher. Yes many capitalist countries did use colonies and slaves but this doesn't mean that capitalism cannot possibly succeed without this "era of exploitation" nor does it explain why communist countries continued to undepreform even in late 20th century. And by underperform I don't mean they had lower GDP per capita but their GDP per capita continuously dropped in relation to capitalist countries from 50s-60s onwards.
They reengineered the society, instituted a one party rule, oppressed free speech for absolutely no gain. Communism was a failure and no amount of comparing USSR with sub saharan Africa will change that.

[K. A. Pital]

You ignore the fact that Poland and Germany were not the only comparisons: Czechoslovakia vs Austria, North Korea vs South Korea. Were they all less industrialized? Czechoslovakia had greater per capita GDP after the war. Not to mention that the issue is not merely that Poland couldn't overtake Germany nor did I expect it to but that it rapidly declined in comparison to a country that lost eastern prussia, Eastern Germany and had to take in refugees from former eastern territories. Yes USSR was batttered in WW2 and US wasn't. But USSR actually manages to slightly close the gap between 1945 and mid 1970s as it recovers from the war. But since then it again begins to drop as percentage of US. Don't pretend this is because of WW2. Furthermore I compared US and USSR more because they were both leaders of their respective blocks. I also compared it to Japan and Brazil and it isn't stellar. When you have a counter point that doesn't involve picking a single nation let me know.

Well, obviously in the Czechoslovakia-Austria example, they were less industrialized. Have you seriously not noted the massive difference between Eastern and Western Europe which existed even prior to the very creation of the USSR, much more so the communist nations of Eastern Europe. As for DPRK and South Korea, yes, DPRKs hyper-autarky and the maintenance of Stalinism did not do the nation any good. How is that even relevant? Once again, I do not "pretend" that the gap between the USSR and USA started rising again because of the war. Quite the contrary - unlike you, I know perfectly why it happened. The USSR (and with it the COMECON) relied on obsolete industrial tooling and methods. I'm not sure why you think I do not understand that. Besides, if you compare Japan to Brazil, you'd find Japan vastly outperforms the former. What does this say? In your theory Japan achieved this on its own.

Because "level of machine tool penetration" can change over the years through government or private investment. Geography is static and cannot be changed by a government. So if communists claim that they will bring about a much better form of government that will make people live much better than capitalist governments then I expect USSR to start outstripping Mexico and closing the gap between USSR and similarly sized capitalist countries. The fact of the matter is that Mexico which has much less arable land, is heavily mountainous which impedes transport, few navigable rivers and had a much larger population growth maintained a level GDP ratio with USSR. Therefore communist system was clearly inferior as they couldn't put much better geography and demographics to good use and there is no justification for one party rule and repressions it undertook in the name of communism. Say again: I never implied that Poland should've overtaken or closed the gap with Germany. Maintaining a level GDP would've been nice although it still wouldn't justify communist repression and one party rule in the name of better future. What happens however is a drastic drop in GDP per capita.

I am not sure why you think economic growth justifies repression or one-party rule. I have never said any of that are justified, or that they are in any way desireable. As for Eastern Europe, barking up the wrong tree again. For many times here I have referred to the creation of East European satellites as one of the worst acts of the USSR and an enormous foreign policy blunder. Not only was it bad par se, but it also gave birth to autarkian nations like Romania and Albania, who performed badly and were marked by extremely negative traits that the USSR itself was able to partly mitigate.

I also cannot understand why or where I have said that implemented Soviet communism represents a superior form of government. I think you are grossly in error about the machine tool and industrialization level, because you think those are some form of stuff you can create without outside help. They are not. They require enormous technical expertise and, during the first stage, ardous and very hard labour. No need to remind about the 12-hour working days in Japan and South Korea, and other Asian tigers. The level of inputs determines the output. Nations which had an industry in the 1900s took the lead and left everyone else - communist or not - FAR behind. This cannot be explained by mere geography, as you obviously can see. So pardon me, but a lead in industrialization often means far more than geography alone.

Then as years pass by other countries overtake it or close the gap. The only two countries which had a markedly worse performance are Nicaragua, which also had a revolution, and Haiti which I already acknowledged. I don't see any kind of jump after the revolution, no justification for Castro's and communist grip on power.

All nations on the chart before 1991 had a worse performance than Cuba, no?

No "industrial indicators" are not more important than arable land, navigable rivers and geographical location if you are comparing the performance of a government over a large period of time since presumably a better government would use its natural resources more effectively to increase the "industrial indicators". It can't turn Rio Grande into Volga. Why should I compare Germany and Mexico? Neither of them were communist and I don't remember saying that all capitalist governments and societies are equally capable or successful. Not to mention that USSR doesn't actually manage to drastically outperform Mexico and only manages to maintain 125% per capita GDP level.

Isn't it remarkable then, that Russia has the worst lands in Europe, from an agricultural point of view? *laughs* Seriously. I haven't said all or even any communist nations are particularly capable or successful. Also, it would be interesting to see at what level of GDP per capita was Russia vs. Mexico, Argentina and several other LA nations in the 1900s. The graphs from Maddison indicate that parts of Latin America were better than Russia in the 1900s, but became worse after the 1950s. Remarkably enough, Mexico proves this quite well - in 1913, the territories comprising the USSR had a GDP/capita 85% that of Mexico.

What exactly does this chart prove? USSR was outperformed by everyone other than Eastern Europe. Exactly as I said. Western Germany was certainly destitute and a rump state and it also drastically outperformed USSR. But that's OK because it had more machine tools in 1900.

Please think about it. Yes, that means prior existing industrialization level is very important.

Done what? Rebuild somewhat or outperform USSR the way they did? US could certainly help somewhat but in no way does it explain why Western Europe and Japan left USSR in the dust.

Really? Why not?

You managed to find worst performing medium and small sized capitalist countries in Latin America and then compared them to the largest and most powerful communist countries and you think it proves something. Maybe I should compare US to Cambodia and call that the proof of capitalist system? By the way according to Maddison in 1989 USSR had 113% of Chilean per capita GDP and 109% of Argentinian. The chart you put up makes the difference seem larger more like 150%.

This chart is built by Maddison's data. Also, those are averages. Besides, I did not "manage to find the worst peforming" nations, I just took a chart which had an average of all Latin American nations. And don't give me the crap about "small and medium sized nations", please - Western Europe consisted of small and medium sized nations. It did not preclude them from getting very high GDP/capita indicators and good HDI rankings, to boot. So the size is, to a large degree, irrelevant when we are talking about per capita indicators. Britain is much smaller than the USSR, but had superior GDP/capita. Latin American nations did not have such.

Communism was a failure and no amount of comparing USSR with sub saharan Africa will change that.

One - I never said it wasn't a failure. Two - let's say "Sub-Saharan Africa was a failure compared to the USSR". See? I got a meaningless, idiotic statement which is also true. You completely ignored the nature of the debate, which was not to prove the USSR, or communist nations were superior.

[Samuel]

Just a minor nitpick but

The colonies were necessary for the resources to fuel the industrialization of Britain and, creating a huge loop where large colonial empires required naval bases, navies and controlled coal depots, colonialism itself was a major driving force in the first period of industrialization.

I'm pretty sure England's early industrialization was built upon shipping and textiles. To the best of my knowledge they did not directly need the resources of their colonies in order to industrialize.

[TC Pilot]

Colonies have usually been important to industrialization by serving as competition-free markets for the goods being produced rather than resevoirs of resources (I imagine that transportation technology was too primitive and unreliable during Britain's industrialization to allow for it anyway), and they're certainly not required for it to occur (just take Germany or Japan, for instance). Colonies were, however, regarded around the turn of the 20th Century as integral to the preservation of the sort of capitalist society industrialization created by people as disparate as Cecil Rhodes and Lenin. 'Superexploitation' and all that.

[K. A. Pital]

Colonies have usually been important to industrialization by serving as competition-free markets for the goods being produced rather than resevoirs of resources (I imagine that transportation technology was too primitive and unreliable during Britain's industrialization to allow for it anyway), and they're certainly not required for it to occur (just take Germany or Japan, for instance). Colonies were, however, regarded around the turn of the 20th Century as integral to the preservation of the sort of capitalist society industrialization created by people as disparate as Cecil Rhodes and Lenin. 'Superexploitation' and all that.

Industrialization can occur without the colonies, but usually those who had no colonies came to the industrial stage later. Germany came later than Britain, and Japan was a latecomer. I'm not sure as to the exact mechanics of this (I presumed a few posts earlier that colonialism and the need to create sprawling empires with naval bases gave a powerful drive for industrialization in the metropole, however correct that may be). It is also notable that Japan's industrialization was pressured by lots of resource bottlenecks which eventually led to their imperialist ventures into Asia.

As for raw resources, this might have been a smaller role, but it did play a role in my view. Consider cotton, for example - Britain, as other colonial metropoles, served as the consumer of raw resource from the colonies, processed them using domestic industry and then sold (exported) the final product.

So, while it is possible that industrialization could occur without colonialism (and primarily naval expansion required for it), the process would have been slower because of both a reduced motivation to industrialize and a lack of the ability to use raw resource inputs from the colonies in certain industries and then sell finished products back to the colonies or to other nations, i.e. fill in some bottlenecks in domestic industry with colonial inputs.

[Samuel]

Colonies have usually been important to industrialization by serving as competition-free markets for the goods being produced rather than resevoirs of resources (I imagine that transportation technology was too primitive and unreliable during Britain's industrialization to allow for it anyway), and they're certainly not required for it to occur (just take Germany or Japan, for instance). Colonies were, however, regarded around the turn of the 20th Century as integral to the preservation of the sort of capitalist society industrialization created by people as disparate as Cecil Rhodes and Lenin. 'Superexploitation' and all that.

Yes, but that doesn't make it true. The British started industrializing in the 18th century. At that time they had the United States as the only colony that really had any population. They got India later, but the industrial revolution started and progressed independently of their colonial expansion. Does anyone have a list of the destination of British exports?

Germany came later than Britain, and Japan was a latecomer.

That isn't exactly a reasonable comparison. Germany didn't exist until 1870 and Japan was isolated from the outside world until 1854.

It is also notable that Japan's industrialization was pressured by lots of resource bottlenecks which eventually led to their imperialist ventures into Asia.

What was the main bottlenecks? I know Japan doesn't have any natural resources, but I'm curious what was the most essential thing they needed to get their hands on.

As for raw resources, this might have been a smaller role, but it did play a role in my view. Consider cotton, for example - Britain, as other colonial metropoles, served as the consumer of raw resource from the colonies, processed them using domestic industry and then sold (exported) the final product.

Ironically, the British textile industry started with wool. On topic there is no reason you need to conquer a region in order to trade with them. Is there any part that wouldn't be better served by normal trade relations? All I can think of planting cotton and eliminating tariffs, but you don't need colonies for either.

[TC Pilot]

Industrialization can occur without the colonies, but usually those who had no colonies came to the industrial stage later. Germany came later than Britain, and Japan was a latecomer. I'm not sure as to the exact mechanics of this (I presumed a few posts earlier that colonialism and the need to create sprawling empires with naval bases gave a powerful drive for industrialization in the metropole, however correct that may be). It is also notable that Japan's industrialization was pressured by lots of resource bottlenecks which eventually led to their imperialist ventures into Asia.

That seems flawed to me. Britain had more colonies than almost any other country, certainly, but I still question how much colonies contributed to British industrialization given, among other things, simple factors like technological limitations inherent in transporting raw materials and finished goods back and forth. I don't think it's a coincidence that most of the industrial giants of the Victorian age (Britain, Prussia/Germany, and the United States) possessed vast coal deposits (coal is about the only thing Japan had, though I wouldn't qualify her an 'industrial giant') well within their 'traditional' borders, or that industrialization was greatest in coal-rich regions (like the Rhineland and Silesia in Germany, northern Britain, northern Italy, for instance). Nor do I think it's a coincidence that, during the period in which Britain was practically the only industrialized nation on the planet, she vigorously pursued a policy of free trade.

Certainly we can agree that possession of colonies does not automatically lead to industrialization, otherwise it would have been spearheaded by Spain and Portugal.

As for raw resources, this might have been a smaller role, but it did play a role in my view. Consider cotton, for example - Britain, as other colonial metropoles, served as the consumer of raw resource from the colonies, processed them using domestic industry and then sold (exported) the final product.

I see I've misunderstood your point a fair bit. I will (hopefully) address this in the next section.

Anyway, I should point out that I think cotton is a bad example, considering Britain imported most of its cotton from the American South and (after the American civil war) Egypt, neither of which Britain held as colonies during its industrialization. Certainly one wouldn't argue that Britain's industrialization slowed after 1783.

So, while it is possible that industrialization could occur without colonialism (and primarily naval expansion required for it), the process would have been slower because of both a reduced motivation to industrialize and a lack of the ability to use raw resource inputs from the colonies in certain industries and then sell finished products back to the colonies or to other nations, i.e. fill in some bottlenecks in domestic industry with colonial inputs.

So, if I've been reading you correctly this time, you are arguing that it's primarily a colony's role as a market for the mother country that serves to fuel industrialization, rather than a source of cheap resources?

If that is indeed the case, then I'm going to have to firmly disagree with you on that, because it wasn't until the advent of overproduction resulting from industrialization that Western countries began to aggressively seek to carve the world up into colonies. Previously colonial holdings were either only beneficial to the mother country in an old fashioned merchantilist way (e.g. Latin America), or lack significant-enough populations for that (like Canada, Australia, South Africa, New Zealand).

But I could just be misreading you again.

Yes, but that doesn't make it true.

What doesn't make what true?

[Omeganian]

Isn't it remarkable then, that Russia has the worst lands in Europe, from an agricultural point of view?

Yeah, half the Chernozem of Earth possessed by the Soviet Union is the worst land of Europe.

Certainly we can agree that possession of colonies does not automatically lead to industrialization, otherwise it would have been spearheaded by Spain and Portugal.

The raw resource inputs from the colonies reduced the motivation.



By the way, did your arguments take into account the fact that Russia had an enormous colony called Siberia?

[TC Pilot]

By the way, did your arguments take into account the fact that Russia had an enormous colony called Siberia?

No, because Siberia was and, to a lesser extent, still is synonymous with "vast, worthless, inhospitable wasteland." It would be at best stupid, at worst dishonest, to try using Siberia and Russian industrialization as an example in my counter to Stas' argument.

[K. A. Pital]

That isn't exactly a reasonable comparison. Germany didn't exist until 1870 and Japan was isolated from the outside world until 1854.

And yet, both nations sought to increase their colonial posessions, which was actually one of the primary drivers in a whole series of wars. I believe that, at least in part, these conflicts were driven by real economic necessities as opposed to imaginary ones. But perhaps I am wrong here. What I said, however, is that a large, sprawling empire which required naval might certainly was a driver for industrialization. Naval competition itself was a huge and potent stimulus for industrial development - though certainly one could industrialize without it, as signified by several land powers.

What was the main bottlenecks? I know Japan doesn't have any natural resources, but I'm curious what was the most essential thing they needed to get their hands on.

Well, for one, Japan's conquest of Manchuria gave them arable land so scarce on their island and a population involved in argiculture. As for raw resources, it is well known that Japan extracted coal and iron ore in Manchuria. Japan also extracted aluminum, a critical industrial metal, in Manchuria, and many other things. Little petroleum, as far as I know, but they built coal gasification plants there.

On topic there is no reason you need to conquer a region in order to trade with them.

Perhaps not. But if you want the region to play by your rules entirely, set trade volume and in general, control the colonial trade from raw resources to final products sold to the colonies from the metropole, then conquering it certainly helps.

Certainly we can agree that possession of colonies does not automatically lead to industrialization, otherwise it would have been spearheaded by Spain and Portugal.

Indeed. But I never claimed such. The possession of colonies can provide stimuli for industrialization, but other factors also matter. And yes, having coal deposits inside the metropole is important, due to the transport limitations and extraction limitations that you have rightfully noted. However, when a combination of coal-powered industry in the metropole is coupled with a massive sprawling empire that requires a Navy to support, it creates in my view a greater stimulus for industrial development.

If that is indeed the case, then I'm going to have to firmly disagree with you on that, because it wasn't until the advent of overproduction resulting from industrialization that Western countries began to aggressively seek to carve the world up into colonies. Previously colonial holdings were either only beneficial to the mother country in an old fashioned merchantilist way (e.g. Latin America), or lack significant-enough populations for that (like Canada, Australia, South Africa, New Zealand).

And yet, there certainly was a process wherein raw resource from the colonies was brought to the metropole, turned into finished product and then re-sold to other nations which may have included colonies. I am not sure about the extent of this phenomena, but I would investigate it further. I am only studying industrialization, so I can't pretend to know everything. Cotton was an example I just had recalled off-hands.

Yeah, half the Chernozem of Earth possessed by the Soviet Union is the worst land of Europe.

Climate dependence and food problems in Russia, 1900-1990. Read Chapter 1.

The raw resource inputs from the colonies reduced the motivation. By the way, did your arguments take into account the fact that Russia had an enormous colony called Siberia?

Of course. First of all, raw resources from the colonies did not "reduce" the motivation (why would they?) - on the contrary, they would increase the motivation to both (a) exploit them and gather them, which means more industrial equipment necessary and (b) control the territory, which means naval power and naval presence necessary, which is another potent stimulus for industrialization.

As for Siberia - obviously was a stimulus to Russia. However crappy the climate and the lands were - it was a very low-quality colonial posession for the most of the XIX and early XX century, because extraction technologies and processing technologies did not permit the Empire and later the USSR to really use the vast mineral riches of Siberia, and such a situation persisted until the 50s.

However, its existence and Russia's imperialist ambitions in the Far East (most notably Russian Empire's meddling in China) drove the creation of the most important transport arteries like the Trans-Siberian and the East China Railway (KVZHD). It is remarkable just how much Russia's imperialist interests shaped and drove forward the process of industrialization.

[Kane Starkiller]

Well, obviously in the Czechoslovakia-Austria example, they were less industrialized. Have you seriously not noted the massive difference between Eastern and Western Europe which existed even prior to the very creation of the USSR, much more so the communist nations of Eastern Europe. As for DPRK and South Korea, yes, DPRKs hyper-autarky and the maintenance of Stalinism did not do the nation any good. How is that even relevant? Once again, I do not "pretend" that the gap between the USSR and USA started rising again because of the war. Quite the contrary - unlike you, I know perfectly why it happened. The USSR (and with it the COMECON) relied on obsolete industrial tooling and methods. I'm not sure why you think I do not understand that. Besides, if you compare Japan to Brazil, you'd find Japan vastly outperforms the former. What does this say? In your theory Japan achieved this on its own.

Again what is your point about a difference in total per capita GDP when I am talking about the increasing gap? Poland had about 50% of German GDP from 1870 to 1913. Then it droped from 50% to 44% between 1929 and 1937. In 1950 Poland started out with 60% of German GDP and immediately started to loose ground GDP falling to 32% of German GDP by 1989. But then after 1990 GDP per capita starts to rise again and by 2008 Polish GDP per capita is almost 49% of German GDP which last happened in 1974. The same goes for Czechoslovakia which maintained about 60% of Austrian GDP from 1870 to 1913 then between 80%-90% GDP between 1920 and 1937 and it started out 1948 with 111% of Austrian GDP. Afterwards, like Poland, there is an immediate decline in GDP which continues as long as there is a communist government.
Furthermore since I'm the one claiming that communist countries undeperformed when compared to any similar country I don't see why you would think I don't understand that happened because of obsolete and inefficient business practices.
Finally I repeat I never said all capitalist countries had the same performances.

I am not sure why you think economic growth justifies repression or one-party rule. I have never said any of that are justified, or that they are in any way desireable. As for Eastern Europe, barking up the wrong tree again. For many times here I have referred to the creation of East European satellites as one of the worst acts of the USSR and an enormous foreign policy blunder. Not only was it bad par se, but it also gave birth to autarkian nations like Romania and Albania, who performed badly and were marked by extremely negative traits that the USSR itself was able to partly mitigate.


I also cannot understand why or where I have said that implemented Soviet communism represents a superior form of government. I think you are grossly in error about the machine tool and industrialization level, because you think those are some form of stuff you can create without outside help. They are not. They require enormous technical expertise and, during the first stage, ardous and very hard labour. No need to remind about the 12-hour working days in Japan and South Korea, and other Asian tigers. The level of inputs determines the output. Nations which had an industry in the 1900s took the lead and left everyone else - communist or not - FAR behind. This cannot be explained by mere geography, as you obviously can see. So pardon me, but a lead in industrialization often means far more than geography alone.

I meant in the sense that at least if there was some huge economic boom over capitalist countries communist governments could claim they gave something in return for repression. As it happened communist regimes failed on almost every possible issue.
Secondly my initial point was how every single Eastern European nation underperformed compared to Western Europe which you contested was not a fair comparison and that was a point of contention. My claim is that it is a fair comparison since the countries are similar in terms of geography and people and I was not comparing their absolute levels of GDP but whether the gap was at least closing. I never implied you think USSR imperialist behaviour in Eastern Europe is a good thing.

You say machine tools cannot be created without outside help. So how were first machine tools created? East Asian tigers were of course an exception and I was hardly comparing Bulgaria with South Korea. I also never said it's impossible for a country to overcome it's hardwired geographical shortcomings merely that it takes a very incompetent government not to take advantages of geography.

All nations on the chart before 1991 had a worse performance than Cuba, no?

No.
Per capita GDPs of selected countries as percentage of Cuban GDP:

Both El Salvador and Dominican Republic start closing the gap starting from 61% and 50% of Cuban GDP respectively and ending up at 82% and 94% of Cuban GDP in 1991 and then overtaking it. Honduras maintains a roughly level GDP with Cuba while I already covered Haiti and Nicaragua.

Isn't it remarkable then, that Russia has the worst lands in Europe, from an agricultural point of view? *laughs* Seriously. I haven't said all or even any communist nations are particularly capable or successful. Also, it would be interesting to see at what level of GDP per capita was Russia vs. Mexico, Argentina and several other LA nations in the 1900s. The graphs from Maddison indicate that parts of Latin America were better than Russia in the 1900s, but became worse after the 1950s. Remarkably enough, Mexico proves this quite well - in 1913, the territories comprising the USSR had a GDP/capita 85% that of Mexico.

Yes it has the worst lands and the lowest population density. Soviet Union had 2 million km2 of arable land and 250 million people and Germany had 120,000km2 of arable land and 80 million people.
In the 1900 Mexico had a population of 14 million and his population exploded. So USSR managed to lift its per capita GDP from 85% of Mexico to 125% at the same time USSR/Mexico total GDP ratio looked like this:

Postwar maximum is in 1949 with 759% of Mexican economy and then it decreases rapidly, as Mexican population expands, to 414% in 1989.
Again, while accommodating a much larger population growth Mexico maintains a roughly level per capita GDP and that is in addition to other geographical disadvantages.

Please think about it. Yes, that means prior existing industrialization level is very important.

It is important for head start. Not for explaining why 80 years later the gap was still widening.

Really? Why not?

Western Euorpean total GDP as percentage of US GDP:

Youll notice how the GDP of Western Europe drops to 40% of pre WW2 reflecting the drop in GDP per capita. However due to the population of Western Europe its total GDP is still over 60% of US GDP and climbs to 90% by 1949. How exactly can US make a huge difference here unless it transfers significant percentage of its GDP to Western Europe?

This chart is built by Maddison's data. Also, those are averages. Besides, I did not "manage to find the worst peforming" nations, I just took a chart which had an average of all Latin American nations. And don't give me the crap about "small and medium sized nations", please - Western Europe consisted of small and medium sized nations. It did not preclude them from getting very high GDP/capita indicators and good HDI rankings, to boot. So the size is, to a large degree, irrelevant when we are talking about per capita indicators. Britain is much smaller than the USSR, but had superior GDP/capita. Latin American nations did not have such.

First of all Western European nations like France, Germany, Netherlands and UK have a large percentage of arable land, navigable rivers and excellent ports. Secondly their population was not excessive for their size and geography. Finally as I already said the fact that some countries manage to overcome geographical obstacles doesn't somehow excuse the larger countries for failing to utilize their own better geography. What kind of logic is that?

One - I never said it wasn't a failure. Two - let's say "Sub-Saharan Africa was a failure compared to the USSR". See? I got a meaningless, idiotic statement which is also true. You completely ignored the nature of the debate, which was not to prove the USSR, or communist nations were superior.

The thread was about communism right? So I compared its performance and challenged your claim that capitalist countries are only richer because of exploitation of slaves and colonies.
In fact while the title of the thread is "communism" you spent most of your time talking about colonialism and capitalism so really which one is steering away from topic?
Of course Sub Saharan Africa was a failure compared to USSR. But it had nothing to do with communism being better than capitalism but because of geography, interethnic and intertribal conflicts, explosive population growth etc.
By the way life expectancy in USSR declined from 71 years in 1964 to 68 years in 1983 so in that respect USSR does begin to resemble Sub saharan Africa more than it does Western Europe or Mexico. Or is this off topic? Should we get back on topic of communism by talking about potatoes in Ireland?

[Samuel]

Er, shoudln't countries with lower per capita GDP have higher growth rates?

What doesn't make what true?

That you need colonies to dump "excess production". If you are making goods no one is buying, it doesn't mean you are producing too much and need colonies- it means your domestic firms are producing garbage no one wants.

And yet, both nations sought to increase their colonial posessions, which was actually one of the primary drivers in a whole series of wars. I believe that, at least in part, these conflicts were driven by real economic necessities as opposed to imaginary ones.

Germany claimed 4 colonies in Africa and half of New Guinea. I don't believe they provided any economic benefit (although I don't know the numbers) but were instead seized because otherwise some other colonial power would claim them.

How exactly can US make a huge difference here unless it transfers significant percentage of its GDP to Western Europe?

I believe the Marshall Plan was matching funds in order to encourage investment instead of consumption as well as setting conditions for recieving funding as long as you keep control of inflation.

[K. A. Pital]

Finally I repeat I never said all capitalist countries had the same performances.

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 claim is that it is a fair comparison since the countries are similar in terms of geography and people and I was not comparing their absolute levels of GDP but whether the gap was at least closing.

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.

You say machine tools cannot be created without outside help. So how were first machine tools created?

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?

Both El Salvador and Dominican Republic start closing the gap starting from 61% and 50% of Cuban GDP respectively and ending up at 82% and 94% of Cuban GDP in 1991 and then overtaking it.

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.

It is important for head start. Not for explaining why 80 years later the gap was still widening.

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...

How exactly can US make a huge difference here unless it transfers significant percentage of its GDP to Western Europe?

So technology transfer, industrial restoration and finally, trading with an unscathed superpower does not factor in?

So I compared its performance and challenged your claim that capitalist countries are only richer because of exploitation of slaves and colonies.

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.

[TC Pilot]

Indeed. But I never claimed such. The possession of colonies can provide stimuli for industrialization, but other factors also matter. And yes, having coal deposits inside the metropole is important, due to the transport limitations and extraction limitations that you have rightfully noted. However, when a combination of coal-powered industry in the metropole is coupled with a massive sprawling empire that requires a Navy to support, it creates in my view a greater stimulus for industrial development.

Ah, I see. In that case I would tend to agree with you, though only to the extent that colonies offer their mother countries monopolies on access to those markets and resources. They could still almost as easily get markets for goods or raw materials for their factories from other countries.

And yet, there certainly was a process wherein raw resource from the colonies was brought to the metropole, turned into finished product and then re-sold to other nations which may have included colonies. I am not sure about the extent of this phenomena, but I would investigate it further. I am only studying industrialization, so I can't pretend to know everything. Cotton was an example I just had recalled off-hands.

I think this has mostly been a case of me seeing a snippet of your much larger post and blowing your rather innocuous claim out of proportion.

First of all, raw resources from the colonies did not "reduce" the motivation (why would they?) - on the contrary, they would increase the motivation to both (a) exploit them and gather them, which means more industrial equipment necessary and (b) control the territory, which means naval power and naval presence necessary, which is another potent stimulus for industrialization.

I believe what he's trying to say is that Spain and Portugal's colonies decreased the movitation to industrialize because there were already immensely profitable avenues available. For instance, why should a Portuguese merchant invest his wealth in a risky venture like, say, building a railroad or factory in Portugal when he can just rake in a fortune with a sugar plantation in Brazil? What need does Spain have for finding new, more efficient production technologies when they can just dig a mountain of silver out of the ground in Peru or Mexico?

That you need colonies to dump "excess production". If you are making goods no one is buying, it doesn't mean you are producing too much and need colonies- it means your domestic firms are producing garbage no one wants.

Those are two very different things. The 'crisis' in the late 19th Century/early 20th Century was that industrialized nations were just producing too much stuff for their local markets to consume. There was a scramble to pry open China in particular.

A portion of The Jungle springs to mind, where the main character losses his job at the International Harvest factory because they shut down the factory because they produced in a few months all the harvesters the world would need that year.

Whether it was true or not, I can't say for sure. But it was definitely the perception at the time.

[Simon_Jester]

I believe what he's trying to say is that Spain and Portugal's colonies decreased the movitation to industrialize because there were already immensely profitable avenues available. For instance, why should a Portuguese merchant invest his wealth in a risky venture like, say, building a railroad or factory in Portugal when he can just rake in a fortune with a sugar plantation in Brazil? What need does Spain have for finding new, more efficient production technologies when they can just dig a mountain of silver out of the ground in Peru or Mexico?

Yes.

There's obviously more going on than "colonies promote industrial growth in the metropole."

That you need colonies to dump "excess production". If you are making goods no one is buying, it doesn't mean you are producing too much and need colonies- it means your domestic firms are producing garbage no one wants.

Those are two very different things. The 'crisis' in the late 19th Century/early 20th Century was that industrialized nations were just producing too much stuff for their local markets to consume. There was a scramble to pry open China in particular.

A portion of The Jungle springs to mind, where the main character losses his job at the International Harvest factory because they shut down the factory because they produced in a few months all the harvesters the world would need that year.

Whether it was true or not, I can't say for sure. But it was definitely the perception at the time.

Right.

Under the Marxist model, what's being dumped here isn't "excess production" in the sense of "shit we can't sell because it's shit." It's excess production capacity: the ability to produce goods faster than the available markets in the homeland can purchase them. Remember that this was still a time when a large percentage of the population was rural subsistence (or near-subsistence) farmers, who had negligible buying power, and industrial laborers who didn't have all that much more.

The market for manufactured goods was often limited to a relatively small middle class: a handful of white-collar employees, craftsmen whose jobs had not been replaced by industrial production, petty-aristocrat landowners and unusually prosperous farmers (the two classes tended to shade into each other). That could make it unprofitable to mass-produce goods for the domestic market unless overseas markets could be found or made.

Under this model, it's a form of specialization: the core focuses on industrial production (often at the expense of, say, agriculture) while the periphery grows dependent on the import market. The catch is that specializing in industry is way better for your economy in the long run than being a cash-crop exporter dependent on imports. Thus, the industrial 'core' economy gets a kickstart: it does better than it could without the colony to sell to.

In theory one would expect three tiers of economies from this:

-Those that develop an industrial economy and have colonies that are forced to buy industrial goods and/or supply cheap food and raw materials to the core industrial economy
-Those that develop an industrial economy but do not have colonies, and therefore have to work somewhat harder or wait somewhat longer before building up the necessary domestic market to support full mass production of goods, a sophisticated market in machine tools and the like.
-Those that do not develop an industrial economy, usually because they are dependent on an import market because their short-term competitive advantage (or colonialist laws) make it impractical to set up domestic industry to compete with foreign ones.

The first tier should do better than the second, and the second should do vastly better than the third.