The Secret Document That Transformed China
npr.org
npr.org
Many people point to this idea as the main weakness (or stupidity, depending on whom you speak) of Socialism as originally proposed by Marx. However, AFAIK (and I'm definitely not an expert on this), Marx saw socialism as a post-industrial step, to be developed in countries like German, France and the UK. On the other hand, his ideas were instituted mainly in mostly feudal countries like Russia and China. His model of human nature and projections for capitalistic growth were also totally off.
Wikipedia says "Despite Marx's stress on critique of capitalism and discussion of the new communist society that should replace it, his explicit critique of capitalism is guarded, as he saw it as an improved society compared to the past ones (slavery and feudal)."
Correct. The model of human nature proposed by Karl Marx was demonstrably incorrect, and the demonstration continues in the few countries that continue to proclaim allegiance to Marxist thought.
An interesting fact about free-enterprise (Marx might say, "capitalist") economies is that they are based in part on the writings of Adam Smith in the book On the Wealth of Nations. But before Smith wrote The Wealth of Nations, he first wrote a book called The Theory of Moral Sentiments, pondering what motivates human beings to behave morally. Smith had deeper insight into human nature even before he began writing about economics proper than Marx ever had.
Smith did not advocate laissez-faire capitalism. He was against any kind of cartel, oligopoly, or monopoly, and wanted the state to be more powerful than corporations, not controlled by corporations. Marx was right about capitalism but wrong about incentives.
Both of them should be drawn from in the creation of a next generation economic system.
In a democracy, the best way for the Government to be more powerful than Corporations, is for the people themselves to have more direct power over the Government. The more the people loosen up their grip on the Government, the more one of the 2 things happen:
1. The Government becomes more powerful than both the people and the Corporations.
2. The Corporations become more powerful than the Government, who in turn is also more powerful than the people.
Society must not tolerate the creation of an aristocratic class, or that class will engage in anti-meritocratic privilege (nepotism & cronyism).
Meritocracy is the next step from democracy. In a meritocracy, ONLY non-privileged competent people are allowed to hold positions of power.
Corporations control the government through privilege games (cronyism and nepotism).
End the privilege games by outlawing elites from government.
End the dumbocracy (rule by the dumb) in favor of meritocracy (rule by those who have proven scientific credentials)
So the health minister should be elected by all who can prove they are informed about health - they hold medical degrees, biology degrees, or can pass the relevant exams. These educated meritocratic voters from the science community elect the health minister.
The real problem of corporations controlling government is a problem of aristocratic dynasties and privileged super-rich elites gaming the system to consolidate wealth and power. It's simple game theory.
The solution is cutting off the power of elites and placing power in the hands of non-superrich meritocratic highly educated experts who have no sex appeal but do have proven competence in their scientific field. These meritocrats, given power by the votes of informed people, would be able to reign in the out of control disasterous cronyism and nepotism that has destroyed our economy.
The solution is meritocracy. Democracy itself needs to be modified in such a way that a tiny group of elite families no longer dominate it. One big way to remove their power is instituting a wealth cap, say $100 million per person. Another way is through inheritance tax. The tax dollars from the superrich should go to empower the poor through high quality education at the private schools where the superrich send their children currently.
When stupid people ask you how our country is going to get out this mess, you respond, "by empowering scientific experts and disempowering the (a) stupid Christians (b) privileged war-mongers (c) nepotists and (d) crony capitalists"
Meritocracy is the only way out of this broken country. Credible, sensible, rational scientific policies can save us. Dumbocracy and privilege will destroy us.
The problem with a meritocracy is that it must be policed in order to make sure that it is indeed operating as a meritocracy. However, all it takes is a little leverage over the watchmen to change it into a meritocracy in name only. All systems requiring policing have this weakness. And since there is a strong economic incentive to subverting the system for personal gain, corruption is an eventuality.
2. Corporations are people. (In the US)
3. Corporations are the richest, most powerful, psychopathic people.
It is not hard to see the problem here.
I could never understand that point. Corporations are people everywhere. Corporation is just a group of people (shareholders/owners and management/employees) with a contractual hierarchy owning some property (equity). Same way NGOs are people, HOAs are people, football teams are people... And it's like that everywhere in the world, it's a very basic property of human societies.
That's why corporate donations traditionally include donations from "members" of the corporation as donation from the corporation BTW.
Now, in civilized countries, individuals within these groups are given some legal protection from responsibility for the group's actions. There are certain advantages to that approach (more innovation, risk taking, investment, etc) but most importantly collective responsibility is simply wrong.
Obviously, I have no idea how to do this.
More importantly, you reduce the temptation for bribery etc.
I ask, because most people who make this argument make it out of an assumption that Marx argued for a system based on widespread altruism.
But a central part of Marx' argumentation about the workers movement is that the working class needed to learn to understand the nature of class struggle, and reject bourgeois/capitalist morality, which is designed to support capitalist rule. E.g. the capitalist class supports strong private property rights because they have property and its in their interest to perpetuate it.
In effect, he argues that the working classes are too selfless - they in fact today actively support a system that puts them at a disadvantage.
If anything, he thought it would be easier to get people to pay more attention to their own self-interests than what they have been most places so far.
Marxist socialism is what you get if the vast majority pay recognize that they will never be "the 1%" and decide to band together to gain collective advantage.
The concept of repeated crises of capitalism leading inexorably to socialism relies entirely on a slender reed that turns out to be broken.
Nevertheless, whether socialism is, regardless of inevitability, possible, is a matter of hot debate. Mostly down to which side of the calculability/use-of-knowledge debate you fall on.
Red Plenty is an interesting book for the days when it seemed as though the Soviet Union really was going to usher in heaven on earth. As for China, Mao: The Unknown Story is a terrifying account.
I figure the only way to make it possible is through the ability to pick & choose members, and exile members. Not to be elitist, but rather to protect the community from those who would abuse it.
Then you have a dictatorial state socialism, also known as Stalinism, Maoism, and the Khmer Rouge. It's been done.
Of course this all depends on who gets to choose to exile members, and getting it to scale.
His ideas definitely assumed a more enlightened populous where class camaraderie made people work hard for the good of all, he kind of assumed slackers wouldn't be tolerated or wouldn't exist. As taking advantage of others by making them do a disproportionate amount of the work while you got equal or greater benefit was a bourgeois disfunction that the proletariat would not engage in.
The typical reader of this article works in front of a computer at a desk in an office block. He or she probably does not know who owns any of these things. It is quite likely that each is owned by someone different – a pension fund, a property company or a leasing business – none of whom is their employer. (http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/86667196-3afc-11e1-b7ba-00144...)
The strange thing is, in school we still learn Marx's critique of the old capitalism. I guess it's because there's nothing politically sensitive about critiquing a system that doesn't exist anymore. Today's business world is run by a professional management class.
Modern titans derive their authority and influence from their position in a hierarchy, not their ownership of capital. They have obtained these positions through their skills in organisational politics, in the traditional ways bishops and generals acquired positions in an ecclesiastical or military hierarchy.
Not only is control completely different, but spreading ownership of the means of production to the masses has become a conservative cause, in the form of privatization of social security and other individual account schemes where citizens use tax-privileged savings accounts instead of services provided directly by the government.
While there is a hopeful optimism in a lot of early socialism, Marx scoffed at most of it, and spent a lot of his time criticising what he saw as untenable utopian forms of socialism that assumed altruism and selflessness.
Instead, yes, he assumed slackers won't be tolerated. It is common for people to assume that communism would somehow mean people could just relax and not suffer consequences, but a large aspect of Marxism is to take away peoples ability to live off the work of others other than to the extent society can afford to do so as the result of excess wealth.
The question of why a society following Marxist principles (as opposed to other forms of socialism) would choose to take the means of doing so away from one group of people just to let other people slack off is something that does not seem to occur to people.
I would be inclined to think that if your immediate co-workers see direct impact on themselves based on whether or not you work, their interest in making sure you work would be greater.
But it is not a Marxist idea. In a society following Marxist principles, if you choose not to work, you would starve: You're not contributing according to your ability. The much mentioned from each according to ability, to each according to their means, is a social contract: If you don't contribute what you can, you should also not receive.
In fact, the purpose of socialism (as opposed to communism) in the Marxist model is a transition where the working classes put in place measures to gradually deprive the capitalist classes of the means to live off capital and to take away their capital in order to subsume them into the working classes: If you don't want to work, as opposed to if you can't, you will eventually starve.
The irony is that a lot of Western social democracies follow policies that Marx' likely would've written off as ploys a la Bismark's "state socialism": Ways of pacifying the working class, and potentially damaging by creating a chorus of people who oppose further socialization by creating systems full of attractive opportunities for those who don't want to work.
This is beyond a lot of the early socialist demand for a right to work, rather than a right to welfare.
A welfare state that pays people unemployment benefits without also putting them to work is petty-bourgeois, not Marxist socialism.
The problem is that this is so hard to measure in practice. I think that in the absence of external motivators, people revert to their subsistence level of output, since they have no incentive to go beyond that.
From my bad and distant memory;
The terms of the contract stated that you had to give X amount to the collective from your land, anything over and above this you kept. The X amount was originally set to be the same as the previous years harvest. The local collective had to raise the amount X a few times so it would appear that they where role models within the system.
It was only after other farmers in the region saw the results that they copied the process. It was eventually turned into the standard for a lot of China.
There are differing versions of the same story around depending on what the politics are for the writer. This version sticks to the American line of "The officials swore at him, treated him like he was on death row.". The Chinese version probably made the villagers look like model, conforming, hardworking and communist loving citizens.
I am neither American or Chinese, I am just fascinated by history and the differing ways it is represented. "History is written by the winners."
Presumably since they interviewed him, this is his account of the story, not an American slanted version.
Within a few years, farms all over China adopted the principles in that secret document. People could own what they grew. The government launched other economic reforms, and China's economy started to grow like crazy. Since 1978, something like 500 million people have risen out of poverty in China.
Though not explicitly stated, the passage seems to imply that the rise from poverty is wholly due to the capitalistic reforms, and a china without these reforms would not have seen any (at least major) similar change. Now this is a china that just decades earlier was destroyed by both the japanese and a civil war. Improvements take time, and these kind of cheap tricks ignore both that and a historical perspective. Sorry for the rant, but these tricks are all too common, and I think we can afford ourselves some more intellectual honesty rather then let things pass with these ideological slants, unintentional though they may be.
China was devastated by Japan, by civil war, and by ruinously stupid communist policies. The Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution were directly imposed by the CCP with Mao as the leading figure.
It is not a "trick" to point out the objectively verifiable consequences of the decisions made.
Despite the articles pro-capitalist rhetoric, note that the 'collective' is also creating its own taxes (presumably to help those less well off) - though it unhelpfully doesnt say what these were.
Ah, so it wasn't just me who heard "Closer to the Heart" play ;)
https://snuproject.wordpress.com/2012/01/03/and-the-debate-b...
Even in the year 2012, after all these years, Americans still need to hear stories that directly outline why communism doesn't work, and good old competitive capitalism is the way of the future.
I wonder how many of you reading this in America even stopped to think about the message you're being fed.
I wonder how many of you reading this in America have absolutely no clue the rest of the developed world does not feed this kind of thing to it's citizens.
Stay clear of those evil commies...
Making sweeping generalizations about Americans contributes nothing good to this discussion. It's needlessly incendiary, and it's more likely to lead to an argument than an interesting discussion.
Please have a look at the first, third and final sections of the HN commenting guidelines.
Are we really being fed a message in this article?
Perhaps. The message I got from this article? Straight communism doesn't work. (Which is fairly well established from past "communist" governments – they're either not communist or they quickly transmute into some other form of government.) But this article also doesn't espouse the benefits of pure capitalism. Instead, it highlights how a mix of communism and capitalism – a mix of group and personal interests – was actually quite successful.
Individuals have incentives to help the group, because after helping the group they help themselves. That's definitely not pure capitalism. Nor is it pure communism. It's something much more rich and powerful.
I think that's something from which we all could derive a very powerful message: absolute black/white polarizations are rarely correct or beneficial. Instead what's often required is a blending of opinions and ideas.
I don't think that the reporters on this piece were trying to give us any sort of message, other than that China realized that communism -- that is, government ownership and regulation of production, and equal pay no matter how hard you work -- was a failure, and that they had to somehow escape from that system and move toward a more capitalistic one. How that happened is an interesting story, and an important one.
If you think that Planet Money is against communism and in favor of capitalism, then that's probably a safe assumption.
But if you think that they're all rah-rah-USA! in their opinions, then you need to listen to the podcast more regularly. They've done some excellent shows on Denmark (and particularly, now Danes are generally OK with taxes that are beyond the pale for all but the most extreme Americans) and education (and how the US isn't attacking that problem, particularly at the preschool level, an intelligent way). Oh, and their reporting on the American banking system, and the ways in which the US housing crisis occurred, were very well done.
It's something of a cliche to say that reporters tend to be left-of-center, but I definitely get the feeling that this is where the Planet Money is located on the political-economic spectrum. But they're also generally trying to explore topics in greater depth than you'll get elsewhere, and from angles that I definitely don't hear in other places. For that, and for their clear explanations (and willingness to be silly and funny), I give them a huge amount of credit.
There is just as much propaganda in American media as there is in Chinese Media.
Does Rupert Murdoch support SOPA or is it the fine informed editors at the Wall Street Journal? Rupert wouldn't use his media as a propaganda network for his own benefit would he?
There is no propaganda in American Media, none at all. It's only the evil commies that have propaganda.
> Pretty much everything written by one country's media
> about another country is propaganda.
My intent wasn't to attack Americans or American media so much as to outline an example as to how Rupert Murdoch (and others) uses the media for his own gain. This is by no means limited to the US. He has a multinational media network.
People like Kim Jong-un also write propaganda but are limited by the reach of their media network.
My apologies if I offended any anyone, this was certainly not my intent.
Perhaps every worker has a different threshhold for what they will settle for in terms of what amount of the harvest they would like to retain.
All the HR people reading HN know exactly what I'm talking about.
Game theory tells us this kind of system will fall apart practically instantly.
I forget the details, but I think Marx tried to dismiss that problem through an appeal to nationalism.
He further believed that a government can 'wither away'.
Marx has been proven wrong in ways that have nothing to do with how well Communism/Socialism works as a system.
Could you provide some reference to support that, please?
http://www.stardestroyer.net/Empire/Essays/Marxism.html
Aside from that, you can read Marx in translation or in the original.
http://www.npr.org/rss/podcast/podcast_detail.php?siteId=944...