maoist economics

[Chris Burford <cburford@xxxxxxxxxx>]

I welcome Gina referring to some statistics on Chinese
agriculture in our disagreement on "maoist economics".
It is a non-antagonistic way of trying to deal with our
contradiction.

However they refer to total grain output. They do not refer
to agricultural productivity *per worker*. That is the
crucial question. That is why it is both true that from the
foundation of the People's Republic of China there were
tremendous achievements on many fronts and it is also true
that surplus labour is pouring off the land now to fuel the
accumulation of capital in new industrial enterprises.

I accepted Gina's challenge, and took her on her home
ground: Red Flag Canal.  But the law of value, which cannot be
totally controlled now until we start controlling the economy
on a global scale, says that to labour for two years
to quarry largely by hand, wells on a dry stone hill, is
lacking in exchange value.

Heroism cannot compensate for this.

There is a lot written about the law of value under socialism.
My understanding is that maoist economics tried to defy this.
Does anyone have further information?

Chris B, London.



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