[lbo-talk] Law Student With a History of Taking Left Turns

[Brad DeLong]

>On Sat, 19 Jul 2003 17:47:38 -0700, Brad DeLong 
><delong at econ.berkeley.edu> wrote:
>
>>Are you saying that you think that Ho Chi Minh was better than 
>>Nguyen Van Thieu, that Mao Zedong was better than Chang Kaishek, 
>>and that Kim Il Sung was better than Syngman Rhee?
>
>I don't mean to get pedantic here, but you may wish to phrase your 
>question in another manner.
>
>Are you asking this as a compound question, or as three distinct 
>issues which have three different answers? For example, if you are 
>asking if someone believes that Ho Chi Minh was better than Nguyen 
>Van Thieu _and_ that Mao Zedong was better than Chang Kaishek _and_ 
>that Kim Il Sung was better than Syngman Rhee, I don't think you're 
>going to get much of an answer.

In all three pairs, the first members are charismatic dictators who 
believed in the abolition of markets, the collectivization of 
agriculture, and the centralization of an enormous amount of power in 
the hands of the states. In all three pairs, the second members are 
corrupt comprador politicians of one sort or another. Answers tend to 
go together.

To believe that the answers to these three questions are uncorrelated 
is to demonstrate a truly striking ignorance about twentieth-century 
Asian politics. I urge you to learn some history quickly.

The only place where I see any split possible is in the case of Ho 
Chi Minh. Mao Zedong and Kim Il Sung appear to have been totally 
insane, while we have no similar evidence for Ho Chi Minh's 
psychological instability.

Brad DeLong