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Comment by Duff | Hacker News Reader

Communist governments have usually attracted intellectuals to higher levels of power -- the results so far haven't been uplifting.

I don't think that a comparison of the US system vs. China is going to produce a clear "winner", only a list of pros/cons whose weighting will be shaped by your perceptions and bias.

The explosive growth of China hides most of the warts of the system. When you have economic growth so fast that new, uninhabited cities get built, there's obviously some excess and policy issues at play.

The US is an imperial power, and the conduct of policy and statesmanship changes in that role. While the President is the front-man and sets the agenda, the work is done and policy is made by anonymous officials in the sprawling bureaucracy. And I betcha if you analyzed a Chinese and American bureaucrat, you would find that they look, act and think alike.

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Nuanced comment here, good analysis. I agree with a lot, but two nitpicks about the first point -

1. I'd say Communist movements attract intellectuals. Communist governments usually do not employ those intellectuals for very long after taking power.

2. Despite the name and symbols, I don't think China is actually Communist any more. I don't know what to call them. If they remain a world power and continue to thrive, I'd bet quite a lot that a new word will be coined for their precise political/economic/geographical/military mix - there's quite literally no comps in history for what they're doing right now.

I agree that China no longer fits the traditional definition of "Communist". Then again, Maoism didn't quite fit the mold either. China has a strong societal tradition that is different than the west.

While they may not be ideologically communist, China does continue to practice the governance style of communist governments. Think about the Soviet Union's model -- a major part of the Soviet story was purging the old in favor of the new, "scientific" way. China is doing a similar thing, but through different means. The "science" may have been quakery (witness the Aral Sea), but the central planners saw themselves as guided by logic and science, not petty feelings or popularity.

Thanks lh. Might be worth noting how many communist governments invoked an "Owning books is counter-revolutionary treason" policy after taking power, too. Not really something for the intellectuals.

It's pretty much impossible for a government to remain Communist after formation.

According to Marx, a Communist state should disassemble itself after organizing society in such a way that it can sustain egalitarianism in a classless manner. Because dictatorial power is necessary to reorganize society from the top down, this power will be acquired by a Communist state. Unfortunately, every institution is self-serving and self-preserving, so ostensibly-Communist states are inevitably unable to complete the self-destructive process. When have you ever known a state to give up power? It just doesn't happen unless the state feels threatened in some way, and the state is unable to destroy the threat.

A Communist state will relentlessly attack any non-hierarchical movement attempting to organize a classless egalitarian society, because such movements are a threat to the state's power. Examples of this are present in both the Spanish Revolution and the Russian Revolution.

Bakunin was totally right. http://i.imgur.com/ijQEp.jpg

It is a bit strange to see a comic that I've seen dozens of times before on /new/ posted on HN.

For number 2. you could argue that they are mercantilist. Most of the enterprises are state backed, much like the Dutch or British East India companies. So the state takes a pretty big role in determining which companies will succeed.

You could argue that the Chinese state as a whole is in fact a large corporation.

"From each according to his ability, to each according to his need(s)."

A leaders best ability is to lead. Hence, you would end up with intellectuals, scientists, economists and others who have a strong grasp of complex theories and systems. Opposed to having actors and political pretty boys leading.

Marx's saying goes even further with the corporate metaphor. The lower the 'worker' in the 'corporation' the less they get 'paid'/'need'. How is there any real difference with how Walmart views its minimum wage workers to how China views its farmers or sweatshop workers? From the top they're all just pawns to make a profit.

Communist governments have usually attracted intellectuals to higher levels of power -- the results so far haven't been uplifting.

No they don't. The Chinese cultural revolution has almost extinguished the intellectual class before ending. I don't recall a single scientist in The Soviet Union Politburo. Do you have any examples for your "usually", beyond this particular incarnation of the Chinese government?

> the results so far haven't been uplifting

10% growth every year for a quarter of a century? I regard that as very impressive.

> I don't think that a comparison of the US system vs. China is going to produce a clear "winner"

It's likely that one of these two countries is going to end up dominating the world. Of course, it's not so much about countries as social systems: both have their strengths and weaknesses.

> And I betcha if you analyzed a Chinese and American bureaucrat, you would find that they look, act and think alike.

I'm sure you're right.

Global domination is a funny thing. Did Britain impose its ways on the world and change it forever, or did the world change it?

The answer is "all of the above". Of course many Brits got rich at the expense of the others.

> 10% growth every year for a quarter of a century? I regard that as very impressive.

They are catching up to status quo. Mostly because they squandered the previous decades scientifically hunting down sparrows and enemies of the state.

Which is so different from the War on Terror and the Patriot Act.

The War on Terror, foolish and wrong-headed though it has been, can't be placed on the same footing of destructiveness as the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution. Not by several orders of magnitude. And you have to come through Stalinism and the Holocaust en route to making that comparison, so let's keep things in perspective here.

I guess I was responding to "hunting down sparrows and enemies of the state" rather than the revolution specifically, so I will accept they are in a different league.

Still, I'm not sure killing around 3% of Iraqis is something that can be dismissed as "foolish and wrong-headed" either.

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,863327,00.h...

As misguided as the Patriot Act is, it pales in comparison to the Great Cultural Revolution and other acts of horror insanity that devastated China after World War II.

> They are catching up to status quo

Yes they are catching up. Three quarters of the countries in the world are catching up -- or trying to -- the most advanced countries, and that's been roughly the situation since the industrial revolution. The difference is that China has been more successful than anyone else at catching up; to the best of my knowledge no other country has ever managed as good a performance (except for poor countries that discover oil, which doesn't really count).

> 10% growth every year for a quarter of a century? I regard that as very impressive.

It's not that impressive when you're chasing tail-lights and the folks ahead are (mostly) helping.

Come on... Simply holding together such a big country is really a daily miracle. I live there and I can tell you Chinese people are not what you think, they are VERY HARD to govern. They never stop inventing ways to break the rules, they have a tendency to suddenly and unexpectedly jump all together on the same side of the boat. A daily miracle, I tell you, and most of this miracle is based on the rock-solid traditional education given in the country-side.

I'll tell you, the Chinese hard even harder to govern than the French. (I'm French, I know both.)

> Come on... Simply holding together such a big country is really a daily miracle. I live there and I can tell you Chinese people are not what you think, they are VERY HARD to govern.

You've identified the problem, but it's not the problem that you think that it is.

Why do you assume that "holding together" and "govern" is a good idea? More to the point, what would happen if the Chinese govt stopped trying to do so?

It's not like China is going to be invaded.

I was going to write something about keeping the gangsters in check, but then I remembered that official corruption is a huge problem in China, and most of that stems from this "govern" thing that you value so highly.

> They never stop inventing ways to break the rules,

Which is another reason why 10% is no big deal.

10% growth every year for a quarter of a century? I regard that as very impressive.

China had the prior example of Taiwan to imitate. And Taiwan had China scared witless by the end of the Cultural Revolution, when it looked like the total size of Taiwan's economy, with only about one-SIXTIETH the population, might exceed the size of China's economy soon.

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