On Thu, Oct 17, 2013 at 7:46 PM, Carrol Cox <[email protected]> wrote: > For over 2 centuries capitalism, in all its phases, has been a continuing > (and growing) disaster for most of the global population. The famine in > India (mentioned in Capital) brought about with cheap textiles from > Manchester, is only one of many such. Quite aside from the present > Austerity > and Repression in the (former) "capitalist core,' one can mention the > continuing horror in Iraq and the terror being visited on the Honduran > people (with enthusiastic support from the Obama Administration). >
Is this true? I'd say no. In fact it is exactly wrong. The neoliberal ascendancy of the past 3 decades has actually coincided with the greatest episode of poverty reduction ever in world history - think of the roughly 1 billion people in China, India, Africa and other poor countries who have been lifted out of extreme poverty through their new inclusion in the system of global capitalism. The neoliberals have done more to reduce extreme poverty in the world than all the working class unions ever did in their Golden Age in the 50's and 60's. The rich country unions for all their pious proclamations of solidarity only ever cared about their own dues-paying members. Of course, the neoliberals have taken from the working classes in the rich world and given most of it to the global capitalist elite and a little bit to the desperately poor, but that is still on balance a progressive transfer, isn't it? -raghu.
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