Source: Piketty’s World Inequality Report 2022
I shared this deep in a dunk thread earlier and figured there’s probably many comrades who haven’t seen this data. I think it’s very good rhetorically because a lot of libs have an incredibly vibes-based impression that the Soviet Union was just an Animal Farm old-boss-same-as-the-new-boss situation.
Instead, this demonstrates that Russia underwent one of the most dramatic inversions of income inequality of any country in recorded history.
For comparison here is the US over the same time period:
China:
And the UK:
Is this purely personal income, or does it take into account wealth that passes into funds that government officals had access to? Is this a case of the wealth passing into a government that was still controlled by an elite class, but not in a way that this graph would show?
Massive income inequality w Chinese characteristics.
Actually existing socialism is when you have worse inequality than post brexit Britain.
actually existing socialism is when you manage to achieve what China has achieved from the absolutely destitute conditions that the communists started with, and didn’t have the advantage of having the largest empire in human history up to that point feeding material surplus into the core
AES is when you ride on the coattails of the work and achievements of the communists who came before you while you lead the country towards capitalism.
Yeah the communists did a great job of priming China for a rise to superpower status, but I think they’d not be so stoked on this turn to state capitalism
It’s worth noting that in China the poorest have seen incredible increases in their standard of living and extreme poverty has been essentially eliminated during the same time period. So its entirely incomparable to say, the United Kingdom or United States where life is getting worse for poor people while the rich get richer.
That said, yeah, income inequality is a contradiction that comes with using capitalism, even a controlled form of it, to develop the means of production. It’s a contradiction that the Communists running China are aware needs to be managed as evidence by plans to address it in upcoming 5 years plans, whereas the focus of previous 5-year plans has been about growing the means of production and eliminating the worst poverty and food insecurity, goals which were met or exceeded.
I don’t think that’s a very charitable characterization of their perspective comrade. It’s not unreasonable to be concerned about those levels of inequality.
A very large part of Chinese income inequality is the huge rural-urban divide. All countries have it but its an order of magnitude worse in China so there are basicaly 2 different countries within China . Having 300 million people in the biggest cities earning western levels of income and 300 million people in rural small towns and villages earning a 4th of that skews the metric a lot EVEN tho life in rural ereas is indeed that much cheaper.Thats hugely different than wages in London being 1.5 times more than “rural” england but prices becides rent being almost at the same level. And thats besides talking about wealth vs income inequality
can a smart person tell me what cool thing happened in the 60s in the soviet union?
I guess the only silver lining is that china puts in a lot of state effort to develop new cities that may exist as alternative options. The fact that massive inequality has gotten worse in china should come as no surprise though. The current success of china is still reliant on allowing their working class to be heavily exploited.
Like i comment elsewhere a very large part of Chinese income inequality is the huge rural-urban divide. All countries have it but its an order of magnitude worse in China so there are basicaly 2 different countries within China . Having 300 million people in the biggest cities earning western levels of income and 300 million people in rural small towns and villages earning a fraction of that skews the metric a lot EVEN tho life in rural ereas is also much cheaper and without taking into account that this is a symptom of the rapid urbanization and mpsernization that will probably uplift the latter group like it did the former
It’ll trickle down!
But it’s fair. China is still experiencing massive growth so the inequality is somewhat less noticable than it would be if that growth had stagnated and the inequality continued to rise.
As China’s growth slows, dealing with this is going to be the next big crisis that China will have to go through. All the western nations dealt with that crisis in the late 70’s and early 80’s. Their solution was austerity and neoliberalosm, the gutting of working class rights and consumption of moderately developed socialist states caught up in the crisis.
The CPC is aware of this though. So is America. That’s why there’s a war footing right now. As China continues into crisis (a crisis that will effect the whole world), America postures to consume whatever nations it can and China is prepared to defend itself and other nations that America is ready to go for.
If income inequality continues after that crisis, it’ll be because America won.
All the western nations dealt with that crisis in the late 70’s and early 80’s. Their solution was austerity and neoliberalosm, the gutting of working class rights and consumption of moderately developed socialist states caught up in the crisis.
Also expanding into the Chinese market, which effectively grew their available labor pool by at the least hundreds of millions of new workers and opened up new markets for industrial capital as well. The US had previously done the same thing with Japan in the 50s, effectively adding the millions of chronically underemployed former soldiers to its labor pool by having them produce commodities for export to the US.
The USSR in its prime was able to challenge the USA on a lot of moral issues that would have never been brought up by other powers. For instance, I’m pretty sure that civil rights was not able to progress as it did without the ability for the USA to be shamed into action.
That said, both China and Russia seem like they are near pre-revolution levels of income disparity right now. So, I don’t know who would be the standard bearer pushing for economic equality now.
It’s disappointing but necessarily surprising tbh. China has been doing state capitalism for a while now.
As for your question these statistics aren’t necessarily contradictory to the idea of extreme poverty being reduced/eradicated. As this is basically a measure of wealth inequality, and while it might be worse than pre revolution, the standard of life is undoubtedly much higher. This is a result of China’s explosive economic growth, there is simply way more wealth in China than ever before. So a higher wealth inequality isn’t necessarily a good indicator of poverty. It is however an apt representation of the CCP’s economic policies over the past two decades and is a good indicator that poverty will rise once China’s growth slows down if wealth inequality isn’t addresed.
wonder how those stats are calculated. The bottom 50% in 1930s China were literal serfs with a life expectancy of 30 doing borderline slavery to feudal landlords. Are we really gonna pretend they owned like 20-30% of the country’s income share ? What does that even mean or matter in a feudal context
both China and Russia seem like they are near pre-revolution levels of income disparity right now.
Uhhhh China’s life expectancy pre revolution was 33 years old. There is absolutely zero comparison between China of today and the humiliation years of hyper exploitation by the British, Americans, Japanese and so on.
I’m not sure the graphs support that conclusion by themselves. The dip in US top 10% occurred simultaneously with Pearl Harbor and the US joining WWII, not the formation of the Soviet Union. For the UK it likewise seems tied to World Wars I and II and decolonization. For WWI it makes sense that it did not impact the US quite as much, especially since the US in fact was a financier of the European nations, and was notoriously unforgiving of war debts. Michael Hudson has argued this debt a major factor in provoking the buildup of Nazi ideology in Germany as France and England directly and indirectly required all of those debts to come from Germany.
The measure in these graphs is inequality of income rather than of wealth. Perhaps nationalization of production during wartime is the causal factor? Unemployment goes way down as people go off to fight or are employed in war manufacture. In any case it’s hard to separate the influences of war and political system on this data.
