From: gjc@mitech.com (George J. Carrette)
Newsgroups: ne.politics
Subject: Re: State Socialism
Date: 30 Dec 92 12:30:04 GMT
Organization: Mitech Corporation, Concord MA

In article <58093@dime.cs.umass.edu>, yodaiken@chelm.cs.umass.edu (victor yodaiken) writes:
> In article <4253@mitech.com> gjc@mitech.com (George J. Carrette) writes:
>>In article <58039@dime.cs.umass.edu>, yodaiken@chelm.cs.umass.edu (victor yodaiken) writes:
>>> When I traveled in China in 1982 I met more than
>>> one Indian student who was wildly enthusiastic about a poor nation where
>>> children on the street looked well fed and healthy. And none of us had
>>> any illusions about how despotic, corrupt, and inefficient the Maoist
>>> government was. 
>>
>>But I think you may have some illusions about how free-market India is!
> 
> No country is capitalist, if you want to be doctrinaire about it. 

You do not need to be doctrinaire. Large parts of India are
call themselves and are in fact Communist. 

> Both Mao and Stalin lead their nations through
> rapid industrializations  at tremendous cost.

Life was cheap? 

> a clear eyed look at how the US and UK became industrial
> powers will turn up some appalling events. Investment capital for
> industrialization has to come from somewhere, and industrializing nations
> seem to need strong governments to protect fledgling industries from
> competition and to force open markets.

What made Mao and Stalin's system caused them to decide they needed to kill 
millions of people to get the job done, whereas the capitalist doing
industrialization in the US needed to import millions of people?

> One does not have to be an apologist
> for slave labor camps to admit the accomplishments of Stalinist Russia,

No, but you have to explain it! You have to account a value for
human life somewhere in your equations.

> any
> more than one has to be an apologist for genocide of the indians or 
> african slavery to admit the accomplishments of the 19th century USA. 

I disagree. One has to explain how it fits in to the scheme of things.
Into how the economy worked.

At least with african slavery in the US you could find that human life
actually had -some- value! Was it ever government policy to kill
millions of slaves? No. To "use them up?" No. Certainly not. Slaves were
always in high demand. And once the slaves who had built the south
were free, there was massive movements to the north to build and
work in factories. 

   The native american people were in a completely different situation.
   They were not considered property, but their property rights
   were always being violated. If you can take away someones property,
   you can take away their life. For example, when the Bison were killed
   that caused more Indian suffering than any direct hit by bullet or
   sword.

   Could it be that the treatment of Indians was the nearest thing to
   communist behavior we had in the US? Indian property, Indian land? 
   No! All that land is owned by everybody for the taking. It is up
   to the government to decide how to spread it around.

   
> Maoist china was a prison camp, but Maoist China did something that 
> pre-maoist china did not: it restored social order and freed agriculture
> from the grip of feudalism, and it gave china an industrial base. 

The Chinese under Maoist china were slaves. Not a man or woman was
able to enjoy the fruits of his own labor. Hell, to this very
day the chinese aren't even allowed to have children without the 
permission of the government. 

-gjc

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