Hayekian communism
glineq.blogspot.com
glineq.blogspot.com
>Well, I would say that, as long-term institutions, I am totally against dictatorships. But a dictatorship may be a necessary system for a transitional period. At times it is necessary for a country to have, for a time, some form or other of dictatorial power. As you will understand, it is possible for a dictator to govern in a liberal way. And it is also possible for a democracy to govern with a total lack of liberalism. Personally I prefer a liberal dictator to democratic government lacking liberalism. My personal impression — and this is valid for South America — is that in Chile, for example, we will witness a transition from a dictatorial government to a liberal government. And during this transition it may be necessary to maintain certain dictatorial powers, not as something permanent, but as a temporary arrangement.
-- Friedrich Hayek, El Mercurio, 1981
Also, my guess is would be that Branko Milanovic has read Hayek in a serious manner.
I imagine Hayek (as many other economists) would object to that by saying that the resource allocation under centralized rule is inferior to that of free market because of failure of central planner to account for individual preferences, which manifest themselves easier in a capitalist market.
Now, whether we should optimize for individual preferences as opposed to some other common noble goal - e.g. building communism - is another question. But I think everyone would agree that central planning could lead to some excesses (collectivization, starving Ukrainian peasants to death, Chinese ghost towns come to mind).
P.S. The author writes: "I thought ten percent was the normal growth rate of communist economies: why would you care to become communist if you would not grow faster than under capitalism?"
Not sure if it's urban legend, but I remember reading how many Western observers were surprised by collapse of Soviet economy since communists always boasted high rates of GDP growth.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/14/opinion/columnists/great-...
https://utopiayouarestandinginit.com/2015/01/24/paul-samuels...
I don’t see conservatism as inherently advocating centralization in the matters you mentioned, just a desire of not throwing away hard-earned good things, due to the realization that they’re much harder to build than to destroy.
(1) Liking or disliking democracy
(2) Liking or disliking certain policies that may be taken under democracy, or under an authoritarian regime.
A country could democratically ban the use of cars, that doesn't mean that everyone who is against democracy loves using cars.
It depends on how this is done. If this is done in a way which tightens centralized control of the populace, then it could be quite anti-democratic.
It was Deng Xiaoping and the revolutionary but simple change he made to the standard Marxist thinking:
> Socialism means eliminating poverty. Pauperism is not socialism, still less communism. [1]
Traditionally Marxists justified the poor conditions in the socialist countries as necessary step on the road to full communism. Alternatively they blamed capitalists outside the country or some inside forces. Deng abandoned this excuse and introduced very pragmatic economic approach.
Principles like "One country, two systems" or the cat's color theory: "It doesn't matter whether a cat is black or white, as long as it catches mice." helped to push this idea trough.
Basically Chinese first moved towards Socialist market economy with limits to private ownership, but the process has taken over and it's impossible to think that private ownership would be reduced again. I don't think that new generation of leaders really want to do that. They don't believe in communist ideology anymore. They want China be like Singapore or South Korea without the democracy part.
[1]: Deng Xiaoping, BUILD SOCIALISM WITH CHINESE CHARACTERISTICS, June 30, 1984 http://academics.wellesley.edu/Polisci/wj/China/Deng/Buildin...
It was Lenin that "circumvented" that requirement with his idea of a "revolutionary vanguard" to guide the country to socialism without waiting for capitalism to develop, and pushed the ideas you ascribe to Marxism. In fact this, along with Lenins idea of "democratic centralism" that allowed for tighter control of the party was what drove the split between the Mensheviks and Bolsheviks - the former with the Socialist Revolutionaries believed that socialism in Russia required allowing a capitalist economy to develop first, in line with Marxist theory. Many of them were murdered or arrested for their opposition to the Bolshevik coup.
Deng's reforms were not really anything particularly new: Lenin was forced to accept the same realisation that a return to at least a limited market economy was necessary with New Economic Policy in 1921, after the strict collectivisation during the Russian civil war had harmed the economy substantially. However Stalin reversed most of NEP in the year after gaining power, and this approach was then largely shelved until Deng. But in both cases is what a bandaid to counter damage done by their attempt to policies on underdeveloped economies that they did not have the resources to make work [that does not mean their policies necessarily would work under any circumstances; but the point is that to have a chance at all required a much more developed economy].
Marx argued already in The German Ideology (1845) that he saw an advanced capitalist economy with sufficient wealth that redistribution would eliminated poverty, rather than just spread it around, to be an essential precondition for a socialist revolution to succeed without devolving into renewed class struggle.
Systems that create wealth are subject to Pareto distributions. However, relative inequality is the primary driver of social unrest. So a stable solution for societal organization needs to take both into account.
Indeed Deng's reforms were influenced by the NEP, according to Pantsov and Levine in Deng Xiaoping: A Revolutionary Life:
> It will be recalled that Deng Xiaoping himself had studied Marxism from the works of the Bolshevik leaders who had propounded NEP. He drew on ideas from NEP when he spoke of his own reforms. In 1985, he openly acknowledged that 'perhaps' the most correct model of socialism was the New Economic Policy of the USSR.
The whole point of the Cultural Revolution was to spend a generation or so breaking down the old money and family structures that had ruled China. Breaking down the country in order to rebuild it. Something like Deng's policies was always in the plans after that.
Not really.
> Both Liu [Shaoqi] and Deng supported Mao in the mass campaigns of the 1950s, in which they attacked the bourgeois and capitalists, and promoted Mao's ideology. However, the economic failure of the Great Leap Forward was seen as an indictment on the ability of Mao to manage the economy. Peng Dehuai openly criticized Mao, while Liu Shaoqi and Deng, though more cautious, began to take charge of economic policy, leaving Mao out of day-to-day affairs of the party and state.
> Liu and Deng's economic reforms of the early 1960s were generally popular and restored many of the economic institutions previously dismantled during the Great Leap Forward. Mao, sensing his loss of prestige, took action to regain control of the state. Appealing to his revolutionary spirit, Mao launched the Cultural Revolution, which encouraged the masses to root out the right-wing capitalists who have "infiltrated the party". Deng was labelled the second-in-command of the "capitalist-roaders" faction (Zouzipai).
> Mao feared that the reformist economic policies of Deng and Liu could lead to restoration of capitalism and end the Chinese Revolution. For this and other reasons, Mao launched the Cultural Revolution in 1966, during which Deng fell out of favor and was forced to retire from all his positions.
> During the Cultural Revolution, he and his family were targeted by Red Guards, who imprisoned Deng's eldest son, Deng Pufang. Deng Pufang was tortured and jumped out, or was thrown out, of the window of a four-story building in 1968, becoming a paraplegic.
See more here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deng_Xiaoping#Target_of_two_pu...
“Leninists”, you mean. Marxists see advanced capitalism as a prerequisite to moving on to socialism as opposed to Leninists who try to bypass capitalism; the poor conditions of Leninist states (which aren't found in socialist systems more broadly) are a direct result of that.
I think it's more interesting to consider the ideas and concepts themselves rather that coming up with a rather meaningless and probably misleading label.
> And, on the other hand, this development of productive forces (which itself implies the actual empirical existence of men in their world-historical, instead of local, being) is an absolutely necessary practical premise because without it want is merely made general, and with destitution the struggle for necessities and all the old filthy business would necessarily be reproduced
The point being that, contrary to what people tend to think, Marx saw people as generally driven by self-interest, rather than altruism, and if a group seeking to improve their lives organise, take control of government, but the country is so poor that redistribution just makes everyone poor, there is no reason to assume that some people will not start trying to take advantage of power and cause a return to class struggle. The foundation of Marxism is the idea that capitalism will bring the productive forces of society to previously never before seen heights, where redistribution eventually becomes viable - this is why you e.g. find Marx and Engels spending the first chapter of the Communist Manifesto largely praising capitalism into the skies.
This theme from The German Ideology is one he returned to time and time again, such as e.g. when warning in prefaces to the Communist Manifesto that Russia could only successfully go through a socialist revolution if a revolution was to happen in the most well developed countries in Europe around the same time, to compensate for the underdevelopment of Russia itself.
Whether or not he was right, this is one of the most central distinctions between Marxism and Leninism.
Most of communism, anarchism and Marxism is fighting over the possession of language and labels. Different factions were named after different people who fought over the correct form of communism and had periodical ideological purges.
I have been reading about communism and anarcho-communistm recently. Daniel Guérin s book Anarchism: From Theory to Practice, 1970 (originally L'anarchisme. De la doctrine à l'action, Paris, Gallimard, 1965). It's a classic.
Isn't a fundamental motivator or justification for moving towards communism a reduction in inequalities? That doesn't seem to be the case in China.
China is certainly remarkable, but I think a more apt description is: authoritarian with market-oriented policies. I don't see much evidence for communism as originally envisioned. China's recent rise has largely been the story of a strong state enabling markets to function, but I wonder if the state's growing desire to involve itself in business will lead to sclerosis, similar to what happened in the Soviet Union under Stalin.
At the beginning of modern communist China, the country suffered from incredible poverty. Most people could barely feed themselves. They had suffered pretty much nonstop war for over half a century - the Boxer Rebellion (against European colonial powers), the Japanese occupation, WWII, and civil war.
I ran numbers on this a while back. Per capita GDP in China has increased 130 times since 1960, from ~$60/year to over $8000/year. With success like that, is focusing on inequality over that period the right approach? Would they be better off with hatchet axe and saw, as Rush put it?
But today, the problems are different. Incredible growth leads to massive concentrations of power. It's not just the inequality, it's the ability to alter the system to favor those already in power, at the expense of everyone else.
That's sort of America's problem today... the top is growing, but mostly by hoarding 100% (or more) of all economic growth, so none of the benefits reach the bottom 90%. China doesn't have that problem - yet.
If you disagree with this, then ask yourself if there is a court or any recourse in China for a private enterprise to challenge an action by the government. There isn't, and we all know it.
In the US, when the government wants to block a merger, they have to do so in court, where they frequently lose (the recent TimeWarner/AT&T merger being a prime example).
In that environment, it's a logical business choice to do as the state requests.
Ma's a smart man to get out.
Credit scores are good.
I'm not exactly clear on the difference, but I'm sure it's very important.
The social credit score, on the other hand, is a measure of society/government approval. And it effects your ability to get on trains.
It seems fair that if you stop paying your bills, then people might not want to loan you money anymore.
It does not seem fair that if you criticise the government, or are friends with people who criticize the government, that you won't be allowed to travel anymore.
If you are talking about how a police officer can just make something up and arrest you, well I guess, but that is something that can happen anywhere in the world.
And as bad as the news has been about unaccountable police officers, I can assure you that the US is way ahead of most countries, in terms of things like corruption.
If by "criticizeing the wrong way", you meant civil disobedience, well yes that's true. You usually do get arrested if you infringe on other people's property rights.
I wouldn't call this bad though, as it has nothing to do with your criticism of the government. Its the infringement on other people's property rights that you are arrested for.
Yes, it could be worse, and it is in many other countries. But my point still stands.
There are parts of China where one can be pretty free in one's personal life, so long as one keeps their heads down and one isn't rich or famous. If one becomes rich or famous, one is inevitably drawn into politics, which can have high stakes consequences.
Not sure what part of China is supposed to be communist these days, except in name and maybe totalitarianism
Communism isn't what's bad about Communism. It's the resulting totalitarianism that's the bad part. If it were possible to and stable to reorganize the world into 450 person communes, there would be something utopian about that. It's very possible to seek out and find such communal experiences. The problem is that such organization isn't stable for Homo sapiens.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17433487
Here's what we know about democracy. It's short term stable, even when pitted against other forms of government. It often changes from within and becomes totalitarianism, however.