[PEN-L:4619] Re: PEN-L digest 671

[dassbach@xxxxxxx (Carl H.A. Dassbach)]

Mark SElden wrote:

>I've been working recently on East Asia and it seems clear that for the
>last fifteen years there have been large, sustained gains in per capita all
>of the above which have translated into higher income and consumption,
>higher life expectancy (and not just high growth rates); moreover, the
>evidence is clear that these gains have broadly reached the countryside and
>not just the city, have extended to less dynamic regions, and to
>significant sectors of the poor and the very poor though by no means all.
>The latter issues are particularly important in light of my own findings
>(in The Political Economy of Chinese Development) that 25 years of
>collective agriculture brought virtually no income or consumption gains to
>China's rural population.)
>
This sounds either like::

1. another (veiled) reference to the currently "fashionable observation"
about "the success of capitalim and the failure of socialism."

2. a reassertion of Marx's observation  that capitalism creates the
conditions for socialism and without developed capitalism there can be no
successful socialism.


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Carl H.A. Dassbach                                   E-mail:   DASSBACH@xxxxxxx
Dept. of Social Sciences                            Phone:   (906)487-2115
Michigan Technological University              Fax:       (906)487-2468
Houghton,  MI   49931    USA