Life expectancy has dramatically improved from feudalism
To be fair, isn’t the reason life expectancy improved is largely attributed to China uplifting over 800 million people out of poverty?
While yes, the overthrow of feudalism, which prevented scientific progress as it had threatened the ruling class’s power, led to medical advancements, better food production and access, etc., capitalism negated a lot of improvements toward life expectancy because of deadly working conditions, genocide, wars, colonialism, etc.
I do agree with your point that capitalism is often a necessity to eventually enable a socialist revolution to be possible once it faces crises from its contradictions and did contribute, at least indirectly, to increased life expectancy, Russia/USSR and China, as mentioned above, are examples of nations that were able to achieve socialism earlier, and their impact towards humanity cannot be understated.
Capitalism certainly lowered life expectancy initially, Marx makes this abundantly clear in Capital - Volume 1. However, with industrialization came advancements in socialized production (not socialist, socialized, ie cooperative work on an expanded and industrial scale in capitalism), which allowed for an acceleration of the sciences. Feudalism was holding science back, which in turn held medical science back. Same with farming, industrial farming increased outputs dramatically.
The Soviet Union and PRC absolutely made more dramatic improvements on a far-shorter time scale thanks to socialism, and indeed they did not rely on a developed period of capitalism (though they still depended on market forces), but the proletarian ideology of Marxism could not have come to existence without the prevalence of capitalism somewhere, this case being western Europe, allowing Marx to make critical advancements and Lenin to analyze the impacts on imperialism to successfully lead a revolution.
Feudalism was more obviously exploitative, and to a lesser extent than capitalism’s theft of surplus value, but the sheer productive capacity of market forces ultimately provided the base for class struggle and development of proletarian ideology.
To be fair, isn’t the reason life expectancy improved is largely attributed to China uplifting over 800 million people out of poverty?
While yes, the overthrow of feudalism, which prevented scientific progress as it had threatened the ruling class’s power, led to medical advancements, better food production and access, etc., capitalism negated a lot of improvements toward life expectancy because of deadly working conditions, genocide, wars, colonialism, etc.
I do agree with your point that capitalism is often a necessity to eventually enable a socialist revolution to be possible once it faces crises from its contradictions and did contribute, at least indirectly, to increased life expectancy, Russia/USSR and China, as mentioned above, are examples of nations that were able to achieve socialism earlier, and their impact towards humanity cannot be understated.
Capitalism certainly lowered life expectancy initially, Marx makes this abundantly clear in Capital - Volume 1. However, with industrialization came advancements in socialized production (not socialist, socialized, ie cooperative work on an expanded and industrial scale in capitalism), which allowed for an acceleration of the sciences. Feudalism was holding science back, which in turn held medical science back. Same with farming, industrial farming increased outputs dramatically.
The Soviet Union and PRC absolutely made more dramatic improvements on a far-shorter time scale thanks to socialism, and indeed they did not rely on a developed period of capitalism (though they still depended on market forces), but the proletarian ideology of Marxism could not have come to existence without the prevalence of capitalism somewhere, this case being western Europe, allowing Marx to make critical advancements and Lenin to analyze the impacts on imperialism to successfully lead a revolution.
Feudalism was more obviously exploitative, and to a lesser extent than capitalism’s theft of surplus value, but the sheer productive capacity of market forces ultimately provided the base for class struggle and development of proletarian ideology.
That’s fair