Chapter 23 (to page 1149)

It was interesting first of all, to read the story on how China produced both Barbie and Dara (the Muslim version of a doll). It was interesting because they were practically complete opposites and it seemed more united that the Muslim community would want a doll like Dara since even i agree Barbie's lifestyle is a little too crazy if not completely unbelievable and unrealistic. It also caught my attention that they would make Dara an 8 year old instead of a woman solving problems because they still wanted that male dominance, but if it was a child it would be OK to them. The fact that China's connected to both the U.S. and Iran shows how much the economy has globalized. After World War II, the world got connected on a much higher level and that has a lot to do with the effects of creating things like a world bank, the IMF, technology allowing for cheaper transportation, and other such factors. Economic globalization in the 1970's was called neoliberalism. The world was beginning to be viewed as one huge market instead of individual ones. Many companies began to take advantage of poorer countries and their loose regulations and cheap labor and made a lot of money without having to do any more colonizing. The second new form of making money was buying and selling foreign currency. Lastly there was a new form in personal investments of individuals. Companies like Nike have taken advantage of cheap labor and close factories when there gets to be too many regulations and open them elsewhere thousands of miles apart. The problem when countries economies are so tightly linked in this way comes when one fails, the others will most likely fail to a certain degree also. This was recently seen when many countries in 2008 when many businesses failed because they could no longer operate with those they were operating from over seas. The chart describing how long people will live based on the average income of their country was also astonishing. The lower income making below $995 lived only between 58/60 in contrast to the above $12,196 lived between 77/83. This is a big difference and it only gets bigger if you go down the table, such as deaths per year, cars per 1,000 people, even the literacy rate ha a 33% difference.

Chapter 21

This chapter I especially got to learn a lot about since I read it over carefully to be ready to present. This chapter covered the rise and fall of communism. It begins by explaining where communism originated, it had been thought of very long in Russia before actually becoming the USSR. Unfortunately to communist countries, including those today, none have really fulfilled what Karl Marx hoped would happen. Then again, the world was not really ready when countries like China and the USSR jumped the gun. The main reason being? None were industrialized to the lever Marx said needed, they were all mainly agricultural countries. Either way, for a while through violence, communism worked to industrialize to a certain point and did serve to raise the quality of living for many people. It also served to open the idea of women being on the same level as men because it was so rejected before, but to be a true communist country means everyone is equal. The USSR was basically the communist homeland and tried to help many other countries unite to communism through advice, protection, and money. The Russian Revolution took place in 1917 and had three main points, it was because of World War I, there was a shortage of food and work, and lastly it marked the end of the Romanov Dynasty.
There was a big difference in the road to communism for the Chinese because they did not have years of studying and arriving to the communist conclusions like the USSR did. It became a Nationalists versus Communists thing until World War II when the communists were better at uniting the people and creating an army. Communism was good for women in China because of many things like divorce, arranged marriage outlawed, women owning land, and literacy for women. China was lucky because they got a lot of help from the USSR, something to their advantage.
Collectivization of Agriculture also differed in these two countries. For the USSR land reform was easy because it was already being done before the Bolsheviks. The problem was with people actually sharing what they owned. Many people resisted sharing and in many cases killed their livestock out of spite. China set up collective farming much easier but both countries went through famine and starvation. Some 5 million deaths occurred in the USSR and some 20 million in China.
These countries both caused irreversible effects from their industrialization, the worst being the environmental effects that continue to this day, especially seen in China. There was also much rejection of feminist ideas and many women had to suffer from this too to achieve their positions and even then were limited because of peasant rejection to the idea of gender equality.
The Cold War was never expressed in terms of actual countries like the U.S. and the USSR in battle but was seen in many other ways. One was through the Iron Curtain that divided communist East from capitalist West in Europe. The other way was these two countries using countries like Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Cuba to spread what they thought was he better form of government. The worst being the Nuclear Standoff between the U.S. and Cuba and indirectly the USSR. Eventually all these countries decided it would be more detrimental to all of humanity to have a war on that scale. After that, all the countries backed off and eventually Soviet Russia collapsed. Communism can still be seen today in many countries like Cuba, Laos, China, and many more. It will probably always be around but it is doubt-able on whether there well ever be a country like Marx's ideal communist country.