Rakesh Bhandari wrote: > > Has anyone read Stephen Andors' or John Gurley's defenses of Maoist > economic strategy? Or Michel Chossudovsky's appraisal? Mark Selden's or > Victor Nee's? From an impossible to get edition of Root and Branch: A > Libertarian Marxist Journal 8, Bill Russell argues that Maoism was actually > the Stalinist crash industrialisation programme adapted to China in which > the State confronted the problem not only of seizing agricultural surplus > but also producing it. > Other well-known Maoist economist's were Samir Amin and post 60's Joan Robinson (she wrote paeans to the Cultural Revvolution and N.Korea after visiting in the late 60's)Maoist economics had a fair amount of prestige in the 60's and 70's even in mainstream development circles. Some of the old undergrad development texts have a section on the Maoist model. Prima facie at an abstract level, Maoist economic strategy in some countries, seems to make good sense.Self-reliance and self-sufficiency (especially in energy--N.Korea is [was?]self-sufficient in energy)could only help poor, dependent and heavily indebted countries in the southern hemisphere [Mao was very strongly against the accumulation of foreign debt] To lessen the gap, or as Maoists would say "resolve the contradictions" between the city and the country would lessen conflict and help raise co-operation and thus productivity.This did happen in Maoist China, though it was equality of poverty. However, since the advent of the township village enterprises, co-operation between villages has declined even though the TVA's have been successful on a micro level. The Chinese government has ,inadvertently re-introduced class struggle back into the coutryside. Kolko in his latest book on Vietnam argues this is occurring in Vietnam too where the tensions are even stronger because the gov't there has reintroduced private ownership of land through a predictably corrupt process. No doubt class struggle will be re-introduced into the coutryside in N.Korea too, when it finally takes the capitalist road. The Maoists confronted economic bottlenecks with mass collective action. The problem was that it was enforced and not voluntary which led to low productivity and efficiency. Mao was correct that mass collective action could accomplish enormous goals but only when done voluntarily. Even the scribes of Beijing and P'yongyang could not motivate everyone to overcome the free-rider problem. Think of the few examples of collective action in Capitalist countries: the response to natural disasters. The Mexico D.F. earthquake of 1985 was what galvanized the popular movement there. It is hard to tell how the Chinese economy performed during the Maoist years because the Chinese gov't, like all AES countries, did not use the usual, bourgeois if you will, macro-economic accounting measures(GNP, GDP etc.) Official stats show Maoist economic performance to be fair(given the size of pop.) with an average GSP (Gross Social Product) growth rate of 6% through the years 1949-76. The economy was subject to great fluctuations due to what was happening in the political realm. Some analysts call this a political cycle theory of the economy " Before 1979, the growth rate of industrial output fluctuted widely within a range of -38.2% (in 1961) to 54.8%(in 1958). That of heavy industry ranged from from -46.5% to 78.8%. In general, China's industrial fluctuations have been triggered by political cycles and/or by intense sectoral disproportions arising from abrupt upsurge in the proportion of the industrial sector, especially heavy industry at the expense of agriculture and other non-industrial sectors, and/or by intensified inflation pressure and by the interaction of all three." Tien-tung Hsueh and Tun-oy Woo *The Economics of Industrial Development in the People's Republic of China* Chinese University of Hong Kong Press, 1991. The authors go on to argue that at first the initiators of the mass movements see the good economic performance and procede to accelerate reforms through the whole economy which spin of of control and destroy the gains that have been made. The system then reverts back to its original practice. This problem was familiar in all centrally planned economies where enterprise managers did not want to fulfill the plan too well or the planners would up output and productivity expectations in the next plan. " During the Great Leap Forward (1958-60) the annual growth rates of the industrial sector were as high as 34% in GOV(gross output value) and 31.9% in NOV(net output value) and those of heavy industry 50.9% in GOV and 45.7% in NOV which resluted immediately in a great leap backward -27.4% in GOV and -28.6% in NOV for the industrial sector as a whole and -34.6% in GOV and -31.6% in NOV for heavy industry in 1961-2" Ibid p 11. The real effects of the Great Leap Forward weren't felt until 1961-5... The authors argue that the primary problem in the Maoist years was poor efficiency and poor planning leading to, amongst other things, a very high capital/output ratio and low growth in productivity. According to official Chinese stats, the labor productivity growth rate was the same in 1991 as it was in 1958. " If the quality of the plan is low, the costs become very high. The lack of autonomy and the alienation from direct participation in decision making impair initiatives, creativity and the sense of self-responsobilty of enterprises and workers, all vital to improve dynamic efficiency" Ibid. p 81 Mao and especially Kim Il Sung were very much into spectacle (where are the PoMo theorists?). Just the sheer spectacle of having thousands if not millions acting together towards some common goal. Actually, the way Bruce Cumings describes it, N. Korea sounds like an interesting place (to visit!) that does or did have quite a bit going for it despite the people's seemingly bottomless ability for idolatry. Cumings argues that the idolatry of N.Korean leaders is rooted in Korean history and that N.Korea most resembles a Neo-Confucian kingdom. See his *excellent* books -Korea's Place in the Sun- , -War and Television- and the -The Origins of the Korean War-. Cumings is a great writer-- check out his take on the movie Chinatown: "Despotism, water control, nepotism, incest: its the Asiatic Mode of Production in our backyard." Cumings argues that the 3rd world countries the U.S. has gone to war against are portrayed in the mass media the same way chinatown is portrayed in "Chinatown". Instead of "Forget it Jake, its Chinatown" we have, "Forget it Dick, its Vietnam" or "Forget it George, its Iraq" or "Forget it Bill, its Yugoslavia" Anyway, this has been interesting but has gone on far too long. One more: describing the Pentagon's behavior vis a vis the media in the Gulf War "even gung ho Soldier of Fortune scribblers complained about being stuck in briefing rooms with a 'bunch of boobs and dorks'" Cumings, War and Television, p 110. Sam Pawlett
