Growth Under Communism
One point Charles Kenny makes in The Success of Development that I’ve also seen argued convincingly in other contexts is that public policy choices seem to matter less than people would lead you to believe. This is a particularly striking fact:
Looking more broadly at the experience of the communist bloc under communism, over the period 1950-1988, no East European country grew as slowly as the UK, Mexico, Switzerland, Colombia, the US, Australia, India, New Zealand, Peru, Chile, Argentina or Venezuela.
People right sometimes about the poor policy choices that led to Argentina’s poor growth performance in the 20th century. But it’s hard to make the case that Argentina was following worse policies during this period than Poland. Also: “Between 1928 and 1937, at the same time as farms were brutally collectivized, famine killed as many as 10 million people in the Ukraine, and Stalin‘s great terror was unleashed, the Soviet Union was the fastest growing country in the world.”
NB: I am not advocating Stalin-style economic policies.
104 Responses to “Growth Under Communism”
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June 20th, 2009 at 2:31 pm
There really isn’t any doubt that the industrialization of the Soviet Union between WWI and WWII was extremely fast and on a huge scale.
June 20th, 2009 at 2:34 pm
This seems to lead to the obvious conclusion that “economic growth” is a pretty poor proxy for development, or progress or whatever you want to call it.
June 20th, 2009 at 2:36 pm
Where were they starting from?
It’s easy to get high-percentage growth from a low initial point, especially with a major national effort. Britain’s economic growth, for instance, between 1780 and 1830 utterly dwarfs its growth in the last 50 years percentage-wise.
June 20th, 2009 at 2:38 pm
Industrialization of pretty much any large country is usually fast and on a huge scale, and brutal too. The civil war period in the US, for for example. Why should the Soviet Union be any different?
June 20th, 2009 at 2:46 pm
“Looking more broadly at the experience of the communist bloc under communism, over the period 1950-1988, no East European country grew as slowly as the UK, Mexico, Switzerland, Colombia, the US, Australia, India, New Zealand, Peru, Chile, Argentina or Venezuela.”
I’m calling bullshit on that one. The author is either fudging statistics, interpreting them to mean something they don’t, or just making it up. It doesn’t even strike me as remotely plausible.
June 20th, 2009 at 2:47 pm
Oh, and the 10 million number – where does it come from, some Joseph McCarthy speech or something?
June 20th, 2009 at 2:49 pm
Not to mention the difficulty in collecting and analyzing data when the wrong answer can result in a Siberian vacation.
June 20th, 2009 at 2:52 pm
Paul Krugman writing in Foreign Affairs:
While the growth of communist economics was the subject of innumerable alarmist books and polemical articles in the 1950s, Some economists who looked seriously at the roots of that growth were putting together a picture that differed substantially from most popular assumptions. Communist growth rates were certainly impressive, but not magical. The rapid growth in output could be fully explained by rapid growth in inputs: expansion of employment, increases in education levels, and, above all, massive investment in physical capital. Once those inputs were taken into account, the growth in output was unsurprising–or, to put it differently, the big surprise about Soviet growth was that when closely examined it posed no mystery.
Also Matt, if this is something that interests you, you should definitely read Barry Eichengreen’s The European Economy since 1945: Coordinated Capitalism and Beyond. It is in the same Princeton history on economic history that Greg Clark’s book was.
June 20th, 2009 at 3:05 pm
Precisely. When you go out the door in the morning, it is into a society, not an economy, that you go.
June 20th, 2009 at 3:05 pm
It’s not really surprising – you pump a lot of capital into industrial development, you’re going to get steady economic growth. The interesting thing is the 1950-88 metric; at least within the USSR proper, “crash” development had already been done 1917-1930s. Although the war might have allowed for a second developing phase by creating the need for the total rebuild of industrial plant.
Of course, the issue within the USSR wasn’t production per se, it was always the balance of production – the USSR had top-notch heavy industry and military manufacturing, but didn’t do very good at consumer goods. (Agriculture was a particular weakness, but that was more due to Soviet weirdness when it came to science.) Khrushchev at one point wanted to de-emphasize military production in favor of ramping up consumer goods and light industry (by way of proving that communism could provide a higher standard of living than capitalism), and did a fairly good job during his period in office, but this policy was kiboshed by Brezhnev after he was removed from office and discontinued during later administrations.
June 20th, 2009 at 3:06 pm
Damn those slandering McCarthyites! Stalin might’ive only killed 5 million Ukrainians! Maybe even a few less!
http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/warstat1.htm
June 20th, 2009 at 3:13 pm
Obviously, where you are starting from makes a big difference. But from 1975 and 1980, central Vietnam went from one rice crop a year to three. All it took was an irrigation system. But the supposedly capitalist (actually feudal) French never built that system, the Communists did. And it’s not like the French hadn’t heard the idea, Ho Chi Minh was quite vocal about it in the 1930s. I generally favor capitalism, but sometimes it takes a government program to get something done. How would you get a few thousand landowners to agree how to build the system? Who’s going to give up their land for the reservoirs? It doesn’t work without the government forcing people to do it. But now that it’s done, those farmers make good money. They have a house bigger than mine, a nice motorcycle, a refrigerator, an air conditioner, a TV, a satellite dish, a computer for their kids, and a high speed internet connection. Not bad for a rice farmer. But he couldn’t do that on one rice crop a year. He can do it on three, thanks to the Communists. But the time for Communism is over in Vietnam, and the people very much agree on that. Someday, their government will catch up. And it’s happening already, albeit slowly. You just can’t find good Communists anymore in Vietnam. As the old ones die off, the new ones that replace them want a modern capitalist society. As they say, change arrives in a hearse.
June 20th, 2009 at 3:14 pm
Will, given that we are still recovering from a war you have cheered for years, you really have a lot of fucking nerve complaining about other people’s murders.
The recent truck bomb represented another 20+ victims of the foreign policy you wanted. Thanks Fuckwit, how many dead before you shut the fuck up?
Your hate filled ideology is right this minute killing people. What the fuck is wrong with you that you have no shame?
June 20th, 2009 at 3:16 pm
Yeah, but fostert, they don’t have Will Allen’s gift of “freedom” if you do that. No, the right thing to do isn’t to let the evil communists make life better, the right thing to do is to follow Will Allen’s prescription of “bomb them for their own good.” Sure, that was done long enough to kill a million of them, but what’s a million dead compared to freedom?
Isn’t that right Will?
June 20th, 2009 at 3:17 pm
@11, well if someone wrote that LBJ with Nixon killed 10 million Vietnamese, you’d probably find it objectionable, no? No? What about 20 million?
June 20th, 2009 at 3:27 pm
Hey, Stupid, how many brown people need to slave away for your comfort? You woulda’ been a full throated supporter of British consumption of American cotton in 1862 right? I can hear you now…..”Look at all the deaths in the United States! Don’t you realize that those slaves, and everyone else, is better off if they remain slaves?”
Why don’t you drive down to Starbucks and buy yourself a latte? Really, it’ll help soothe your preening nerves!
June 20th, 2009 at 3:29 pm
Nope, abb1, I wouldn’t.
June 20th, 2009 at 3:29 pm
“the new ones that replace them want a modern capitalist society”
To put that in perspective, the people thought they wanted ice cream, karaoke, and Coca Cola. And the Communists gave them that. But it turns out they also wanted refrigerators, TV’s, and the internet. And the Communists gave them that too. But the people are realizing now that they want something much more valuable: freedom. Eventually, the Communists will give them that too. Even the Communists don’t like Communism anymore. I met two Communists Party officials and both of them hated the Communists. They were only in it for the real estate deals.
June 20th, 2009 at 3:31 pm
“Sure, that was done long enough to kill a million of them”
Make that three million.
June 20th, 2009 at 3:33 pm
@17, in that case, what’s the point of citing a number? And yet you link a page with a whole bunch of numbers.
June 20th, 2009 at 3:34 pm
jeeze louise you guys are tedious
June 20th, 2009 at 3:37 pm
It is in the same Princeton history on economic history that Greg Clark’s book was.
That should say “economic history series.” The link to the series is here:
http://press.princeton.edu/catalogs/series/pehww.html
June 20th, 2009 at 3:37 pm
Then what is the fucking point?
June 20th, 2009 at 3:39 pm
abb1, one can make a correction without objection via a sarcastic remark, which impugns the reputation of the person one thinks has made an inaccurate estimate. Some of the people who make the larger estimates for Stalin’s death tolls are people who suffered from Stalin’s murdeous activities. It’s really obnoxious to associate them with McCarthy. Clear enough?
June 20th, 2009 at 3:41 pm
@18, you got this completely backwards. Refrigerators, TV’s, and the internet is exactly what everybody wants. ‘Freedom’ is just something all of them (communists, anti-communists, and all the rest of them) tell you that you already have.
June 20th, 2009 at 3:45 pm
Brad,
It doesn’t strike me as at all implausible, given that they are looking at the period ‘1950 through 1988′. Centrally planned economies tend to be very effective at going through the early stages of industrialization (producing lots of producer goods) and then relatively poor at managing an already developed economy (producing mostly consumer goods). Thus many centrally planned economies tended to grow faster than the market economies during the 1950s and 1960s and slower during the 1970s and 1980s. Naturally we remember what we are closer to in time, so most people’s lasting impression of the eastern bloc is of stagnation. But I’ve seen other studies that conclude what Matt’s source do: that over the entire postwar period as a whole, centrally planned economies did not do too poorly on average. Of course there were _some_ centrally planned economies that did terribly, e.g. North Korea. And one of the most successful communist states of all, Yugoslavia, wasn’t really centrally planned at all. (Yugoslavia did have the fastest economic growth rate in the world for about 15 years).
As for Argentina vs. Poland, I think even a lot of hardline anticommunists would say that in a purely economic sense, Poland did have better economic policies. Whatever your views on capitalism vs. socialism, certainly incompetent, corrupt and inflationary capitalism is ‘worse’ than relatively competent socialism.
June 20th, 2009 at 3:47 pm
Fostert,
Just curious….is there actually _no one_ you met in Vietnam who still held some of the old socialist/communist ideals? And if the answer is no, then do you think that will change if Vietnam, or the global economy as a whole, go through a protracted economic crisis?
June 20th, 2009 at 3:47 pm
Re: It doesn’t even strike me as remotely plausible.
It does if you’re take into acount the fact that Eastern Europe was rebuilding from severe destruction during the war, while the other countries mentioned were not (not even the UK, where war damage was fairly minimal). This is simply the Broken Windows fallacy on a large scale.
Re: Oh, and the 10 million number – where does it come from, some Joseph McCarthy speech or something?
10 million is an upper bound figure but it is not out of the ballpark. Stalin was much less anal in his record keeping than the Nazis were, so the tallies of his tyranny are more guesswork. But it’s well accepted that several million people perished in the Holodomor of 1932-33. Denialism about this appalling event should be as socially unacceptable as Holocaust denialism.
Re: But from 1975 and 1980, central Vietnam went from one rice crop a year to three. All it took was an irrigation system.
And no doubt the end of a long-running war that had had a hugely disruptive effect on agriculture while preventing any major infrastructure projects from getting off the ground.
June 20th, 2009 at 3:48 pm
Will Allen 24: sorry, but that’s nonsense.
June 20th, 2009 at 3:49 pm
Economies that developed rapidly and the primary method:
1930s Germany – Fascist
1930s Sweden – Socialist
1930s USSR – Communist
Post WWII Japan – Fascist
Post WWII S. Korea – Fascist
Post WWII Taiwan – Fascist
Post 1980 China – Communist moving to mixed
1800s England – Capitalist
Post Civil War US – Capitalist
June 20th, 2009 at 3:52 pm
“bomb them for their own good.”
Needless to say, the Vietnamese people disagree with that attitude. They suffered hard under those bombings. Yams used to be part of their diet, but no longer. Yams were the only crop that could survive a napalm strike, so that’s all they had during the war. Now, they won’t eat them because it just brings back bad memories. They want dog with rice now. They mostly eat chicken, pork and tofu, but when they really want to style, dog is what they want. German Shepard is apparently the prized breed. They ain’t eatin’ yams anymore.
June 20th, 2009 at 3:55 pm
Sure, abb1, it’s nonsensical to say that one should refrain from saying that people who make a high estimate of Stalin’s murders are McCarthyite in nature, no matter that some of those people actually suffered from Stalin’s policies. Sure.
High estimator of Stalin’s murders = McCarthyism. Got it. Thanks for your penetrating insights.
June 20th, 2009 at 3:56 pm
Denialism about this appalling event should be as socially unacceptable as Holocaust denialism.
I find aggrandizing equally tasteless. Especially when people aggrandize crimes of the official enemies while minimizing, whitewashing, or rationalizing similar crimes committed by politicians they like.
June 20th, 2009 at 3:58 pm
Mr. Abb1,
You will not find many people further Left, in an economic sense, than me. And you won’t find many people (in the U.S.) with more sympathy for at least some socialist and communist governments or with more dislike for the way the Cold War was conducted. But the 10 million figure is at the low end of the estimates for Stalin’s death toll (numbers more typically run around 20 million). This was a man, remember, who could and did send people off to slave-labor camps for life for clocking in late to work.
Stalin was simply a genocidal, and power-hungry tyrant, to an almost demoniacal degree, whatever his successes in the economic arena. No one can reasonably dispute that. And few people do, not even the hardest Leftists. Read Souvarine.
June 20th, 2009 at 3:58 pm
Matt, you are aware of the basic fact that it’s easier to expand a smaller baseline statistic, aren’t you? The reason Eastern Europe’s rate of growth from 1950 looks good is that the baseline economic number of those economies was about zero in 1945, due to that’s where the war was fought.
Ditto for USSR Growth, World War I and the chaos following it pushed down its baseline number, making growth a more impressive stat.
June 20th, 2009 at 3:59 pm
“And if the answer is no, then do you think that will change if Vietnam, or the global economy as a whole, go through a protracted economic crisis?”
The answer is no. I’ve never met an old school Communist there. But I don’t see them going through a crisis. They are still a mostly agrarian society and rice is their big export crop. They are the world’s largest exporter of rice. When times go bad, you cut down on some things, but rice isn’t one of them. And rice is worth a lot more now. They will survive pretty easily. Certainly much easier than what they’ve survived through before. They are the toughest people in the world, their is no need to worry about them. If we have a worldwide nuclear holocaust, the cockroaches will be wiped out by the Vietnamese.
June 20th, 2009 at 3:59 pm
Fostert,
When you say yams, do you mean what Americans call yams (which are really sweet potatoes), or do you mean the long tubers (true yams).
True yams are in the Dioscoraceae family and quite distinct from sweet potatoes (in the morning glory, or Convulvulaceae family).
June 20th, 2009 at 4:01 pm
Mr. Abb1,
DOn’t be silly. 10 million deaths under Stalinism is the low end, not an ‘aggrandizement’.
June 20th, 2009 at 4:02 pm
High estimator of Stalin’s murders = McCarthyism. Got it.
It’s not? What is it, then? Why cite a fake, obviously inflated number; what could possibly be an innocent reason?
June 20th, 2009 at 4:03 pm
“When you say yams, do you mean what Americans call yams (which are really sweet potatoes), or do you mean the long tubers (true yams).”
Good question, and I don’t really know, the Vietnamese refuse to eat them anymore, so you won’t see them in the market. I’m guessing the true yams, but historical and translation issues make that difficult to verify.
June 20th, 2009 at 4:04 pm
I think Abb1 is going to refer specifically to deaths in the Ukraine, where 10 million may be a high figure. One can certainly debate the number of Ukrainian murders without making insipid remarks which imply that any person who holds to the higher figure is possessed by McCarthyism.
June 20th, 2009 at 4:08 pm
“DOn’t be silly. 10 million deaths under Stalinism is the low end, not an ‘aggrandizement’.”
10 million is low end for just the purges. There were probably as many killed outside the specific purges. I go with a 25 million number for Stalin’s reign. And that’s probably conservative. Regardless, nobody killed more people than Stalin. Ever.
June 20th, 2009 at 4:09 pm
Gee, I dunno, abb1 what could possibly result in someone coming up with a figure which you think is obviously inflated, other than being an adherent to the views and motivations of an alcoholic Senator from Wisconsin who sought a cudgel with which to beat his domestic political opponents in the United States? Hmmmm…..I’ll really need to contemplate that mystery!
June 20th, 2009 at 4:13 pm
DOn’t be silly. 10 million deaths under Stalinism is the low end, not an ‘aggrandizement’.
Totally anecdotal, but my great-grandfather – a kulak – died in the late twenties.
My grandfather had something like 10 or 11 siblings. By 1953, when Koba died, he had something like 1 or 2 left. You can’t really blame that on the Reich, considering that my family was in the part of the Ukraine that actively supported the invaders. And you can’t really claim it was from reprisals after the war, since my great-grandmother was the only member of the family convicted, and she got sent east of the Urals.
Something killed almost my entire family between 1929/30 and 1940.
Our money is on the Holomodor, seeing as I have no record of any of my grandfather’s brothers serving in the Red Army.
My grandfather, mind you, was the youngest son, and he was born in 1919.
10 million may be too high for the induced famine of the early thirties, but for the entire decade of the kulak extermination campaign? That’s overwhelmingly accurate. Furthermore, Stalin is basically known to have killed something like 10 million *excluding* the Ukrainian debacle.
You realize, abb1, that over 1% of the entire Soviet population was under arrest, at any given time in the 30s and 40s?
Frankly, if you think that 10 million is aggrandizement, I’ve got a useful four letter word for you, and you’re full of it.
June 20th, 2009 at 4:18 pm
“They are the toughest people in the world”
And by the way Hector, the second toughest people in the world are the Indians. You should be very proud of your heritage. I’ve always said that you could drop an Indian anywhere in the world with a dime in his pocket, and he’ll send his kid to medical school. The Vietnamese would do that, but they send their money back to Vietnam. And for good reason, Vietnam is rapidly becoming a very beautiful and successful country.
June 20th, 2009 at 4:20 pm
When you’re arguing with abb1, you need to step back and ask yourself to examine the choices you’ve made to go so wrong.
June 20th, 2009 at 4:21 pm
Greg, my heart goes out to you and your family. The Ukranians have faced some really nasty shit. About as bad as the Cambodians.
June 20th, 2009 at 4:21 pm
And by the way Hector, the second toughest people in the world are the Indians. You should be very proud of your heritage. I’ve always said that you could drop an Indian anywhere in the world with a dime in his pocket, and he’ll send his kid to medical school. The Vietnamese would do that, but they send their money back to Vietnam. And for good reason, Vietnam is rapidly becoming a very beautiful and successful country.
Unfortunately, if you dropped a Ukrainian in a similar situation, he’d not only survive, but he’d probably become the head of the largest organized crime syndicate in the country. Or the head of that country’s security services.
What a fucking waste.
June 20th, 2009 at 4:31 pm
Sadly, Greg, that is all too true. But they are tough people too. Yeah, what a waste. But they play some good hockey.
June 20th, 2009 at 4:34 pm
Someone once asserted to me that a victim of Nazi mass murder suffered worse than a victim of Stalinist mass murder, because the former often had the knowledge that his murderer was trying to kill everyone in the victim’s religous group, while the latter was just being killed for their socioeconomic status. As if some father, while eating what was yesterday their child’s forearm, was saying to himself, “Golly, I sure do feel better knowing that Stalin isn’t going to try to kill ALL of the Ukrainians!”
June 20th, 2009 at 4:36 pm
Well, this pretty much confirms what we already know, Stalinism was great at building a massive number of tanks, ZIL trucks and MIGs ranging from dubious to okay quality but it’s horrible at the simple stuff, like wheat for bread or dairy products for butter. And that’s way the Soviet Union fell, not some eloquent speech by Reagan.
June 20th, 2009 at 4:37 pm
As for the Ukrainian being the head of the largest crime syndicate, well, he’d have to beat the Chinese to do that. And the Chinese are scary enough to scare even the Ukrainians. The Chinese mobs have been around for a long, long time. They run Thailand, and even the King won’t interfere with that. Nor will any of the mobs from Russia, Ukraine, or any Eastern European country. The Chinese are the one people those mobs won’t fuck with.
June 20th, 2009 at 4:42 pm
I’ll also note that calling famine deaths “murders” and attributing them all to a single individual (no matter how powerful) sounds a bit conspicuous; it’s obvious that you’re making an ideological point (just like Mccarthy), not describing an event.
Not that anything is wrong with that, but I must say I don’t like it much in this case. Think about it: tens of millions of people in India died from famines while they were under colonial control of the UK. I’ve never heard anyone describing those deaths as ‘murders’ and declaring that some British PM murdered so many millions of people.
June 20th, 2009 at 4:43 pm
There really isn’t any doubt that the industrialization of the Soviet Union between WWI and WWII was extremely fast and on a huge scale.
And it has been also argued since the Russian economy was already expanding over a long-term rate almost as fast as modern China before the revolution, the success of Stalinist economics was just a continuation of prosperity that had been briefly interrupted by the chaos of the revolution.
Not endorsing the theory, but I find it interesting. I think that much of Soviet Russia was in fact a continuation of Imperial Russia, only under the guise of a hammer and sickle rather than the double-headed eagle if you look at some of the behavior and policies of the USSR. Stalin was a Georgian, but he sure out-russianed the Russians.
June 20th, 2009 at 4:49 pm
Forstert:
And it’s not like the French hadn’t heard the idea, Ho Chi Minh was quite vocal about it in the 1930s. I generally favor capitalism, but sometimes it takes a government program to get something done. How would you get a few thousand landowners to agree how to build the system?
I hate finding myself defending Capitalism, but that’s more the fault of colonialism than a decentralized capitalist system. The French were more interested in rubber plantations and mines than feeding the Vietnamese people, they knew that if a couple died from starvation, they could get more from where they came from, that was their mindset.
June 20th, 2009 at 4:54 pm
Numbers don’t tell much.
The Soviet Union may have been producing lots, but it produced lots of shit. And a horrifying number of despairing alcoholics who would die very young.
June 20th, 2009 at 4:54 pm
That’s absolutely right, Kropotkin. That’s why I described the French system as being feudal.
June 20th, 2009 at 4:59 pm
“Think about it: tens of millions of people in India died from famines while they were under colonial control of the UK. I’ve never heard anyone describing those deaths as ‘murders’ and declaring that some British PM murdered so many millions of people.”
I do declare those to be murders and I do think that British colonial rule in India was ruthless, to put it mildly. But I’ll agree, few people would support my assessment.
June 20th, 2009 at 5:04 pm
“But I’ll agree, few people would support my assessment.”
Well, except for a billion Indians. But nobody listens to them.
June 20th, 2009 at 5:07 pm
Well, fostert, I claim that it’s very often a mistake to declare PMs, presidents, and chairmans “murderers”. There are objective, evolutionary reasons for industrializations, revolutions, colonial conquests, civil wars; a particular leader doesn’t make much difference. It is what it is, things go the way they do.
June 20th, 2009 at 5:10 pm
“I’ll also note that calling famine deaths “murders” and attributing them all to a single individual (no matter how powerful) sounds a bit conspicuous;”
It’s not conspicuous when you napalm people’s crops right before harvest. If a famine is intentional, the deaths have to be counted as deaths from military action. And when a military kills an innocent person, there’s only one word for it: Murder.
June 20th, 2009 at 5:17 pm
“Well, fostert, I claim that it’s very often a mistake to declare PMs, presidents, and chairmans “murderers”.”
Fair enough, but it’s about intent, and in India, the intent was to kill anyone who disagreed with British Rule. Those deaths didn’t just happen by accident. There was an intent to kill. And that’s murder.
June 20th, 2009 at 5:21 pm
Body counts are always an interesting game, if odd and more than slightly grotesque. Especially since few people would deny all of these people are murderers, but there’s always some sense that you always need to maximize the number of your opponent.
I don’t know how, though, someone can claim Stalin killed more people than anyone. I only think that’s possible if you count the Ukrainian famines as notches on his belt. But if you count those, how can you ignore the famines under Mao? Which killed an order of magnitude people more than the Ukrainian one. (Question 2: How do we evaluate capitalism? If we’re counting famine as a murder instrument, shouldn’t people dying because of lack of access to medical care, food, etc. be under the belts of liberal democratic states?)
Also, isn’t it better to work in percentages than absolute number? Because if you’re in a country of 500 million and kill 50 million or so you look pretty badass, but if you’re in a country of 4 million and kill 2 million, you had less to work with and managed to do so much more.
June 20th, 2009 at 5:22 pm
Yes, if you kill a person or bomb a city, that’s murder. But when millions of people move from fields to factories, or the level of contradictions in the society goes too high, civil war begins, millions die – that’s history. Not necessarily someone’s fault.
June 20th, 2009 at 5:24 pm
Fostert,
I’m Indian (by ethnicity), and certainly while there were many atrocities under British rule, most notably the famine of the 1940s in Bengal, I would still defend the record of British rule in the aggregate, and compared to the alternatives. As the Sikhs said in 1857, better the British than the Muslims.
I don’t know the word for true yams vs. sweet potatoes in Vietnamese, but true yams are a lot longer and larger. If you heard any French spoken there, “ignames” as opposed to “patates douces.”
Mr. Abb1,
It wasn’t just the Ukrainian famine- there was the Moscow Trials, the Red Army Purge, the Communist Party purges, the deportation of the Chechens and other suspect nationalities, the mass executions of ‘collaborators’ in Poland and other occupied countries, the deaths in the Siberian labor camps, and many more. Adding all of those together, the total is probably much higher than 10 million.
Don’t get me wrong: I believe in socialist ends and values, and I think that Stalinism was not all that the Soviet Union was about, and indeed that after the death of Stalin the Soviet Union did much to better itself. I am not a Cold Warrior, mind you. But I think regardless of our ideology, honesty dictates that we acknowledge that from about 1925 to 1955 the Soviet Union was very close to being a hell on earth.
June 20th, 2009 at 5:26 pm
“But when millions of people move from fields to factories, or the level of contradictions in the society goes too high, civil war begins, millions die – that’s history. Not necessarily someone’s fault.”
It depends on why they moved. If they moved because someone naplamed their crops, that isn’t a voluntary move. At that point, they are refugees from military action. It’s not just something that happens. It was intended to happen.
June 20th, 2009 at 5:27 pm
Fostert,
And regarding the 1940s, while terrible things were happening to Indians under British rule, I would update the Sikh’s comment above: better the British than the Japanese Co-Prosperity Sphere.
June 20th, 2009 at 5:38 pm
“I would still defend the record of British rule in the aggregate”
Well, I can’t really speak about what happened in South India, but the Mughal rule in North India had decayed into something purely pathetic. They needed to go, but the British weren’t the people to take them out. The British were nothing but barbarous people with nothing but disdain for the people that lived there. They behaved only slightly better than they did in Australia. And in Australia, they used the locals for target practice. In India, there were just too many people to kill, so they just did their best to offend them and keep them down. Compare India to Thailand (which was never colonized). Call me in fifty years when India has come close to reaching Thailand’s prosperity. But by then, Thailand will still be fifty years ahead. So what did the British do for India besides keeping them behind?
June 20th, 2009 at 5:41 pm
I know Hector, but we were talking about Ukrainian famine specifically, read the post. I believe the number cited most often is 5 million, including political repression and everything.
June 20th, 2009 at 5:49 pm
And seriously, Hector, look in Asia at the countries that were colonized and those that weren’t. Which are doing better? How’s Japan doing compared to Malaysia? How’s Thailand doing compared to Laos? How’s Korea doing compared to Burma? It’s pretty fucking obvious that the colonial powers did nothing but destroy the countries they took over. The locals would have done a better job. And when they were given a chance, they did do a better job. Fuck the British, and fuck the French and Portuguese too. The Asians can manage their own affairs, thank you. The only colonial country in Asia that can even function is Vietnam. But as I said, they are the toughest people in the world.
June 20th, 2009 at 5:54 pm
Fostert,
Let’s put it this way. Assume that someone like Nehru, and everything he represented- modern education, infrastructure, industry, socialism- was the desired endpoint, what India needed in 1947. Could there possibly been a Nehru if there hadn’t been a Clive? In other words, was colonialism, and the destruction of the traditional monarchies and the caste system that it involved, necessary to allow forward-thinking progressives to emerge? Was it necessary for the British to destroy the old system (brutally and pridefully, let’s not whitewash it) in order that India could be liberated from the past?
Karl Marx said somewhere that British colonialism in India was a brutal and cruel necessity in order for the country to advance, and 150 years later I’m not certain that he was wrong.
June 20th, 2009 at 5:58 pm
And note, Fostert, I’m NOT saying that British colonialism was a good thing in 1947. I’m saying it was- well, not a ‘good’ thing, but a _necessary_ thing, in 1857. By 1947 it had served its purpose (breaking the power of oppressive traditional structures) and was well overdue to be swept away.
June 20th, 2009 at 6:25 pm
“Was it necessary for the British to destroy the old system (brutally and pridefully, let’s not whitewash it) in order that India could be liberated from the past?”
India can never be liberated from the past. The past is right in front of them. It cannot be escaped, but it can be built upon. There were some great rulers in India, and some beautiful and peaceful societies. I’d highlight Akbar and Asoka. Both are multi-religious people.
Asoka was ruthless in battle when he was a Hindu, and he conquered many lands, but then he freaked out. He became a Buddhist and declared to there would be no more war. Kind of convenient when you already control everything, but I do believe his conversion was genuine.
Like Asoka, Akbar inherited a huge empire from his father and expanded it big time. Akbar was was a Muslim, and he enforced a concept that anyone can worship in any way. And the royal court had scholars from every religion debating ethics. He really was a visionary. Although the bar was pretty low then, as Europe was burning Jews at the stake. That was apparently the Christian thing to do at the time. But all religions have had their times when they strayed from the path they built. But Christianity has had an usually hard time staying on the path. They became the Romans as soon as they could. And they forcibly converted entire continents. Most of the Christians of the world are descendants of people who were forcibly converted to Christianity by an army. Historically, it has not been a religion of choice.
June 20th, 2009 at 6:40 pm
“but a _necessary_ thing,”
First of all, what’s with the underscores? I hate that. But there was nothing necessary about the Raj. Every country that just developed on their own did better than India under British rule. So why is the Raj so great?
June 20th, 2009 at 6:45 pm
“But Christianity has had an usually hard time staying on the path.”
I meant to say ‘unusually’ but oddly enough, the ‘usually’ works just as well. No religion ever stays on their path, and arguing about how far off you are doesn’t make any sense.
June 20th, 2009 at 6:46 pm
I’m pretty sure Colombia grew more in the 1950-1988 period that Czechoslovakia did.
June 20th, 2009 at 6:51 pm
The best look at Soviet development I have ever seen is Robert Allen’s Farm to Factory: A Reinterpretation of the Soviet Industrial Revolution – looks at growth in USSR in a way (I don’t think) anybody had before.
June 20th, 2009 at 7:14 pm
John M,
Alec Nove’s writings are good too. He’s an anti-Soviet socialist, who favored a ‘market socialism’ along the lines of Tito’s Yugoslavia, so he may not appeal to strong enthusiasts of capitalism.
Fostert,
Comparing India to countries that weren’t colonized is a tricky thing. First of all, your sample size is tiny. There are a handful of countries east of Persia that were never colonized. Thailand is doing pretty well, Japan is of course a developed country (and was already quite developed by 1800 I might add). Nepal and Afghanistan were also never colonized, and are substantially poorer than India. Why compare India to Thailand when you could compare it to next-door Nepal instead?
By the way, the parts of India that were ruled _directly_ by the British (as opposed to ruled by their indigenous princes with relatively little British interference) tend to be more developed than the princely states.
But look, I don’t really disagree with you, economically. British rule was a disaster for India economically, and India’s economy stagnated under the British. I do think, however, that British rule accomplished some good things in the social sphere. They helped undermine the caste system and end its worst excesses (as well as other forms of oppression- against women most particularly).
I don’t think you fully appreciate how evil the caste system was. India in 1750 was a country where a Brahmin mob could beat to death a Dalit because his _shadow_ fell across one of them. It was a country where an entire Dalit village could be razed to the ground with women and children inside, just because one of the Dalit young men had ran off with a high caste girl. This was a country where too many people (certainly not everyone, but some) would rather see a Dalit man die of thirst rather than drink from a Brahmin well. I don’t blame this on Hinduism, I blame this on the evil that resides within every human heart, and that in India inspired people to create the caste system. This was one of the most diabolic systems of oppression ever to darken the face of the earth. And if the iron heel of Britain was necessary to break the back of this serpent so that it could never strike again, then I consider that well worth the cost.
June 20th, 2009 at 7:44 pm
Looking more broadly at the experience of the communist bloc under communism, over the period 1950-1988, no East European country grew as slowly as the UK, Mexico, Switzerland, Colombia, the US, Australia, India, New Zealand, Peru, Chile, Argentina or Venezuela.
I suspect this claim depends on taking commie statistics at face value which is a mistake.
June 20th, 2009 at 9:02 pm
Coming into this a bit late, but I want to second fostert’s assertion about the Vietnamese. Having not really known much about them, visiting the country was amazing. You see a lot of resourcefulness and beauty in the country. The countryside was great, but going through some areas, you see hills of only grasses and any tree over a certain height is dead due to the poisons still in the ground.
Also, this from #44:
Isn’t that like half the incarceration rate of the US? Not saying anything one way or the other, but…
June 20th, 2009 at 9:42 pm
Even considering caste system, the british were still a pretty massive net negative on the Indian subcontinent. They largely sucked the place dry, and I do mean dry.
Also, it bears mention that criticizing local groups for their local barbarousness has been a very common tactic for colonial authorities. Colonials have even *encouraged* barbaric behavior–for example, in Dar Al Islam, they typically tried to authenticate “local” patterns of behaviors, when those local traditions were abandoned by the natives in favor of Islamic law for fairly good reasons…
June 20th, 2009 at 9:42 pm
What amazes me about Will “I loves me some dead brown people so I can keep my 400 pound ass in comfort” Allen is that he somehow blames me for the “slavery” of the very people he not only enjoys having enslaved but also promotes murdering “for their own good.”
No, Will, you have no evidence that I am any more guilty of abusing resources than you are. Which means that we start out basically even until we get to the part where you promote mass murder in order to assure your continued access to those resources.
June 20th, 2009 at 10:13 pm
Comming in late . . .
Waitaminute, is Fostert the guy who was declaring a couple of weeks ago that modern India was “hell on Earth?” The dudes a nationalist whack, Hector, don’t waste too much time on him.
Also, this notion . . .
Most of the Christians of the world are descendants of people who were forcibly converted to Christianity by an army. Historically, it has not been a religion of choice.
. . . was bigoted, racist nonsense the first time he tossed it into the forum, and it still is. Any time you care to offer actual evidence for this bizarre notion, Fostert . . . ?
As bloody-handed large-scale ego-maniacal despots go, Akbar was better than most. But leaders who weren’t narrow-minded, self-indulgent thugs were pretty rare in India after he died. The British, who were a hard, cold, rational lot of shopkeepers when they weren’t putting on airs about their genteel cultural superiority, understood this. They outmaneuvered the better Indian rulers whenever they appeared and broke them, generation after generation, while subverted the more common decadent royals with great skill. A long, frustratingly shameful record for the Indian aristocracy.
No matter how many nasty names you want to call them, the Brits won in India, again and again, against native regimes with overwhelming advantages in manpower and financial resources, the latter advantage usually meaning that both sides were armed with similar weaponry. I would be fascinated to read a decently neutral study on how they managed it, and how they managed to rule such a vast, alien population without mass destruction and slaughter on the scale we associate with other conquerers: Romans, Russians, Chinese, Spanish, Aztecs, Turks and Mongols, etc. The population of the sub-continent seem to rose at a rate respectable for pre-industrial societies in the 19th and 20th Centuries. The British must have been doing something right.
Of course, the British also prevented India from taking full part in the Industrial Revolution, something they didn’t do with the “White Dominions.” A great evil, indeed, which is why India finally got rid of them. Sensibly, India kept their European notions of secular, rational, middle-class government, democracy, and science-based education. They seem to be doing quite a bit better with them than most of the post-colonial states.
June 21st, 2009 at 12:08 am
Shah8,
I fully acknowledge that the British ’sucked the place dry’ ecconomically. My claim was that British rule was good for India in a socio-cultural sense, not an economic sense.
You should note that whitewashing the crimes of non-Western cultures has been a very common tactic for postmodernist cosmopolite liberals, historically. What’s next, will we hear an argument that the worshippers of Molech were just misunderstood nice guys. That this penchant should extend to apologies for the caste system is deplorable. Are you seriously going to dispute that the caste system was an inhuman outrage?
And you haven’t answered my question. Nehru, the man who more than anyone else made modern India, was steeped in British culture, British education, British notions of parliamentary rule, and British ideas about evolutionary socialism. Is it possible to imagine a Nehru without a Clive?
Midland,
Fostert is wrong on some issues, I think, but he’s unfailingly a smart and interesting correspondent. I much enjoy having these discussions with him.
June 21st, 2009 at 1:29 am
Economies that developed rapidly and the primary method:
1930s Germany – Fascist
Huh? Germany didn’t develop rapidly in the 30s. Germany developed rapidly from 1860 to 1900 under a protectionist capitalist system. It recoverd from the depression under Hitler, but basically just by massive Keynesian military spending.
June 21st, 2009 at 2:48 am
Hector
Super thread. Insightful and well reasoned arguments. Kudos, sir.
===========
In the Normblog interview Matt was asked “what is your favorite piece of political wisdom.” He responded with the old Tip O’Neil quote “all politics is local.” I wouldn’t mind if Matt, at some point, elaborated on this a bit.
It seems to me that all politics are increasing national in scope, and this blog, for the most part, represents that notion. I would argue that there is almost a consensus on the Left, reflected by a majority of Matt’s posts and a high percentage of the commentariat, that believes that a certain level of Capitalism is necessary for an efficient economy but that it must be tightly controlled at the national level. And smart, forward looking centralized planning is the key.
I honestly believe there is a model -a microcosm- of efficient governance of a nation-state that has never been fully explored. It is the National Football League -a perfect synthesis of Capitalism and Socialism is ever there was one.
The right blend of Capitalism and Socialism is what everybody seems to be all looking for, and I think the NFL figured it out almost 40 years ago.
June 21st, 2009 at 3:58 am
As if British system isn’t a caste system. Read some Dickens for chrissake…
June 21st, 2009 at 4:08 am
The ocean doesn’t want me today. It never does, that’s why it’s not here. I think of those beautiful waves trying to suffocate me. But there are no waves here. And when I do go to her waves, she still won’t kill me. I try hard with my body surfing, but she still won’t drown me. What’s it going to take? Nothing apparently. The ocean never wants me.
June 21st, 2009 at 6:11 am
Do you know what Will Allen calls it when a state sponsored band of terrorists plants hundreds of bombs in a capitol city in order to assassinate the leader of a sovereign nation?
Bringing freedom.
Now, normal people would call this terrorism, but Will Allen sees through that kind of nonsense. After all, someone killed by American soldiers is a much happier about it than if they had been killed by Saddam Hussein’s minions.
On the other hand, if you are an insane promoter of mass murder that makes perfect sense.
June 21st, 2009 at 8:19 am
Re: Especially when people aggrandize crimes of the official enemies while minimizing, whitewashing, or rationalizing similar crimes committed by politicians they like.
Stalin, Mao and Hitler are in the absolute stratosphere for their death counts. The only other figure in all of history who comes close to them is Genghis Khan. No one in the US, the UK, France, Spain, the Netherlands etc comes remotely near the tolls these genetlemen racked up. There’s no “aggrandizement” in recognizing this fact.
Re: Why cite a fake, obviously inflated number
The number is neither fake nor “obviously inflated”, though it is an upper bound of reasonable estimates for this atrocity. Educate yourseldf. Here’s a link to start: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukrainian_famine
Re: But when millions of people move from fields to factories, or the level of contradictions in the society goes too high, civil war begins, millions die – that’s history. Not necessarily someone’s fault.
Hmm, most of the First World managed to move from field to factory without filling mass graves. Some even liberalized their political system as they went down the road rather than embracing tyannies which made their former despotic rulers look like saints.
Re: the Mughal rule in North India had decayed into something purely pathetic. They needed to go
They were pretty much already gone. I think there was a rump Mughal state still when the British began expanding in India in the later 18th century, but it was not even a ghost of the empire of Shah Jahan and Aurangzeb.
Re: Most of the Christians of the world are descendants of people who were forcibly converted to Christianity by an army
This is nonense. Forcible conversions are rare in Christian history. In fact I cannot think of a one. The usual pattern in the early Middle Ages (and even in Constantine’s Rome) was for the ruler to convert, whether sincerely or for political reasons, and then most of his followers would do so for reasons of personal loyalty, which counted for much in that era. At lower levels the practice of Christian charity, which had no Pagan analogue, motivated people. And let’s not ignor the possibility that Christianity offered people something which the old pagan cults did not so its triumph may have been as natural and simple as the fact that iron replaced bronze as the metal of choice a millennia earlier.
June 21st, 2009 at 9:17 am
JonF,
Yes, the Mughal state was pretty much gone as a real power when the British began expanding. The major power at the time was the Marathas over most of the north, and various smaller rulers in the south. Later on the Sikh Empire emerged and gave the British a good run for their money.
June 21st, 2009 at 10:32 am
JonF, the number is certainly inflated, at least doubled. Read your own link, unless it’s changed dramatically since I read it last.
Also, (and I am repeating myself) it seems incredibly childish (and tendentious) to attribute major tribulations in human history to the will of some (even powerful) individuals. Where the conditions exist individuals will turn up.
June 21st, 2009 at 12:11 pm
@85
You could say that Germany developed a second time. The Rhineland was neutralized and reparations were severe. And Germany started with civilian projects like the autobahn and the Volkswagen.
The same second development applies to Japan.
June 21st, 2009 at 12:50 pm
JonF is wrong about forcible conversions. Since I can come up with too many examples off the top of my head, I will stop here.
June 21st, 2009 at 1:51 pm
Re: JonF is wrong about forcible conversions. Since I can come up with too many examples off the top of my head, I will stop here.
Nice to claim I am wrong and then refuse to provide examples. At least I gave Abbe1 a link on the Holodomor. Come on– let’s have it. It’s put up or shut up time.
And so that we are on the same page what I am talking about are instances where people were given a literal choice of conversion or death. Not cases where some Christian king conquered a non-Christian region (as in the New World and Australia) and the Christian religion ended up with exclusive rights to evangelize the population, perhaps with some carrots and sticks added as motivation.
June 21st, 2009 at 2:45 pm
Seriously? What about the Inquisition forcibly converting Jews? I thought that was common knowledge.
June 21st, 2009 at 2:57 pm
It’s pretty convenient to leave out examples of when some Christian king conquered a non-Christian region.
It’s also mightily convenient to leave out examples of conversions to different sects of Chrisitanity.
I don’t really waste time arguing with people who converse in bad faith.
Like I said, anyone could counterexamples that would lead to pretty much the bulk of Christianity. Even if you were to dismiss events outside of Europe, the deeds of Clovis and Vladimir and their like had considerably more violence than you are intimating.
I’ll stay up here in the meta, thank you.
June 21st, 2009 at 4:13 pm
Re: It’s pretty convenient to leave out examples of when some Christian king conquered a non-Christian region.
You can include such cases if they are examples of the conquered being told “covert or die”. That’s how I define a “forced conversion”, where people are given no choice except death. And as I said I cannot think of any instances which qualify. And to be fair, I cannot think of any such examples that apply in the history of Islam either. Both religions have indeed spread often by conquest, that much I admit. However since both religions require volutary conversion for the salavtion they offer to be effective, they have generally motivated people with various carrots (charity, social advancement etc.) and sticks (higher taxes, discriminatory laws). That’s unjust I will firmly agree, but it isn’t “forced conversion”.
June 21st, 2009 at 5:41 pm
JonF,
Much as I hate to side with the hipster yahoos, I have to disagree with you here. Official Christian teaching generally forbade conversion of nonbelievers by force, but for a good many centuries it allowed the use of coercion, even unto death, against heretics. And since the borderline between a heresy and a simple non-Christian religion isn’t always easy to define (Is Manichaeanism a Christian heresy whose adherents may be coerced, or a different religion whose adherents may not be? Is Islam? Is Mormonism? Is Mandaeanism?) and since most people at odds with the church in Europe were in fact heretical Christians, not Hindus or Buddhists, that was cold comfort for them. ‘Convert or die’ was certainly used against Christian heretics.
As I said, I’m not aware that the official teaching of any Christian body ever sanctioned conversion by force, and from a quick google search it would appear that initially Spanish policy in Peru was to persuade rather than coerce. However, later on there were efforts to forcibly extirpate the indigenous religions of South and Central America, whether or not they were theologically sanctioned. The fact that the Spanish may not have ever said, ‘convert or die’ is again, cold comfort: they used pretty much every manner of coercion short of that.
I’ll agree with you that, for the most part, in Africa there was no coercion.
June 21st, 2009 at 6:04 pm
JonF speaks well on the topic of conversion.
In general, even in multi-relgious societies, the religion of the leading family or faction is either imposed on the upper classes or the upper classes are pressured to convert by political and economic incentive. The peasants are usually ignored, unless their religious beliefs are considered a political threat. Mass conversion usually takes place over centuries, unless there are major wars with relgious elements (like the Crusades, the wars of the Reformation, the dynastic wars in China) which lead to general suppression of religions considered a threat to the political establishment.
Examples of regions where massed force conversion to Christianity occurred are not hard to find: the Spanish colonial empire, the Saxons conquered by Charlemagne, the Balts under attack by the Teutonic knights.
On the other had, the Roman Empire became about 1/3 Christian while Christianity was still an outlawed faith. Pagan beliefs lingered on in various regions for almost a thousand years. Judaism survived despite various pogroms. Most of northern and eastern Europe converted to Christianity gradually after their leaders were converted by missionaries, not conquerers. Christianity was spread almost entirely by missionary work in North America, Africa, and Asia.
Islam, which was originally tied to a specific cultural group (Arabs) was originally less likely to trouble about converting the lower classes once it secured complete polticial power in a region. There is evidence that as late as the 12th Century, the largest “Christian” country in the world was still Egypt, 500 years after the Arab conquest. I am told that conversion pressure and re-settlement became more intense in the Islamic world after Latin Christian Europe mounted an unexpected counter-attack (the Crusades) that made Islamic leaders in the Middle-east less confident about their internal security. I expect the back and forth between Islamic and Hindu rulers in India and Islamic, Pagan, and Christian rulers in Africa caused similar bouts of oppression.
Overall, there is no general statement that cannot be disputed on this topic. Other than the one that almost any general statement is likely to be inaccurate.
June 22nd, 2009 at 6:38 am
Re: Convert or die’ was certainly used against Christian heretics.
I was speaking about converting people from non-Christian religions. And even on the heresy matter, this was sporadic. The Inquisition was formed only in the 13th century, operated effectively in only a handful of countries and had no analogue in eastern Christendom.
June 22nd, 2009 at 7:19 am
The Inquisition was formed only in the 13th century, operated effectively in only a handful of countries and had no analogue in eastern Christendom.
Further, as I noted, the Inquisition’s heavy hand was most felt in support of political crises, most notably the Castilian monarchy’s attempts to impose political “purity” on Spain.
Among the eastern churches, the Orthodox regime of Muscovy, bitterly conservative as it was, had large subject populations of Moslems, Catholics, Lutherans, Jews, and Eurasian pagans, their political status always inferior but their religious status protected by law.
June 22nd, 2009 at 7:44 am
JonF,
Larison, who’s extremely pro-Byzantine, acknowledges that there was one exception to the ‘No death penalty for heretics’ in the East, the Manichaeans. And since ‘Manichaean’ was an extremely broad catch-all term of abuse for a whole slew of different heresies, I would suspect that a fair number of people did get executed. I do acknowledge that there was no equivalent of the inquisition or the anti-heretic crusades in the East, and that the East appears to have been much more tolerant of religious minorities (Muslims, Armenians, Assyrians, Jews, Mandaeans, etc.) within its borders than the West.
It was still bad enough though- not to mention that being denied civil rights is a pretty effective incentive to convert. That’s why so many people converted to Islam under Muslim rule- as you point out the means were usually subtler than ‘convert or taste steel’, but no less coercive for all that.
June 23rd, 2009 at 12:40 am
Death penalty for Arian Christian?