Windy
From: Dennis Robert Redmond <dredmond at efn.org>
>Reply-To: lbo-talk at lists.panix.com
>To: lbo-talk at lists.panix.com
>Subject: Re: Socialist Planning -- Liberation from the Market
>Date: Tue, 17 Sep 2002 18:16:08 -0700 (PDT)
>
>On Tue, 17 Sep 2002, windy storm wrote:
>
> > 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
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