The lesson– privatize the ag sector first, then industry– was lost on the ex-Soviets in Russia, who have yet to allow real land ownership in the countryside. As a result Russia continues to have about 70% of the population living in dire poverty, even as Moscow-Babylon incomes now average close to $10k per year (with 25+ FOrbes list billionaires as well, more than in any other city aside from NY).

Clearly capitalism won’t remain pinned to the coast. It has long hence started to move inland. How things will play out among the Red Army’s vast holdings, the holdings of the corrupt party officials, and the individual capitalists is far from clear. No one there believes in “communism” but I believe a great many do believe in keeping the peace. I’m very skeptical about the civil war scenario. I was just reading a new book on the Roman Republic. There isn’t all that much difference between a Marius and a Chavez. Plus ca change. But China is different, it’s not a place that has produced civil wars, historically, and I see no particular reason why it should start now. The big danger comes as the result of the one-child policy, namely, the buildup of way too many young males for whom there cannot be any brides. Bad news all around. Far more likely that the rulers will steer all that unsatisfied male energy into war with Taiwan. They will bide their time until the US and Japan are sufficiently weak or distracted.

Anyway, I agree that China will have a lot of problems integrating as a national market economy. Civil war in ten years is a bold guess. But with all the posturing over Taiwan, I suppose they are having problems keeping everyone together. It is very hard to find writing on China that is attentive to all the regional divides. I’d love to see more if anyone can help.

There’s no need to keep calling racial preferences “affirmative action” either.

About the blogosphere and diversity, aren’t bloggers and their commenters more gender-progressive than the MSM, since they tend to use uni-sex bathroom facilities at “work”? Girls and boys, women and men are all allowed in my bathrooms. Also, if women are inherently more verbal and more stereotyped as typist-secretaries, isn’t it a blow for affirmative action that men might be more blog prolific? Good on them for expressing themselves, I say! Empathy/ sympathy is next for men to master.

The second type was owned by a consortium of local party officials and actually had an employment office with a line. The manager told me that they turned over low skill employees at a rate of about 25% per month because the wages were so “good” (a little over $30 per month) that workers would leave after 4 to 6 months because they could afford to set up some sort of business at “home”. I suppose that’s possible but I think that they really just liked to turn over the workforce at the unskilled level. Fewer ribs showing. I’d say that these fellows might have been peasants coming in for higher wages. Maintenance was poor with a lot of decent machinery not running for “lack of parts” – actually I believe that it may have been lack of labor skilled enough to run the machines.

The third type was owned by “overseas Chinese” and was world class in operation. The manager told me that they only used local labor, paid them around $45 per month and had close to 0 turnover. Workers were well fed and much better dressed than in the other two plants.

All three plants were within an hour of Xiamen and were technically “competing” with each other but they actually shared work. There’s no question that peasants have been drawn to Xiamen in the hopes of higher pay. I’m betting China has a civil war within ten years. Those fellows taking their money back home to set up their own shops are going to create a lot of pressure. The Chinese can’t keep capitalism pinned to the coast.

And of course there is Mr. Dickens who immortalized the worst cases existing in 19th century England. He was literally writing about the worst cases, ( and making stuff up) but today again we view his novels as nothing less than literary reportage and believe that they describe typical living conditions at the time. But Dickens, for all practical purposes, created not a window on but a caricature of a society.

Whenever we talk about human lot at some point in history it is wise to consider all the circumstances. That of course does not mean that we should ever stop striving for better lives for all of us.

i think you hit the nail on AA. The idea of applying it to the blogosphere is a perfect example of over-dependence on a once good idea whose time has largely past (in America), at least I hope so.

My explanation of the left’s hatred of industrial capitalism was rather limited. However, I would take issue with the argument that all early factory owners were inhumane. Some were idealists of various stripes who built what were to their minds model towns and factories. It’s been a while since I read the historical debates, but I don’t think we ever had a strong consensus on the degree to which peasants were pushed or pulled into factories. (Precisely because the question was politicized by intellectuals generally resentful of, and hence blinkered to, reality.) Some were obviously pushed off their land, but many saw urban factory life as having advantages over the hard work, social inequities and limited freedoms of the countryside – single women, for example. And of course, all over the world today people are still moving to the cities.

I remind you just in order to ask about your (once briefly mentioned) experiences in Chinese factories: do you think the workers are there because they can make more money than on the farm, or because they have little choice?

You are right. Just as there is a case sometimes for certain agricultural and buisness subsidies in times of emergencies they mutate from wise policy into sacred dogma and if you try to alter them or phase them out you are branded as the destroyer of family farms, even though the bulk of these subsidies go to mega corporations, or a racist when it comes to AA. Government welfare, for the rich or the poor, is a hard addiction to crack.