• UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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    14 hours ago

    In the case of China it’s not enjoyed by everyone, though.

    The industrialization of scarce commodities significantly increases the number of consumers of the given good or service.

    A typical Chinese toilet is a huge hole in the ground

    It’s funny, because I’ve been in some shockingly fancy squatty-potty restrooms. Definitely took some getting used to. But that’s more a consequence of culture than economic necessity. And anything that’s been renovated in the last 30 years will have a handicap accessible stall with a sit-down toilet.

    I feel like I’m talking to someone who spent six months in the West Virginia back country, trying to insist everyone in the US still uses the Outhouse. What you’re describing doesn’t exist in any of the massive high rise apartments thrown up all over the eastern seaboard. You’re discounting hundreds of millions of people.

    The people living in opulence are not enjoying something everyone there has.

    The people still living in rural backwaters are at the tail end of a massive upgrade to trade and travel. They received access to modern industrial farming and manufacturing back in the 80s and 90s. That’s why you don’t need a full third of the population manually planting rice anymore just to avoid a continent-spanning famine.

    If you didn’t notice the big industrial combines and giant metal storehouses, nevermind the full electrification of the back country (a feat neighboring India, rural Latin America, Central Africa, and even parts of Eastern Europe have struggled to achieve) then you weren’t looking.

    That happened long before yesterday, though.

    It laid the foundation for a century of economic growth and prosperity. What you’re seeing today is the fruit of the revolutionaries’ labor.

    whatever Mao was striving for, got eventually all undone.

    China passed through an industrial revolution and changed the underlying economy from subsistence farms to a modern manufacturing and professional service-based economy. That’s not a reversal of the Long March. It’s the fondest dream of any well-read Marxist scholar.

    Shorter working hours, high living standards, a more educated population, and a robust domestically owned and operated worker economy is Socialist stage of economic development that Marxists strive towards… until they get there and seek to go further.