The distribution of medicine in the USSR, a much poorer country, was widely available because of the socialist economy and distribution of resources. Medicine does not magically appear, economics decides how and where it goes.
The fact the majority of the global south didn’t see comparable life expectancy spikes of the same degree as socialist countries and the fact life expectancy plunged post socialism in eastern Europe really points to the system having a great effect on life expectancy.
the global south were experiencing multiple famines due to the British at that time.
And the life expectancy plunged after the collapse of the USSR as multiple countries with NEW goverments just didnt know what to do and it took them decades to stabilize
Colonial famines only explain the starting point. The real explanation is that the Global South largely stayed locked into capitalist extraction chains. Core economies required cheap labor and raw materials from the periphery. That structural position kept mortality high and blocked independent development. Socialist states broke that dependency. They redirected surplus into public health, housing, and food security. The outcomes of this are obvious, life expectancy doubled in a generation, infant mortality collapsed. The material basis improved because production answered human needs instead of profit margins. The idea of post soviet governments simply being confused and not knowing better is a nice fantasy but is completely detached from reality. The mortality spike was not administrative error. It was policy. Shock therapy dismantled central planning. State enterprises were liquidated. Housing guarantees were revoked. Social services were defunded. Mass unemployment followed overnight.
The new governments knew exactly what they were building. They replaced planned distribution with market extraction. The human toll was accepted as transition cost. Capitalism does not stumble into crisis. It manufactures crisis through deliberate dispossession.
A health invention in a vacuum is useless.
If you have health inventions but then withhold them from poor people, average livespan will increase very little.
If you have health inventions and then make a system that supplies those to everyone, average lifespan will increase very much.
in 1945, penicillin became widely available, we have no proof that stalin caused it
God ordained “there shall be abundant penicillin” in 1945 and there was penicillin.
🤣
more like “yay we found out how to mass produce commercial penicillin” “no no no our Leader Comrade Stalin did”
No? Socialism made a life-saving medicine more widely available.
the USDA is known for their extreme socialism
The distribution of medicine in the USSR, a much poorer country, was widely available because of the socialist economy and distribution of resources. Medicine does not magically appear, economics decides how and where it goes.
The fact the majority of the global south didn’t see comparable life expectancy spikes of the same degree as socialist countries and the fact life expectancy plunged post socialism in eastern Europe really points to the system having a great effect on life expectancy.
the global south were experiencing multiple famines due to the British at that time.
And the life expectancy plunged after the collapse of the USSR as multiple countries with NEW goverments just didnt know what to do and it took them decades to stabilize
Colonial famines only explain the starting point. The real explanation is that the Global South largely stayed locked into capitalist extraction chains. Core economies required cheap labor and raw materials from the periphery. That structural position kept mortality high and blocked independent development. Socialist states broke that dependency. They redirected surplus into public health, housing, and food security. The outcomes of this are obvious, life expectancy doubled in a generation, infant mortality collapsed. The material basis improved because production answered human needs instead of profit margins. The idea of post soviet governments simply being confused and not knowing better is a nice fantasy but is completely detached from reality. The mortality spike was not administrative error. It was policy. Shock therapy dismantled central planning. State enterprises were liquidated. Housing guarantees were revoked. Social services were defunded. Mass unemployment followed overnight.
The new governments knew exactly what they were building. They replaced planned distribution with market extraction. The human toll was accepted as transition cost. Capitalism does not stumble into crisis. It manufactures crisis through deliberate dispossession.
Neoliberal shock doctrine seems deliberate to me, not a lack of expertise in government