Resolved: Capitalism Has Been The Exclusive Liberator From Grinding Poverty

I believe that our debate can now be reduced down to the examples alone: 0) Vietnam: If you accept this example, by logical necessity haven't you lost the motion that 'capitalism is the exclusive liberator from grinding poverty'? To it, I would like to conjoin the social model of village communities and self-sufficient, albeit, small societies in which people have both adequate nutrition and hydration. Technically they are impoverished, not having the capitalist generation of profit, but can exist and innovate within their own system of economics perfectly well. If you disagree, I would find a concrete definition of poverty useful which exempts them. 1) The USA: I put emphasis on the Great Depression to attempt to exemplify how growth between 1850-1900 was unsustainable and culminated in the imposition of mass poverty nation-wide come the Wall Street crash. In your response, you claimed that plutocrats benefit their fellow man by pursuing individual wealth: please explain how this is the case to me so I know what argument I'm addressing (the 'trickling down' metaphor or what have you). Additionally, taking America in isolation, I think you will of course agree that slaves were not liberated from grinding poverty from the Emancipation Act through the economic boom of industrialised America, thereby constraining the parameters of your argument to favour only the white population. 2) Holland: yes, I know that case was in the citation, that was my point. It exemplified a case of free trade in the era of mercantilism you claimed did not exist. So, subsequently, I will now re-interpret your sentence that, "Free trade did not exist in the era of mercantilism", into "Free trade did exist in the era of mercantilism, but only very marginally." Somewhat undermining the authority of your own prose. 3) UK: Don't reduce my argument. It was not just imperialism I attributed their success to, but a more refined domestic manufacturing business and their unrivalled naval capacities for trade, enabling them to out-compete foreign markets. Did you even read my response? Regardless, we cannot forget that around a third of British exports went to its Empire. I did not conflate Germany and France into this narrative because it burdened me with a much too broad of an investigation point for so little space. The general crux I gave in R1 though, in that they emulated the British model of industry. I will say this in verbose terms as follows, to make the point of having not intentionally missed them out: 4) Germany: the home of humanism, in 1850 employed the more successful innovations of the English Industrial Revolution to enhance its capital gain, meaning that England had less of an economic advantage over it. The proliferation of banks in the period, though leading to economic depressions and slumps, and growth of the bourgeois class (as in England and France) does indicate the increasing wealth of the country. I agree. And, free-trade capitalism definitely aided the commercial benefits of the Revolution, though it was landlocked and thereby geopolitically limited in its 'free' trade (tariffs actually rose significantly in this period). Yet, could this growth of occurred without the technological advances Marx so praised? And, did these technological advances emerge from capitalism or from intellectual and communal innovation? That is the question I raised in R1 which remains currently unanswered. 5) France: your discussion of "the ascent of the bourgeoisie", because, you know, the bourgeoisie represent everyone in 18th and 19th century France (sarcasm), does not display the extirpation of poverty but the enrichment of a certain set of people in society. The conversion of the poor into cogs in the industrial machine that produced the middle class. I am now positive that you are defining poverty as the absence of modern capitalism, which is absurd. It's as though you're omitting the Terror under Robespierre, the Long Depression of the French economy, and the plight of the working man under these social models where poverty was either produced cyclically in economic slumps or imposed on him, not given. I again extend my previous arguments to state that France copied Industrial Revolution practices as not to become obsolete in the global trading market, becoming more efficient in its domestic economy, and uplifting its capital income as a whole. This still doesn't mean that the average man was liberated from poverty by necessity. Say I had 1,000,000 livres and gave them to a city with 20 citizens: if 1 or 2 people have ownership of all the currency owning the means of production in which I invest, those 19 or 18 people aren't necessarily any better off, except for the fact that the social infrastructure has improved to protect the minority's power. I need to know how you think capital was distributed in order to argue whether people became richer en masse. 6) Argentina: I commend you on your technical economic skill: less so, for translating it into reasonable analysis. I'm finding my criticism of your viewpoint to be so reoccurring: I agree that free-trade capitalism can abet economic growth opening up potential in a country for the reduction of social poverty. What causes the utilisation of this system however I see as a greater impetus for social change and equally believe that other economic systems could be utilised (with less institutional impieties) that reduce poverty. Additionally, even if free-trade capitalism is utilised, I would pose the question of what ensures that the distribution of wealth liberates the masses from poverty and not just those on the top of the corporate hierarchy: i.e. does socialist government regulations (e.g. minimum wage increases, worker protections... also need to be implemented?). 7) The USSR: to reconstruct myself, the point was thus: socialist countries can innovate technical advances (such as in the space race) by using resources and intellectual traditions outside the capitalist system. If this is true, then mass industrial advances can also occur in a socialist state meaning that capitalism is not necessary for such events as the Industrial Revolution to occur. The liberation from poverty can come from socialist-collective enterprise, devising solutions to it that improve overall social functioning, rather than just individual enterprise in capitalism that historically has always generated an impoverished class or set of people in an uneven distribution of wealth. You did not respond to this point but circumvented it to talk about the obvious: the failure of the Soviet state. Karl Marx: Additionally, you did not respond to my inversion of Marx: of liberation from grinding poverty coming from innovations within society which capitalism is not logically necessary a causal factor of. Nor, did you comment on how a society can be proclaimed a 'liberator' which systematically imposes poverty onto working people. If you were familiar with Marxist theory, you would additionally note that the USSR and other such revolutionary enterprises were enacted under social conditions not conducive to his social system (which I agree is erroneous in many places). But, Marx believed that communism would develop from a mature and advanced capitalist society. And, indeed, the gradual cultural shift from capitalism to socialism in Western powers (exemplified through Jeremy Corbyn and Bernie Sanders, for example) may validate historical materialism yet. The underlying point however, is that I need to understand your viewpoint on material distribution in modern capitalist society in order to progress this debate. So, please prioritise this if you can please--