Thread by @jasonhickel

What are the drivers of progress in social indicators? Does it emerge spontaneously from the forces of capital accumulation, or is it won by progressive social movements? Three classic studies from the '80s and '90s reveal interesting results:

In 1981, Amartya Sen demonstrated that among developing countries, socialist societies tended to perform better in terms of social outcomes than capitalist ones. “One thought that is bound to occur is that communism is good for poverty removal,” he wrote. pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12339005/

Sen found that this fact holds even when you correct for GDP. In other words, socialist policy delivers better social outcomes at any given level of GDP - a powerful finding.

The other stand-out performers are of course Taiwan, Korea, Hong Kong and Singapore. Sen argued that their success was due not to "free markets" but to state-led industrial policy. “How invisible were the hands that reared the Korean economic expansion? Not much.”

“The Korean govt had overwhelming control of the banks”, “The public sector absorbed a third of total investment”, and “In addition to railways, communication and electricity, the public sector produces 15% of manufacturing output and owns a larger share of industrial capital.”

“It is not clear how cheered Adam Smith would have been with the South Korean experience,” Sen quipped.

Sri Lanka is also notable for social outcomes. Sen classifies it as a mixed economy, but attributes its success to socialist food policy and public healthcare. He notes that this delivered social progress much faster than waiting around for GDP growth alone would have done.

“Ultimately poverty removal is a matter of entitlement raising… and must come to grips with the issue of entitlement guarantees.” Here is a free PDF: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdfdirect/…

Five years later, Cereseto and Watkin confirmed Sen’s results. They found that in 30 of 36 comparisons between countries at similar levels of economic development, socialist countries showed more favorable social outcomes. pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/2430906/

In the 1990s, a study by Vicente Navarro found the same thing again. “Contrary to dominant ideology, socialism and socialist forces have, for the most part, been better able than capitalism and capitalist forces to improve health.” jstor.org/stable/40404638

In Latin America, he finds Cuba is a notable performer in terms of social outcomes. “If the rest of Latin America had the same infant mortality rate as Cuba, over two million children's lives would be saved each year.”

Navarro finds that China beats India by a wide margin, and with faster rates of improvement. “If India's infant mortality rate were the same as China's, 4 million infant lives would be saved per year.” The one part of India that does perform well, he finds, is socialist Kerala.

“Its superiority over capitalism in the promotion of socioeconomic rights, including health rights, explains the enormous attractiveness of the socialist project among the populations of the under-developed world.”

How about in the developed world? Navarro finds the best performers are the social democracies, with policies delivered by political parties that “claimed allegiance to the socialist project and the need to transcend or break with capitalism.” Free PDF: static1.squarespace.com/static/5a372ca…

None of these scholars romanticize socialist history; rather, their work shows that key socialist policies - like universal public services and state-led industrial policy - are key to delivering strong social outcomes and should be foregrounded in development strategy.