The Secret Document That Transformed China

http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2012/01/20/145360447/the-secret-document-that-transformed-china

by nantes • 15 years ago

172 53 15 years ago

Jun82• 15 years ago

"Work hard, don't work hard — everyone gets the same," he says. "So people don't want to work."

Many people point to this idea as the main weakness (or stupidity, depending on whom you speak) of Socialism as originally proposed by Marx. However, AFAIK (and I'm definitely not an expert on this), Marx saw socialism as a post-industrial step, to be developed in countries like German, France and the UK. On the other hand, his ideas were instituted mainly in mostly feudal countries like Russia and China. His model of human nature and projections for capitalistic growth were also totally off.

Wikipedia says "Despite Marx's stress on critique of capitalism and discussion of the new communist society that should replace it, his explicit critique of capitalism is guarded, as he saw it as an improved society compared to the past ones (slavery and feudal)."

ryanmolden• 15 years ago

Popper talks quite a bit about this, and how Marx was mostly rebelling against a capitalism that we no longer would recognize, I.e. the cut-throat, robber baron, child laboring to an early grave type.

His ideas definitely assumed a more enlightened populous where class camaraderie made people work hard for the good of all, he kind of assumed slackers wouldn't be tolerated or wouldn't exist. As taking advantage of others by making them do a disproportionate amount of the work while you got equal or greater benefit was a bourgeois disfunction that the proletariat would not engage in.

dkarl• 15 years ago

The term capitalism doesn't mean much when applied to today's world. Originally, its defining characteristic was that the economy was controlled by those who owned the means of production.

The typical reader of this article works in front of a computer at a desk in an office block. He or she probably does not know who owns any of these things. It is quite likely that each is owned by someone different – a pension fund, a property company or a leasing business – none of whom is their employer. (http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/86667196-3afc-11e1-b7ba-00144...)

The strange thing is, in school we still learn Marx's critique of the old capitalism. I guess it's because there's nothing politically sensitive about critiquing a system that doesn't exist anymore. Today's business world is run by a professional management class.

Modern titans derive their authority and influence from their position in a hierarchy, not their ownership of capital. They have obtained these positions through their skills in organisational politics, in the traditional ways bishops and generals acquired positions in an ecclesiastical or military hierarchy.

Not only is control completely different, but spreading ownership of the means of production to the masses has become a conservative cause, in the form of privatization of social security and other individual account schemes where citizens use tax-privileged savings accounts instead of services provided directly by the government.

vidarh3• 15 years ago

His idea assumes a population that recognizes they're almost certainly not going to become part of the wealthy elite, and so who recognize that it is not in their interest to support said elite.

While there is a hopeful optimism in a lot of early socialism, Marx scoffed at most of it, and spent a lot of his time criticising what he saw as untenable utopian forms of socialism that assumed altruism and selflessness.

Instead, yes, he assumed slackers won't be tolerated. It is common for people to assume that communism would somehow mean people could just relax and not suffer consequences, but a large aspect of Marxism is to take away peoples ability to live off the work of others other than to the extent society can afford to do so as the result of excess wealth.

The question of why a society following Marxist principles (as opposed to other forms of socialism) would choose to take the means of doing so away from one group of people just to let other people slack off is something that does not seem to occur to people.

I would be inclined to think that if your immediate co-workers see direct impact on themselves based on whether or not you work, their interest in making sure you work would be greater.

tokenadult• 15 years ago

His model of human nature and projections for capitalistic growth were also totally off.

Correct. The model of human nature proposed by Karl Marx was demonstrably incorrect, and the demonstration continues in the few countries that continue to proclaim allegiance to Marxist thought.

An interesting fact about free-enterprise (Marx might say, "capitalist") economies is that they are based in part on the writings of Adam Smith in the book On the Wealth of Nations. But before Smith wrote The Wealth of Nations, he first wrote a book called The Theory of Moral Sentiments, pondering what motivates human beings to behave morally. Smith had deeper insight into human nature even before he began writing about economics proper than Marx ever had.

forensic2• 15 years ago

They aren't in competition. They both were geniuses.

Smith did not advocate laissez-faire capitalism. He was against any kind of cartel, oligopoly, or monopoly, and wanted the state to be more powerful than corporations, not controlled by corporations. Marx was right about capitalism but wrong about incentives.

Both of them should be drawn from in the creation of a next generation economic system.

vidarh3• 15 years ago

I'm curious as to what you think Marx' think human nature was like.

I ask, because most people who make this argument make it out of an assumption that Marx argued for a system based on widespread altruism.

But a central part of Marx' argumentation about the workers movement is that the working class needed to learn to understand the nature of class struggle, and reject bourgeois/capitalist morality, which is designed to support capitalist rule. E.g. the capitalist class supports strong private property rights because they have property and its in their interest to perpetuate it.

In effect, he argues that the working classes are too selfless - they in fact today actively support a system that puts them at a disadvantage.

If anything, he thought it would be easier to get people to pay more attention to their own self-interests than what they have been most places so far.

Marxist socialism is what you get if the vast majority pay recognize that they will never be "the 1%" and decide to band together to gain collective advantage.

jacques_chester2• 15 years ago

The root flaw in Marxism is the labour theory of value. It just doesn't lead to a workable theory of economics. That wasn't clear at the time he wrote Das Kapital, because the leading summation of economics was Smith (which I believe Marx worked from), and Smith got it wrong also.

The concept of repeated crises of capitalism leading inexorably to socialism relies entirely on a slender reed that turns out to be broken.

Nevertheless, whether socialism is, regardless of inevitability, possible, is a matter of hot debate. Mostly down to which side of the calculability/use-of-knowledge debate you fall on.

Red Plenty is an interesting book for the days when it seemed as though the Soviet Union really was going to usher in heaven on earth. As for China, Mao: The Unknown Story is a terrifying account.

sliverstorm2• 15 years ago

whether socialism is, regardless of inevitability, possible, is a matter of hot debate.

I figure the only way to make it possible is through the ability to pick & choose members, and exile members. Not to be elitist, but rather to protect the community from those who would abuse it.

vidarh3• 15 years ago

> "Work hard, don't work hard — everyone gets the same," he says. "So people don't want to work." > > Many people point to this idea as the main weakness (or stupidity, depending on whom you speak) of Socialism as originally proposed by Marx.

But it is not a Marxist idea. In a society following Marxist principles, if you choose not to work, you would starve: You're not contributing according to your ability. The much mentioned from each according to ability, to each according to their means, is a social contract: If you don't contribute what you can, you should also not receive.

In fact, the purpose of socialism (as opposed to communism) in the Marxist model is a transition where the working classes put in place measures to gradually deprive the capitalist classes of the means to live off capital and to take away their capital in order to subsume them into the working classes: If you don't want to work, as opposed to if you can't, you will eventually starve.

The irony is that a lot of Western social democracies follow policies that Marx' likely would've written off as ploys a la Bismark's "state socialism": Ways of pacifying the working class, and potentially damaging by creating a chorus of people who oppose further socialization by creating systems full of attractive opportunities for those who don't want to work.

This is beyond a lot of the early socialist demand for a right to work, rather than a right to welfare.

A welfare state that pays people unemployment benefits without also putting them to work is petty-bourgeois, not Marxist socialism.

Jun82• 15 years ago

"If you don't contribute what you can..."

The problem is that this is so hard to measure in practice. I think that in the absence of external motivators, people revert to their subsistence level of output, since they have no incentive to go beyond that.

joejohnson• 15 years ago

What?! Right as that was getting good, it ended. I looked to see if there was a second page. How does it go from the changes in the 1970s to empty factories today?

twelvechairs• 15 years ago

> "Each family agreed to turn over some of what they grew to the government, and to the collective"

Despite the articles pro-capitalist rhetoric, note that the 'collective' is also creating its own taxes (presumably to help those less well off) - though it unhelpfully doesnt say what these were.

fuzzix• 15 years ago

"Despite the articles pro-capitalist rhetoric"

Ah, so it wasn't just me who heard "Closer to the Heart" play ;)

llimllib• 15 years ago

How in the world does the article end where it does? It finally gets interesting and then it cuts off.

re_format• 15 years ago

If everyone works hard, everyone gets to keep more. Because more is produced. If only some work hard, then the whole group cannot produce as much.

Perhaps every worker has a different threshhold for what they will settle for in terms of what amount of the harvest they would like to retain.

All the HR people reading HN know exactly what I'm talking about.

sliverstorm2• 15 years ago

You're missing the classic game theory element. If everyone is working hard, everyone gets X. But if I decide to slack off, everyone gets X minus some tiny fraction, including me.

Game theory tells us this kind of system will fall apart practically instantly.

I forget the details, but I think Marx tried to dismiss that problem through an appeal to nationalism.

derleth4• 15 years ago

Marx also believed that no capitalist country would ever, say, abolish child labor, institute universal education, and create universal health care.

He further believed that a government can 'wither away'.

Marx has been proven wrong in ways that have nothing to do with how well Communism/Socialism works as a system.

tnuc3• 15 years ago

The article is well written but a little light on facts.

From my bad and distant memory;

The terms of the contract stated that you had to give X amount to the collective from your land, anything over and above this you kept. The X amount was originally set to be the same as the previous years harvest. The local collective had to raise the amount X a few times so it would appear that they where role models within the system.

It was only after other farmers in the region saw the results that they copied the process. It was eventually turned into the standard for a lot of China.

There are differing versions of the same story around depending on what the politics are for the writer. This version sticks to the American line of "The officials swore at him, treated him like he was on death row.". The Chinese version probably made the villagers look like model, conforming, hardworking and communist loving citizens.

I am neither American or Chinese, I am just fascinated by history and the differing ways it is represented. "History is written by the winners."

learc83• 15 years ago

>"The officials swore at him, treated him like he was on death row."

Presumably since they interviewed him, this is his account of the story, not an American slanted version.

icebraining• 15 years ago

In fact, you can hear him speak on the podcast: https://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2012/01/13/145184551/the-fri...

grecy• 15 years ago

I'm getting down voted to oblivion for this...

Even in the year 2012, after all these years, Americans still need to hear stories that directly outline why communism doesn't work, and good old competitive capitalism is the way of the future.

I wonder how many of you reading this in America even stopped to think about the message you're being fed.

I wonder how many of you reading this in America have absolutely no clue the rest of the developed world does not feed this kind of thing to it's citizens.

Stay clear of those evil commies...

coryl• 15 years ago

What? So you think this is nothing more than propaganda?

tnuc3• 15 years ago

Pretty much everything written by one country's media about another country is propaganda.

There is just as much propaganda in American media as there is in Chinese Media.

Does Rupert Murdoch support SOPA or is it the fine informed editors at the Wall Street Journal? Rupert wouldn't use his media as a propaganda network for his own benefit would he?

There is no propaganda in American Media, none at all. It's only the evil commies that have propaganda.

ryannielsen• 15 years ago

You'd be down voted to oblivion because you make baseless statements without any factual backing.

Are we really being fed a message in this article?

Perhaps. The message I got from this article? Straight communism doesn't work. (Which is fairly well established from past "communist" governments – they're either not communist or they quickly transmute into some other form of government.) But this article also doesn't espouse the benefits of pure capitalism. Instead, it highlights how a mix of communism and capitalism – a mix of group and personal interests – was actually quite successful.

Individuals have incentives to help the group, because after helping the group they help themselves. That's definitely not pure capitalism. Nor is it pure communism. It's something much more rich and powerful.

I think that's something from which we all could derive a very powerful message: absolute black/white polarizations are rarely correct or beneficial. Instead what's often required is a blending of opinions and ideas.

xiaoma• 15 years ago

>Even in the year 2012, after all these years, Americans still need to hear stories that directly outline why communism doesn't work, and good old competitive capitalism is the way of the future.

Making sweeping generalizations about Americans contributes nothing good to this discussion. It's needlessly incendiary, and it's more likely to lead to an argument than an interesting discussion.

Please have a look at the first, third and final sections of the HN commenting guidelines.

http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

maxvu• 15 years ago

Woah woah woah. You have a downvote button?

pizza• 15 years ago

The threshold is 500 karma.

reuven2• 15 years ago

I have been listening to Planet Money since it first started, several years ago. While the quality and freshness has dropped off somewhat in the last year or so, it remains a great source of insight and reporting into economics.

I don't think that the reporters on this piece were trying to give us any sort of message, other than that China realized that communism -- that is, government ownership and regulation of production, and equal pay no matter how hard you work -- was a failure, and that they had to somehow escape from that system and move toward a more capitalistic one. How that happened is an interesting story, and an important one.

If you think that Planet Money is against communism and in favor of capitalism, then that's probably a safe assumption.

But if you think that they're all rah-rah-USA! in their opinions, then you need to listen to the podcast more regularly. They've done some excellent shows on Denmark (and particularly, now Danes are generally OK with taxes that are beyond the pale for all but the most extreme Americans) and education (and how the US isn't attacking that problem, particularly at the preschool level, an intelligent way). Oh, and their reporting on the American banking system, and the ways in which the US housing crisis occurred, were very well done.

It's something of a cliche to say that reporters tend to be left-of-center, but I definitely get the feeling that this is where the Planet Money is located on the political-economic spectrum. But they're also generally trying to explore topics in greater depth than you'll get elsewhere, and from angles that I definitely don't hear in other places. For that, and for their clear explanations (and willingness to be silly and funny), I give them a huge amount of credit.

guano___• 15 years ago

Interesting article, but I find this part a bit disingenuous:

Within a few years, farms all over China adopted the principles in that secret document. People could own what they grew. The government launched other economic reforms, and China's economy started to grow like crazy. Since 1978, something like 500 million people have risen out of poverty in China.

Though not explicitly stated, the passage seems to imply that the rise from poverty is wholly due to the capitalistic reforms, and a china without these reforms would not have seen any (at least major) similar change. Now this is a china that just decades earlier was destroyed by both the japanese and a civil war. Improvements take time, and these kind of cheap tricks ignore both that and a historical perspective. Sorry for the rant, but these tricks are all too common, and I think we can afford ourselves some more intellectual honesty rather then let things pass with these ideological slants, unintentional though they may be.

jacques_chester2• 15 years ago

Western Europe was destroyed by the bombing campaigns of World War II, yet sprung back to wealth within 20 years.

China was devastated by Japan, by civil war, and by ruinously stupid communist policies. The Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution were directly imposed by the CCP with Mao as the leading figure.

It is not a "trick" to point out the objectively verifiable consequences of the decisions made.

kylebrown• 15 years ago

For an interesting twist on the tired old communism vs capitalism debate, read Michel Bauwens of the p2p foundation philosophize on how aspects of Marxism were 'ill-conceived' while alternativley, the thriving p2p economy is a viable successor to capitalism.

https://snuproject.wordpress.com/2012/01/03/and-the-debate-b...

georgieporgie• 15 years ago

This was a Planet Money podcast. I don't know if it was any different (I just skimmed it), but I always really enjoy the presentation and style of Planet Money.

http://www.npr.org/rss/podcast/podcast_detail.php?siteId=944...

bconway• 15 years ago

It's interesting to revisit events like this in the present-day US. One can only wonder what sort of change might take place if rather than giving up 50% of what we make, we were allowed to reinvest it into our homes, businesses, and communities. Perhaps states like Texas and New Hampshire could be held up as the poster-children for a new direction in US policy? Unlikely, but one can dream, I suppose.

The Secret Document That Transformed China

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