Employment Policies, 14th Jan., 2011.

Jacques Rueff, a student of Ludwig von Mises and Financial Minister of France, wrote an article on the dominance of Keynesian thought in the West.

[T]he new theory has not merely a philosophical significance. It leads to rules of action, notably in the struggle against the chief malady of modern society - chronic unemployment. Indeed, it is this aspect of it - the doctrine of "full employment" - that has been most influential. Explaining the evil and providing the means of curing it, it has brought great comfort to the world. As a remedy for unemployment, it quickly expanded beyond economic science to become an instrument of government. It has led to the publication of white papers in England and Canada and to a proposed law in the United States, the Murray Full-Employment Bill, which undertake to bind governments to its prescriptions. The new French constitution obliges the government to present each year "a national economic plan designed to provide full employment of labor and the rational utilization of material resources." The Economic Committee of the United Nations is called "Committee on Economic Questions and Employment." Finally, the International Conference which is to deal with the problem of international trade and whose first session was held in London in October-November, 1946, is the Conference on Commerce and Employment.

Central Planning in India 1950-1980, 13th Jan., 2011.

Nicholas Stern has an article, written for the Royal Economic Society, about post-war economic planning. F. A. Hayek is mentioned.

The balance of opinion in the I940S and I950S appears to have been in favour of substantial state intervention, particularly in the investment process. The leading example for the discussion was India (China was little discussed as information was very scarce and Western economists were not involved). Disenchantment with planning increased from the early I960s through the I970s and I980s. This formed a central part of what Little (I982) describes as the 'neoclassical resurgence'. This shift of the balance of views was based on the apparently heavy hand of planning in countries such as India and the rapid advance of countries which, it was argued, followed more laissez-faire policies. The outstanding growth performance of the so-called 'four dragons', South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore was particularly influential. It was argued that the achievements of countries which both encouraged response to prices and which made an effort to 'get prices right' belied the arguments of the structuralists who had emphasised the sluggishness of economic reactions and the ineffectiveness of a decentralised price system. The stultifying effect of large-scale planning was, it was suggested, exemplified by India.

Post-War Businesses and Keynesianism, 12th Jan., 2011.

H. W. Arndt has an article about Keynesianism's effect on British businesses after World War II.

If there is general agreement that world prosperity is a condition of British prosperity, there is even more striking unanimity on the method of approach to that goal: all five reports accept the "under-consumption" theory--so recently rank heresy in the eyes of business men and economists--in one form or another (the London C. of C. in terms reminiscent of Major Douglas). The root of the trouble has been the gap between potential and effective consumers' demand, the deficit in our "monetary mechanism" for the distribution of purchasing power. If one may judge by these reports, British business has been more than adequately converted to "Keynesianism".

Radical Economics in America, 11th Jan., 2011.

Martin Bronfenbrenner has an article about the rise of radical economics in America in the 1960 and 70s, right when China was beginning to doubt its own socialist system.

Only five years later, in late 1969, the end of ideology had itself ended. A thou- sand-member Union for Radical Political Economics (U.R.P.E.) had not only been organized by graduate students and junior practitioners, but had staged a "counter- convention" at an annual meeting of the American Economic Association and disrupted a few sessions of its prestigious parent body [29, 1970]. Several academic institutions, including Harvard, had curricula in radical economics. At a few of them the radicals controlled the entire economics program.' Advertisements for the revision of America's most popular undergraduate economics textbook-a mouthpiece of establishment economics through seven editions-now assured us that "Complacent Establishment Economics is the Enemy!" The change is extraordinary. The sleeping dogs have not only awakened, they have awakened with extra teeth and extra sets of vocal cords. [...]

Radical economists see the existing economic order as hopelessly infected with a number of evils, "to such an extent that no part of it can be extracted which is not contaminated" [5, 1969, p. 53]. Further, they are pessimistic about the possibility of significantly remedying these evils by democratic, representative, or parliamentary measures because both the mass media and legislative campaign funds are controlled by an "establishment" of satisfied persons and groups with great interrelated wealth and power.

Keynes and Socialism, 10th Jan., 2011.

According to Austin Robinson of the Royal Economic Society:

He had made himself rich, it is true, in a Liberal world; but he had nothing to fear in Socialism; he would have been a perfectly loyal, happy and financially care-free Governor of the Bank and the Fund, or whatever might come his way, in a Socialist world or in any other. His objectives were included in their objectives. His political Liberalism was seldom obtruded in later life. I do not know (and I doubt if anyone knows) what his final views would have been upon the present moves towards nationalisation. Neither, I suspect, wholly unfavourable nor wholly favourable. Yet it was natural to him, in trying to make a framework within which the world economic system might develop, to think of it in the essentially Liberal terms of markets and prices and discounts and borrowing rates. And when the General Theory was interpreted as an argument for closing national economic systems, or his pupils expressed scepticism whether interest rates could ever provide a wholly perfect and effective working link between the volume of saving and the volume of investment in full employment, Keynes' fundamental belief in the Liberal economy was apt to find itself in conflict with his passionate care for his objectives.

Keynes in World War I, 9th Jan., 2011

Thomas F. Cooley and Lee E. Ohanian make the case that "One clear justification for this balanced-budget policy was that it advanced his social objectives, a view he made explicit in the preface and on the first page of How to Pay for the War:"

I have endeavored to snatch from the exigency of war positive social improvements. The complete scheme (tax policy)now proposed . . . embodies an advance toward economic equality greater than any which we have made in recent times. [P. iii]

[I] propose a plan conceived in a spirit of social justice, a plan which uses a time of general sacrifice, not as an excuse for postponing desirable reforms, but as an opportunity for moving further than we have moved hitherto towards reducing inequality. [P. 1]

Hard and Soft Authoritarianism, 8th Jan., 2011.

According to Edwin A. Winckler's article:

Three relationships regulate the transition from hard to soft authoritarianism: between institutionalization and participation, between external and internal factors, and between formal and informal arrangements. The most important domestic political relationship, occupying most of this article, is that between institutionalization and participation. In Huntington's already classic formulation, maintaining political order in changing societies requires maintaining a balance between the capacity of elite state institutions and the volume of mass political mobilization. [3] As to how this formulation applies to specifically authoritarian regimes, the first position to enter the comparative politics literature assumed that social modernization accompanying the early light-industrial stages of economic development would produce a crisis of demand for increased mass participation, leading to democratization. [4] A second position then argued that the elite institutions of contemporary modernizing authoritarian regimes are pre-adapted to contain such mass demand for participation, particularly if they have robust ruling party organizations. In some accounts this stability is reinforced by consensus among elites on the need for a strong state to mobilize capital and steer development during the late, expensive, heavy-industrial phases of economic development. [5] However, a third position soon proposed that tensions between institutional elites themselves, partly occasioned by the need to adjust to rapid socio-economic change, might still produce the breakdown of authoritarianism and the possibility of a transition to democracy. [6]

Building Socialism, 7th Jan., 2011.

According to Michael Lindsay's article:

The explanation of the actual Communist choice is almost certainly that "Socialism," defined in Communist terms, is a more important objective than productivity or raising the standard of living. It is possible that this priority for "Socialism" comes partly from a deeper motivation of securing power for the Communist Party, but the evidence can be best explained by assuming that there is also a deep-seated belief in the value of "Socialism" as an end in itself--that motivation comes from a desire to realise the vision of an ideal human society for the construction of which Communist theory is believed to offer infallible guidance. There is evidence suggesting that even the most unrealistic parts of this vision of "Socialist" society have an influence which sometimes worries the Communist leadership. For instance, people who argue that a Socialist society should have a moneyless economy and say that, "Economic accounting is the legal right of the bourgeoisie," were criticised in a fairly recent article which suggests that they were numerous enough to have appreciable influence in the Party. [3] And similar influences at the very top levels of the Party-Mao's hope to see a Communist society before he died-may have been important in producing the communes programme.

Early 1970s Economic Growth, 6th Jan., 2011.

According to Hung-mao Tien's article:

Aside from the changes occurring at the level of the national elite, the overall socio-economic spectrum is also being transformed. By many yardsticks, Taiwan's economy is rapidly modernizing and its growth is impressive. From 1961 to 1973, the annual increase in actual national income averaged about 9-5 per cent 10 and that for per capita income, close to 7 per cent. [11] With a per capita income of over U.S.$500 in 1974, the island is rapidly developing into an industrial consumer society. Latest government figures show that, in 1974, for every 100 families there were 10.48 colour television sets, 71.29 black-and-white sets, 54.9 refrigerators, and 25.35 clothes washing-machines. [12] If private ownership of automobiles has significance, there were 86,535 registered cars in 1974 as compared with 4,635 in 1964, an almost 20-fold increase in a 10-year period. [13] Rapid economic development in Taiwan also means an increasing level of industrialization and of commercial activities. In 1973 the value of industrial production increased to 37.9 per cent as a proportion of all sectors of the economy, as compared with 17.9 per cent in 1952, while the share of agricultural output decreased from 35.7 per cent in 1952 to 15.5 per cent 20 years later. [14] A Kuomintang Central Committee report in April this year revealed that the number of corporate firms with annual sales over U.S.$2-5 million (N.T.$100 million) had increased from 265 in 1971 to 480 in 1973, almost doubling in two years. [15]

Early Taipei City Council Elections, 5th Jan., 2011.

According to J. Bruce Jacobs' article:

The official rules for the Taipei City Council election stated that "candidates, when giving political opinions at meetings, may not transgress the Constitution, injure national interests, oppose the policy of Counter-Attacking the Chinese Communists and Resisting Russia, slander the Government or make charges against any group, defame or insult any other candidate; those who do, besides losing their qualifications as candidates, will be severely punished according to law.

The Limitation of Offspring, 4th Jan., 2011.

Ludwig von Mises wrote on economic development and its relation to population in his article "Ludwig von Mises on the Limitation of Offspring."

The reformers of the oriental peoples want to secure for their fellow citizens the material well-being that the Western nations enjoy. Deluded by Marxian, nationalist, and militarist ideas they think that all that is needed for the attainment of this end is the introduction of European and American technology. Neither the Slavonic Bolsheviks and nationalists nor their sympathizers in the Indies, in China, and in Japan realize that what their peoples need most is not Western technology, but the social order which in addition to other achievements has generated this technological knowledge. They lack first of all economic freedom and private initiative, entrepreneurs and capitalism. But they look only for engineers and machines. What separates East and West is the social and economic system. The East is foreign to the Western spirit that has created capitalism. It is of no use to import the paraphernalia of capitalism without admitting capitalism as such. No achievement of capitalist civilization would have been accomplished in a noncapitalistic environment or can be preserved in a world without a market economy.

The Politics of Market Socialism, 3rd Jan., 2011.

Andrei Schleifer and Robert W. Vishny have an article in the Journal of Economic Perspectives, titled "The Politics of Market Socialism."

Under all forms of market socialism, from Lange (1936) to the present, the state ultimately controls the firms, and hence politicians' objectives must determine resource allocation. Market socialists have traditionally assumed that politicians will pursue an efficient resource allocation, and only paid lip service to the idea that the state becomes "bureaucratized." They dismiss the tragic socialist experience as irrelevant because totalitarian systems are not what they have in mind. Rather, market socialists count on a democratic socialist government that pursues efficiency. The question of what such a government will maximize is therefore absolutely central to the discussion of market socialism.

Reform and Opening of China's Agriculture, 2nd Jan., 2011.

Lee Travers has an article in The China Quarterly, titled "Post-1978 Rural Economic Policy and Peasant Income in China."

A second group of policy changes, first implemented in 1979, raised agricultural purchase prices and lowered purchase quotas. The base procurement price increase in 1979 averaged 20 per cent for grain and 17 per cent over all crops. The above-quota price bonus of 50 per cent for grain and edible oil standardized that rate at two-thirds again the previous level, and a uniform bonus of 30 per cent of the base price was established for cotton. Further price adjustments in 1980 and 1981 increased the overall level of base prices by 3.5 per cent and 2.4 per cent, respectively. [5] At the Third Plenum requisition quotas were fixed for a five-year period at the 1971-75 level, though some reductions were made in 1980 and 1981. [6] With good harvests, by 1981 only about 40 per cent of grain was purchased at the base price; 60 per cent was at above-quota and negotiated prices, compared to less than 1 per cent in 1977. [7] [ . . . ]

Specialization in collective production was facilitated by an increase in rural commodity grain from the 1978 level of 1-8 mmt to over 5 mmt in 1981. [8] In 1979 communes were granted some autonomy in planting decisions, but delivery quotas and direct regulation have blocked profit maximizing cropping patterns.

In 1978 Sichuan and Anhui provinces began experimenting with a system in which small work groups or, in a few cases, households or individuals, took responsibility for a piece of land and were paid on the basis of net output. A theoretical debate over the socialist nature of the household and individual responsibility systems was resolved in 1980, when they were publicly approved. [10] By the end of 1982, 78 per cent of all teams were using some version of the household responsibility system. In most cases the household retains all output after delivering their pro-rated share of the team delivery quota and making a specified payment to the team. Teams continue to own the land, assign its use, and assign quotas. Small farm tools are owned by households, large tools may be collectively or privately owned.

The 1946 Chinese Constitution, 1st Jan., 2011.

Thomas E. Greiff has an article in the China Quarterly, titled "The Principle of Human Rights in Nationalist China: John C. H. Wu and the Ideological Origins of the 1946 Constitution."

Reading the 1946 Constitution one sees much syncretism of China and the west, but little balance between the individual and the collective. True to the spirit of Nationalist China of the 1930s, this Constitution tips that balance almost exclusively in favour of the state. [ . . . ]

The 1946 Constitution provides for protection of property, freedom of speech, [32] religion, [33] association and assembly, [34] freedom to choose residence, [35] and secrecy of correspondence. [36] It also grants familiar political rights, such as the right to vote and the institutions of initiative, referendum and recall, [37] and the right to petition the government. [38] It also enacts the institution of habeas corpus and a number of other due-process type limitations on arbitrariness in the criminal process. [39] Finally, the specifically Chinese right to sit for civil service examinations is guaranteed. [40] [ . . . ]

This positivist, legislative notion of the source of rights also leads to limits on who may exercise rights. This is the so-called "principle of revolutionary right." [43] Article 7 of the Constitution provides for equality before the law for all citizens. [44] Article 1, however, provides that "The Republic of China is a san-min chu-i [sanmin zhuyi] Republic." [45] The practice built up before 1946 was that anyone who opposed the National Revolution or the Three Principles of the People was legitimately denied his rights. [46] This continued under the Constitution. [47] This gave great power to the Kuomintang and again suggested the priority of national claims over individual claims; it also represented a serious derogation of the principle of the rule of law: it allowed the government, on political grounds, arbitrarily to define a category of citizens to whom it could constitutionally deny rights on a systematic basis.

[ . . . ] In its final version, Article 23 provided:

The freedoms and rights enumerated in the preceding articles shall not be restricted by law, except in cases where such a restriction is necessary for preventing an obstruction of the freedoms of other persons, averting an imminent crisis, maintaining social order, or promoting the public interest. [49]