Jim Devine
Tue, 12 Sep 2000 08:47:03 -0700
Louis wrote: >> If a state agency cuts into their profits, they might find it >> preferable to let land lie fallow. Somebody like Fidel Castro would have >>organized the agricultural work force to evict the bosses and declare the >>ranches and farms public property. Then, the wheat, cattle, etc. would >>have been exported and revenue would have continued to come in. Brad ripostes: >No. > >Historical experience strongly suggests that the collectivization of >agriculture is disastrous for agricultural productivity and agricultural >exports. The claim that what Argentina's economy needed after World War II >was to become more like the economy of the Soviet Union is unsupported by >any historical evidence. I believe that Brad and Louis are talking about different kinds of "collectivization." Brad is talking about the kind of collectivization-from-above that Stalin and his boys engineered (along with elimination of the kulaks). Louis is talking about the agricultural work force being organized (rather than ordered to), in order to make the ranches and farms public property, collectivization-from-below with central support. Public property can mean democratic collectivization; it need not be bureaucratic collectivization. Strictly speaking, "public property" must be the former. If it's only collectivization by the state and the people don't control the state, it's hardly "public." Of course, this is very abstract... Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] & http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine