[PEN-L:27351] Re: RE: Re: RE: Re: Re: Re: TV and income disparity

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

Jim, it is too much trouble to reply to your posts. When I select "reply"
from my Eudora mail, I am presented with a glob of text that is too much
trouble to sort out. I urge you to contact a computer programmer at your
university to help you sort things out.

At 10:03 AM 6/28/2002 -0700, you wrote:
>     I wrote:
>>> so the political monopoly of the North Korean communist
>>>party and its planning efforts had nothing to do with it?
>> Kim il and his son had nothing to do with it?    & protection from them.
>But I asked if it's possible that the self-appointed and self-perpetuating
>elite (or ruling stratum) of NK helped to create those problems.   His
>response is to quote some fine stuff by Marty Hart-Landsburg that I've read
>before, that says up to 1965 or so, NK was doing really well (at least
>according to the standards of industrialization, ignoring issues of
>democracy and the like). That doesn't say anything about how NK did after
>1965 or so. It also doesn't deal with the relative role (or non-role) of
>internal and external forces.   It's important to remember that by the
>standards of industrialization, the old SU did pretty well until 1965 -- or
>even later (1980?). So it would be a mistake to generalize from events
>before 1965. The old SU didn't collapse simply due to external factors (US
>imperialism). (If one believes that only external forces are crucial, then
>it's one step away from the bogus Reaganite claim that US militarism under
>their hero forced the SU to spend a lot of resources on the military,
>causing its collapse.) No, there were internal problems: the planning
>system didn't work very well, while the top-down nature of political,
>social, and economic rule squelched the flow of information and
>instructions from the rank and file workers and consumers that might have
>made the planning system work better. When the old SU ran out of a surplus
>of labor-power and when raw materials became less abundant, suddenly the
>limits of the system became more severe. It's these internal problems that
>allowed and encouraged the self-appointed internal elite to decide to bring
>in capitalism...  (Among other things, the old SU was pretty good at
>producing the same item in large quantity, but never good at producing
>high-quality goods. I remember when I was discussing the import of a Soviet
>nuclear power plant into Cuba with some Cubans in the late 1970s
>(pre-Chernobyl), the argument of mine that hit the hardest was that I
>doubted the quality of the Soviet product.)   By analogy, if we want to
>understand NK's problems, it's a mistake to simply look at external causes,
>especially when the people there don't seem to have any control over their
>government: remember that power corrupts unless those who wield it are held
>responsible democratically. (How else could the leadership of the country
>be passed to Kim il Sung's son, in imitation of a feudal lord?)   Jim
>Devine   Louis quotes:
>> Martin Hart-Landsberg, Korea: Division, Reunification, and U.S.
>> Foreign Policy:
>>
>> During the first two decades after division, many Koreans, perhaps
>> even a significant majority, viewed North Korea more favorably than
>> South Korea. Reflecting this sense of superiority, it was the North,
>> not the South, that made repeated offers for greater North-South
>> communication and exchange. The South Korean government not only
>> rejected these offers, it refused to make any counterproposals.
>> Perhaps even more revealing of Korean impressions of the two Koreas is
>> the fact that in 1960, some 450,000 Koreans living in Japan officially
>>"" as compared with
>> 165,000 that selected the South. This difference is even more
>> impressive because the great majority of Koreans living in Japan were
>> originally from southern Korea. Between 1959 and 1962, approximately
>> 75,000 Koreans left Japan to permanently settle in the DPRK.
>>
>> One reason that North Korea was able to confidently approach the South
>> and attract tens of thousands of Koreans from Japan was its economic
>> superiority. While South Korea struggled with recession and high rates
>> of unemployment during the 1950s, the North Korean economy generated
>> full employment and rapid growth. And even though new state-dominated
>> relations of production enabled the South Korean economy to grow
>> rapidly over the following decade, the North Korean economy continued
>> to outperform it in terms of employment, income distribution, and
>> growth.
>>
>> North Korea's strong economic performance was the result of a thorough
>> state-directed transformation of Northern economic and social
>>"" Korea, it did so in an
>> uneven way. In 1940, approximately 85 percent of Korea's heavy
>> industry was in the north while 75 percent of the country's light
>> manufacturing and almost all its agricultural production was in the
>> south. The division of the country left each side with half an
>> economy. The North Korean leadership responded to this historical
>> legacy by implementing a number of sweeping reforms which radically
>> changed workplace, gender, and ownership relations. It also launched a
>> series of economic plans-one-year plans in 1947 and 1948, and a
>> two-year plan covering 1949 to 1950--that were designed to create a
>> more balanced and self-sufficient economy. These initiatives were both
>> popular and effective.
>>
>> North Korea's economic progress was temporarily interrupted by the
>> Korean War. At the end of the war, power production was only 26
>> percent of what it had been in 1949, fuel 11 percent, chemicals 22
>> percent, and metallurgy 10 percent. Agriculture was also in chaos
>> (primarily because of the massive U.S. bombing of the country's dikes
>> and dams).
>>
>> Almost immediately after the armistice, the North began an impressive
>> rebuilding program, pursuing what Stewart Lone and Gavan McCormack
>>"possibly the most centralized and planned economic development
>>" A three-year plan was produced
>> for 1954 to 1956 that gave priority to the development of heavy
>> industry. The plan's targets were actually met some six months ahead
>> of schedule. A five-year plan was then drawn up covering 1957-1961,
>> and its targets were also met ahead of schedule. According to the
>>"a
>>" A new
>> seven-year plan was launched in 1961, with the aim of modernizing the
>> country's newly created industrial base, as well as establishing more
>> technologically advanced industries.
>>
>> In the postwar period, the state also completed the task of
>> eliminating private ownership of productive assets. Agriculture went
>> through a process of collectivization which proceeded in stages
>> between 1953 to 1958, a process largely driven by the destruction left
>> by the Korean War, which made the pooling of limited resources and
>> labor necessary for survival. Lone and McCormack describe the
>> collectivization experience as follows:
>>
>>"Despite the urgency of the task of capital accumulation for
>> industrialization, the regime seems not to have squeezed the farmers
>> too hard, allowing them to experience gradually rising living
>> standards and reduced taxation levels, until the tax on the
>> agricultural yield was eliminated entirely in 1966. Irrigation,
>> terracing of hillsides, mechanization (large scale production and
>> allocation of tractors) and chemicalization (use of fertilizers) were
>>"
>>
>> Urban handicraft as well as small-scale, privately owned enterprises
>> involved in commerce and industry also went through a similar process
>> of collectivization. By August 1958, the North Korean leadership,
>> basing its assessment on the extent of state ownership, announced that
>>"the socialist transformation of the
>>"
>>
>> North Korea's economic achievements were truly remarkable.
>> Agricultural output grew by an average of 10 percent a year during the
>> 1950s and 6.3 percent during the 1960s. By the end of the 1960s, the
>> government was able to declare that the country had achieved food
>> self-sufficiency. Industrial growth rates were even more noteworthy.
>> Gross Industrial Product in 1956 was almost three times what it had
>> been in 1953; in 1960 it was almost 3.5 times what it had been in
>> 1956. As a result, industry's share of national income rose from 16.8
>> percent in 1946 to 64.2 percent in 1965. And by 1960, machine-building
>> had become the country's largest industrial sector. These achievements
>> were so remarkable that even Western economists began to speak of the
>>"" In fact, according to the economist Joan
>>"All economic miracles of the postwar world
>>"
>>
>>
>>
>> Louis Proyect
>> Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org
>>

Louis Proyect
Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org