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

[Brad DeLong]

>At 6:48 PM -0700 19/7/03, Brad DeLong wrote:
>>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.
>
>Speaking of history, shouldn't the question be: At any time up to 
>say, around 1970, what would have been the judgment of a reasonably 
>open-minded person? More to the point, if you were Chinese or 
>Vietnamese or Korean at the material point(s) in time, how would you 
>have chosen?
>
>Would you seriously have come down on the side of Chiang Kai Shek 
>and what he stood for in the decades leading up to 1948? On Syngman 
>Rhee, perhaps the choice should be Kim Il Sung and Park Chung Hee 
>who came in on a coup? Thieu was a no contest, period -- as even 
>those looking down at us from the eagle's perch acknowledged when 
>they killed him.
>
>As for the other issue -- "centralisation of an enormous amount of 
>power in the hands of states". In the hands of Chiang or Park, 
>wasn't there also the same? For that matter, Singapore, that regular 
>near top of the list of free economies... as also, when there's more 
>honesty about it, one of the most successful -- by conventional 
>measures -- statist schemes in the world (pace the paeans of praise 
>for Scott's Seeing like a state), now running into some road blocks.
>
>Perhaps a little less ideology, a little less of the eagle's perch, 
>and a little more actual history might help?
>
>kj khoo
>___________________________________
>http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk

Well, these are interesting questions: at what point in time should 
one have known that Pol Pot, Kim Il Sung, Mao Zedong, Stalin, et 
cetera were bloodthirsty maniacs who had no more idea about how to 
build a utopian or even a progressive than does my dog?

My answer is "1924." By the time the Boshevik Inner Party decides 
that they should--for their own short-term political gain--suppress 
Lenin's Testament, it is clear that nothing good can come out of the 
Communist enterprise.

There are others who put the answer at "1956"--that it was OK to be a 
deluded fool up until the time Nikita Sergeyevitch ripped open the 
curtain.

I can't see how anybody rational and reasonable can put forward any 
date after 1956, however.

Nor can I understand how anyone can fail to distinguish between Lee 
Kuan Yew's Singapore and Mao Zedong's China.

Brad DeLong