Resolved: Capitalism Has Been The Exclusive Liberator From Grinding Poverty

No one is denying capitalism as a source of social change and concrete improvement. The socialism of Hegel and Marx was directed against the radical modern capitalism of their time: not capitalism in-itself (which in fact, Hegel defends). It is the extent of capitalism and the institutional practices that ensue from its development over time that has been argued to restrict the poor, causing detriment that could be practically abated by employing some further form or component of socialism. Unlimited radical capitalism post the fall of the USSR, the position you seem to advocate, is oppressive even if restricted capitalism can abet freedom and a raised quality of life for the individual citizen when conjoined with socialist policies. In simpler terms, the gains of individual capital of course do not help the poor unless they go through a collective filter and infrastructure where this help can be implemented: unless they go through a restricted form of capitalism that is conjoined with socialist welfare policies. CONTEXT Firstly, I would like to challenge your section labelled 'context.' Your history of capitalism is incomplete: you jump to 1820, the nadir of the Industrial Revolution, missing out the 600 years or so of relevant economic development. "Enter the increasingly dominant notion of capitalism and free trade" in 1820? Screw you capitalism pre-1820s. What this translates into is the proposition that 'modern capitalism has been the exclusive liberator from grinding poverty', which is a much lesser claim, but one I will interpret you as meaning. If so, you instantly use Marx's economic theory: you argue that the economy and technology is the base on which society is built and that the capitalist development of the economy led to social progress. One criticism of this is such: a) You ought not to conflate the fruits of the human sciences with the fruits of capitalism, though the two have grown adnate together, post-Luther. Change and social progress can come from beyond the economy. Innovations in thought, breakthroughs in science, fashions, cultural events, the relations of production, can change society alleviating the dire conditions of poverty and even becoming the base for capitalism. Couldn't I turn your point on its head and say that 'social relations and innovations and not modern capitalism reduced social poverty'? For instance, from the decline of the monarchy, we see state taxes not being wasted on crushing foreign wars but rather frugally invested in domestic infrastructure. We see a rise in social mobility (no longer operating under a hereditary system) which allows the impoverished to rise above their feudal stations. We see new agrarian and industrial innovation, enabling more successful communication, division of labour, distribution and production of goods leading to population growth... all of which was supported by trade and capitalism but originated beyond it, in people before the pounds. For instance, the steam engine was made in this period after a long process of discovery in academic thought which has begun in early humanism (experiments to actualise it occurring in the mid-1500s). I.e. Capitalism was no sudden epiphany in 1820: it needed a societal change to make the Industrial Revolution occur and a Golden Age to emerge. The Industrial Revolution and not capitalism reduced poverty. This is just one criticism of your view; I can provide more in succeeding rounds. With it, I will also reconstruct the part of Marx you miss out portraying modern capitalism as oppressive: a) The infrastructure of modern capitalism (MC) and alienated labour. What MC resulted to in the 1900s and to whom Marx was addressing in his much socially-disdained writings was the mechanistic model of labour emergent in Fordism and Taylorism. Reductively the notion was thus: in employing a worker for his labour per hour, the capitalist was exploiting them by only paying them reduced or subsistence wages, and not the actual value of their work (the capitalist profiting the surplus value themselves). This exploitation alienated man from his labour-products for as soon as he acted upon an object at work it became the property of someone else and he saw little of the wealth which his actions had produced. He became a cog in the rich man's machine and two classes emerged: the proletariat (the worker, a slave within the hours of his contract) and the wealthy class with a bourgeoisie agenda, pressuring the executive law-makers to protect their property rights. The false premise here was: because I own the factories, I own everything produced by the factories which is mine and protected by the law. b) "Poverty is the shadow of wealth." (Gans) To become rich, the wealthy class needed the capital produced by and denied to the lower class whose interests were not being represented fairly. Economic contingencies put the labour force out of work, whilst the capitalist still maintained their hegemony. When there was less demand for a product, or a price crash occurred, the worker and his family became destitute. When commodities were created in such unaffordable quantities as to debase their economic value, an economic slump could put thousands out of work. If an economic competitor cut production costs by having better technology, all factories had to replicate this as to not become obsolete, meaning that a mass corpus of workers were replaced by technology (causing poverty). Unskilled labours accustomed to one job on a production line found it hard to find suitable work again. And thus, the high population of the unemployed and finite number of jobs made it so that workers drove down their wages as to become more employable, perpetuating their own poverty. And, in the meantime, the most successful capitalists flourished, monopolies made, and the unfair distribution of wealth festered. This is just a quick adumbration of Marxist theory: I am by no means advocating it, but leaving it open to rational criticism (don't dismiss it just because of the reputation of Marx: tell me why you dismiss it). PRACTICAL APPLICATIONS As for your five examples, they can be reduced to three: the USA, Europe, and Argentina, given that the social-economic models of England, France and the dissolved Prussian states operated reciprocally, as to successfully rival one another. Unfortunately, I only have the space to briefly cover one, choosing the one most readers will be interested in: 1) The USA The USA traditionally, from the ideations of Locke and Paine in the constitution, operated via a laissez faire model of government that believed that the less the state intervened in society, the better this was for all. A man owned what he produced (under Locke's theory) and then could sell this for a price, making his own way in the land of opportunity. Only then, resources were claimed by corporations and the law, meaning that the individual could only sell his own labour or what he had produced having bought his resources, requiring prior wealth. So, driven to the factories, the mass production of goods their led to the introduction of credit spending (the spending of money one did not have). Promises and obligations were made on Wall Street. People couldn't pay off their credit in economic slumps (such as the one post-WW1 were the USA had made a fortune selling goods to Europe). And, thus, the economy crashed and mass poverty ensued. So in fact, the welfare state you mentioned was a socialist invention of Roosevelt in the 1930s in reaction to this, creating a political obligation for the future federal state to intervene in the lives of impoverished people. After the Great Depression (caused by capitalism and the credit system), people no longer wanted a laissez faire government and the seeming lethargy of Hoover, but an active government who created the conditions and institutions that benefited the interests of Americans through the New Deal and beyond...