Re: Economic revolutions

[Yoshie Furuhashi <furuhashi.1@xxxxxxx>]

Justin wrote:

> In a message dated 10/7/00 9:07:41 AM Eastern Daylight Time, lnp3@xxxxxxxxx
> writes:
> << Inequality is higher now as well. Socialists are not interested in economic
> growth for the same of economic growth. We are interested in social
> justice. >>
>
> Not all socialists:
>
> "What is a 'fair distribution'? Do not the bourgeois assert that the present
> day distribution is 'fair'? And is it not, in fact, the only 'fair
> distribution on the basis of the present-day mode of production? . . . . HAve
> not also the socialist sectarians the most caried notions about 'fair'
> distribution?" --Marx, Critique of the Gotha Program

Nowhere in "Critique of the Gotha Program" and other works, however,
did Marx say that if economic growth had to be achieved through
increasing unemployment & income- & wealth-polarization, so be it.

Aside from Marx, distribution of social powers can be much more
important than economic growth for the well-being of people,
especially of women.  Consider the experience of Kerala:

*****
<http://csf.colorado.edu/seminars/sustecon/Douthwaite.feb98/0025.html>


Economic growth benefits

Wed, 18 Feb 1998 13:04:18 -0800
Will Alexander (walexand@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx)

Richard Douthwaite asks us: "Whether economic growth is still proving
beneficial in wealthy countries"?

I don't have good evidence to answer this question. I will offer
evidence for an easier question: Does economic growth prove
beneficial in resource poor countries? And in order to put population
growth in perspective in this question I will define "resource poor"
as Earth resources per capita available for exploitation. There is
some evidence of benefits of economic growth in India while India has
experienced 3% economic growth. However, if you look for characterics
I prefer to call "beneficial", such as long life, low infant
mortality, high levels of education, and below replacement birth
rates, we can find these only in the state of Kerala (29 million).
And in Kerala the economic growth rate experience is 0.3%. I don't
wish to argue that economic growth is not beneficial. However, as the
population of the entire Earth approaches the condition known in
India throughout the 20th century, that is, a condition of resource
poverty per capita, the experience of India shows that economic
growth is not beneficial.

--
William M. Alexander  30 El Mirador Court,
San Luis Obispo, CA 93401
Phone/Fax 805 594 1839
walexand@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
http://www.jadski.com/ferp/   *****

*****   Population: Delusion and Reality

AMARTYA SEN

September 22, 1994

...A useful contrast can be drawn between China and India, the two
most populous countries in the world. If we look only at the national
averages, it is easy to see that China with its low fertility rate of
2.0 has achieved much more than India has with its average fertility
rate of 3.6. To what extent this contrast can be attributed to the
effectiveness of the coercive policies used in China is not clear,
since we would expect the fertility rate to be much lower in China in
view of its higher percentage of female literacy (almost twice as
high), higher life expectancy (almost ten years more), larger female
involvement (by three quarters) in the labor force, and so on. But
India is a country of great diversity, whose different states have
very unequal achievements in literacy, health care, and economic and
social development. Most states in India are far behind the Chinese
provinces in educational achievement (with the exception of Tibet,
which has the lowest literacy rate of any Chinese or Indian state),
and the same applies to other factors that affect fertility. However,
the state of Kerala in southern India provides an interesting
comparison with China, since it too has high levels of basic
education, health care, and so on. Kerala is a state within a
country, but with its 29 million people, it is larger than most
countries in the world (including Canada). Kerala's birth rate of 18
per 1,000 is actually lower than China's 19 per 1,000, and its
fertility rate is 1.8 for 1991, compared with China's 2.0 for 1992.
These low rates have been achieved without any state coercion.32

The roots of Kerala's success are to be found in the kinds of social
progress Condorcet hoped for, including among others, a high female
literacy rate (86 percent, which is substantially higher than China's
68 percent). The rural literacy rate is in fact higher in Kerala-for
women as well as men-than in every single province in China. Male and
female life expectancies at birth in China are respectively 67 and 71
years; the provisional 1991 figures for men and women in Kerala are
71 and 74 years. Women have been active in Kerala's economic and
political life for a long time. A high proportion do skilled and
semi-skilled work and a large number have taken part in educational
movements.33 It is perhaps of symbolic importance that the first
public pronouncement of the need for widespread elementary education
in any part of India was made in 1817 by Rani Gouri Parvathi Bai, the
young queen of the princely state of Travancore, which makes up a
substantial part of modern Kerala. For a long time public discussions
in Kerala have centered on women's rights and the undesirability of
couples marrying when very young.

This political process has been voluntary and collaborative, rather
than coercive, and the adverse reactions that have been observed in
China, such as infant mortality, have not occurred in Kerala.
Kerala's low fertility rate has been achieved along with an infant
mortality rate of 16.5 per 1,000 live births (17 for boys and 16 for
girls), compared with China's 31 (28 for boys and 33 for girls). And
as a result of greater gender equality in Kerala, women have not
suffered from higher mortality rates than men in Kerala, as they have
in the rest of India and in China. Even the ratio of females to males
in the total population in Kerala (above 1.03) is quite close to that
of the current ratios in Europe and America (reflecting the usual
pattern of lower female mortality whenever women and men receive
similar care). By contrast, the average female to male ratio in China
is 0.94 and in India as a whole 0.93.34 Anyone drawn to the Chinese
experience of compulsory birth control must take note of these facts.

The temptation to use the "override" approach arises at least partly
from impatience with the allegedly slow process of fertility
reduction through collaborative, rather than coercive, attempts. Yet
Kerala's birth rate has fallen from 44 per 1,000 in the 1950s to 18
by 1991-not a sluggish decline. Nor is Kerala unique in this respect.
Other societies, such as those of Sri Lanka, South Korea, and
Thailand, which have relied on expanding education and reducing
mortality rates-instead of on coercion-have also achieved sharp
declines in fertility and birth rates.

It is also interesting to compare the time required for reducing
fertility in China with that in the two states in India, Kerala and
Tamil Nadu, which have done most to encourage voluntary and
collaborative reduction in birth rates (even though Tamil Nadu is
well behind Kerala in each respect).35 Table 2 shows the fertility
rates both in 1979, when the one-child policy and related programs
were introduced in China, and in 1991. Despite China's one-child
policy and other coercive measures, its fertility rate seems to have
fallen much less sharply than those of Kerala and Tamil Nadu. The
"override" view is very hard to defend on the basis of the Chinese
experience, the only systematic and sustained attempt to impose such
a policy that has so far been made....
<http://www.finance.commerce.ubc.ca/~bhatta/ArticlesByAmartyaSen/amart
ya_sen_on_population.html>   *****

While Kerala's growth rate pales before China's ("for two decades
since December 1978, Deng's reform program made China's GNP grow on
an average rate of 9% per year" at
<http://www.cosmopolis.ch/english/cosmo5/postmao.htm>), women in
Kerala are better off than women in China.  And conditions of many
women worsened under China's turn to the market and during the period
of economic growth:

*****   ...There is an opening gap between the poor and the rich in
China. Elizabeth Perry reveals "an explosion of collective resistance
in the form of tax riots, industrial strikes, and street
demonstrations. In the rural areas, an increasing gap is found
between the prospering managers and workers in rural industries and
farmers who work in the fields. In addition, there have been growing
economic and social disparities between urban and rural areas [...]",
and between the coastal areas and the inland provinces.

As a result of the lack of the social security safety net of the Mao
era for people in the unemployed and nonstate sector, women and the
elderly in the countryside suffer most. The anthropologist Arthur
Kleinmann estimates that China has the highest per capita rate of
suicide among women in the world....
<http://www.cosmopolis.ch/english/cosmo5/postmao.htm>   *****

Yoshie