Somebody: Do people really believe this? There literally isn't a single country in the world, not even in HIV blighted southern Africa, where people don't live longer, healthier lives than in the past. And there isn't a single nation where literacy rates and education levels aren't much higher than they were three centuries ago. Aren't these the sorts of metrics we refer to when praising, for instance, the achievements of the Cuban Revolution? And frankly, even if we want to replace capitalism, isn't the fact that it's supposed to have laid the ground for socialism a kind of progress?