In the late ’50s through early ’70s it was fashionable for the literati to extol the virtues of collective farming and various re-education efforts in Maoist China. Down with the capitalist bourgeoisie, up with the unionized proletariat.
Over the past three decades, with a complete reversal of economic policy, these same pundits now abhor at the “uneven” growth in the Chinese economy. For instance, apparently not everyone in China has the financial ability to own a car or flat screen TV. According to some, this is awful!
The funny thing is (or really sad) is that none of this economic growth could have occurred without the very free-markets they railed against years before. Thus, again, this illustrates the absurdity of egalitarianism: where everyone can and must suffer equally.
For more, see my latest piece: The Peaceful Rise of China. You may also be interested in Rothbard’s: “Egalitarianism, a Revolt Against Nature.”
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I wish I could be so enthusiastic about the rise of China. But their ranking on the economic freedom index is still very low, and taxes and fiat money production on the mainland are high. To me that says “empire wannabe” rather than “peaceful rise to freedom”. Tim Swanson’s points are very compelling though – sadly, the US is certainly in for a well deserved ass kicking.
Thanks for showing things as they really are. China is, in many ways, freer economically than the US these days. Good luck trying to convince most people of this, though.
That writer from the monthly review is a pseudo intellectual of the worst kind.
“There is little doubt that late Maoism and the Cultural Revolution are an aberration in the history of world socialism.”
Right… how about Pol Pot, or Stalin, or the Nazi Death Camps since Nazi thought rose out of socialism?
What the hell is wrong with people who believe in all out socialism – and that previous failed attempts are just examples of not carrying it out correctly? Can’t they see that all out socialism, despite high minded intentions, always results in evil?
David -
As a percentage of GDP, government expenditure in China is half that of the US (18% China vs 36% America).
Taxes are also much less, although not quite half (in percentage terms)
Remember the RMB is rising against the dollar.
What does this say about China’s monetary policy?
Far lower taxes and a less expansive monetary policy… sounds good to me.
“They also showed how market reforms generate their own dynamic—how each stage ‘generated new tensions and contradictions that were solved only through a further expansion of market power, leading to the growing consolidation of a capitalist political economy.’”
That sounds like a great endorsement of the free market to me. How well has government solved these ‘tensions and contradictions’?
> Remember the RMB is rising against the dollar.
>
> What does this say about China’s monetary policy?
No. The chinese government are performing complex central bank operations to distort their economy. They have put capital controls on exporting currency to avoid their citizens dealing with foreigners. They are pegging their currency to the dollar at artificially low rates.
They are handing out huge loans with negative interest rates to businesses friendly to the state. There _is_ expansionary monetary policy.
All of this is seriously distorting their structure of production.
They are heading for trouble. But then again so is almost every other part of the world.
It is also important to remember that inflation is rampant in China, and is so even though the State sets the price for various key resources (oil, gas, electricity).
A substantial amount of the “free” market activities that occur are “grey fading to black” market activities. Lots of things are purchased with a suitcase full of cash.
The State is extracting an enormous amount of revenue from the entry of foriegn business into China, and the import of engineered goods into China. Also, there is a 17% VAT on all internal transactions. The current policy is propped up by a huge river of foriegn investment.
Chinese government is the biggest government in the world. I have an article about the expansion of chinese government. Translating it into English is a hard work. I am sorry.
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Tim has to overlook a lot that’s bad in China (persecution of Christians and high levels of corruption) and good in the US, as well as make some very dubious moral equivalency arguments. In addition, readers should know that his assessment of the US is based on Rothbard’s and Hoppe’s ethics in which the state is evil by definition so everything it does is evil, not on traditional Christian ethics.
That said, he is right that China holds better prospects for freedom in the future than does the US because you won’t ever fool the Chinese about the benefits of socialism. They have lived it and suffered from it. Americans are easily fooled because American socialists think they can succeed where the Chinese, and every other socialist experiment in history, has failed. Their hubris knows no bounds.
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