Basic Statistics Prove Western Propaganda Wrong About Socialism

The Soviet Union, China, Vietnam and Cuba

Now we are in perhaps the Third Cold War, the first being after WW1 and the second after WW2, the West turns up the propaganda campaigns to new levels that include the ongoing denigration of actually existing socialism. Sadly, greatly aided by the Western Marxist facilitators. A good place to start in ridding ourselves of this constant Othering is basic statistics about the human condition and economic growth.

Soviet Union

Let’s start with the Soviet Union and life expectancy, remembering that Imperial Russia was a land of vast poverty with a very small rich elite.

Years of Life Expectancy At Birth

1900: 22 (men); 33.5 (women)

1910: 25.5 (men); 35.9 (women)

1920: 23 (men); 35.2 (women)

1930: 33 (men); 41.7 (women)

1940: 30.3 (men); 38.6 (women)

1950: 57.8 (men); 65.5 (women)

1953: 60 (men); 66 (women): the year Stalin died

1960: 64.4 (men); 72.7 (women)

1970: 64.5 (men); 73.5 (women)

1980: 61.5 (men); 73 (women)

1990: 63 (men); 74 (women)

2000: 58.6 (men); 72 (women)

2010: 62.2 (men); 74.3 (women)

2020: 66.3 (men); 75.9 (women)

Prior to WW1, in 1910, male life expectancy was only 25.5. This was reduced for those born in 1920 by the horrific conditions of the civil war and the Polish invasion. A male child born ten years later could look forward to a ten year increase in life expectancy, irrespective of the early 1930s famine and the purges. The 1940 generation were of course deeply affected by the huge war losses, but a male child born only five years after the end of WW2 could look forward to a lifespan more than double that of pre-WW1 Imperial Russia. In 1953, the year of Stalin’s death, male life expectancy reached 60 years of age and then hardly improved in the next 37 years. Then crashed to below the level of 1953 during the disastrous 1990s. In 2020 it was only a small amount above that of 1960. Literacy rates in Russia were about 30% in 1910, had already increased to 57% in 1930, then to 87% in 1940 and 98% in 1950.

What about economic growth rates? Between 1928 and 1970, the Soviet Union was the second fastest growing economy in the world; growing at an average of 5% per year and only behind Japan. That is after the 1920s rapid recovery from the devastation of WW1, the civil war and the Polish invasion.

In 1928 the country had a small capital stock and a large, ineffectively employed, rural population. The rapid accumulation of capital was the key to rapid growth. The investment rate was pushed up from 8 per cent in 1928, to over 20% in the mid-1930s.

This was the core of Stalin’s rapid Soviet industrialization, with 5-year plan output targets focused on heavy industry combined with soft budgeting to provide the flexibility to meet those targets. So the era of Stalin was one of increased life expectancies, a move to near universal literacy and rapid economic growth and industrialization, as well as the defeat of the Nazis. Hardly a “disaster”. The post-WW2 rapid growth of state-capitalist Japan was driven by the central planning of the Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI) which directed investment flows. The victory of the Japanese central bank over MITI in the 1990s was disastrous for Japanese industrial planning.

So why did the Soviet Union slow down from the 1970s? One determinant was the depletion of the Western oil fields (and coal fields and mineral deposits) and the colossal cost of developing the Siberian natural resources as replacements. This was a huge investment sink for the Soviet economy, with little gain in GDP, with the economy going from cheap European area resources to much more expensive Siberian resources. Japan greatly benefitted from falling global prices for such natural resources, while the Soviet Union aimed for self sufficiency. Second was a disastrous decision to focus investment on the upgrading of current plants rather than the building of new plants, with the Japanese continuing to focus investment on new plants. The industrial productivity progress rapidly diverged between the two countries after this decision. At the same time, the surplus labour that could be transferred from agriculture to industry was fully used up. Adding to this was the increasing orientation of R&D budgets toward the military industrial complex. Also, with the colossal foreign exchange earnings of the 1970s, the need to take action could be put off while the level of corruption expanded.

Even then, according to the CIA, the GDP per capita at PPP of the Russian Republic of the USSR was about half of that of the USA in 1980; it may have been higher given the scale goods and services provided by the Soviet state. Just before WW1 Russia’s GDP per capita at PPP had been less than a quarter that of the US. And in the interim period, Russia had been devastated by two world wars, a civil war and a Polish invasion while the US mainland had not been touched by war whilst greatly benefitting from war production and its post-WW2 unipolar moment. And of course, the Russian GDP collapsed in the 1990s and the median Russian may be little better off today than in the last years of the Soviet Union. The current Russia is still a highly neoliberal one with a large billionaire oligarch class; 155 billionaires.

Communist China

The Communist Party of China took over a country devastated by a civil war, the Japanese invasion, the KMT-Communist pre-WW2 conflict, the warlord period and the prior subjugation by the Western powers. As with the Soviet Union in 1928, it was ripe for the benefits of central planning.

Years of Life Expectancy At Birth

1930: 31

1940: 34.5

1950: 43.8

1955: 47.2

1959: 48.8

1960: 33.4 (worst year of Great Chinese Famine)

1961: 40.2 (last year of Great Chinese Famine)

1962: 51

1970: 56.8

1978: 63.1

1990: 68.6

2000: 71.4

2010: 74.9

2020: 77.4

2025: 79.3

The literacy rate in China was 20% in 1950, rising to 50% in 1960, 60% in 1970 and about 75% in 1978. Then 91% in 2000 and 97% currently. What about economic growth? It averaged 6.3% between 1952 and 1978. This was with the impacts of the Western trade embargo, the huge resources expended in the Korean War and as aid to the Vietnamese, the break from the Soviet Union in the 1960s and the impact of the Great Chinese Famine; all while under an economic blockade by the West. The characterization of the China of 1978 as “being as poor as Africa” is utterly ridiculous given the levels of industrialization, life expectancy and literacy. The Mao years were hardly the “disaster” that the West and even Chinese liberals characterize them as.

The Deng years were more a continuation of the success of China, benefitting greatly from access to Western markets, Western capital and Western technology while still maintaining the supremacy of the Party-state and the planning processes. Nearly thrown away in the late 1980s before the economic and political “shock therapy” was abandoned for a much more controlled approach (see Weber How China Escaped Shock Therapy: The Market Reform Debate). Economic growth averaged 10% between 1980 and 2010, then falling to 7% in the 2010s and 5% in the 2020s.

To this day, the Party-state maintains its dominance over society, with the “commanding heights” of the economy firmly in state hands and private sector corporations operating within the context of five-year plans and Party-state oversight. The reforms of Xi have provided significant benefits to China with the refocusing of investment away from property and toward the productive forces, while also driving the escape from the middle-income trap and foreign ownership of the export and higher technology oriented enterprises; as well as a significant reduction in Party-state corruption. Unlike the US vassal Japan, China resisted the pressure to deconstruct its economic planning system. The Chinese financial system still serves the productive forces under the direction of the Party-state.

Vietnam

The country suffered during WW2 with Japanese occupation and then had to struggle for three horrific decades to throw off first French, and then US, imperialist forces. Even after the final liberation in 1975, the country was devastated by the three decades of the national liberation war. The largest US mass bombing campaigns had been as late as 1972, with a total of 5 million tons of bombs (more than dropped by the allies in WW2) including napalm, and 20 million tons of dioxin-containing herbicides, being dropped on the country. Over 40,000 deaths and 60,000 injuries were caused by unexploded ordinance since the end of the war and dioxin pollution for decades afterwards. In addition, the US did not remove its trade embargo until 1994. About 5% of the population died during the war against the US Empire.

The utter lack of even a thought for the massive civilian losses due to the carpet bombing of Hanoi in the video below represents the general US indifference even today.

And the deadly unexploded ordnance that keeps taking victims to this day.

And the legacy of Agent Orange.

Years of Life Expectancy At Birth

1940: 32

1950: 48 (middle of first Indochina War 1946 - 1954)

1960: 58

1968: 62

1970: 60.5

1973: 58 (peak of deaths from conflict and US mass herbicide use)

1975: 61.5 (year of unification)

1980: 65.3

1990: 70.5

2000: 73

2010: 74

2020: 75

The literacy rate in 1940 was around 10%, rising to 20% in 1960 and 60% in 1970 (with much higher literacy rates in North Vietnam), 83% in 1980, 90% in 1990 and 95% in 2000; where it remains today. And economic growth? Post unification there was a severe economic crisis, with growth only really taking off in the 1980s with the help of the Doi Moi reforms mid-decade. Growth averaged 4.4% in the 1980s, then accelerated to 8% in the 1990s, dropped slightly to 7% in the 2000s, and 6.3% in the 2010s. Growth in 2025 was 8.5%, and is estimated to be 8% this year.

The Party-state still oversees society, but with a significantly market-based economy. The state dominates the “commanding heights” of the economy as in China, such as the energy sector, telecommunications, transport and infrastructure, finance and banking, basic food provision and the heavy industries. State owned enterprises still represent about 30% of GDP. The government is targeting zero hospital fees by 2030.

Cuba

Cuba of the 1950s was a country of stark inequality, with a white modern affluent urban class surrounded by a deeply impoverished non-white majority. The latter overwhelmingly lived in huts with no sanitation, and no access to electricity with minimal healthcare availability and literacy rates as low as 55%. With one third of the population only seasonally employed. The income and wealth was concentrated among foreigners and the small vassal elites. With a huge sex trade and open racism that excluded non-whites from many establishments unless they were service staff (including a very large population of prostitutes).

Ever since the the Cuban revolution, the US has been at war with Cuba; either militarily, economically, or both. Prior to the revolution, the country was utterly dominated by the US. With a US vassal leader who made sure that it was run as a mixture of mafia playground, elite entertainment district and plantation.

Years of Life Expectancy At Birth

1950: 59

1960: 64

1970: n/a

1980: 74

1990: 75

2000: 77

2010: 78

2020: 78

Current data puts US and Cuban life expectancy at the same level. The literacy rate was about 70% in Cuba in both 1950 and 1960, rising to 90% in 1970, 95% in 1980, 98% in 1990 and to all intents and purposes 100% in 2000. And economic growth? Continuously stifled by the US blockade, managing 4% per annum in the 1960s and 6% per annum in the 1970s, before a deceleration in the 1980s and outright contraction in the 1990s. Then a recovery to 5% per annum in the 2000s, a deceleration in the 2010s as the ally Venezuela struggled and sanctions on Cuba were intensified. Then back to contraction and collapse in the 2020s due to COVID and then the great intensification of the US blockade. Cuban socialism was never allowed to flourish by the US.

The current US Secretary of State may lie about it, but his parents fled the Cuba of the US vassal dictator Batista, not post-revolutionary Cuba. Within one year of the 1959 revolution, the US had slashed the Cuban sugar import quota by 95% and had established controls limiting most Cuban imports. Followed up with the Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961 and a full economic, commercial and financial blockade in 1962, together the prohibition of US imports including Cuban content from any country and a ban on US nationals travelling to the country. The blockade was progressively tightened during the Cold War, with Cuba relying upon trade with the Soviet Union.

With the collapse of the Soviet Union, the US tightened the blockade even more to deepen the economic travails of the “Special Period” of the 1990s as the Cuban economy collapsed without Soviet trade and aid. This tightening even included a law banning any ship from loading or unloading freight in the US for 180 days after doing so at a Cuban port. Incredibly, the Party-state managed a successful transition through this period with an agricultural revolution and a turn to tourism and the legalization of small enterprises, together with an openness to remittances. This included dealing with a cut off of oil and oil derivatives supplies from the Soviet Union, with oil imports dropping by more than half.

The Party-state remained intact and successfully restructured the economy. In the early 2000s, Cuba also found a new ally in Venezuela. With Cuba also exporting medical services to gain foreign exchange. The US attempt to starve Cuba into submission had failed. After a further tightening during the Bush administration, the Obama administration moved to an easing of restrictions and a normalization of relations. This was partially reversed by the first Trump administration and the Biden administration, including the reinstatement of travel and business restrictions together with tighter controls over remittances. An attempt was made to stir up unrest within Cuba in 2021 but failed.

Incredibly, by 2020 Cuba, an island off the coast of America with a population of only 11 million, had survived sixty years of US economic, military and covert war. And taking into account the free healthcare and subsidized food services, and very low levels of inequality, the average Cuban was most probably better off, healthier and physically safer than the average citizen of most if not all of the countries in the region; excluding of course, the US.

With the second Trump administration and the US refocus to the domination of “its” hemisphere, the US war against Cuba escalated. The kidnapping of the Venezuelan president and the subjugation of that nation cut off the oil lifeline from that country. The administration’s “maximum pressure” campaign against Cuba includes a crude oil and cooking gas blockade (threatening sanctions against any country that exports oil to Cuba), while also tightening even more the economic sanctions; Cuba only produces about one third of the oil that it consumes. It is not that Cuban socialism is failing, it is that is has withstood 60 years of extensive US aggression. That is what now drives the US to even more extreme measures. A part of the problem is the Cuban emigre community in Miami and its representative, the US Secretary of State. Including a narco trafficking community that includes his brother in law.

This is worse than the “Special Period”, as it is after another three decades of sanctions and involves a full energy blockade. In recent weeks, the Cuban government has implemented policies that represent a very significant opening to capitalism in an attempt to stop the US administration starving its people.

The US administration dismissed these policies and intensified the blockade further, showing that what it is really interested in is a complete subjugation of Cuba with its rhetoric being a smokescreen for a pure imperialist power play. The Cuban socialist revolution will not fail, it will be destroyed by over six decades of US imperialist aggression topped off with the imperial psychopathy of the current US administration. The lot of the Cuban population will not improve, as the US administration wants to return it to the level of subjugation of the 1950s.