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Maoist view of success of south Korea and Taiwan
Now we will return to the subject of Korea. South Korea is very important because it is an exception in the post- World War II period. It has been a Third World country that has successfully developed. People should realize that the "four tigers" or "little dragons"--Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore are exceptions in the history of developing in the dependent capitalist orbit. Even if capitalism "worked" for these four, it would not prove anything about the possibilities for development under imperialism. The reason is that you would have to count all the failures that went with the successes. And as we have already documented, those failures account for massive starvation death and inadequate health care that amounts to a virtual genocide for "low-income" countries where most of the human-race lives. (Ask us for the posts on this if you missed them.) At least 22 capitalist-dominated countries have suffered an actual decline in per capita income in recent years according to the U.S. Statistical Abstract. The imperialists can still exploit most countries mercilessly, so a few exceptions are allowed by the system to develop while other countries decline in the international capitalist sweepstakes. The winners and losers change from time to time, but the system stays the same. OK, but south Korea is an exception. Why? The reason is that the United States and East Asian capitalists jumped on the bandwagon of class struggle at a crucial point at the completion of World War II and the Korean War. Without much fanfare, these capitalists and the United States had the sense to copy what Mao was doing in China wholesale. What did they copy? They copied land reform. Why did they copy it? Because the communists had just kicked capitalist ass in China and were starting to do the same in Korea and Vietnam. The capitalists learned their lesson and when they got the chance, they ditched their landlord oppressor partners. The reason Korea and Taiwan succeeded while the rest of the Third World also worked hard at development without succeeding is that communist class struggle gave the capitalists the chance to get rid of the strong influence of the landlord class, an influence which continued in India, El Salvador, the Philippines and the Third World generally which still desperately needs the destruction of the landlord class's power--the destruction of semi-feudalism. Korea As most people on this net probably know, the communists came very close to winning the civil war in Korea by sweeping south before the United States troops landed in the Korean War. There was really only a toehold for capitalism left on the very southern tip before the U.S. landed. The nearly complete communist victory gave the U.S. imperialists and southern capitalists their chance to leave their landlord partners in the dust, historically speaking. Listen to the bourgeois economists lump South Korea in with the communist countries for copying land reform: "The best-known successful land reforms have commonly involved little or no compensation for confiscated assets of landlords. Such was the case in Russia after 1917 and China after 1949, as well as in Japanese and South Korean reforms after World War II." (Malcolm Gillis, Dwight Perkins, Michael Roemer, Donald Snodgrass, Economics of Development (NY: W.W. Norton & Co., 1992), p. 499. Japan One reason that land-reform was acceptable even in bourgeois circles pressed by the communists is that the landlords in East Asia were on the wrong side of the war. In China they lined up with the Japanese, often serving as Japanese occupation government officials. Of course, Japan was quite developed already earlier this century so Japan is not relevant to our development discussion here, but Japan is relevant in its role in the war and class struggle. Again in Japan, we see the United States copy the communists; although no one would know it based on how little attention the issue of land reform gets. "The Japanese land reform that followed World War II was different in important respects from the Chinese experience. Land reform in Japan was carried out by the U.S. Occupation forces. The Occupation government believed that the landlord class had been an important support of the forces in Japanese society that brought about World War II. . . .Since the Americans had won the war, Japanese landlords were not in a position to offer resistance to reform, and a thoroughgoing reform was carried out. Compensation for landlords was provided for in legislation, but inflation soon had the effect of sharply reducing the real value of the amounts offered. As a result Japanese land reform also amounted to confiscation of landlord land with little compensation." (Ibid., pp. 497-8) In contrast, land reforms in places like India failed. The political mechanism was not there. (Ibid., p. 498) Basically, the communists in India did not succeed well enough to do all the work for the capitalists. Taiwan People on this net probably realize that when the Guomindang moved to Taiwan, it was uprooted from its land on the Mainland. In this case, exile by the Maoist communists was the best thing for these ex-landlords. Having had their ties to the land cut, these people could now take up a new life. In their new home, the Guomindang, again with U.S. backing, learned their lessons. They did not allow the old patterns of landlord domination to occur in Taiwan and in fact they saw to a very high level of income equality generally. The gini coefficient in Taiwan is one of the lowest--.326. (Ibid., p. 76) The U.S. role in backing landlord-regimes The U.S. foreign policy is basically opportunist but consistently pro-U.S. interests. When the United States needs stable allies it allies with landlord-dominated regimes--like El Salvador or Marcos/Aquino in the Philippines. When the United States and its ruling class friends get their butts kicked, then the U.S. gets on the bandwagon. In El Salvador and the Philippines, the United States lacks both the will and power to force real land reform through. In East Asia though, the balance of power was basically set by the communists, so the United States could choose to do without the landlords in some cases. In both East Asia and the rest of the world, narrow geopolitical (imperialist) interests prevailed but with different results reflecting differing balances of power. The United States will never act as a real agent for modernization in the Third World. It chooses not to rock the boat, because it seeks landlord-dominated regimes as allies. The U.S. imperialists have no inherent interest in land reform like communists do. If landlord and bureaucrat-capitalist Somoza can get the job done of backing the United States, assuring resources etc. then Somoza will get U.S. aid. It is U.S. support to landlords and capitalist-bureacrats in the Third World that Mao dubbed "compradors" that makes the United States the number one prop of "order" and the number one public health menace. East-West comparisons One remaining problem is why did Taiwan and south Korea diversify and industrialize more successfully than China and north Korea? We will leave out issues like south Korean massacres in Kwangju and the mass starvations that didn't happen in the north. What about the economy? People will recall that we Maoists have had doubts about north Korea. We don't believe it is socialist and few people have much real information about it. Still, it is clear that north Korea did not have the option of export-led development to the world's largest economy--the United States. The same is true of China. China, Taiwan and Korea were predominantly agricultural societies, but the United States and ruling classes copied the communists on agricultural issues. Hence south Korea and Taiwan garnered the benefits of intense class struggle led by communists. What south Korea and Taiwan had that China and north Korea did not have is the world's largest industrial market available. Indeed, China and north Korea had to devote large resources to defending themselves against U.S. imperialism. Had the United States been a socialist country, the story would have been different. Then China and north Korea would have had the same chance as Taiwan and south Korea. This points to the serious duty of U.S. residents to bring down U.S. imperialism, so that all countries can be brought together in a cooperative world economy, not just the ones favored by U.S. imperialist circles.
In conclusion:
1. Where there is no land reform (the breaking of the
landlord class), there is no development.
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