Is Authoritarianism Necessary for Equality? (RE:: Keeping focus after the WTO

["Nathan Newman" <nathan.newman@xxxxxxxx>]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-pen-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> [mailto:owner-pen-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]On Behalf Of Yoshie Furuhashi
>  While many analysts focus on authoritarianism
> in some of
> >the more NICs, those countries often had a number of other factors
> >involved - especially significant land reform instituted after the end of
> >World War II.  That base of greater economic equality has been positively
> >correlated with growth rates in the post-war period. (THE ECONOMIST has
> >noted these trends at points).
>
> How can you implement "significant land reform" without an
> authoritarian state?

An interesting case is of course Kerala which, having fought through
democratic grassroots mobilization for various forms of land reform, did not
take the export-led NIC approach to GDP-led development, but instead focused
on human needs development. But the point is that democracy is not a bar to
implementing greater economic equality.

The idea that land reform and other forms of social progress only comes
through authoritarianism (a belief of both the hard-right and hard-left
justifying dictatorships of the same) has been a kind of shared trope of the
Cold War and beyond.  Of course, any non-authoritarian democratic country
that sought equality democratically was terminated -- Chile and 1968
Czechoslovakia being the paradigm cases in each camp -- thereby creating an
enforced sociological "fact."

-- Nathan Newman