Ideology

32 mins read

Is Capitalism Too Productive?

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Lionel Jospin recently took power in France with a promise to reduce the workweek from 39 to 35 hours. Why? Because of the latest popular economic fallacy: the theory of global glut, or the belief that there is too much output and not enough work to go around in today’s hyper-efficient economy. But productive capacity in the advanced nations is not growing much faster than it was during the last two decades, and more slowly than in the 1950s and 1960s. People will always find new wants, and the newly industrializing countries are consuming even more than they produce. As Marx could have told you, capitalism can go on accumulating capital — and producing more goods and services — forever.

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37 mins read

Mao’s China: The Decline of a Dynasty

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For a long time it was thought that the way the People’s Republic of China was being governed opened a new chapter in Chinese history. Some scholars argued that the communist system in China was a continuation of Confucianism, but a closer look disclosed little resemblance. The country was subject to spasmodic, repetitious political campaigns; the national economy constantly went through major reshuffles-land reform, socialization, communization, the retreat from communization and the Great Leap Forward. Traditional Chinese values were repudiated or ignored. Even the old Chinese concern for “face” seemed to be disregarded. Everybody was expected to expose in public meetings the evil words and evil deeds of friends and colleagues, of parents and brothers. The traditional Chinese family was severely disrupted, though, as the old Chinese proverb says, it is useless to attack a city if the hearts are not won over. The hearts were not won over, but for a long time it appeared that the régime was solidly established and enjoying general support, if not from love, then from fear.

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