Henry C.K. Liu
Brad De Long wrote:
> >This appears to be still the problem of logic....
> >
> >Of course it is a weakness of a socialist state that 10 years after a
> >revolution it is not able to manage resources and reserves to avoid
> >substantial deaths from major natural disasters. It is also true that Mao
> >and others were associated with major left errors which disrupted the rural
> >economy through the Great Leap Forward. But it is also true that the
> >climate of China is regularly irregular.
> >
> >
> >It is ahistorical if Socialist China in its early formation is judged by
> >21st century standards of social management of economies.
> >
> >Chris Burford
> >
> >London
>
> *Snort* *Giggle* *Chortle*.
>
> I had written:
>
> >
> >I no longer find it funny...
>
> I withdraw my claim. It *is* funny--in a sick, perverted, demented, and
> despairing kind of way...
>
> Mao decides--throwing aside everything about economies of scale in
> industrial development that had been learned over the previous two
> centuries--that the people of China are to stop farming and make steel in
> their backyards. No one dares tell Mao that this policy is having a
> catastrophic effect on agricultural production. Thus when the local
> bureaucrats backed up by the PLA come to requisition the harvest, they take
> away so much of it to feed the cities that a very large number of
> people--perhaps between 8 and 80 million? we don't know in large part
> because the then-regime had no interest in permitting any contemporaneous
> documentation of what was going on--starve to death.
>
> And in a bold act of staring the facts in the face, Mr. Burford categorizes
> this as a "weakness of a socialist state."
>
> Surely it would be more appropriate to say something like my:
>
> > Alas! The fact remains that Mao Zedong was (along with
> > Josef Stalin and Adolf Hitler) the head of one of the very,
> > very few regimes that managed to kill more than thirty million
> > people in this century. Mao's Great Leap Forward and the
> > Cultural Revolution count as among the greatest human
> > disasters of this century...
>
> But instead Mr. Burford wants to blame the "irregular" climate of China.
> And he wants to plead that it is "ahistorical" to judge "Socialist China in
> its early formation" by "21st century standards of social management."
>
> The first principle of power and rule--a principle very early established
> after the invention of agriculture, once it became clear that agriculture
> meant that the peasants couldn't run away from their fields, and thus that
> your thugs-with-spears could obtain an easy life for you and your priests
> by coming up to them and saying "your grain or your life"--the first
> principle of power and rule is that when your thugs-with-spears requisition
> grain, *leave* *enough* *for* *the* *peasants* *to* *live* *on*.
>
> It is not by 21st century A.D. standards of social management that Mao
> Zedong is weighed in the balance and found (severely) wanting. It is by
> standards of social management that were well-known to Sargon of Akkad, to
> Alexandros of Ilium, to Agamemnon of Mykenai, to Minos of Knossos.
>
> There is indeed a "problem of logic" here. But it ain't mine...
>
> *Snort* *Giggle* *Chortle*.
>
> Brad DeLong