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A faithful reader who knows I am interested in socio-political things sends this little book report blurb on Shenfan: The  Continuing Revolution in a Chinese City:

The author points out that while peasants are learning to cooperate with one another in planting and growing crops, the bureaucratic overseers try to outdo one another by falsely reporting yields - proving that the competitive spirit can’t be obliterated but only moved from place to place. 

So, in one village, X reports that “his people” produced 200 catties per mou (I’ve forgotten what those translate to in bushels per acre), and then Y says “my people” produced 300.  And pretty soon, someone is reporting 10,000 catties per mou. 

This is all well and good until all the cadres (bureaucrats) start harassing “their people” to produce to at the enormously inflated level, making all the peasants feel inadequate and depressing the collective to the point that it can’t function.

At which point, because this is socialism/communism, the state steps in and sends the peasants the grain they need but are no longer producing because they can’t meet unreasonable quotas.  

Making them totally dependent on the state – which works only for a short time, because since all collectives are producing less, the state has less to distribute.

 Forcing the peasants back into growing crops the way they used to – on their own land privately.

 And:

Mao wanted to put his trust in “the peasants,” believing that they could learn to cooperate in order to benefit both themselves and the state as soon as they could be taught that it was in their best interest to do so.

 But Mao was opposed by others at the top who didn’t trust the masses at all and felt that they needed to be controlled and managed (exploited) and that power had to remain in the hands of an elite few.  Unfortunately, these elite few were full of pie-in-the-sky ideas about farming and production, and when their projects fell apart, they simply blamed the masses for the failure.

It occurs to me that  whether we are talking socialism or capitalism, true progress is made when those at the bottom cooperate to improve their own lives (bigger yields, more food on the personal table) while supplying the state with the excess, so that the state can, in turn, build roads, keep the peace, improve technology, and the like. 

And that neither system flourishes when an elite loses touch with the grassroots.

This post from John Hood is a winner:

A Joke And What It Reveals   [John Hood]

Speaking in front of a huge audience at downtown Raleigh rally yesterday, Barack Obama threw off a humorous line about John McCain’s accusation that the Obama tax plan is redistributionist:

McCain has “called me a socialist for wanting to roll back the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans so we can finally give tax relief to the middle class,” Obama said. “I don’t know what’s next. By the end of the week he’ll be accusing me of being a secret communist because I shared my toys in kindergarten.”

Ha ha.

Only, in this passage Obama revealed precisely why he is vulnerable to such charges: he can’t seem to tell the difference between a gift and a theft. There is nothing remotely socialistic or communistic about sharing. If you have a toy that someone else wants, you have three choices in a free society. You can offer to trade it for something you value that is owned by the other. You can give the toy freely, as a sign of friendship or compassion. Or you can choose to do neither.

Collectivism in all its forms is about taking away your choice. Whether you wish to or not, the government compels you to surrender the toy, which it then redistributes to someone that government officials deem to be a more worthy owner. It won’t even be someone you could ever know, in most cases. That’s what makes the political philosophy unjust (by stripping you of control over yourself and the fruits of your labor) as well as counterproductive (by failing to give the recipient sufficient incentive to learn and work hard so he can earn his own toys in the future).

Government is not charity. It is not persuasion, or cooperation, or sharing. Government is a fist, a shove, a gun. Obama either doesn’t understand this, or doesn’t want voters to understand it.