>>> Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> 12/22/99 03:17PM >>>
Charles Brown wrote:
>Sort of like Keynes , wasn't it ?
Yes and no. Keynes wrote a preface to the German edition of the General Theory that praised Nazi economic policy. But, though Keynes shared the anti-Semitism of the British upper class, he wasn't at heart a Nazi.
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Charles: I'd say Henry Liu is in his heart, soul and mind not only not a Nazi ,but an anti-Nazi. My guess is Henry Liu's assessment of the Nazi economic policy is in the same vein as Keynes', i.e. "purely" economic without any endorsement whatsoever of the arch-criminality of the Nazis' racism an political and military policies. In other words, the answer to the above is "yes" , not "no". Henry Liu doesn't endorse Nazism , in the today's common understanding of that term, anymore than Keynes did .
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>But what did that have to do with the arguments about anti-Asian
>racism, the topic of this thread ?
You said that "Henry Liu had the better side of the arguments he was in." I was wondering if you included that among them.
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CB: Well, did Keynes have the worse side of his argument praising Nazi economic policy ? What was Henry Liu arguing ? I doubt that he was arguing that Hitler's political crimes were alright. He probably was arguing like Keynes , on the "pure" economic element. And what were the people on the other side of that specific argument arguing ? That Hitler should have used free market policies rather than Keynesianism ?
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As for the China question, I'll say this: Henry went way too far in defending the Chinese regime - I won't say for "racial," but I will say for "nationalistic" reasons. Just because the Chinese government is sometimes critical of U.S. imperial arrogance doesn't mean it isn't a repressive regime in both the economic and political senses. A government that happily rents its labor force to the likes of Nike for pennies an hour doesn't qualify as remotely admirable in my book.
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CB: I thought this thread was about whether the murder of Vincent Chin was evidence of anti-Asian racism stirred up by the UAW's "Buy American" campaign in the 1980's ? Then Max claimed that mention of Chin was a poor argument that reminded him of Henry Liu's arguments. Although Chin and Liu were and are Chinese, the issue is more the racism of the U.S. regime, not Chinese nationalism.
As to China's current economic policy, the facts you cite don't amount to an argument that the current government in China is not remotely admirable. What would be the circumstance of the workers you mention if they didn't work for pennies ? Would they be even poorer as peasants or in some other status ? The demographics, level of development of forces of production and whole economic circumstances of China must be taken into account in assessing the current policy. It may be that wages that are outrageously low in a developed country are more humane than the alternatives in the most gigantic developing country. What is the Chinese social safety net ? What are the prices of subsistence goods in China ? Can the people you mention afford the basics of life on pay that would be too low here ? The comparison is more complex than you imply above.
The Great Leap Forward was not as easy as first thought. It just may not be possible to develop enough yet so that everybody has work and income on the scale of that in developed countries, and the situations like the above are better than what would result from refusing the entrance of capitalists with their technology , etc. I'm pretty sure that something like this is behind the whole Deng theory.
CB