From: yodaiken@chelm.cs.umass.edu (victor yodaiken)
Newsgroups: ne.politics
Subject: Re: State Socialism
Date: 31 Dec 92 17:17:28 GMT
Organization: University of Massachusetts, Amherst

In article <4271@mitech.com> gjc@mitech.com (George J. Carrette) writes:
>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. 

The communist parties run state government in a few provinces. Not
quite the same.

>> Both Mao and Stalin lead their nations through
>> rapid industrializations  at tremendous cost.
>
>Life was cheap? 
>

To them.

>> 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?

I don't want to shock you, but there was a tremendous difference in
population between 19th century USA and mid twentieth century china.
China "imported" industrial workers from the Chinese countryside.
The ideological differences between Carnegie and Mao were not responsible
for this difference.


>
>> 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.

I don't believe that that is possible: human life cannot be sensibly
reduced to a monetary value.

>
>> 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.

Sure. To understand the development of US capitalism, one must understand
the role of slave labor. And to understand the development of Stalinist
russia, one must understand the role of the prison camp system and
the terror. But, Stalinist Russia *did* industrialize rapidly, and 
it is absurd to claim otherwise.

>
>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

What's the point here? How did it benefit human beings who were treated
like beasts of burden to have a "value" assigned to them by the slave
market? What does "at least" mean in this context? 

>were free, there was massive movements to the north to build and
>work in factories. 

Not right away. The big migration came after the mechanization of the 
cotton fields in the 1930's.


>   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.

Your reasoning is not clear. I'm suggesting that all industrializing nations
seem to have raised the resources needed for the initial effort by
taking them from people who were unable to defend themselves. Whether
there was a market value for these people or they were considered to have
property rights seems minor.


>> 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

But at least the Chinese government values them?

>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. 

And for good reason. But that's another issue, so to speak.



For the same reason that 
>
>-gjc


-- 


yodaiken@chelm.cs.umass.edu