I read Michael as essentially challenging me on any implications that the social planning in Hong Kong has been particularly progressive. I accept that other contributions in this thread suggest that it has been the exception rather than the rule that Labour influenced administrators have succeeded in such initiatives.
My phrase about putting the government in a stronger position for further social urban planning may imply otherwise, but I was thinking of the future and of the principle, which might be implemented more vigorously by more progressive regimes.
It is fine if other people draw other issues out of this thread, but since August or September I have been using it to test the proposition that a capitalist government can be relatively resilient in the middle of the economic turmoil, with state ownership of land. Although the use of the currency board to control finance capital has also been a main theme, the administration could not have been in such a strong position as to buy up 10% of the stock exchange virtually overnight without having accumulated large reserves.
I regard Michael as one of the most careful and well informed posters on these lists but I would like to clarify a point and invite him to come back. It depends on the marxist theory of ground rent. I understand Marx analysed how surplus value gets redistributed among the capitalist class in practice, and that the portion that goes to landed capital is a first charge on profits.
By having essentially no landed capital in Hong Kong, what the government gets is not a tax, it is actually the ground rent. Under either system it could be said that such charges raise property prices and production costs.
I do not wish to prettify this, but to make a fundamental point about the tactical and strategic possibilities of left-wingers isolating and attacking landed capital, and eliminating it, *because Hong Kong shows it can be done*. I accept it would therefore be more correct to say in line with this analysis that the capitalist Hong Kong system is one in which there is only one landed capitalist, the government. It is a state capitalism in land.
Nevertheless this may provide a transitional form which *with class struggle* could be used to slice up the capitalists, and move towards more effective socialisation of the market.
I would appreciate comments which probe the robustness of this analysis.
Chris Burford
London.
At 07:57 AM 11/14/98 -0500, Michael Hoover wrote:
>> > I have checked with my source. He says that although some leases
>> > lasted as long as 99 or 75 years, from the 1950's leases became
>> > shorter.
>> > But the point is that even existing leases have to come up before
>> > the auctions if there is to be a change of usage. This system
>> > picks up revenue for the government from property prices which
>> > rise with economic development, and puts the government in a
>> > stronger position for further social urban planning.
>> > Chris Burford
>
>standard land-leases are 75 years and most are renewable...there also
>exist temporary land-leases that are not renewable...at the time
>leases expire, lease-holders negotiate with the government over the
>price of the new contract...'private owners' can develop whatever they
>like in line with lease conditions and statutory land use plans...
>
>in theory, 'collective ownership' should allow a better built,
>planned, and designed place...but the HK system allows the
>government to earn lot together with private developers...because
>the gov't derives a major proportion of its revenue from land -
>property rates & taxes, stamp duties, lease modifications, premium
>on new land - it has a vested interest in creating new prime site
>properties...this explains HK government's enthusiasm for land
>reclamation despite public opposition to further destruction of
>the harbor (btw: the Chinese characters for Hong Kong mean
>Fragant Harbor - pronounced Heung Gong, the 'eu' resembling the
>syllable in French - an apparent reference to the area's one
>natural blessing that long ago lost any pleasant aroma that
>might have spawned the name, pollution having turned the deep
>blue water into brown sewage, the flotsam of industrial society)...
>
>because the gov't land policy is used to raise revenue, it is
>taxation in the form of higher property prices and rents...the
>social & financial burdens of a high land price policy include
>declining home ownership opportunities, increasing cost of
>living, and growing wealth disparity...re: the latter, gov't
>land policy makes for an alliance between developers and banks
>who have an interest in keeping rices as high as possible...
>
>in sum, there is no urban social planning if the 'social' is
>supposed to mean 'public good'...Michael Hoover
>
>