> The following is written by the Maoist political economist Raymond Lotta. It
> is excerpted from a larger discussion on http://2changetheworld.info where
>
> But the situation was totally different in China when Mao died in 1976.
> China was socialist, and there was no crisis or breakdown in China’s
> socialist economy.
Peasant-industrial autarky isn't socialism. It's catchup-accumulation.
> agricultural-industrial base. During the years of the Cultural Revolution
> industrial growth averaged 10 percent a year.
Not true. The real statistics point to strong growth during China's reformist periods (e.g. 1949-1956, 1962-65, and 1978-present), and stagnation or near-implosion during the Great Leap and the Cultural Revolution.
> Living standards greatly improved. The food problem was solved; a growing
> assortment of consumer goods was being produced; housing needs were met; and
> the revolution created the most egalitarian health care system in the world
> (that’s according to the World Bank!).
The food problem was *not* solved. Per capita grain production barely kept pace with the population increase until 1978. Ordinary Chinese workers and peasants made do with extremely austere life-styles, until relatively recently. Much of China's wealth was pissed away in the 3rd Line project, a mad scheme which relocated vast sections of the industrial base into the remote interior. Mao was presumably preparing for WW III, but the effect was to hamstring the economy for at least a decade, maybe longer.
> These advances were made on the basis of social mobilization and mass
> political awareness. People were taking up and debating major issues of
> politics and culture in factories and communes.
All under the watchful eye of Kang Sheng.
> consumer goods expanded. The problem is that the people who mainly can
> afford these things are from new privileged strata—while millions of
> ordinary Chinese are working in sweatshops, producing consumer goods that
> they cannot afford for markets in the imperialist countries.
Untrue. Growth has been quite broadly distributed. The biggest inequities are between regions, not necessarily within regions. And many of China's exports are sold in fellow Asian peripheries, not Japan and the EU.
-- Dennis