4 ms·

Liberal western-style democracy with open markets has certainly seen its failures. And it has also seen its successes. Pray tell, what successes has communism

by maratd 14y ago

Liberal western-style democracy with open markets has certainly seen its failures. And it has also seen its successes. Pray tell, what successes has communism and radical socialism achieved?

scarmig 14y ago
That's tricky, because it's not so much a question of successes relative to the past (which I assume you'd agree are many) but a question of successes relative to alternative worlds where a capitalist system had developed in those countries. And there's also a question of what counts as communism/radical socialism in your book--China, even now, has far more government involvement in the economy than many Western countries, and even more so under Deng. Does it count? What about Congress-style socialism in India? That said, and emphasizing I have no love of the following countries and think some form of liberal democracy would have worked substantially better... Cuba started from a fairly good baseline, so we shouldn't read too much into it, but it has superior healthcare and education to much of Latin America. The Soviet Union had a couple decades of breakneck economic growth: many economists, perhaps even the majority, expected it to have outgrown the West by the 1980s. This should be discounted somewhat, though, this time because the UK and the USA also rapidly developed at various points in their history. The USSR also excelled at generating a large class of engineers, scientists, and mathematicians, who contributed a large body of knowledge to the world. And it made some pretty good chess players, too, when it wasn't cheating like crazy.
rayiner 14y ago
My point is that if you sat there in 1800 and looked at the track record of democratic/republican revolutions at that time, you'd come to a different conclusion than if you did so in 2012.

4 ms·

Liberal western-style democracy with open markets has certainly seen its failures. And it has also seen its successes. Pray tell, what successes has communism

by maratd 14y ago

Liberal western-style democracy with open markets has certainly seen its failures. And it has also seen its successes. Pray tell, what successes has communism and radical socialism achieved?

scarmig 14y ago
That's tricky, because it's not so much a question of successes relative to the past (which I assume you'd agree are many) but a question of successes relative to alternative worlds where a capitalist system had developed in those countries. And there's also a question of what counts as communism/radical socialism in your book--China, even now, has far more government involvement in the economy than many Western countries, and even more so under Deng. Does it count? What about Congress-style socialism in India? That said, and emphasizing I have no love of the following countries and think some form of liberal democracy would have worked substantially better... Cuba started from a fairly good baseline, so we shouldn't read too much into it, but it has superior healthcare and education to much of Latin America. The Soviet Union had a couple decades of breakneck economic growth: many economists, perhaps even the majority, expected it to have outgrown the West by the 1980s. This should be discounted somewhat, though, this time because the UK and the USA also rapidly developed at various points in their history. The USSR also excelled at generating a large class of engineers, scientists, and mathematicians, who contributed a large body of knowledge to the world. And it made some pretty good chess players, too, when it wasn't cheating like crazy.
rayiner 14y ago
My point is that if you sat there in 1800 and looked at the track record of democratic/republican revolutions at that time, you'd come to a different conclusion than if you did so in 2012.