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[MattW]

Here is an essay on the topic of civilian death under Mao, some of which is relevant to this GLF topic. Any qs, feel free to ask...

An Exploration of the Loss of Civilian Lives in the People’s Republic of China, 1949-1976

Preface

The human cost of Mao’s period in power in China is shocking- it is hard to imagine how such widespread suffering could happen only fifty years ago, after nations had fought for freedom in the two World Wars. This short study is not a vindication of Mao, but an effort to understand why he allowed such loss of life to take place and what drove his decisions. Hopefully, through such an exploration, the catastrophic nature of this part of Chinese history for humanity will never be allowed to repeat itself in the future.

***

In 1949, Mao Zedong’s# Chinese Communist Party won the civil war against Chiang Kai-Shek’s Nationalist Kuomintang Party, signalling the dawn of a new era in Chinese history. The victory in 1949 marked a new era of revolutionary political and economic developments in China. Unfortunately, the story of 1949 to 1976 is tainted by the human cost of Mao’s policies. Historians are in common agreement that 70 to 90 million Chinese died during this 27 year period- as a useful comparison, an estimated 30 million perished under Stalin in Russia and up to 10 million people suffered in Hitler’s Germany#. Right the way from 1949 to 1976, Mao headed up the new Communist government, as party Chairman for the entire period and as head of state until the end of the 1950s. He always held a vice-like grip on the political system of China and enjoyed a huge personal following in the CCP# and across China as a whole. As a result of these things and more (how Mao kept control is not of central relevance here), there can be little doubt that Mao was the driving force behind the major economic and political policy decisions made by the government of China in this period of so much suffering and human loss of life. Quite understandably therefore, many hold a view of Chairman Mao as a cruel and vicious tyrant whose lack of respect for humanity meant that he oversaw enormous and unnecessary death tolls with no restraining morals, and that he was unjustifiably prepared to sacrifice millions in order to meet his objectives. Although the author would never subscribe to the view that the deaths of so many people were acceptable, it is the intention of the writer to highlight the reasons why so many Chinese died under Mao and to show that a) Mao cannot be held responsible for the entire death toll, and that his policies were based on serious convictions rather than on a supposed little or no regard for humanity.

It would be best to split this analysis into two components, relating to Mao’s economic and political policies. Turning first to the realms of the economy, one point must be made perfectly clear- the China that the CCP inherited in 1949 was economically in tatters. The Nationalists had fled the mainland with the bulk of China’s gold reserves, the Japanese had destroyed the economic productivity of Manchuria (China’s main economic province with the main deposits of much of China’s raw materials) during its long occupation in the 1930s, and continuous warfare against both the Japanese occupying forces and the Nationalists had blighted China’s agricultural regions- economic output was disastrously low. Obviously, economic recovery was to be at the top of the Chairman’s agenda for the 1950s- programmes of land reform were introduced soon after the Communist’s took power, and the CCP embarked on its first Soviet-style ‘five year plan’ in 1953. Although these programmes had successes in the longer-term, they did not bear fruit in the short-term, meaning that famine was a big killer in the early years of the regime, but was more of an inevitability in the circumstances rather than a direct result of Mao’s early policies.

However, Mao recognised that for the longer-term economic prosperity of China, a more ambitious economic policy was required- this came in the form of the renowned ‘Great Leap Forward’ of 1958-1961. In the ‘Leap’, rural peasants were encouraged to switch from food production to the smelting of steel (pig iron) in backyard furnaces, in order to increase steel exports and the materials available for industrial development. It soon emerged that the steel produced was in the main useless due to its impure nature- at the same time, agricultural production further slipped to just 150 million tonnes in 1960# as peasants devoted the majority of their time to working the furnaces. Therefore, historians have seen the ‘Leap’ as a definite failure, in that it failed to meet any of its main objectives. The consequences of this failure were extreme- from 1959 to 1961, an estimated 38 million Chinese died as a result of the serious food shortages in the countryside- deaths that can be clearly and directly attributed to Mao’s policy of a so-called economic ‘Leap’.

However, it is often the case that the calamitous results of the Great Leap Forward have been interpreted to mean that these people died needlessly at the hands of Mao’s poorly planned economic venture, and that this did not concern the government. This was not the case. Intertwined with the debacle of the ‘Leap’ were problems on a scale that Mao could not have predicted- agricultural figures were falsified and bogus ‘show’ fields were created by cutting down all the harvest and placing it in one field. This (and more) meant that the government’s figures on food production were disastrously out of tune with actual food levels in China, and policy (such as the exporting of 8.22 million tonnes of grain to other countries during the famine years) was decided on these false figures. If Mao had been aware of the real nature of the food crisis in the country, government exporting and provision for famine might have been more sensible, and Mao may have even halted the ‘Leap’ in order to focus on agricultural production. Furthermore, when the regime realised the extent of the famine problems in 1961, grain imports rose from 0.06 million tonnes in 1960 to 5.80 million tonnes in 1961-a move that could not save 38 million people from dying from famine, but averted more deaths.

Furthermore, we must appreciate Mao’s reasoning behind the launching of the Great Leap Forward. China had lived under the cloud of foreign imperialism for decades. The Manchus were effectively foreigners who came to rule, the British, Russians and French had exploited China’s resources and people (especially after the First Opium War of 1839 to 1842) and, in Mao’s lifetime, Japanese forces had marched unchecked through vast swathes of Northern China, leaving a trail of economic exploitation and damage in their wake. As a result, Mao held a deep desire to see China dominant over its one-time imperial oppressors- this meant catching up and overtaking the Western economies in record time. The Great Leap Forward was Mao’s intended way of achieving this, for the long-term benefit of the Chinese people and Sinizised Communism- a benefit which was enough for him to overcome the risks associated with launching such an ambitious policy after only ten years of Communist government.

The Great Leap Forward was by far the most important economic reform programme of the Maoist era in China, and had an aftermath for much of the period up to 1976. It also represents the most significant example of an economic measure that led to huge loss of life, and sums up the economic side of this study well#.

The other complementary part of Mao’s policy programme was in the area of political policy. Communist government was very much politically orientated and Mao was responsible for many different political movements and developments during his 27 years in power. In 1949, the newly-formed government instigated a process of land reform, where the land of local landlords was seized and re-distributed to the Chinese peasantry. Akin to this was the trial of these landowners in so-called ‘people’s tribunals’- trials which led to the execution of one million people. The way in which the majority were killed (a bullet in the back of the head) speaks of the barbaric nature of Chinese society and politics in the early years of Communist rule, yet whether these deaths can be laid at Mao’s door is questionable. It was after all the peasants in the tribunals who judged the guilt of the landed class and an appropriate sentence- Mao did not have the resources to oversee the execution of individuals on his personal whim. Instead, the peasant majorities that spoke in the tribunals have the responsibility for these early one million deaths.

Furthermore, it is important to consider another question: was Mao justified in introducing a policy that had such potential for barbaric loss of life? Morally the answer would be in a negative, but Mao recognised that the only way of achieving widespread and essential (both ideologically and practically speaking) land reform was through the elimination of the landed elements in rural society. The executions provided land to be the foundations of the Chinese commune and co-operative system, and also signified the serious and revolutionary intentions of the CCP. The landlords also represented China before the Communists took power- the eradication of this class in Chinese society marked a break with the past, so that its people could start afresh. Therefore, it is clear that this loss of life did not represent personal and needless barbarism on the part of Mao- instead, the policy was adopted for its value, both in the sense of helping China’s longer-term development and in translating into political currency for the government.

As commented on earlier on, 1959, 1960 and 1961 were the worst years for post-liberation China, with widespread famine in which millions perished. In their relatively recent biography of Chairman Mao, Jung Chang and Jon Halliday have been critical of the way in which Mao spent about $4.1 billion (at 1957 prices) on giving China ‘the bomb’ between 1962 and 1964- an amount which they calculate to have been worth about 300 calories to every single person in China for two years. Investing this money in famine relief rather than atomic weapons would have saved the life of every person who died in the Great Famine#. This spending did not however occur just because Mao enjoyed death. As alluded to above, the government was unaware of the true extent of the famine problems even by 1961- figures were still falsified, and the system of feeding back information to Peking was far from streamlined- there was no way that Mao could hope to have a clear idea of the situation in every part of a country that numbered 11 000 counties#. Furthermore, Mao’s decision to spend billions of dollars on achieving nuclear capability was made in the context of the world climate at the time. In the early 1960s, having atomic weapons was everything for all countries that did not have nuclear capabilities. The Russians and the Americans were continually vying to achieve global military supremacy, investing vast sums of money in project after project. In addition, the world had come several times close to nuclear war, most notably in the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. Quite understandably therefore, having similar weapon capabilities to the other superpowers was of paramount importance in Mao’s mind- he wanted China to be able to stand up to other countries (especially the USSR, which was causing problems on the Sino-Russian border at the time) rather than being walked over (as had happened in the 19th century), and China had to be able to hold its own in a nuclear war to ensure its survival- a nuclear war which, in 1962, was a real possibility (something which is not appreciated enough with the benefit of hindsight). Of course, few would regard nuclear weapons as a suitable trade for millions of lives, but it is definitely understandable why Mao decided to invest so much money in achieving nuclear capability quickly whilst at home the Chinese people starved. His decision was taken out of a wider concern for China’s position on the world stage, not because he held little concern for the lives of his fellow Chinese.

Finally, although not the only other time that Mao’s political decisions would cost lives, the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution of 1966-1976 was by far the most important example of this in the second half of Mao’s Chairmanship. By 1966, Mao thought that both party and people had become complacent with the victory of the Communist’s, and he genuinely feared for the future of the Chinese Revolution. Already, traces of capitalism had begun to seep back into government policy and Chinese society (e.g. the breakdown of the Commune system of in favour of more individualised farming), and Mao saw the return of the exploitative landlordism of the early part of the 20th century on the horizon. His answer to this problem was the GPCR. Essentially, with Mao’s concerns in mind, the GPCR was an ideologically inspired movement that was Mao’s attempt at re-invigorating the CCP and the general populace with an ideological inner compass. Exactly what the Chairman wanted to achieve by the GPCR is a point of historical controversy, but he launched the movement as a programme of re-education, encouraging students in particular to form into ‘Red Guard’ groups and study his ideology (‘Mao Zedong Thought’). The Red Guards were also tasked with the re-education of the population and rooting out ‘bad’ political and social elements in China. What followed was several years of anarchy and suffering. The Red Guards took their ‘rooting out’ duties seriously, and persecuted many people- some were actually ‘bad elements’, but many were innocent, often targeted for convenience or as a result of personal grudges (the best example being school teachers). As a result, over one million people committed suicide in the GPCR’s first year, rather than face the humiliating and shocking Red Guard denunciation rallies. After turning on ordinary civilians, the Red Guards turned on each other in what was effectively a civil war, with all groups proclaiming loyalty to Mao but hatred of each other. Many were killed in this struggle, and the involvement of the army in 1969 to resolve the conflict fanned the flames of strife, as Chinese fought Chinese, civilian fought military and young fought old. The situation mellowed after 1971 with the final disbandment of the Red Guard units but small-scale strife continued until Mao’s death in 1976 ended the GPCR. In these calamitous ten years, million died as a result of Mao’s political movement, and the death toll has been attributed to the Chairman- after all, wasn’t it his creation?

However, this is an over-simplification of a situation that sinologists still do not fully understand#. It must be appreciated that events soon spiralled out of anyone’s control, even Mao’s. Red Guard activities soon went out of the remit of the regime to control. Units over-zealously went about their mission, and soon got caught up in the hype of the whole movement-power went to the heads of many of the students, with disastrous results. The one million suicides in the first year was because the Red Guards pursued innocent people with a vengeance and favoured cruelty over re-education, not because of Mao’s original policy. By the time the Red Guard groups started to turn on each other, the regime was unable to claw the movement back to its original principles. Charged by strength of feeling and reluctant to abandon their new-found purpose in life, the Red Guards ignored repeated directives from the centre to cease their activities, and the major decision by Mao to send in the army (which was the point at which the death rate ballooned) was one over which he had little choice- it was the army or face civil anarchy. There was no way in which Mao could anticipate the events of the GPCR when he launched the movement and very quickly after its start the regime lost the ability to direct its activities- the main factor in explaining why so many people were killed in the movement. Even after the army prevailed in 1971, this was only in the major cities and inner provinces of China. Localised difficulties which the regime could do little to prevent continued for another five years and just added to the death toll.

In conclusion, there is evidence to suggest that Mao has been given an unfairly bad press over the millions of deaths in China during his 27 years in power. Nothing can ever justify the deaths of so many people but, through the several policy examples discussed here, it has been shown that Mao’s policy decisions cannot be seen as simply him killing millions of people for no reason. Sometimes Mao was driven by a logic that put the ‘greater good’ above the adverse effects to the individual (e.g. his nuclear spending during the famine years), and sometimes he was not directly responsible for suffering. Rarely however, did Mao simply kill people because he could- he always had a purpose, and this purpose he could justify in the context of the time.

***

[brightness]

Mao's record defines the terms "misrule" and "misgovernment" regardless what his intentions were. When someone makes the choice of taking on that much power to himself, he does not have the luxury of blaming his subordinates. Sure, Stalin never killed anyone with his own hands, nor did Hitler (besides killing himself, as in the final suicide); heck, the latter was even a vegetarian and loved animals, LOL. They couldn't escape the label of "mass murderers" just because it was the likes of Felix Dzerzhinsky, Chekka, Lavrentiy Beria, NKVD, Heinrich Himmler, the SS Einzatzgruppen, etc. who did the hands-on dirty work. Mao had his Kang Sheng and struggle meetings.

Kang Sheng's organization was liquidating (mass murdering) fellow revolutionaries and hapless anti-Japanese idealists as far back as YanAn years. So the anti-rightist and CR purges of the 1950's and 60's were not momentary abherrations for Mao at all.

Mao couldn't dump the blame of the economic mismanagement, and consequent mass deaths, on subordinates either. Mao's policies were directly responsible for the mass starvations. Many of his subordinates, like Liu Shaoqi, Deng Xiaoping, Peng Dehuai, actually fought hard (at various times when they dared) against Mao's policies . . . not because they were some kind of free market economists, but because they understood that Mao's policies would lead to mass starvation and a country/economy that would be ungovernable (and consequently the end of CCP power even if you are a lover of CCP and want to keep it in power; all three of them obviously were). Peng and Liu eventually paid with their lives for voicing disagreement with Mao. Deng was lucky, and out-lived Mao, and lucky for China. Many of his latter economic policies were actually tried earlier in the 1950's and early 1960's, with good results of economic recoveries, only to be cut short repeatedly by Mao.

As for "zealots getting out of control," sure, the "zealots" have to answer for their own crimes, but that does obviate the "Command Responsibility" of the leader himself. Just like General Matsui could not blame Nanjing Massacre on his troops getting out of control alone. He was the man who was in command, and the man who set the parameters that allowed the massacre to happen. At least with Matsui, he wasn't personally involved in the massacre and was distraught and apologetic immediately after he found out what happened, retired from the army and built a large statue of Buddhist Goddess of Mercy in his home town facing Nanjing; "Command Responsibility" still got him hanged after the war. In the case of Mao, many of the political murders were very much at the instigation of the "Great Helmsman" himself.

As for "Maoist Shining Path," it essentially comes down to the millenia old rape-and-pillage strategy of the nomads (both east and west): move into a settled area, kill all the have's, distribute their wealth to the have-nots; now the local economy is destroyed due to absence of secure property rights (who'd be buying seeds and planting if the right to harvest is not guaranteed; you'd eat the seeds too when faced with those perverse incentives), time to move onto pillaging the next settled area with your army of have-nots. It's a very effective strategy of maintaining your vagabound army (they need to continuously pillage in order to eat) . . . until you either run out of places to pillage or run into a civilization that can stop you cold with their defensive technology; then you end up in the dustbin of history. That's why Mao was eager for WWIII in the 1950's. Just like Shang Yang, Mao believed prosperity was a vice. All he needed were breeding and raising soldiers for war making. Even if the "Shining Path" succeeded in conquring the world, it's not clear how the system is supposed to sustain itself when it runs out of places to pillage. Mao's economic central plannings were obiously unworkable.

The West did not reject Mao in 1949 at all. The US actually left its ambassador to China, Leighton Stuart, behind on Mainland when KMT fled to Taiwan. Mao was the one who kicked out Stuart in order to re-affirm his alignment with the USSR. The US wasn't even defending Taiwan until Mao invaded Korea. Otherwise, the mainland may well have been able to grab Taiwan in the 1950's (not necessarily a blessing).

The rapid economic recovery of Germany and Japan was not primarily the result of US aid, any more than the rapid Chinese economic development in the last three decades was the result of aid from any ouside country (free trade but not aid). The UK and France received far more aid than Germany, and did not have to pay war reparations to the allies like Germany did. It was the internal economic policies of low taxes and relatively free market competition that made post-war German and Japanese economies take off . . . just like the same policies did for Taiwan in the 60's and 70's, then for Mainland China in the last three decades. Countries engageed in free trade (especially those with little natural resources to export) are usually prosperous, whereas countries living off chronical aid are usually basket cases. Why? Because aid money trickles down from the top, fostering corruption every step of the way, whereas free market trade relationships are from bottom up and promote economic efficiencies through compeitition.

Mao did take a significant positive step in his last years: after the soviet threat of the early 70's, and Lin's attempted defection, Mao was the one who authorized rapproachment with the US and the rest of the Western world. Given the political environment and a full generation of indoctrination, it would have difficult for any other Chinese leader to touch the taboo subject of raproachment (the very reason why the Soviets were accused of being "revisionists" a decade earlier) without risking political demise.

In any case, I find it very troubling to see people would excuse Mao on the ground of

(1) he didn't do it personally, or his subordinates carried away;

(2) he was liquidating a swath of class enemies for the greater good.

By those standards, a number of other nortorious 20th century mass murderers would be excused too.

[LilJon]

Hey everybody.

I would just like to point out to those criticizing Mao's economic justification for his programs by citing their particular failures that this does not actually undermine his rationale for undertaking them in any economic sense, i.e. you cannot criticize his economics without giving an economic reason. Particular policy failures do not repudiate its economic rationale for beginning it. If lower level cadres misrepresented grain production, and thus altered official targets, or most of the other problems, then this is more of a political or logistical rather than economic problem. Nothing was inherently wrong with establishing even the backyard furnaces in any economic sense. As J. Gray writes in "Mao in Perspective" in China Quarterly 187:

"The Great-Leap backward blast furnaces were scorned; yet twe miles from where I am now sitting are the carefully preserved remains of a backyard blast furnace reputedly owned by Derby of Coalbrookdale. China in 1958, like pre-modern Britain, was still full of small, scattered, easily worked deposits of ore. There was nothing to prevent their being quickly exploited. The fault lay in the euphoria which led to the naive assumption that it could be done everywhere, an assumption Mao was quick to condemn. And it should be remembered that when the Rural Responsibility System was instituted after Mao's death, backyard blast furnaces sprang up across China in the hands of individual peasants, and were profitable."

The economic justification for the Great Leap Forward was actually quite sound. China at the time was low on both land and capital but high on labor. The Great Leap Forward was an attempt to make use of the surplus labor in the countryside in order to develop it--rural industry to expand capital and irrigation, etc. to expand arrable land--thus the mass mobilization campaigns and so on.

Those who blame Mao for establishing the collective farms, and which consequently were a factor for the famine deaths tend to miss the fact that collective farming, after a brief period immediately after the GLF, was re-established during the mid 1960s and continued up to 1984. There was no famine during this period; food production kept up with population growth. Also, much of the infrastructure in the countryside was established at this time.

C. Bramall has written extensively on the results of collectivization and rural industry as ultimately being enabling factors for China's post 1978 growth. His argument, briefly, is that the establishment of the collective farms and rural industries, by creating the productive structures that could create fertilizers, seed strains, and irrigation in the countryside on a widespread local level, as well as creating substantial human capital through experiental learning enabled rapid growth that began in the countryside.

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This is out of my specialty, but as for those who downplay Mao's historical "greatness" in favor of someone like Deng Xiaoping? Not a chance. China has not produced an individual as simply influential as Mao for centuries. His influence in revolutionary strategy is well known. Even today, the most successful revolutionary socialist movements are decidedly Maoist. Nepal was decisively and popularly taken by the Maoists; the Naxalites in India are Maoists. But in philosophy (especially on the French), at least, he is probably the most influential person China has produced for perhaps millenia. At the time, almost everybody was a Maoist or at least a sympathizer. Sartre, Althusser, Balibar, etc. Even today in Badiou and others. In economics we had the likes of Paul Sweezy, and the whole Monthly Review gang, Joan Robinson, etc. practically declaring their Maoism. Was this trend ultimately short-lived? Probably. But it was an ideological time, and Mao made an ideological impact when it mattered. It was Mao who challenged Soviet Marxist orthodoxy, and practically initiated an intellectual revolution in Marxism when Marxism was most relevant. Mao will always eclipse Deng, even if Deng was somehow responsible for China's economic growth. A lot of people have overseen economic growth, really. But Mao? He is almost ubermensch. Almost.

Edited by LilJon, 15 June 2009 - 12:27 PM.

[brightness]

Comparing Maoist national backyard furnace campaign to the historical British and post-1976 Chinese village enterprises is as mistaken as the Qing officials who proclaimed on the eve of the Opium War that, they have tubes that fire balls and we have tubes that fire balls too. The devil is in the details: it's not the formality of tubes and balls; what really mattered were details like the muzzle velocity, projectile weight, how many inches of oak wood or stone wall the projectile could penentrate/destroy. Whether the projectile was launced by sinew, counterweight, gunpowder or rockets is decidedly secondary to the pentratrative/destructive power when the projectile arrives at the target! And how accurately and how quickly those projectiles can be fired!

Mao, and his apologists, being amatures that they are like the Qing officials, focused on the form but ignored the substance. The historical British and post-1976 Chinese village small scale enterprises were successful because they had specific local resources, like coal and easily accessible ore, and were turning out easily marketable implements that had high tolerance on the carbon content in the iron. Those were private or "self-sustaining" enterprises that were driven by profit motives. The endeavors were only undertaken so long as they could turn something of lower value to something of high value. Mao's national backyard furnace campaign did exactly the opposite: there was little economic caculation involved. All they cared about was the official turnover statistic. So they took high value existing implements, like utensils, woks and even iron doors, turn them into worthless pig iron with lower purity than the input material to begin with. That is economic suicide. The issue is not scale, but economic purpose/effect or lack thereof. You can build the most modern large scale copper mill in the world, but if your source of copper input is ripping up the entire national electric grid for you to have something to melt down and churn out copper inguts, you'd still be committing economic suicide on a national scale regardless how many copper inguts you churn out in the official statistics.

The problem with GLF commune wasn't that they were called "communes" but the political coercion to break up family units and force everyone to share all properties and eat at the communal mess halls. That destroyed the incentive to produce and to save, while encouraged waste. The Chinese tradition of family as the basic economic unit was restored after the closing of GLF. The 1960's and 70's saw Mao's new attempt at politcal machination, but even he did not try to break up all farmers' families and force them into giant mess halls again.

As for "greatness" and being worshipped, there are neo-nazis today worshipping you-know-who. By the looks of it recently, Maoism is not giving the Nepalese "revolutionaries" any clue on how to run their country either. As Lord Acton said: power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely, most "great men" are evil men.

[LilJon]

Comparing Maoist national backyard furnace ... inguts you churn out in the official statistics.

As I said previously, criticizing particular policy failings does not undermine the economic rationale for the backyard furnaces. Did I make the argument that the specifics of the backyard steel production campaign were carried out soundly? No. I don't actually care about the specifics of the backyard furnaces--it was an example.

The point was that the creation of rural industry, even the backyard furnaces, was based on sound principles. For all the failings of the furnaces, there were successes in establishing industries that produced fertilizers, pesticides, seed strains, as well as expanding other infrastructure like irrigation. This had the effect of using surplus labor to make up for and to increase arable land and capital. This has a sound basis in developmental economics and had successful empirical results, Austrian "economist" rhetoric notwithstanding.

The problem with GLF commune wasn't that they were called "communes" but the political coercion to break up family units and force everyone to share all properties and eat at the communal mess halls. That destroyed the incentive to produce and to save, while encouraged waste. The Chinese tradition of family as the basic economic unit was restored after the closing of GLF. The 1960's and 70's saw Mao's new attempt at politcal machination, but even he did not try to break up all farmers' families and force them into giant mess halls again.

Bad argument. Communal dining does not equal collective farming. Collective farming was re-established in the mid-1960s and continued up to 1984, i.e. land and means of production were collectivized (i.e. family units were "broken up" and property, as it relates to production was "shared"). As I said previously, the collective farming system was quite successful during this time especially in expanding rural infrastructure, enabling the growth of the 1980s.

As for "greatness" and being worshipped, there are neo-nazis today worshipping you-know-who.

Oh, you mean Hitler? Nothing makes a better argument than a comparison with Hitler. I think influencing an Althusser, Sartre, or Badiou means just a tad more than some Neo-Nazis.

By the looks of it recently, Maoism is not giving the Nepalese "revolutionaries" any clue on how to run their country either.

Yeah, it's a shame that parliamentary democracy, and actually accommodating opposition parties, can be such a pain. (Yet they still won their revolution as well as previously getting the majority of positions in the new government through popular support.)

As Lord Acton said: power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely, most "great men" are evil men.

A quote about some guy's opinion deserves another. As Nietzsche said: [random quote about small men, weakness, good and evil, etc.]

Edited by LilJon, 16 June 2009 - 02:58 PM.

[brightness]

As I said previously, criticizing particular policy failings does not undermine the economic rationale for the backyard furnaces. Did I make the argument that the specifics of the backyard steel production campaign were carried out soundly? No. I don't actually care about the specifics of the backyard furnaces--it was an example.

That's a bit like arguing catapulting toilets at British warships was a sound tactic in principle because it too was a type of projectile weapon . . . and projectile weapon was what's needed to fight those ships. LOL.

The problem with Mao's campaign was in ignoring local realities and real economic effectiveness, but insisting on central planning through a few simple numbers, such as the tonnage of iron/steel making, never mind whether the real output on the ground was 1.5%-carbon steel, 3%-carbon cast iron, or something with inconsistent carbon content in the alloy and therefore almost useless. The normal market price mechanism was evolved to deal precisely with those details, so that resources can be allocated properly to fit what the users of iron and steel would require in the next stages of production. The politically coerced replacement of that market price mechanism with what amounts to arbitrary government statistics (a ton of pig iron with slags is a ton just like a ton of high quality steel) was the essence of GLF. It's not a matter of specifics of backyard steel production, but endemic to the fundamental premise of the entire GLF movement. The same sort of economic suicide happened in numerous other industries, in order to satisfy those government statistic criteria.

The point was that the creation of rural industry, even the backyard furnaces, was based on sound principles. For all the failings of the furnaces, there were successes in establishing industries that produced fertilizers, pesticides, seed strains, as well as expanding other infrastructure like irrigation. This had the effect of using surplus labor to make up for and to increase arable land and capital. This has a sound basis in developmental economics and had successful empirical results, Austrian "economist" rhetoric notwithstanding.

It's hard to argue "surplus labor" when people were starving because not enough people were tending the fields (as they were diverted to pursue those grandiose economic suicide projects). There is a thing called "opportunity cost"; when you decide to do something, something else is left undone! Do you really believe that GLF projects were allocating labor efficiently? creating more value than what the farm laborers would have done otherwise? The mass starvations obviously proved otherwise. Sure, the North Korean Kims may have been telling their peons that it's the Kims and the government that have been feeding the people, never mind that it's the Kims' mismanagement of their economy that has brought starvation to North Korea to begin with. Likewise, are we really to believe that without GLF government meddling, there wouldn't be fertilizers, pesticides, seed strains, etc?? People would just sit on their hands waiting to die without the government telling them what to do?

Bad argument. Communal dining does not equal collective farming. Collective farming was re-established in the mid-1960s and continued up to 1984, i.e. land and means of production were collectivized (i.e. family units were "broken up" and property, as it relates to production was "shared"). As I said previously, the collective farming system was quite successful during this time especially in expanding rural infrastructure, enabling the growth of the 1980s.

The "communes" in the 60's and 70's were in name only by comparison, nothing like what was tried during GLF. People in the communes were paid wages in the 60's and 70's; many also maintained backyard plots illegally, and many local officials engaged in benign neglect, thanks to the bad GLF experience. Collective farming was not very successful at all, even in the reduced collectiveness of the 60's and 70's. The stores were bare, and there were ration coupons on everything, from rice, to four, to cooking oil, to meats, to sugar . . . etc. etc. The infrastructure argument is also problematic. Government officials might be interested in building infrastructures, but it's often in the wrong places and for the wrong reasons. What did all those hill top terraces accomplish besides temporarily boosting ploughed acreage and causing mud slide in a few years? Just look at the Soviet big infrastructure programs of the 1920's, Nazi infrastructure programs of the 1930's, the TVA in the US, etc. etc. They were all big waste of human labor and material resources. Never forget what the human labor and material resources could have been used in the absence of the government coercion. In the case GLF, that alternative use was glaringly obvious: tending the field so there could have been enough food to keep people alive.

Oh, you mean Hitler? Nothing makes a better argument than a comparison with Hitler. I think influencing an Althusser, Sartre, or Badiou means just a tad more than some Neo-Nazis.

You'd be surprised at who Mao was worshipping back in the 30's. Mao advocated a collectivist alliance among USSR, Germany, Italy, Japan and China. Politics can be such a fadish thing. LOL

Yeah, it's a shame that parliamentary democracy, and actually accommodating opposition parties, can be such a pain. (Yet they still won their revolution as well as previously getting the majority of positions in the new government through popular support.)

I'm actually glad that the Nepalese rebels had abandonned their Maoist path of violence in favor of parliamentary participation. As they are finding out, Maoism really doesn't give them any clue on how to run a country.

A quote about some guy's opinion deserves another. As Nietzsche said: (random quote about small men, weakness, good and evil, etc.)

What is the quote that you are looking for? I quoted Lord Acton only because he happened to express a point earlier than I could have done so myself. What is Nietzche's point that you find fitting by your way of thinking? That millions of human lives should be sacrificed so that a dead corpse can be elevated into the pantheons of "Great Men"?

[FiddyCent]

Brightness, you sound like a fan of Ayn Rand. Are you?

[brightness]

Brightness, you sound like a fan of Ayn Rand. Are you?

No. IMHO, while Ayn Rand was a significant contributor to the cause of liberty and freedom, she had her own failings (especially inside her fandom). That is not to subtract anything from the intellectual power/persuation of her novels.

[FiddyCent]

I'm not even going to bother. Minarchist/"Anarcho-capitalist"/Randist/Whatever types are distinctly unacademic bunch--good at rationalizing the whole of history and society into their little conceptual framework, bad at citing sources, good at making bad reducio ad absurdum arguments (especially Nazi comparisons), or making things up entirely. You can't argue with their absolutist nonsense because if you argue in any objective manner, i.e. giving weight to both the merits and demerits of any particular subject, they will completely ignore most of what you say and seize upon any "concession" and blow it entirely out of proportion, forcing you to act like some absolutist and forgo any type of intellectual integrity.

And before any accusations of being a Marxist, Collectivist, Statist, Tribalist, or Kantian (Heaven forbid), etc. I am none of those.

It's hard to argue "surplus labor" when people were starving because not enough people were tending the fields (as they were diverted to pursue those grandiose economic suicide projects). There is a thing called "opportunity cost"; when you decide to do something, something else is left undone! Do you really believe that GLF projects were allocating labor efficiently? creating more value than what the farm laborers would have done otherwise? The mass starvations obviously proved otherwise.

It's pretty easy to argue for the existence of surplus labor when it was mainstream theory in developmental economics at the time, e.g. in the Lewis Model. The idea of surplus labor assumes that in a predominantly agricultural society that relies on labor inputs, the marginal productivity of labor is so small (effectively zero) that using part of that labor, the surplus, for other purposes will have minimal impact on production in the agricultural sector, i.e. there is minimal opportunity cost by transferring surplus labor into other sectors. The economic rationale of using surplus labor to build infrastructure, rural industry, etc. coincided with theory in developmental economics at the time by Nurkse and others.

Also, stop being so fixated on the Great Leap Forward. Unlike you, I have the intellectual integrity to say that the Great Leap Forward was executed poorly. However, it was never my argument that it was executed correctly, only that its theoretical rationalization had support in economics. And I'm talking about mainstream, Neoclassical, orthodox economics, not "Austrian" economics. Also that the strategy (i.e. the same strategy that underlay the GLF) was used successfully after the Great Leap Forward. Your strategy has been to say, "Oh no! The system after the Great Leap Forward was completely different, I mean the collective farms were slightly different!" No, this is a terrible argument; you completely miss the point that it is not about collective farms, it is about reallocating surplus labor. Collective farms were a means to make the organizing labor easier. There was no fundamental change in form between the GLF strategy and the post-GLF strategy. If the collective farms in the post-GLF period had better incentives, then that's great, kudos to them, but it doesn't change the purpose of the collective farms in the overall strategy, which was to organize labor and which had economic justification. No matter what you think would have happened in your pretend world, it doesn't change the success of the rural industries in raising local and national production of chemical fertilizers, pesticides, and other inputs, etc. Even if you think the peasantry would have spontaneously developed rural industry that would have been more efficient or whatever, you will never be able to test that theory. Why? Because the past is over and there will never again be such a situation identical to that of the past, so it would probably be better use of your time to look at what actually occurred (you know, like people who actually study these things) instead of fantasizing about an ideal free market, stateless, world.

A digression: the problem with fans of Austrian economics is that they live in a pretend-world of counter-factuals. They never have to defend anything because nothing like their ideal world of free-markets sans regulations and minimal government/nightwatchman state exists. All they have to do is rationalize whatever occurs in the real world according to their conceptual schemes. If there is a Capitalist economy that succeeds, they all say, "Look! It's because of low regulations and limited government!" If a Capitalist economy fails, they will say, "It wasn't really a free market/there were too much regulations/state intervention/etc." If a Socialistic policy fails, they say "Look! Statism bad!" If a Socialistic policy is successful, they will say, "It wasn't really socialistic/there were free market incentives/etc." Any criticisms of their worldview, and they reply: "You can't criticize us, true laissez faire Capitalism doesn't exist."

The only other group that immediately comes to mind that thinks like these fans of Austrian economics, these greatest of all rationalizers, are dogmatic Marxists: the ones who argue "You can't criticize Socialism because true Socialism has never been realized. The USSR, China, Cuba, all these were state capitalist/did X,Y,Z, incorrectly, etc."

Incidentally, neither of those two groups are taken seriously in mainstream economics.

Sure, the North Korean Kims may have been telling their peons that it's the Kims and the government that have been feeding the people, never mind that it's the Kims' mismanagement of their economy that has brought starvation to North Korea to begin with. Likewise, are we really to believe that without GLF government meddling, there wouldn't be fertilizers, pesticides, seed strains, etc?? People would just sit on their hands waiting to die without the government telling them what to do?

Reducio ad absurdum, you seem to love those. I was hoping for another Hitler argument, but instead I got Kim Jong-il. Kim Jong-il/Il-Sung has nothing to do with topic. The tangent wasn't even good. Your arguments all revolve around linking everything to random bad-guys. Brilliant.

The "communes" in the 60's and 70's were in name only by comparison, nothing like what was tried during GLF. People in the communes were paid wages in the 60's and 70's; many also maintained backyard plots illegally, and many local officials engaged in benign neglect, thanks to the bad GLF experience. Collective farming was not very successful at all, even in the reduced collectiveness of the 60's and 70's. The stores were bare, and there were ration coupons on everything, from rice, to four, to cooking oil, to meats, to sugar . . . etc. etc. The infrastructure argument is also problematic. Government officials might be interested in building infrastructures, but it's often in the wrong places and for the wrong reasons. What did all those hill top terraces accomplish besides temporarily boosting ploughed acreage and causing mud slide in a few years? Just look at the Soviet big infrastructure programs of the 1920's, Nazi infrastructure programs of the 1930's, the TVA in the US, etc. etc. They were all big waste of human labor and material resources. Never forget what the human labor and material resources could have been used in the absence of the government coercion. In the case GLF, that alternative use was glaringly obvious: tending the field so there could have been enough food to keep people alive.

This is incorrect. Post-Great Leap collective farms were based on the work-point system, see Christopher Bramall in Chinese Economic Development, Routledge, 217-219. Your inevitable argument will be that work points were a wage. This is incorrect. They can only be called a wage in a non-technical sense, as some sort of renumeration for labor, but this would still be inaccurate. Also, before you start, I don't care what Austrian economics would call it.

The work points determined income based on the production of the farm as well as the allocation of the work points themselves. Allocation of work-points was usually determined by the collective farm itself. The value of a work-point was largely dependent on the net output of the farm. In a sense it was a combination of a wage and dividend. See Bramall 240. Private plots were not illegal under the collective farm system. Each family was allocated a private plot. Bramall 217. Food output kept up with population growth throughout the post-GLF period. Meisner.

You'd be surprised at who Mao was worshipping back in the 30's. Mao advocated a collectivist alliance among USSR, Germany, Italy, Japan and China. Politics can be such a fadish thing. LOL

You're completely bullshitting. LOL! Cite a source.

What is the quote that you are looking for? I quoted Lord Acton only because he happened to express a point earlier than I could have done so myself. What is Nietzche's point that you find fitting by your way of thinking? That millions of human lives should be sacrificed so that a dead corpse can be elevated into the pantheons of "Great Men"?

Sigh. It was sarcasm.

The point was that it is easy to find a quote supporting absolutely whatever you want because famous people have been saying things for-*******-ever. But if you really want a quote:

'One has taken the value of these "values" as given, as factual, as beyond all question; one has hitherto never doubted or hesitated in the slightest degree in supposing the "good man" to be of greater value than "the evil man," of greater value in the sense of furthering the advancement and prosperity of man in general (the future of man included). But what if the reverse were true? What if a symptom of regression were inherent in the "good," likewise a danger, a seduction, a poison, a narcotic, through which the present was possibly living at the expense of the future? Perhaps more comfortably, less dangerously, but at the same time in a meaner style, more basely?--So that precisely morality would be to blame if the highest power and splendor actually possible to the type man was never in fact attained?'

From the Genealogy of Morals; a nice little antidote to the Lord Acton cliche that is trotted out everywhere. Take a good read, because I'm not actually going to waste my time arguing about random quotes, even if it is Nietzsche. And, before you trot out your terrible Hitler, Stalin, whatever, comparison, the quote is not about Mao, he didn't go beyond morality, the quote is an example of a quote against yours. Quoting quotes for no good reason is a bad way to argue. k?

I'm not going to bother responding to you after this post. If anyone with a more academic, a more objective, interest in the topic wants to comment, feel free.

Edited by FiddyCent, 05 July 2009 - 04:17 AM.

[brightness]

I'm not even going to bother. Minarchist/"Anarcho-capitalist"/Randist/Whatever types are distinctly unacademic bunch--good at rationalizing the whole of history and society into their little conceptual framework, bad at citing sources, good at making bad reducio ad absurdum arguments (especially Nazi comparisons), or making things up entirely. You can't argue with their absolutist nonsense because if you argue in any objective manner, i.e. giving weight to both the merits and demerits of any particular subject, they will completely ignore most of what you say and seize upon any "concession" and blow it entirely out of proportion, forcing you to act like some absolutist and forgo any type of intellectual integrity.

So why bother typing all that nosense up?

And before any accusations of being a Marxist, Collectivist, Statist, Tribalist, or Kantian (Heaven forbid), etc. I am none of those.

Nobody is accusing you of any of that, yet.

It's pretty easy to argue for the existence of surplus labor when it was mainstream theory in developmental economics at the time, e.g. in the Lewis Model. The idea of surplus labor assumes that in a predominantly agricultural society that relies on labor inputs, the marginal productivity of labor is so small (effectively zero) that using part of that labor, the surplus, for other purposes will have minimal impact on production in the agricultural sector, i.e. there is minimal opportunity cost by transferring surplus labor into other sectors. The economic rationale of using surplus labor to build infrastructure, rural industry, etc. coincided with theory in developmental economics at the time by Nurkse and others.

This argument sounds a little like "don't let facts confuse my pretty theory." Whether it's called Lewis Model or Doofus Model makes little difference if the model is wrong or wrongly applied. Logically, it should be quite easy to see why the model is wrong: if the marginal productity of labor is zero and the agro society relies on labor input, well then the society/economy is effective zero, then pray tell where is the food coming from to feed the esteemed Doofus to apply the Lewis Model? How can any viable economical theory starts off assuming what exists in a functioning society is all effectively zero? It should have been quite obvious that in subsistence farming, becaue the productivity is low, surplus is limited to begin with, significant removal of labor is a recipe for starvation. Facts seem to prove this back of the envelope model much more valid than Doofus Model or any advocacy by Nerds completely removed from reality. Dr Doofus and Dr Nerds can come up with any number of models on how many angels can dance on the tip of a pin; none of them would have any bearing on reality.

Also, stop being so fixated on the Great Leap Forward. Unlike you, I have the intellectual integrity to say that the Great Leap Forward was executed poorly.

It's just a wee bit more than that: such as the plan couldn't possibly work, unless you assume individual human beings are like chess pieces or screws on a machine, will do exactly what they are told to do without any deviation, and any think for themselves.

However, it was never my argument that it was executed correctly, only that its theoretical rationalization had support in economics. And I'm talking about mainstream, Neoclassical, orthodox economics, not "Austrian" economics.

Econnomics is not an exact science. There are many different schools of economic thoughts, many of them are diametricly opposed to each other. You can cite some econmic school to support just about anything, including the mass extermination of one group in order to build paradise on earth. Just because a theory calls itself an economic theory doesn't make it correct or even have real predictive power. In the lingos of scientific methods, most economic theories barely qualify for Postulations. According to some Marxian economic "theories," North Korea and Cuba should be paradise, now are they? "Theories" and Postulations that fail in the face of reality are not worth the ink and paper that they have wasted in being put into print.

Also that the strategy (i.e. the same strategy that underlay the GLF) was used successfully after the Great Leap Forward. Your strategy has been to say, "Oh no! The system after the Great Leap Forward was completely different, I mean the collective farms were slightly different!" No, this is a terrible argument; you completely miss the point that it is not about collective farms, it is about reallocating surplus labor. Collective farms were a means to make the organizing labor easier. There was no fundamental change in form between the GLF strategy and the post-GLF strategy. If the collective farms in the post-GLF period had better incentives, then that's great, kudos to them, but it doesn't change the purpose of the collective farms in the overall strategy, which was to organize labor and which had economic justification.

You don't seem to understand what collective farm is. Collective farm is where a farmer's reward is not individually linked to his/her effort or input. The whole point is not to give material incentives to individuals, and not let one farmer get richer than another farmer because he/she works harder. During Great Leap Forward, the conept of equality was extended to the most basics of "results": i.e. compulsive shared meals, compulsive shared housing. A farmer was not paid in wages, and there was no way of saving at all (savings would have been considered petite bougeoise mentality). The post-GLF period was entirely different: the farmers were paid wages, and responsible for their own meals at home and slept in their own separate quarters. Here's the real kicker: because farmers were allowed to eat and sleep in their own homes, they turned their own little yard around their own houses into private gardens! Those private "illegal" gardens and the black markets, that were willfully ignored by local officials who had learned the painful lessons of GLF, were largely responsible for the survival of the people of the country.

No matter what you think would have happened in your pretend world, it doesn't change the success of the rural industries in raising local and national production of chemical fertilizers, pesticides, and other inputs, etc. Even if you think the peasantry would have spontaneously developed rural industry that would have been more efficient or whatever, you will never be able to test that theory. Why? Because the past is over and there will never again be such a situation identical to that of the past, so it would probably be better use of your time to look at what actually occurred (you know, like people who actually study these things) instead of fantasizing about an ideal free market, stateless, world.

The whole point of studying anything is to find out repeating patterns, under similar circumstances. If phenomena are truely one-off, and can never happen analogously either before or after, what's the point of studying it at all?? Private fertilizer and pesticide producers emerge in economies all the time, because there is a market demand for their products! The private producers are very carful about which workers to hire and how many, becaues their own profitability depends on those decisions. The problem with government fertilizer and pesticide factory is that, the government managers are more interested in paying themselves and their friends/relatives than making a profit, so the hiring and production is less efficient; what does get produced, get applied to fields with better political connections instead of the fields where the chemicals would lead to better economic results as judged by consumers in a free market place.

BTW, the issue is not rural industry; I have no problem with rural industries. The problem is collectivization vs. competitive free market choice. How many people should work the field and how many people should work the rural industries should be a decision left to the free market place to decide. GreatLeapForward certainly proved it in spades that the pyramidal bureacratic reporting system is no viable subsitute to the market price mechanism. It's not just a matter of implementation details. Assuming perfect knowledge / omniscience on the part of the central planner is not a matter of implementation detail, but a fundamental falsehood/pretension in the entire theory of central planning.

A digression: the problem with fans of Austrian economics is that they live in a pretend-world of counter-factuals. They never have to defend anything because nothing like their ideal world of free-markets sans regulations and minimal government/nightwatchman state exists. All they have to do is rationalize whatever occurs in the real world according to their conceptual schemes. If there is a Capitalist economy that succeeds, they all say, "Look! It's because of low regulations and limited government!" If a Capitalist economy fails, they will say, "It wasn't really a free market/there were too much regulations/state intervention/etc." If a Socialistic policy fails, they say "Look! Statism bad!" If a Socialistic policy is successful, they will say, "It wasn't really socialistic/there were free market incentives/etc." Any criticisms of their worldview, and they reply: "You can't criticize us, true laissez faire Capitalism doesn't exist."

I don't like digressions. Unfortunately and fortunately we are dealing with human beings, with subjective values. Values are subjective and relative, not absolute. Any model is only good if it can reflect the subject under stuy. If you are looking for an optim level of taxation that holds true for all people at all time, you are not likely to find it. A concentration camp inmate having his daily diet increased from 1000 calaries to 1500 calaries on higher productivity will give you productity increase for a few weeks even if the effective tax rate is 90%; on the other hand, increasing tax in a relatively free society from 25% to 30%, you will see productivity drop (of course still probably much higher than the concentration camp productivity even after the drop, if given comparable tools and comparable poeple, when the steady state is reached after initial euphoria). People do operate on relative terms. Success and failure are also relative terms. The fact that the Great Leap Forward led to mass starvation, while the eventual divvying up land into family plots led to food surplus by 1984, all using more or less the same tools on the same land (with slight shrinkage due to desertification and expanding urbanization), that should give you some hint how the economy works in the real world. Whether you call the model that reflect such realities "Austrian" or something else is quite immaterial. Since we are in a Chinese history forum, we can call it ShenBuHai Economics if you don't like the Austrians.

The only other group that immediately comes to mind that thinks like these fans of Austrian economics, these greatest of all rationalizers, are dogmatic Marxists: the ones who argue "You can't criticize Socialism because true Socialism has never been realized. The USSR, China, Cuba, all these were state capitalist/did X,Y,Z, incorrectly, etc."

Incidentally, neither of those two groups are taken seriously in mainstream economics.

Actually, Marxian economics was taken very seriously in many parts of the world, include the west, before the fall of the Eastern Bloc. Why? because it provided a system of training government advisors for interventionist policies. The fact that it was wrong and unworkable in real life was only secondary to its marketability as a state religion for meritocrats who wanted themselves or their children to avoid the vagaries of the market place itself and sought out government sponsored academia instead. Ptolemy's geocentric theory and theories about how many angels could dance on a pin were very mainstream theories for hundreds of years, thanks to their academic marketability. Austrian Economics suffered from the opposite problem: it doesn't provide a theocratic platform for devising new government interventions; hence it hasn't been particularly popular in seeking government sponsorship in the academia.

This is incorrect. Post-Great Leap collective farms were based on the work-point system, see Christopher Bramall in Chinese Economic Development, Routledge, 217-219. Your inevitable argument will be that work points were a wage. This is incorrect. They can only be called a wage in a non-technical sense, as some sort of renumeration for labor, but this would still be inaccurate. Also, before you start, I don't care what Austrian economics would call it.

The work points determined income based on the production of the farm as well as the allocation of the work points themselves. Allocation of work-points was usually determined by the collective farm itself. The value of a work-point was largely dependent on the net output of the farm. In a sense it was a combination of a wage and dividend. See Bramall 240. Private plots were not illegal under the collective farm system. Each family was allocated a private plot. Bramall 217. Food output kept up with population growth throughout the post-GLF period. Meisner.

The "GongFen" system was introduced after the end of GLF; there was nothing to "Fen" (divide, points) during GLF, when all your food and shelter was provided by the commune (you were not allowed to cook for yourself if you lived in a GLF commune), and accummulating savings for yourself would have been condemned as being capitalist. You should have stepped out onto the fields of where "GongFen" was used, like I did with my own feet. It was not a pretty picture. How could they have been pretty, when people were just showing up to sleep after moonlighting on their own private gardens. Sure, there were set-aside "model fields" for officials and foreign dignitaries; they were set aside because the commune putting on a good show would get extra meat coupons as reward so they did not have to stick to their monotonous cabbage dinners.

BTW, private plots were illegal in much of the 60's, but local officials largely ignored enforcement unless they want to squeeze you for something. They were legalized in some provinces in the 70's. It should be obvious to you now, by the time even your authors acknowledged private plots being legalized, it wasn't much of a collective system, was it? Like I said before, the "communes" became in name only (simply an administrative unit) after the end of GLF.

The point was that it is easy to find a quote supporting absolutely whatever you want because famous people have been saying things for-*******-ever.

Apparently you still didn't get it. I gave the quote not because I consider Lord Acton some kind of authority, but because he said it before I did, hence I can not claim the sentence to my originality, despite my agreement with the sentiment of the statement.

But if you really want a quote:


'One has taken the value of these "values" as given, as factual, as beyond all question; one has hitherto never doubted or hesitated in the slightest degree in supposing the "good man" to be of greater value than "the evil man," of greater value in the sense of furthering the advancement and prosperity of man in general (the future of man included). But what if the reverse were true? What if a symptom of regression were inherent in the "good," likewise a danger, a seduction, a poison, a narcotic, through which the present was possibly living at the expense of the future? Perhaps more comfortably, less dangerously, but at the same time in a meaner style, more basely?--So that precisely morality would be to blame if the highest power and splendor actually possible to the type man was never in fact attained?'

If you actually believe this statement, do you actually believe central planning is the right answer? as opposed to market freedom and letting more brains engaged in independent research and finding out whether "good" is really "good"? and instead of letting market mechanism to propagate the new findings if and when "good" is found by to be "bad"?

I'm not going to bother responding to you after this post. If anyone with a more academic, a more objective, interest in the topic wants to comment, feel free.

Thank you for your intention to stop the nonsense. I wish I saw the post a few days ago, and could have given you a reply earlier. If you would like to engage in a logical discussion based on reality instead of ad hominim attacks involving myriads of vacuous -ism's, please feel free to write back.

[Libertarianfamine]

I'd just like to point out that the free market sensibilities of Germany and Japan claimed as great progress from the Liberfraud here is really quite an interesting thing to say. For one, they never operated under a strict libertarian free market. For two, both of these countries were modernized thanks to their militarily imposed industrialization and imperialist plundering. For three, both countries negated a lion's share of their public spending by having their military eliminated. They were protected by allied forces (and East Germany by the Iron Curtain) thereby foregoing that historical necessity. To claim that industrialized countries insulated from war and given much aid somehow vindicates the free market position is laughable.

The shortsightedness of the libertarian position is indicated in the starvation of the world despite the fact that the world can create enough food for everybody many times over. The libertarian is then abhorred at any mention of taking one's personal private property in an industrialized/rich state while happily trading with the best market value outside of state even though this is frequently with corporatist militants who are known to value a person's privacy as much as the most insane Sci-Fi totalitarian regime.

In fact, the USA Imports more of every single resource than it exports except for weapons. The USA is dependent on exports gleaned from other nations who operate under any circumstance that produces the material. Is this the same thing as free market liberfraudianism? Usually not; and when countries start to take over their own resources or become focused internally at fixing conditions many an American citizen becomes abhorred at this selfishness and calls them communist or islamicist.

[brightness]

I'd just like to point out that the free market sensibilities of Germany and Japan claimed as great progress from the Liberfraud here is really quite an interesting thing to say. For one, they never operated under a strict libertarian free market. For two, both of these countries were modernized thanks to their militarily imposed industrialization and imperialist plundering. For three, both countries negated a lion's share of their public spending by having their military eliminated. They were protected by allied forces (and East Germany by the Iron Curtain) thereby foregoing that historical necessity. To claim that industrialized countries insulated from war and given much aid somehow vindicates the free market position is laughable.

Welcome to the forum, assuming you are not violating forum rules by posting under a 2nd user account. It will be most helpful if you refrain from arbitrary renaming of people and ideas that you do not like. It's hard to tell if "liberfraud" is reference to "liberalism" or "libertarianism." I will try to answer the points raised one at a time:

1. "strict libertarian free market" is quite unnecessary if not oxymoronic. Even different self-claimed libertarians often disagree on specific details. What makes all the difference in the world for the better are usually the relative changes: more free vs. less free; not ideological purity. As human beings living real lives, we hardly ever get to decide between pure good vs. pure evil; usually the choice is between better vs. worse. What the 1950's Germany and Japan had were the benefits of relatively free markets with lower levels of taxation and regulations.

2. Not sure what you mean by "both countries were modernized thanks to militarily imposed industrialization and imperialist plundering" Both Germany and Japan were militarily de-industrialized (by bombing) during WWII. Yes, the soviets did push the de-industrialization further along in Germany on their way out; i.e. plundering.

3. No sure why military spending had to be huge at all in those countries; WWII experience certainly proved that huge military spending didn't work for those countries. In any case, the forced labor that the soviets and some western allies kept after WWII as war reparation was quite a greater burden than any defense spending would have cost/needed to guard that bombed out broken country.

The shortsightedness of the libertarian position is indicated in the starvation of the world despite the fact that the world can create enough food for everybody many times over. The libertarian is then abhorred at any mention of taking one's personal private property in an industrialized/rich state while happily trading with the best market value outside of state even though this is frequently with corporatist militants who are known to value a person's privacy as much as the most insane Sci-Fi totalitarian regime.

Countries that practice more libertarian policies and allow the free market place to flourish hardly ever have mass starvations under those policies. In fact, many countries formerly known for mass starvations became self-sufficient and food exporting after they embraced free market policies. Nothing says libertairans should only trade with libertarians. In fact, trade is one of the greatest instrument for liberating people from totalitarian regimes. It is through trade that people living under totalitarian regimes realize that there can indeed be a better life out there, contrary to the lies spread by their totalitarian masters. That's one of the reasons that regimes like North Korea clamped down on trade . . . because it realized that trading with more liberal/libertarian ouside world would undermine its own totalitarian regime.

In fact, the USA Imports more of every single resource than it exports except for weapons. The USA is dependent on exports gleaned from other nations who operate under any circumstance that produces the material. Is this the same thing as free market liberfraudianism? Usually not; and when countries start to take over their own resources or become focused internally at fixing conditions many an American citizen becomes abhorred at this selfishness and calls them communist or islamicist.

First of all, the USA is hardly a paragon of Libertarianism, although it is run far better (in terms of treating its own citizens) than most other large countries, up to this point anyway. Secondly, the US used to be a major exporter of both manufactured products and resources, before the 1960's. The US was a far more libertarian society before the 1960's. The ills of imperialism that you see about the US is very much the result of an anti-liberal/anti-libertarian transformation of the US that took place in the 20th century. Coutries do not take over their own resources or become focused internally; both the USSR and the Iranian Islamic Republic exported enormous amount of oil to the West. Trade is the result of mutual benefits. When a country turns totalitarian, the people who suffer the most are usually not the outsiders, but the citizens internal to those countries first and foremost.

[Libertarianfamine]

1. "strict libertarian free market" is quite unnecessary if not oxymoronic. Even different self-claimed libertarians often disagree on specific details. What makes all the difference in the world for the better are usually the relative changes: more free vs. less free; not ideological purity. As human beings living real lives, we hardly ever get to decide between pure good vs. pure evil; usually the choice is between better vs. worse. What the 1950's Germany and Japan had were the benefits of relatively free markets with lower levels of taxation and regulations.

And Foreign Aid and Military protection and an industrialized and educated society with trading partners on both sides of the Cold War fence in addition to a massive ideological campaign.

2. Not sure what you mean by "both countries were modernized thanks to militarily imposed industrialization and imperialist plundering" Both Germany and Japan were militarily de-industrialized (by bombing) during WWII. Yes, the soviets did push the de-industrialization further along in Germany on their way out; i.e. plundering.

Both countries had the educated workforce that other third world nations did not have. Some industry was destroyed but not nearly all of it; nor were not all of germany's engineers and scientists killed, its libraries were not burned, its people were ready to work.

3. No sure why military spending had to be huge at all in those countries; WWII experience certainly proved that huge military spending didn't work for those countries. In any case, the forced labor that the soviets and some western allies kept after WWII as war reparation was quite a greater burden than any defense spending would have cost/needed to guard that bombed out broken country.

You are missing the point. Japan and Germany are NOT allowed to create a military force in any significant degree. This means their national economy has been removed of the burden of military spending that all other countries in the world have to deal with in some capacity - privatized corporatist militia or not. This removal of burden is not due to the foresight of free market ideology penetrating their ranks but rather due to national accords imposed on that populace AND protection paid for them. Japan and Germany were liberated from military spending because their borders and culture were protected without their consent or direction. This means a substantial historical need was given to them for free allowing them to spend public money elsewhere or invest more in the market. Society (it exists if private property exists) needs the military; people need the military. Japan and Germany's economic growth was fostered by the removal of a gigantic burden with none of the consequences. Outside of this insulated bubble of free protection everybody else had to pony up for Cold War, Religious War, National Liberation, et al.

Countries that practice more libertarian policies and allow the free market place to flourish hardly ever have mass starvations under those policies. In fact, many countries formerly known for mass starvations became self-sufficient and food exporting after they embraced free market policies. Nothing says libertairans should only trade with libertarians. In fact, trade is one of the greatest instrument for liberating people from totalitarian regimes. It is through trade that people living under totalitarian regimes realize that there can indeed be a better life out there, contrary to the lies spread by their totalitarian masters. That's one of the reasons that regimes like North Korea clamped down on trade . . . because it realized that trading with more liberal/libertarian ouside world would undermine its own totalitarian regime.

The problem is that much trade is done with foreign dictators who privatize at the expense of their people. America's dealings with dictators is well known and transcends political party. Suharto (who was mentioned in this thread), Pinochet, the shah of Iran, the many militias of Colombia, Tito, and d**** near every country in South America all consorted with Capitalist imperialism.

Meanwhile, capitalist states in Africa, India, and Bengal have had many natural famines and problems caused by the lack of healthcare and distribution of wealth.

Trade "lifting them up" is a bit of nonsense much like invading armies "lifting them up" is a bit of nonsense.

Or to go historically deeper; what about the famine in Ireland? Property owners used the bayonet of English muskets to enforce free trade and enhance pocketbooks of Britain's ruling class while masses occupied on an island had no recourse to claim anything outside their measley wages which did not provide enough for them to eat during a natural famine. Oh sure, enough food was created to actually feed these people, but it belonged rightfully to British property owners who needed to sell inventory or else be left behind in the global competition.

And yep, starvation is the number one killer in the world. More than cancer, communism, and islam.

First of all, the USA is hardly a paragon of Libertarianism, although it is run far better (in terms of treating its own citizens) than most other large countries, up to this point anyway. Secondly, the US used to be a major exporter of both manufactured products and resources, before the 1960's. The US was a far more libertarian society before the 1960's. The ills of imperialism that you see about the US is very much the result of an anti-liberal/anti-libertarian transformation of the US that took place in the 20th century. Coutries do not take over their own resources or become focused internally; both the USSR and the Iranian Islamic Republic exported enormous amount of oil to the West. Trade is the result of mutual benefits. When a country turns totalitarian, the people who suffer the most are usually not the outsiders, but the citizens internal to those countries first and foremost.

With respect, you're not from America or don't know it's history very well at all and this proves your fundamental incorrectness with misunderstanding imperialism and the market. "Before the 1960's" America had expanded its borders from the east coast of America to the west coast; had taken over the islands of the Phillipines, Hawaii, Cuba, Guam, and Puerto Rico. Had taken over Alaska. America had slavery, race laws, gender inequality, labor oppression, internal terrorism and warfare, religious intolerance, and free speech/gun/judicial equality problems. America starting with Teddy Roosevelt (1902) and ending with Reagan (1980) saw the creation and expansion of the welfare state.

Fascist libertarianism (which can be very much synonymous) existed. State capitalism existed. Imperialism most of all existed. Slavery existed. America being a paradigm of liberalism is patently incorrect revisionist history that everybody in America (left and right) acknowledges.

America post WW2 has been at a high point of "freedom" for its populace. This is something I will not dispute. This freedom is bought off with the blood and sweat of others in the world who can't afford our freedom or our hungry appetite - which we consume enough of to feed the entire world on a yearly basis. The point I was making about America's importation practices is that everybody in America, from the very dredges of society to the very top of society, benefits from America's (now mostly neo-liberal corporate) imperialism. America does not *actually* generate its wealth - it buys it at cheap prices and shuffles it around through either the market or government to make sure everybody gets some chunk of the pie.

Thus is the problem with comparing America to the world. America relies on the world to generate its actual wealth (which is material goods) so if the conditions in Colombia, China, or Taiwan are poor we are very much part of the problem.

A common tactic of the crude libertarian is to compare Cuba with that of the United States. If you see that as a valid defense of America's system over Cuba's then you really need to think more critically.

[brightness]

And Foreign Aid and Military protection and an industrialized and educated society with trading partners on both sides of the Cold War fence in addition to a massive ideological campaign.

The scale of aid paid to Germany and Japan can not compare to the war reparation extracted from them and war-time destruction done to those countries. Germans and Japanese were not more educated than Brits, French, Italians or Americans (especially considering the statist nonsense that they had been brainwashed with under the former fascist regimes) . . . yet German and Japanese economies grew much faster.

Both countries had the educated workforce that other third world nations did not have. Some industry was destroyed but not nearly all of it; nor were not all of germany's engineers and scientists killed, its libraries were not burned, its people were ready to work.

The allied air force ran out of targets to bomb in Germany by the beginning of 1945. Germany was more or less de-industrialized between the bombing, the Nazi wartime industrial distorsions, and allied looting and deliberate deindustrialization policies immediately after the war. Vast numbers of German engineers and scientists were killed (when entire cities were burned to the ground) and expatriated (both due to Nazi policies prior and during the war, and post-war better economic opportunities working outside Germany). People are always ready to work if they have to pay for their own keep. So why did Germany experience far more rapid economic growth than France and Britain? The latter two not only suffered less war-time damage, but also benefitted from the looting of Germany capital as war spoils and the importation of German engineers and scientists in addition to forced labor in the form of German prisoner of wars.

You are missing the point. Japan and Germany are NOT allowed to create a military force in any significant degree. This means their national economy has been removed of the burden of military spending that all other countries in the world have to deal with in some capacity - privatized corporatist militia or not. This removal of burden is not due to the foresight of free market ideology penetrating their ranks but rather due to national accords imposed on that populace AND protection paid for them. Japan and Germany were liberated from military spending because their borders and culture were protected without their consent or direction. This means a substantial historical need was given to them for free allowing them to spend public money elsewhere or invest more in the market. Society (it exists if private property exists) needs the military; people need the military. Japan and Germany's economic growth was fostered by the removal of a gigantic burden with none of the consequences. Outside of this insulated bubble of free protection everybody else had to pony up for Cold War, Religious War, National Liberation, et al.

First of a society does not necessarily need a military to exist (quite a few countries have no military), certainly not a huge military that is a heavy burden on the economy. Secondly, Germans and Japanese paid for their own police, if that's what you meant by what is necesary for a society to funciton. Thirdly, the Germans and Japanese were taxed by the allies to pay for the occupation of their own countries. It wasn't a freebie. Fourthly, the forced labor imposed on Germans by the allies, numbering over a million abled bodied males, far out-weighed the cost of a peace-time military establishment would have to be in Germany.

Besides, your whole premise is a little odd . . . it looks as if you believe a country would be better off being militarily occupied by someone else. While I agree that the allied occupation of West Germany (especially after 1948, when the policy of deliberate de-industrialization ended) was more benign than the previous home grown Hitlerian regime . . . it would be a stretch to think that foreign occupation is always better for the economy, and the reason why coutries in the third world fell behind was due to the fact that they were not occupied by someone else (kinda pushing "Whiteman's burden" theory a little too far, don't you think?)

The problem is that much trade is done with foreign dictators who privatize at the expense of their people. America's dealings with dictators is well known and transcends political party. Suharto (who was mentioned in this thread), Pinochet, the shah of Iran, the many militias of Colombia, Tito, and d**** near every country in South America all consorted with Capitalist imperialism.

While I'm very much against imperialism, it wouldn't make sense not to trade with a country just because it is under a dictatorship (which is why I'm against the embargo of Cuba despite my distaste for Castro regime). The trading relationship with Suharto probably mitigated the harshness of his regime, and the same applied to the Iranian Shah, who was eventually ousted under pressure from Carter administration. Pinochet, while no hero of human rights, probably brought a far more sustainable economy to his people than the historical alternative Allende would have . . . and as Latin American dictators go, both left and right-wing, a relatively benign/less-harmful one; we ony need to compare Chile's prosperity and stability to the recurring chaos in neighboring Latin American countries to see that.

Meanwhile, capitalist states in Africa, India, and Bengal have had many natural famines and problems caused by the lack of healthcare and distribution of wealth.

I have some idea why people keep popping up here and claim every country that had trade relationships with the west as a "capitalist state": that's the standard CCP propaganda. I have no idea why you, an American (I presume from your claims) would see it that way. It's as if every single country that aligned with the West during the Cold War was claimed to be "capitalist" by the CCP regime propagandists. Even that standard alone still wouldn't make India "capitalist" as it aligned with the USSR . . . and incidentally would have made China itself "Capitalist" after Mao's repproachment with the US in 1973. So the real litmus test for being "capitalist" according to CCP regime propagandists is really their closeness to the CCP regime itself; that also explains why every newly disgraced ex-party official was a "capitalist roader." Hence India was labelled "capitalist" despite clearly stated socialism in both Indian Constitution and that of the Congress Party, which ruled India from its independence in 1948 to 1990. Bengladesh was also a socialist country, so were the overwhelming majority of African countries that gained independence after WWII.

Trade "lifting them up" is a bit of nonsense much like invading armies "lifting them up" is a bit of nonsense.

Why do you think so?

Or to go historically deeper; what about the famine in Ireland? Property owners used the bayonet of English muskets to enforce free trade and enhance pocketbooks of Britain's ruling class while masses occupied on an island had no recourse to claim anything outside their measley wages which did not provide enough for them to eat during a natural famine. Oh sure, enough food was created to actually feed these people, but it belonged rightfully to British property owners who needed to sell inventory or else be left behind in the global competition.

There is nothing free trade about feudalistic occupation. The transfer of wealth and food from a famine stricken Ireland to the absentee landlords in England were not trade but taxation/confiscation, just like Mao's transfer of food from starving prinvinces to the party and military elite during the Great Leap Forward . . . the lack of free trade was the problem. Before the repeal of trade-restrictive Corn Law tarrifs, food prices were kept artificially high in Britain.

And yep, starvation is the number one killer in the world. More than cancer, communism, and islam.

Political meddling, especially totalitarian central planning, is the leading cause of starvation.

With respect, you're not from America or don't know it's history very well at all and this proves your fundamental incorrectness with misunderstanding imperialism and the market. "Before the 1960's" America had expanded its borders from the east coast of America to the west coast; had taken over the islands of the Phillipines, Hawaii, Cuba, Guam, and Puerto Rico. Had taken over Alaska. America had slavery, race laws, gender inequality, labor oppression, internal terrorism and warfare, religious intolerance, and free speech/gun/judicial equality problems. America starting with Teddy Roosevelt (1902) and ending with Reagan (1980) saw the creation and expansion of the welfare state.

I know American history better than most average Americans, ever since the days when I aced the AP American history courses decades ago . . . and I have read numerous books and treatise since then. Border expansion does not necessarily translate to expansion of government relative to the size of the economy on a massive scale. The doubling of the US during Louisiana Purchase during Jefferson administration did not greatly affect the relative size of the government to the economy; nor did the Alaskan purchase. Much of the west-ward expansion was done cheaply. Sure, America had its ills, especially in the forms of various inequality (especially towards those not recognized under "all men" at the time). However, the overall oppressive burden of the government on the overall population has increased dramaticly since the 1960's . . . as shown in the peace time government spending as per centage of GDP.

Fascist libertarianism (which can be very much synonymous) existed. State capitalism existed. Imperialism most of all existed. Slavery existed. America being a paradigm of liberalism is patently incorrect revisionist history that everybody in America (left and right) acknowledges.

How do you define "Facist libertarianism"? It's like saying "liberty and freedom under slavery" . . . doesn't make much sense at all.
"State capitalism" is just another name for fascism . . . fascism is when the state bureacrats and big business owners get together to set price and production; "state capitalism" is either exactly that or government bureacrats themselves set prices and production as the de facto owners of all the businesses (as in Lenin's "State Capitalism" in the 1920's)

America post WW2 has been at a high point of "freedom" for its populace. This is something I will not dispute. This freedom is bought off with the blood and sweat of others in the world who can't afford our freedom or our hungry appetite - which we consume enough of to feed the entire world on a yearly basis. The point I was making about America's importation practices is that everybody in America, from the very dredges of society to the very top of society, benefits from America's (now mostly neo-liberal corporate) imperialism. America does not *actually* generate its wealth - it buys it at cheap prices and shuffles it around through either the market or government to make sure everybody gets some chunk of the pie.

I actually do not agree that America reached the high point of freedom/liberty in the post-WW2 era . . . precisely for the reasons that you cited. Post WWII America steadily marched towards the drum beat of imperialism. The situation became drasticly worse in the late 1960's and early 1970's, when the US way over spent and had to default on the BrettonWoods obligation to the rest of the world. Before then, although the federal government increased oppression on the people after the gold default of 1934, the rest of the world could still technically engage the US in fair exchange through redemption of dollar for gold. After the Nixon default, the dollar became an imperial script.

The average Americans actually do not necessarily benefit from American Imperialism. Imperialism makes it possible for businesses to operate overseas without having to risk the whims of foreign dictators (who are now compliant to American laws under American Imperialism). That artificially reduces the cost of doing business overseas while having the taxpayers to pay the cost of enforcing American Imperialism . . . dealing the workers who do not have the means to go overseas a double blow.

That's why I have been saying the US has been stagnating since the 1930's, and going down hill since the 1970's. That actually bears out quite well in terms of the number of hours average worker's pay that are required to buy a house or buy a car. American real income (in terms of cars and houses of contemporary standards) was held stationary between 1929 and 1971, and has dropped in half since then. That corresponds to about 2% per year drop since 1971. Contrast to that, the US experienced a 2% annual real per capita real income growth from colonial time to the 1840's, when the canals were built, and 4% from the 1840's to the 1920's. With 2% annual increase, that's a doubling of living standards every generation (36 years). At 4% per year, the doubling took place every 18 years or so. That's why European immigrants came to the US in droves in the late 19th century. The 2% annual decline, or halving every 35 years or so is the reason why the Congress has been introducing new laws to expropriate expatriation attempts in recent years. More and more Americans probably will try to scramble overseas if this decline continue.

Thus is the problem with comparing America to the world. America relies on the world to generate its actual wealth (which is material goods) so if the conditions in Colombia, China, or Taiwan are poor we are very much part of the problem.

Colombia suffers from US drug war policies. China and Taiwan are not poor. They have certainly benefitted from entering the global trade system. China was a much poorer place before it entered the global trade system. What the global trade system did for Chinese economy was providing a set of reference points for price signals when their domestic command economy had thoroughly trashed the internal price signals and priorities (political "goods and services" took precedence over all material goods and services; military material took precedence over civilian material needs . . . in other words, the typical totalitarian nightmare). This currrent worldwide severe recession will be a significant test on the Chinese, and see if they can formulate their own internal market place, setting priorities in a competitive market driven manner to benefit their own people, without an American consumer pattern for reference.

A common tactic of the crude libertarian is to compare Cuba with that of the United States. If you see that as a valid defense of America's system over Cuba's then you really need to think more critically.

Cuba had much higher relative economic standing in the world before the Castro Brothers. It's entirely possible that after the Castros are gone, Cuba will be prosperous place again under free market economy.

[Libertarianfamine]

I am aghast at the doublethink that brightness is currently perpetrating. This is truly the most distorted, ideologically stupid view of history I've ever come into contact with. I really have no interest in continuing with an ideological idiot.

You're wrong or deceptive or retarded in just about your entire post, but I'm going to focus on your inability to understand that Germany and Japan did not have to pay for a military which had previously funded their acquisition of resources.

First of a society does not necessarily need a military to exist (quite a few countries have no military), certainly not a huge military that is a heavy burden on the economy.

Wrong, society, throughout history has needed and maintained a military precisely for reasons of national defense and plundering. This is true in all societies everywhere of all races, religions, and personal opinions of property on planet earth.

Countries that have no military are either protected by other militaries or coalitions or are of such little strategic value that they need none. Largely because of the United Nations a country can invoke a sort of world court order if their borders are invaded but nearly all nation states have a military. In fact, the richest and most prosperous nations on earth are in fact the nations which have strong militaries or are protected strategically by these states (as in the case of Japan and Germany).

Secondly, Germans and Japanese paid for their own police, if that's what you meant by what is necesary for a society to funciton.

A police force is not the same as a military.

Thirdly, the Germans and Japanese were taxed by the allies to pay for the occupation of their own countries. It wasn't a freebie.

And this is hilarious. If Germany were to be invaded by the USSR do you think the "taxes" they paid would equate to a fair trade military transaction? Or do you think it would be a consumer choice provided service? No, USA needed Germany because it needed a workforce and resources. The USSR needed Germany because it needed a workforce and resources. If one side invaded the other it would launch a world war. Germany was allowed the luxury of not having to worry about military matters because the German state was prevented from having one. You're obviously too dense and wrapped up in ideological retardation to understand this.

I also don't even know how exactly they were taxed for this, if at all.

Fourthly, the forced labor imposed on Germans by the allies, numbering over a million abled bodied males, far out-weighed the cost of a peace-time military establishment would have to be in Germany.

There was no state "peace-time military establishment" in Germany so you can't actually say that, can you? Current "peace time military establishments" for Russia, China, and South Korea do make you even more of an idiot.

Besides, your whole premise is a little odd . . . it looks as if you believe a country would be better off being militarily occupied by someone else.

Only a m**** would think that would be my premise. Only a m**** could draw that premise in the first place. What I said is that Japan and Germany were nation states insulated from the historical necessity of military presence because of their protection. They were allowed first rate protection from superpowers without the cost involved, even if they "paid" for it. Because two states traditionally linked with militarism and military spending were freed from this spending they could do so in other ways. They were propped up by America, rebuilt by America, and functioned as a consumer imperialist state with America.

While I agree that the allied occupation of West Germany (especially after 1948, when the policy of deliberate de-industrialization ended) was more benign than the previous home grown Hitlerian regime . . . it would be a stretch to think that foreign occupation is always better for the economy, and the reason why coutries in the third world fell behind was due to the fact that they were not occupied by someone else (kinda pushing "Whiteman's burden" theory a little too far, don't you think?)

Again, I'm done. Your hypocritical comment about United State's expansionism is false for obvious reasons. The other stuff you've typed is unsubstantiated or moronic or deceptive. Either you're trolling or you really are incapable of realistic thought. The Austrian School is known for its people who create axioms against science, so it's not surprising. Arguing with you is like arguing with lamppost that flickers stubbornly denying its right to be turned on.