Resolved: Capitalism Has Been The Exclusive Liberator From Grinding Poverty

Well, considering that my opponent has opted-out of proper debate and instead constructed several straw man arguments in the final round, it falls to me to surmise: My opponent defined poverty as the lack of capitalism, which for him somehow is synonymous is the lack of nutrition, water, and shelter (three things nearly all forms of society have produced regardless of their economic system, including tribal and agrarian societies). As such, when shown Vietnam's socialist model (post the capitalism bombardment of the country), he by some nebulous means calls it impoverished because it isn't capitalist. If so, then we would also have to call free-trade capitalist countries on the same economic level as Vietnam impoverished as well, placing socialism and capitalism on par. His accusation in R4 inflecting my own definition of poverty as inadequate is outstanding given that I didn't give one, but rather asked my opponent to in explicit concrete terms. "Relative poverty is simply not interesting to this debate": it should be. If there were 10 poor people and 90 wealthy in a society, we might say that, that society is well off. If that society developed to the point were there were 1000 poor and 9000 wealthy, I should not think that it had been liberated from poverty. 'Liberator': I also took issue with the terminology of your proposition in this debate, given liberty suggests 1) more choice and 2) colonialist rhetoric, a society liberated when it has been converted into capitalism. Rising wages does not mean less poverty if all commodities proportionally go up in prices, perhaps to the extent that a large faction of that society can't purchase them. 'Exclusive': if poverty has been reduced by other social conditions and models, I hardly think this word is fitting. The point about my lack of sources, is arbitrary given that I mentioned concrete data which he could have sourced for himself (just because I don't cite from the Encyclopedia pages on ducks, does not mean that they do not quack). My intention was much rather to debate, especially since I think my opponent has had formal education, and I would not of minded whatsoever if they broke out of their own self-restrained rules in order to get at a more interesting point. Of course, the "authoritative" sources my opponent provided to me, were merely the viewpoints of other writers, mentioning concrete data and phenomenon. The Industrial Revolution... etc. etc. Yes, of course we were focusing on 'inductive means' (well d'oh: we're talking about the empirical world, not some abstract formula). You wanted explicit counter-examples, I know, but that doesn't mean that my counter-proposal: 'capitalism has been unnecessary from eliminating poverty in capitalist countries themselves' can be ignored. The point was thus: if those things could have happened in another economic system, then capitalism wasn't causally responsible for eliminating poverty and thereby your proposition false. You conflated society with capitalism, rather than seeing that society is bigger than its economic system. Marx, of course is famous for inverting Hegel's mystical idealism into an historical materialism, and was not being unintentionally being candid there when he wrote that 'All social life is essentially practical'. He knew full well what he was saying. Isn't that the point of Feuerback? The power of man rather than the power of some strange external power (*coughs-capitalism-coughs*). Capitalism: you're failing again to see that there are different extents, types and modalities in it. As such, a radical, absolutely unrestrained liberalist capitalism (as you seem to be advocating) is not the same as say, today's capitalism, which has socialist protections and collective rather than just individualist intentions for the benefit of the majority, giving way to the pervasive force of privatisation post the fall of the Soviet Union.... Not to say that Hegel's dialectical movement is not useful: I think if we're being truly honest we'd attribute economic success to people using the system around them (the antithesis of Marx's idea), and the synthesis being that: what people create, gives them a wider potential to create more. From people making capitalism, capitalism can be developed and utilised more. And, perhaps capitalism is more successful at producing potential than other economic systems: this is what I meant by it being a source of social change. I think this is what you implicitly mean. This doesn't prove or help you motion as you've defined it though. False dichotomy, eh? No, I was thinking within the parameters of a synthesis. The doctor might cure hunger though. Marx certainly won't, he dead. Feel free to message me / talk in the comments about this or topics like it at any time. As I said in R1, I was just focusing on one critique.