[lbo-talk] What is socialism?

Somebody Somebody philos_case at yahoo.com
Thu Oct 14 09:46:29 PDT 2010


Joseph Catron: Nor, I dare say, does working on an assembly line in Detroit compare with a comparable job in Bangladesh. You deserve some kind of award for the sheer, myopic silliness of that statement.

Somebody: No, but life for a garment industry worker in Bangladesh isn't what it used to be either. This is one complaint I have about the left and about people in the West generally; they don't always keep up to date on the level of development in the countries of the periphery. You would think this was still the world of Che's two, three, or many Vietnam's.

Bangladeshi life expectancy has shot up almost 20 years over the past two decades - trading a year for a year. That's pretty unbelievable. This was made possible by cutting infant mortality over the same time period by more than half. If Hugo Chavez was in charge in Dhaka, we'd be trumpeting such achievements to the world.

Meanwhile, it isn't the case that Bangladeshi women are burdened with litters of children anymore. The average children per woman in the country is just 2.3. In the United States it's 2.1, for comparison's sake. Thirty-five years ago they were having almost 7 children per family, which is more or less the norm for traditional subsistence societies. Part of reducing fertility rates was providing education and expanding literacy among women. This meant doing things like providing food and stipends for families who sent their girls to school.

These are the sorts of achievements that we reference when defending the Cuban Revolution. I wonder why they don't matter for Bangladesh.



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