There's a natural tendency to blame Vietnamese poverty on the legacy of communism, and of course, some of that is fair. Vietnam suffers in many ways from the legacy of state-owned enterprises; things like financial markets, and financial accounting, are still novelties that budding capitalists are struggling to get the hang of. And corruption, which is such a big problem that it is actually mentioned as something that needs fixing by government officials we interview, is undoubtedly at least partly attributable to the insanities of a non-market system.
But in fact, Vietnam is mostly just poor because it's poor, just as it's always been poor--and just as the overwhelming majority of the human race has always been poor. Driving through the agricultural areas around Hanoi this afternoon, I was put in mind of a Chinese Communist propaganda film from the early 1950's, a screening of which I stumbled into one rainy London afternoon. It was, like all such films, filled with happy workers living in the soon-to-be bright communist future . . . all of them singing merrily as they reaped the many material and spiritual rewards of living in a collectivist society where no grain of rice went to feed the evil capitalist overlord.
What was surprising was not the obvious untruth of the promises, but how meagre they were. In the bright Communist future, there will be new roads . . . constructed by thousands of men digging out the hillside by hand. When the farmworkers pole out in flat boats to collect seaweed, everyone gets a brand new net. And the collectivist farm is going to have some tractors, driven by a tractor-controlling elite that (at least to judge from the plot) never marries outside the caste.
They were painting a vision of an impossibly bright future that would hardly have done for a weekend backpacking trip on the other side of the Pacific.
Communism stalled progress, but unlike in many parts of Eastern Europe, it didn't actually reverse it. And judging by the enthusiasm for education and human capital acquisition (one entrepreneur simultaneously advocated more spending on socialized medicine . . . and raising school fees so that there would be more money in the educational system) it seems likely to be a fairly temporary delay at that.
Posts with the word 'History' in the title should at least touch on it...
I'm sure thousands of years of colonialism, from China, then France, then the US, has something to do with Vietnam's poverty.
The heck with communism...I seem to recall that Vietnam was in a war of some significance. Given all that, it sounds like they are doing just peachy, and they've come through with their good nature remarkably intact.
Careful. You'll get taken off of Cato's Christmas card list.
In Leviticus 26, God promises the Jews how nice life will be if they obey him. However, even the ancient vision of heaven on earth is pretty simple. In particular, verse 10 promises "So much of the old crops will you have stored up for food that you will have to discard them to make room for the new.".
They were so focused on how wonderful it woudl be to get enough to eat - and they never even considered that the extra farmers could move to the city and produce other stuff.
I had the opportunity to spend a year in South Vietnam, mostly in rural areas, in 1971. Despite the war, there was clear evidence of entrepreneurialism. The population was manifestly hard working, smart, interested in education, etc. They were no worse off than the populations of rural Thailand, Malaysia, or possibly even Taiwan and Korea. Had the North Vietnamese not started a war they had the misfortune to win, South Vietnam today would be as wealthy as South Korea. North Vietnam, not burdened by the Kim Dynasty, would be at least as wealthy as Indonesia.
By-the-way, re a preceding post, a Honda motorbike with a board across the back and two baskets slung beneath it makes an excellent taxi for picking up farmers who live in hamlets down dirt roads and getting them to the market town with their ducks, chickens, pigs, etc.
THOUSANDS OF YEARS OF COLONIALISM??????
Are you freaking serious? So in the 1500 years (ish) since the fall of (Western) Rome, the various northern provinces of the empire have bee reorganized, depopulated several times, seen capitals rise and fall, had sewers and aqueducts destroyed and then (very belatedly) re-introduced, and seen several revolutions in agricultural technology (horse-collar, synthetic fertilizers, hybridized seeds, internal combustion tractors). But Vietnam would have been far advanced of them if not for the Chinese controlling the area for thousands of years? Just like how Zimbabwe's current famine and runaway inflation is thanks to British colonialism (of maybe 100 years) and is in no way thanks to Comrade Bob running the country since 1980.
Then, of course, there's "Nam". So 33 years on how is Vietnam doing? How does it compare to West Germany or France of 1978? How about relative growth?
So despite the desperate wishes of the Left to never have to say a bad thing about any Communist, especially a Maoist or Stalinist like Fidel, Uncle Ho, or Kim Jong Il, we still have the result that Communism is a decisive impediment to growth. Just as all politics that deny the benefits of the market or decry the freedoms of people to contract as they decide.
Hey-
Yes. I am "freaking serious" that thousands of years of colonialism has something to do with Vietnam's poverty. Centuries of domination by China, another from France, and the near-total evisceration of the countryside from bombs bombs and more bombs has something to do with Vietnam's poverty.
There are children in vietnam yet to be born who will be deformed due to the residue of agent orange.
I think the choices of the people in Vietnam have a lot to do with their current state. Now they may not have conceived of better choices based on what appears to be a somewhat stubborn, traditionalist Southeast Asian (Chinese?) mentality.
But clearly the west was confronted with as many violent threats to our society if not more so than the Vietnamese.
The fact that we overcame them and instilled something better, and not more of the same only different, says something about our cultural heritage.
I'm not sure exactly what it says however...
sam-
Oh yes. The poverty of vietnam has nothing to do with colonialism, war, famine, land reform, corrupt government. Rather, it is the stupid "orientals".
Why can't they be just like the white men?
Somehow I'd guess that vietmanese standards of living have
risen a lot in the fifteen years since Vietnam
embraced market economics and that poor as people may appear
now, circumstnances have actually improved radically.
And is advocating spending on socialized medicine
really a plus? It might be that just like here in the
U.S. (and for that matter in europe) plowing money into systems
where there's no incentive to lowers costs and in fact all the
incentives lie on the side of raising costs will just
as here in the U.S. result in ever rising curve of expenditure.
Which is going to grow faster: Vietnam's overall economy
or government expenditures? If the latter, doesn't that
mean in real terms the average person ends up
poorer?
I was under the impression that men are involved in nearly all of those factors you listed.
I was also under the impression that plenty of stupid white men have had to endure exactly those factors and succeeded.
I certainly do not chalk the white man up for a victory on accord of his skin color or brain power.
I closed my last posted with the line, "I'm not sure..."
Which is true. But I don't think blaiming a bunch of factors, which they are a part of, for their plight is the reason for their situation.
Their culture situation is a result of their culture. That should be a given. The more they learn to break some of their cultural boundaries, the more they'll be able to westernize, if that is indeed what they want. But you seem obsessed with wanting to point to a bunch of factors and pretending they had nothing to do with them as if they were imposed on them that way and all of the sudden they had no choice in the matter.
The colonists of America had a choice. The Saxons of England had a choice. I don't claim personal superiority as a result of the sacrafices of my ancestors and the strong foundation they've passed on to us. However I am perfectly able to point out that their choices were apparently superior.
But I guess you're view point on the world is that we're no better off and our ancestors didn't make any better decisions, they were just dealt a different fate that the rest of the world and that is why we are they way we are. There are no great men, only lucky deals.
"Communism stalled progress, but unlike in many parts of Eastern Europe, it didn't actually reverse it."
Actually, I bet there are lots of parallels between Vietnam and Eastern Europe. Much of Eastern Europe had suffered horrific wartime devastation (much of Warsaw, for instance, was leveled), and the rebuilding of these societies was overseen by the communists. From the perspective of at least some Eastern Europeans, the communists were responsible for the economic progress that they enjoyed after the war. What they did not see, however, was how much better their western counterparts were doing after having suffered similar devastation.
I don't know where you get this stupid orientals bit, rickm.
Seems to me people here are blaming communism. Yes, colonialism, war,
famine, lack of land reform, corrupt government are
pretty bad starting points. But pick any random point on the
globe and most of those conditions aren't that far back in
time, that's assuming they aren't actually present now.
In context, it could be that with proper appreciation of local
circumstances that Vietnam is doing quite well. Or then
again maybe not. China seems a relevant point of comparison.
In 1983, living standards in Vietnam and China where likely
similar.
sam wrote "I certainly do not chalk the white man up for a victory on accord of his skin color or brain power."
You did the inverse. You wrote "they may not have conceived of better choices based on what appears to be a somewhat stubborn, traditionalist Southeast Asian (Chinese?) mentality." Characterizing, oh, about a billion people specific to a vast region as stubborn, without evidence (I can't imagine a serious scholar endorsing such a position) is, quite frankly, stupid and racist.
It is silly and simplistic to say "culture" was the reason for success in one region versus another. For one, not-too-insignificant counterexamples can be made, like, oh, Japan. Or Singapore. Or the recent and staggering growth of China.
Fortunately, we don't have to worry about such silly and simplistic arguments when a much better and well researched explanation exists - I'm referring to Jarrod Diamond's Guns, Germs and Steel. He may not be right, but I think he's way more right than anyone before him.
Also, I'm not sure we can really understand what is happening in Asia using the intellectual framework of Communism versus Free Markets. Communist China seemed to discard the economic portions of the ideology prett quickly without (chillingly) the authoritarian portion. In the West, we've always assumed the political and economic freedom go hand-in-hand and that progress in one area eventually drives up progress in the other. Sort of like perestroika and the fall of the Soviet Union. But with China, this didn't happen. I suppose political reforms could eventually arrive in China, but then again, they might not.
Rickm you have too much zeal when it comes to read mal-intent on my behalf. Calling something, "somewhat stubborn/traditionalist" is certainly a far cry from their are genetically inferior.
I stick by my point that as long as the Chinese and the Vietnamese stubbornly stick to their traditionalist viewpoints they will fall behind the Westernized world. If they don't want to be Westernized I think that's fine by me.
But all this hand wringing that other people are to blaim for their plight is ridiculous. Vietnamese society is culpable for Vietnamese society.
Just like our culture is to blaim for many of the ills which we are suffering from today and happily exporting to the rest of the world.
Sam- you said that "south asian" people had a "stubborn...mentality."
What if you said that, say, Arabs had a violent mentality, or that blacks had a lazy mentality, or that Irish had a pugnacious mentality, or that Jews had a frugal mentality. Reasonable observers would call that racist.
Poverty is easy to explain. Subsistence living has been the norm of human experience for all but the last few moments. And the Malthusian economics at work are fairly well understood. Colonialism, war, etc. are aspects of life under Malthusian conditions, not causes of those conditions. As Gregory Clark's book shows it's the rise in living standards in some places since 1800 that's hard to explain.
wow, sam is a racist idiot. i hope he is young.
Yes, I think Communism can be blamed for the fact that Vietnam is much poorer than, lets say, Taiwan or South Korea. Indeed, Vietnam has come quite a way since it started to follow the Chinese model of casting off the economic policies of Communism. Who knows where they will be 25 years from now?
Henry Evans is right, though, this kind of poverty has been the norm for most of human history. It should be surprising to not find it. The Malthusian trap stuff, I just don't buy, however. I think the key is that the grinding poverty blinds people to the policies required to build capital- firm property rights.
RickM raged: Sam- you said that "south asian" people had a "stubborn...mentality." What if you said that, say, Arabs had a violent mentality, or that blacks had a lazy mentality, or that Irish had a pugnacious mentality, or that Jews had a frugal mentality. Reasonable observers would call that racist."
Hmm...what if someone were to suggest that Jews have a stubborn cultural mentality?
To isolate the effects of communism versus cultural and other factors, we have two fairly good controlled experiments - North vs. South Korea, and China vs. Taiwan. We could add Hong Kong to the China/Taiwan comparison, but Hong Kong had the benefits of being a British colony. There's also East vs. West Germany.
These comparisons aren't perfect, but they're as close as we can hope to get. Communism is clearly a significant factor. Poor countries like to blame their problems on colonialism and other historical gripes, but they'd do better to simply modernize their political, legal and financial systems.
As Acad Ronin pointed out, Vietnam should have at least been able to keep up with Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia, without communism as an extra burden. And any of those countries could have done even better if they'd chosen better government. Communism is an extreme along the continuum of good or bad government.
If someone were to say this about any large ethnic group: "Now they may not have conceived of better choices based on what appears to be a somewhat stubborn, traditionalist...mentality", in a discussion on why a large national group is poor, I would certainly feel think are being stupid and racist.
"Or the recent and staggering growth of China."
szr, the Chinese, or at least the Communists, did indeed consider their traditional culture to be the primary impediment to their progress. Mao Zedong went on and on about it, and finally launched an upheaval when he saw the Party itself backsliding (or so he said - he may just have been getting rid of up-and-coming threats.) You may have heard it it - he called it the Great Proletarian CULTURAL Revolution.
"In the West, we've always assumed the political and economic freedom go hand-in-hand and that progress in one area eventually drives up progress in the other."
It does tend to work like that, but the key part is the "eventually" you mention. It took the merchant class a long time to get any real politicla power in England, long after they started developing their wealth, and in France it took centuries longer. It took much less time in Korea.
Singapore is a fascist nightmare on par with Calvin's Geneva - that's what you get when businessmen presume to rule. Maybe you need touchy aristos jealous of their personal prerogatives to develop a clear notion of individual rights beyond property rights.
Ann,
Oh yes. How could I have forgotten about that civil war in Thailand that lasted for 30 years?
Jim -
Regardless of what Mao said, he started the Cultural Revolution to get rid of those with too clear a memory of the Great Leap Forward. In the Great Leap, Mao forced all these ridiculous ideas on the entire country (including occupied territories like Tibet), leading to a historically unprecedented feat - he created famine in all parts of China at once.
The estimates are that between 10 million and 30 million people died in the Great Leap, and massive amounts of resources were destroyed. They took their metal plows and bed frames and doorknobs and melted them down to make worthless lumps that were counted as part of China's 'steel production' from backyard furnaces. It was madness, and the Cultural Revolution was needed to put Mao fully back in power and get revenge on those that brought the famine to an end.
I don't think I'd call Singapore a 'facist nightmare', although I wouldn't want to live there. They certainly take the nanny state attitude to extremes.
RickM wrote: If someone were to say this about any large ethnic group: "Now they may not have conceived of better choices based on what appears to be a somewhat stubborn, traditionalist...mentality", in a discussion on why a large national group is poor, I would certainly feel think are being stupid and racist.
So in other words, your rational faculties have ceded the helm of your ship to the control of your emotional faculties, and as a consequence, you cannot evaluate the merit of any debate point that first triggers a wildly undisciplined and vituperous emotional reaction.
Interesting. Ya got any other buttons we should know about?
szr: I'm referring to Jarrod Diamond's Guns, Germs and Steel.
So the Vietnamese didn't have access to domesticatable animals, living on the Asian land mass as they were? It seems the Vietnamese are evidence that domesticatable megafauna are necessecary but not sufficient conditions for pre-industrial economic development.
szr: I suppose political reforms could eventually arrive in China, but then again, they might not.
They are arriving, in many ways. Chinese society is becoming more open by the day, with greater personal liberties. It was just a few years ago that extramarital sex was decriminalized. Small markets are everywhere, though corruption is still rampant. The changes just haven't led anywhere close to democracy yet.
As for Japan and the rise of Japanese society post-Meiji reformation, the Japanese were pretty explicit in identifying with western powers and in assimilating western culture. So Japan is the exception which proves the rule.
Well, where was South Korea 34 years after the end of the fighting (1987)? Oh yeah, Hyundai had been exporting cars to the U.S. for a year already. Crappy cars initially, but cars nevertheless.
Yes, I think Communism can be blamed for the fact that Vietnam is much poorer than, lets say, Taiwan or South Korea.
Amend that to "partly" or even "mostly" blamed, and I agree. But it's important not to be too simplistic. The South Korean military regime was far more unified and competent than the South Vietnamese one was, and the Vietnamese had 30 years of war while Korea had 3. The legacy of the war didn't have a long after-effect -- like most wars, the rebuilding went shockingly fast. But it froze Vietnamese growth for 30 years, devastated agriculture by depopulating the countryside, obviated the possibility of manufacturing (during the very years when S Korea and Taiwan were making their moves), and created a perverse inflationary economy based on massive influxes of US dollars. In the conservatives' best-case scenario, if Saigon had never fallen, South Vietnam would have been starting in 1975 more or less where South Korea started in 1955 or 1960.
The converse argument is that Vietnam moved away from the command economy, privatized agriculture and began its turn towards the free market in 1986. So in that sense, the South (which has been the chief engine of growth) basically lost a decade to strict Communism.
Remember, Thailand and the Philippines were never communist. But they're nowhere near as rich as South Korea or Taiwan. There are other factors that hinder growth besides communism.
I will cede to the better argument made by Ann. She actually identifies the correct controls.
Rickm,
Any discussion of cultural differences that affect economic outcomes is going to prompt an emotional reaction from you. There can be no doubt that culture matters to so many things, and it is not necessarily racist to point out that culture hinders as well as promotes certain outcomes.
Yancey-
In the abstract, you're right. Its my impression that, say, people like sam aren't arriving at their conclusion about the inadequacies of Vietnamese culture after a lifetime's worth of experience immersed in their culture. My point is, that in terms of epistemology, a non-expert commenting on a particular ethnic/national region is going to need A LOT more evidence to confidently point to culture as a particular problem or impediment to economic growth. I can know nothing about a nation, read up on its economy, find out that they experienced a vicious war for 30 years, and reasonably conclude that the war probably had some inimical effects on their current economic state. Culture is much more inscrutable.
Also, I think good explanations for disparities in economic states across the globe should account for geography, natural resources, etc. before they account take into account of culture. This is because there is much more in common across cultures than there is across distributions of natural resources or geography. (don't forget happenstance!)
As for my alleged "emotional" reaction, like those that anony-mouse pretentiously spewed, its not like there hasn't been a long history of blaming "oriental minds" for their putative backwardness, from Karl Marx to Lord Kromer. Cf. "Imagining Vietnam and America" by Mark Bradley, or "Cold War Orientalism" by C. Klein. The kind of mentality sam espoused is responsible for many bad things.
China is another parallel--they had decades of civil war, a brutal Japanese occupation, and then a couple decades of dumbed-down Maoist communism (Great Leap Forward, Cultural Revolution, etc). China spent a longer time under communism, but they moved towards a market economy earlier than Vietnam, I believe.
Amy P-
China is big. Vietnam is small. The civil wars were much different--the entire map of China was not littered with bombs. Also, no one dropped agent orange on China. No one extirpated the peasants from the countryside and put them in stupid hamlets.
Also, the Japanese occupation was not nearly as long as the French or Chinese occupation of Vietnam.
Remember, Thailand and the Philippines were never communist. But they're nowhere near as rich as South Korea or Taiwan. There are other factors that hinder growth besides communism.
True. I for one blame Iberian influence for the relative weakness of the Philippines and Latin America. Thailand, having never been colonized, is more of a puzzle. Is Buddhism to blame? i hope not, being sympathetic to it.
But of course there's always the basketcase of Cambodia that shows how devastating communism can be without a significantly protracted conflict.
Rickm,
I don't know anything about Vietnam, and I haven't read a lot of big picture 20th century histories of China, but I've read a pile of Chinese memoirs dealing with the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution, and I think you underestimate how cataclysmic life was during the Mao period. (By the way, "To Live" is a beautiful and wrenching Chinese film that tells the story of those years.) Upthread, people have already mentioned the absurdism of the Great Leap Forward, when people (who were quite poor by our standards) lost their bed frames and cooking pots so that the makeshift smelters could be fed, unusable third rate steel produced, and quotas met. Later, a whole generation of Chinese went uneducated because of the need to conduct years of witch hunts against teachers and professors. What with all the self-criticism and struggle meetings, the schools and universities were paralyzed for years. There were also the usual agricultural measures, leading to famine.
"Regardless of what Mao said, he started the Cultural Revolution to get rid of those with too clear a memory of the Great Leap Forward. "
ann, he launched it aginst academic and party people, and they were hardly the only ones that remembered the Great Leap Forward. The Great Lepa Forward is a big stretch.
It is also a stretch for outsiders to commnet on whole cultures or to ascribe failure or success to those cultures. Besides, there is no need ot do that; people in those cultures have done a fair bit of commenting already. People in India have had 50 years of debate about the caste system, Chinese had their debate, mostly concluded by mid-century, the Japanese had their debate. Most of them find plenty in their tradtional systems to criticize, and they find their societies progress when they get rid of some of those traditions. After all, they are the experts.
Jim,
From the accounts I've read, the purpose of the Cultural Revolution was to attack just about all mid-level leaders, including many old communists. Chinese society was effectively decapitated, all except for the handful of people who had unleashed the Red Guards. Here, there's a very clear parallel to Stalin's purges of 1937, during which many old communists perished. Interestingly, there was roughly the same time interval between the Bolshevik victory and the Stalinist purges as between Mao's victory over the Nationalists and the Cultural Revolution.
"There are other factors that hinder growth besides communism."
I absolutely agree that there are many factors, although it's hard to find a system that has generally shown itself to be more destructive than communism.
Another interesting (non-communist) comparison is between Singapore and Malaysia. That's complicated by the ethnic Chinese factor (much more dominant in Singapore). But I would argue that Singapore succeeded in spite of a relatively hands-on approach to the economy, because of less corruption and more 'meritocracy'. People weren't allowed to criticize the government of Singapore freely, but they were expected to compete economically. Malaysia was more corrupt and focused less on competition than on redistribution.
Jim -
When did the Chinese have 'their debate'? And I disagree that only those within a culture can offer useful ideas regarding it, or that each culture should be seen as so unique that there are no useful comparisons.
Economic, political and legal systems should be seen as technology, and countries should try to modernize. How many countries say "it's not part of our culture to use cell phones; you had many decades of extensive land-line telephone systems before moving to mobile phones, so you can't expect the technology to work here overnight"? Problems such as corruption are largely universal, even though they've been allowed to become more entrenched in some cultures.
Culture is used as an excuse, when it should be seen as simply a technological complication. Systems may need to be adapted somewhat for cultural reasons, but the same basic rules apply.
"When did the Chinese have 'their debate'?"
That's an excellent point (that debate is limited in an non-democratic country), although I do think that there have been a number of Chinese movies that have addressed the Cultural Revolution (To Live, Farewell My Concubine, etc.). There have been many excellent memoirs of the Mao period, but the ones I've read have been by Chinese emigres. I get the feeling that it's not an era that contemporary Chinese like to dwell on.
"And I disagree that only those within a culture can offer useful ideas regarding it, or that each culture should be seen as so unique that there are no useful comparisons."
Certainly. Where would we be if Monsieur de Tocqueville had kept his opinions to himself? (There are a number of wonderful memoirs and pieces of autobiographical fiction written by emigre Russians to the US in the 70s and 80s.) An observant and well-informed foreigner is a gift. Being well-informed is important--ideally one should have read several books on an area, or known a bunch of emigres from the area, or spent a long stretch of time there.
Amy P -
An excellent book on the Great Leap famine is Hungry Ghosts, by Jasper Becker. It's also a good book for anyone who wants to understand why communism doesn't work in practice. It's a shame that more people aren't familiar with what happened during the Great Leap in China, since it would have helped them to understand the later North Korean famine.
Think about it - between 10 million and 30 million people dead, for no particular reason, and to this day the rest of the world has barely noticed.
Rickm,
Here's a straight-up cultural difference manifesting itself: Jews vs. Arabs.
Both Semites, essentially the same people, big difference in economic development owing to ... culture.
I know. I'm a racist. Duly noted.
Occam-
Oh I totally forgot about how the Arabs were colonized for, what was it again? Thats right... 600 years. The majority are poor not because of that, but because of culture. And the Jews, being so much better than Arabs, are economically successful not from millions and millions of dollars of aid, donations, etc.
Good heavens, what's up with the obsession with colonialism? India's doing darn well, world's largest democracy, tech support call center to the world, etc. Lots of former British colonies in the Caribbean have done fine; Hong Kong kicked the rest of (uncolonized) China's butt for years despite having no natural resources. (I'm seeing a pattern here, but I suppose it would be racist to point it out).
Meanwhile, the Jews were treated like crap everywhere they went for a couple thousand years, suffering under Roman colonialism, the Diaspora, the Inquisition, a wide variety of pogroms, heck, even controversy over the appointment of Cardozo to SCOTUS (Frankfurter was already sitting in the Jewish seat). And yet somehow the Jews "made the desert bloom" long before the state of Israel was ever established--while the area was still "colonized" by the Brits!
At the risk of generating more uproar, let's note that colonialism wasn't entirely bad (cf. colonization by the Romans, Normans, British, French, and Spanish promoted progress as well as iniquities).
Communism/socialism, however, has an unrelentingly dismal record both of crushing the human spirit and failing to generate much progress.
Rickm,
600 years? The Arab world is a huge area, and very little of it was controlled by Europeans until fairly late in the day. Perhaps you're talking about the Ottomans? In any case, pre-Islamic North Africa was culturally a real hot spot--it was home to Alexandria, not to mention Augustine of Hippo and a multitude of other interesting figures. From here, it looks like the Arab invaders of North Africa took a going concern and ran it into the ground.
Occam's Beard -
What a great point. We hear so many more complaints about colonialism, which was bad in many ways but also had some benefits, whereas communism has been uniformly horrendous. By far the worst thing that 'the Western World' has done was to unleash communism.
Ann
You are treating communism and colonialism as two distinct things. Communism, in practice, arose as an countervailing force to colonialism.
Rickm -
In some cases, that might have been part of the motivation. But I think that communism spread because it can be made to sound good to 'the masses', if they don't understand economics and haven't thought things through, whereas power-hungry leaders quickly figure out what an oppressive system it will be in practice (and therefore a convenient system for those at the top, that enjoy oppressing).
Communist leaders were good in the beginning at pretending to want to help the masses, and there was often an initial boost when communism was first implemented, from confiscating and redistributing existing wealth. It was only later, when the new wealth failed to be created, that the masses realized that they'd given up their political freedom in exchange for greater poverty.
It's such an attractive fairy tale that people seem to be falling for it again in Venezuela, where Chavez is using the country's oil wealth to hide the problems in the system he's implementing until it's too late.
Communism, in practice, arose as an countervailing force to colonialism.
Maybe in Vietnam, but tell that to the European colonies of the USSR.
You are treating communism and colonialism as two distinct things. Communism, in practice, arose as an countervailing force to colonialism.
No, it didn't.
The fixation on colonialism only arose once it became apparent that the working class wasn't being ground down and becoming more revolution (as St. Karl had predicted), but rather quite the opposite.
Lenin & Co. tried to paper over the failed predictions by morphing Marx's analysis to apply not to class interactions within one country, but to interactions between countries. In this view, workers in capitalist countries weren't getting poorer because those countries exploited other countries. This led to the shopworn "oppressor/oppressed" paradigm, which found natural expression in resistance to imperialism.
But communism's focus on imperialism arose long after Marx, and as a way of way of recovering from his failed predictions.
Interestingly, Lenin and Mussolini (whom Lenin apparently held in high regard) disagreed on related grounds. Both sought socialism, but Lenin thought socialism should be organized on a trans-national basis (workers of the world, and all that), whereas Mussolini thought it should be organized within one country: hence national socialism.
Er, make that "revolutionary."
Coercion is inevitable in communism, for a simple reason: no one consistently places the collective good over his own personal good. The only way to get people to do so is compulsion, in matters both large and small, and applied on a daily basis.
The only way to accomplish that is a large and highly efficient police force, whose members are not immediately recognizable, so no one knows whether or not he's being watched. Voila! Secret police.
I wouldn't see colonialism and communism as part of some sort of yin yang relationship--communism was in many places a colonial force, as for instance in Central Asia, where Soviet Russia functioned quite nakedly as a colonial power.
Re: the whole racism angle - I don't think there's anything racist about ascribing certain characteristics to a culture. After all, how often is it said that Americans tend to be more individualist? Not "white people," but Americans, which obviously includes many races. There are definitely cultural characteristics of Asian countries that both help and hinder development. But a third generation American of Japanese descent probably does not have any of those cultural learnings.
And, speaking as someone who is married to a native mainland Chinese, I know many Chinese people who will tell you that China's development is hindered by some of the cultural values that have built up over the the last couple thousand years. They also will tell you that it's helped by some of those values (a strong aversion to personal debt, for example).
My brother in law is a member of the Chinese Communist Party and works in the economics ministry. He will tell you all day long about the problems with Chinese culture as it relates to economic development.