7 ms·

The Secret Document That Transformed China

172 points by nantes 15y ago

bconway 15y ago
It's interesting to revisit events like this in the present-day US. One can only wonder what sort of change might take place if rather than giving up 50% of what we make, we were allowed to reinvest it into our homes, businesses, and communities. Perhaps states like Texas and New Hampshire could be held up as the poster-children for a new direction in US policy? Unlikely, but one can dream, I suppose.
Jun8 15y ago
"Work hard, don't work hard — everyone gets the same," he says. "So people don't want to work." 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)."
- ryanmolden 15y ago
  Popper talks quite a bit about this, and how Marx was mostly rebelling against a capitalism that we no longer would recognize, I.e. the cut-throat, robber baron, child laboring to an early grave type. 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.
  - dkarl 15y ago
    The term capitalism doesn't mean much when applied to today's world. Originally, its defining characteristic was that the economy was controlled by those who owned the means of production. 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-00144feabdc0.html#axzz1k3j9oTCd 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.
  - vidarh 15y ago
    His idea assumes a population that recognizes they're almost certainly not going to become part of the wealthy elite, and so who recognize that it is not in their interest to support said elite. 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.
- tokenadult 15y ago
  His model of human nature and projections for capitalistic growth were also totally off. 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.
  - forensic 15y ago
    They aren't in competition. They both were geniuses. 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.
    - deleted 15y ago
      [deleted]
    - nextparadigms 15y ago
      How do you get a state that is "more powerful" than Corporations? I don't think Government size has anything to do with it. Are you referring to having many strong law enforcement agencies to threaten the corporations? I'd say the US Government already has that, and Corporations still seem to control it. And if you want to give China as an example, that's not an acceptable model. 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.
- jacques_chester 15y ago
  The root flaw in Marxism is the labour theory of value. It just doesn't lead to a workable theory of economics. That wasn't clear at the time he wrote Das Kapital, because the leading summation of economics was Smith (which I believe Marx worked from), and Smith got it wrong also. 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.
  - sliverstorm 15y ago
    whether socialism is, regardless of inevitability, possible, is a matter of hot debate. 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.
    - derleth 15y ago
      > I figure the only way to make it possible is through the ability to pick & choose members, and exile members. Then you have a dictatorial state socialism, also known as Stalinism, Maoism, and the Khmer Rouge. It's been done.
      - tomjen3 15y ago
        Not necessarily -- he may have a defense against the inevitable slide into corruptness that happened in those places. Of course this all depends on who gets to choose to exile members, and getting it to scale.
- vidarh 15y ago
  > "Work hard, don't work hard — everyone gets the same," he says. "So people don't want to work." > > Many people point to this idea as the main weakness (or stupidity, depending on whom you speak) of Socialism as originally proposed by Marx. 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.
  - Jun8 15y ago
    "If you don't contribute what you can..." 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.
joejohnson 15y ago
What?! Right as that was getting good, it ended. I looked to see if there was a second page. How does it go from the changes in the 1970s to empty factories today?
twelvechairs 15y ago
> "Each family agreed to turn over some of what they grew to the government, and to the collective" 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.
- fuzzix 15y ago
  "Despite the articles pro-capitalist rhetoric" Ah, so it wasn't just me who heard "Closer to the Heart" play ;)
llimllib 15y ago
How in the world does the article end where it does? It finally gets interesting and then it cuts off.
re_format 15y ago
If everyone works hard, everyone gets to keep more. Because more is produced. If only some work hard, then the whole group cannot produce as much. 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.
- sliverstorm 15y ago
  You're missing the classic game theory element. If everyone is working hard, everyone gets X. But if I decide to slack off, everyone gets X minus some tiny fraction, including me. 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.
  - derleth 15y ago
    Marx also believed that no capitalist country would ever, say, abolish child labor, institute universal education, and create universal health care. 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.
    - gphilip 15y ago
      > Marx also believed that no capitalist country would ever, say, abolish child labor, institute universal education, and create universal health care. Could you provide some reference to support that, please?
      - derleth 15y ago
        This is a surprisingly good summary: http://www.stardestroyer.net/Empire/Essays/Marxism.html http://www.stardestroyer.net/Empire/Essays/Marxism.html Aside from that, you can read Marx in translation or in the original.
    - 15y ago
tnuc 15y ago
The article is well written but a little light on facts. 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."
- learc83 15y ago
  >"The officials swore at him, treated him like he was on death row." Presumably since they interviewed him, this is his account of the story, not an American slanted version.
  - icebraining 15y ago
    In fact, you can hear him speak on the podcast: https://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2012/01/13/145184551/the-friday-podcast-the-secret-document-that-transformed-china https://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2012/01/13/145184551/the-fri...
grecy 15y ago
I'm getting down voted to oblivion for this... 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...
- coryl 15y ago
  What? So you think this is nothing more than propaganda?
  - tnuc 15y ago
    Pretty much everything written by one country's media about another country is propaganda. 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.
    - pyre 15y ago
      > Pretty much everything written by one country's media > about another country is propaganda. You say this, yet you only attack American media for propaganda. Would you say the same thing about a BBC article on Iraq? A French article on Spain?
      - tnuc 15y ago
        In general, yes I would say the same thing. I am certain a German article on the economic situation in Greece is going to be quite different to an article in a Greek newspaper. 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.
x3c 15y ago
This article makes a good case for capitalism and private property. But using this article (or this line of thought) to justify unregulated free market is just as dangerous as pure communism. Free market soon gets distorted to ugly oligarchic, one where (extending the farmer analogy) the more a farmer grows, the more he's entitled to from the common pool (besides his own earning). And that is current course of free market. Consider this like an unstable equilibrium. At the top of inverted-U curve, natural tendency of a point is to escape the stability, and it does not correct itself. The correction can happen either incrementally by a healthy regulatory body, like government, or by a more drastic measure when things go really off the rails and an upheaval/revolution restores the system back to the unstable equilibrium. This represents the economic balance of the system and, since, money is directly proportional to power, political entities go through the same motion too. Hard to get the causality right (political to economic or the other way round), but that is the state of human society since times immemorial.
guano___ 15y ago
Interesting article, but I find this part a bit disingenuous: 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.
- jacques_chester 15y ago
  Western Europe was destroyed by the bombing campaigns of World War II, yet sprung back to wealth within 20 years. 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.
kylebrown 15y ago
For an interesting twist on the tired old communism vs capitalism debate, read Michel Bauwens of the p2p foundation philosophize on how aspects of Marxism were 'ill-conceived' while alternativley, the thriving p2p economy is a viable successor to capitalism. https://snuproject.wordpress.com/2012/01/03/and-the-debate-begins-peer-to-peer-and-marxism-analogies-and-differences-jean-lievens-interviewed-with-michel-bauwens/ https://snuproject.wordpress.com/2012/01/03/and-the-debate-b...
georgieporgie 15y ago
This was a Planet Money podcast. I don't know if it was any different (I just skimmed it), but I always really enjoy the presentation and style of Planet Money. http://www.npr.org/rss/podcast/podcast_detail.php?siteId=94411890 http://www.npr.org/rss/podcast/podcast_detail.php?siteId=944...

172 points by nantes 15y ago

It's interesting to revisit events like this in the present-day US. One can only wonder what sort of change might take place if rather than giving up 50% of what we make, we were allowed to reinvest it into our homes, businesses, and communities. Perhaps states like Texas and New Hampshire could be held up as the poster-children for a new direction in US policy? Unlikely, but one can dream, I suppose.

Jun8 15y ago

"Work hard, don't work hard — everyone gets the same," he says. "So people don't want to work." 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)."

ryanmolden 15y ago
Popper talks quite a bit about this, and how Marx was mostly rebelling against a capitalism that we no longer would recognize, I.e. the cut-throat, robber baron, child laboring to an early grave type. 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.
- dkarl 15y ago
  The term capitalism doesn't mean much when applied to today's world. Originally, its defining characteristic was that the economy was controlled by those who owned the means of production. 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-00144feabdc0.html#axzz1k3j9oTCd 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.
- vidarh 15y ago
  His idea assumes a population that recognizes they're almost certainly not going to become part of the wealthy elite, and so who recognize that it is not in their interest to support said elite. 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.
tokenadult 15y ago
His model of human nature and projections for capitalistic growth were also totally off. 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.
- forensic 15y ago
  They aren't in competition. They both were geniuses. 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.
  - deleted 15y ago
    [deleted]
  - nextparadigms 15y ago
    How do you get a state that is "more powerful" than Corporations? I don't think Government size has anything to do with it. Are you referring to having many strong law enforcement agencies to threaten the corporations? I'd say the US Government already has that, and Corporations still seem to control it. And if you want to give China as an example, that's not an acceptable model. 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.
jacques_chester 15y ago
The root flaw in Marxism is the labour theory of value. It just doesn't lead to a workable theory of economics. That wasn't clear at the time he wrote Das Kapital, because the leading summation of economics was Smith (which I believe Marx worked from), and Smith got it wrong also. 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.
- sliverstorm 15y ago
  whether socialism is, regardless of inevitability, possible, is a matter of hot debate. 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.
  - derleth 15y ago
    > I figure the only way to make it possible is through the ability to pick & choose members, and exile members. Then you have a dictatorial state socialism, also known as Stalinism, Maoism, and the Khmer Rouge. It's been done.
    - tomjen3 15y ago
      Not necessarily -- he may have a defense against the inevitable slide into corruptness that happened in those places. Of course this all depends on who gets to choose to exile members, and getting it to scale.
vidarh 15y ago
> "Work hard, don't work hard — everyone gets the same," he says. "So people don't want to work." > > Many people point to this idea as the main weakness (or stupidity, depending on whom you speak) of Socialism as originally proposed by Marx. 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.
- Jun8 15y ago
  "If you don't contribute what you can..." 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.

joejohnson 15y ago

What?! Right as that was getting good, it ended. I looked to see if there was a second page. How does it go from the changes in the 1970s to empty factories today?

twelvechairs 15y ago

> "Each family agreed to turn over some of what they grew to the government, and to the collective" 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.

fuzzix 15y ago
"Despite the articles pro-capitalist rhetoric" Ah, so it wasn't just me who heard "Closer to the Heart" play ;)

llimllib 15y ago

How in the world does the article end where it does? It finally gets interesting and then it cuts off.

re_format 15y ago

If everyone works hard, everyone gets to keep more. Because more is produced. If only some work hard, then the whole group cannot produce as much. 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.

sliverstorm 15y ago
You're missing the classic game theory element. If everyone is working hard, everyone gets X. But if I decide to slack off, everyone gets X minus some tiny fraction, including me. 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.
- derleth 15y ago
  Marx also believed that no capitalist country would ever, say, abolish child labor, institute universal education, and create universal health care. 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.
  - gphilip 15y ago
    > Marx also believed that no capitalist country would ever, say, abolish child labor, institute universal education, and create universal health care. Could you provide some reference to support that, please?
    - derleth 15y ago
      This is a surprisingly good summary: http://www.stardestroyer.net/Empire/Essays/Marxism.html http://www.stardestroyer.net/Empire/Essays/Marxism.html Aside from that, you can read Marx in translation or in the original.
  - 15y ago

tnuc 15y ago

The article is well written but a little light on facts. 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."

learc83 15y ago
>"The officials swore at him, treated him like he was on death row." Presumably since they interviewed him, this is his account of the story, not an American slanted version.
- icebraining 15y ago
  In fact, you can hear him speak on the podcast: https://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2012/01/13/145184551/the-friday-podcast-the-secret-document-that-transformed-china https://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2012/01/13/145184551/the-fri...

grecy 15y ago

I'm getting down voted to oblivion for this... 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...

coryl 15y ago
What? So you think this is nothing more than propaganda?
- tnuc 15y ago
  Pretty much everything written by one country's media about another country is propaganda. 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.
  - pyre 15y ago
    > Pretty much everything written by one country's media > about another country is propaganda. You say this, yet you only attack American media for propaganda. Would you say the same thing about a BBC article on Iraq? A French article on Spain?
    - tnuc 15y ago
      In general, yes I would say the same thing. I am certain a German article on the economic situation in Greece is going to be quite different to an article in a Greek newspaper. 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.

x3c 15y ago

This article makes a good case for capitalism and private property. But using this article (or this line of thought) to justify unregulated free market is just as dangerous as pure communism. Free market soon gets distorted to ugly oligarchic, one where (extending the farmer analogy) the more a farmer grows, the more he's entitled to from the common pool (besides his own earning). And that is current course of free market. Consider this like an unstable equilibrium. At the top of inverted-U curve, natural tendency of a point is to escape the stability, and it does not correct itself. The correction can happen either incrementally by a healthy regulatory body, like government, or by a more drastic measure when things go really off the rails and an upheaval/revolution restores the system back to the unstable equilibrium. This represents the economic balance of the system and, since, money is directly proportional to power, political entities go through the same motion too. Hard to get the causality right (political to economic or the other way round), but that is the state of human society since times immemorial.

guano___ 15y ago

Interesting article, but I find this part a bit disingenuous: 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.

jacques_chester 15y ago
Western Europe was destroyed by the bombing campaigns of World War II, yet sprung back to wealth within 20 years. 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.

kylebrown 15y ago

For an interesting twist on the tired old communism vs capitalism debate, read Michel Bauwens of the p2p foundation philosophize on how aspects of Marxism were 'ill-conceived' while alternativley, the thriving p2p economy is a viable successor to capitalism. https://snuproject.wordpress.com/2012/01/03/and-the-debate-begins-peer-to-peer-and-marxism-analogies-and-differences-jean-lievens-interviewed-with-michel-bauwens/ https://snuproject.wordpress.com/2012/01/03/and-the-debate-b...

georgieporgie 15y ago

This was a Planet Money podcast. I don't know if it was any different (I just skimmed it), but I always really enjoy the presentation and style of Planet Money. http://www.npr.org/rss/podcast/podcast_detail.php?siteId=94411890 http://www.npr.org/rss/podcast/podcast_detail.php?siteId=944...