Breathing Spell in Asia
WITTFOGEL, KARL A.
By Karl A. Wittfogel Breathing Spell in Asia Unrest in Communist countries may prevent a major military outbreak in Asia, but bold reforms are needed to preserve freedom where it still exists No...
...Under such conditions, an economic philosophy that makes the managerial state the dynamic center of society is extremely attractive—all the more so when the ideas of Marxian socialism can be used to picture such a state as benevolent and historically necessary...
...His remark and subsequent Chinese developments demonstrate the crucial importance of a far-sighted socio-economic policy in Asia and elsewhere...
...The master strategists of the Communist bloc are not restricted In independent public opinion, but the danger of national and social unrest is no less real because it is inarticulate...
...Geneva ushered in at best a limited and uneasy truce...
...But it is also obvious that, from the standpoint of the non-Communist world as a whole, closer commercial relations with the Communist bloc would have serious political and military disadvantages...
...Thus, wherever the land issue is a key one —and in almost every country of non-Communist Asia it is exactly that—only a generous and constructive land reform will keep the peasants from becoming the cannon fodder of Communist power strategy...
...Both sides dispose of huge economic and military resources, but the exposed position of all major non-Communist countries invites continued attempts to penetrate and weaken them...
...In colonies or former colonies, nationalist sentiment further complicates the issue...
...Nor does it provide any absolute guarantee against Chinese participation in a big military venture...
...In 1927, Stalin expressed his pleasure that, in China, no group was endangering Communist plans by a bold reform policy...
...And it is particularly so in those parts of Asia that for millennia have known the rule of a despotic elite, a monopoly bureaucracy...
...Where shall the intelligentsia of non-Communist Asia go...
...At the same time, he made total power for the managerial state the core of his socialist program...
...Indeed, the socio-economic foundations of freedom and progress in non-Communist Asia are threatened most seriously by those political and intellectual leaders who use existing agrarian, industrial and national tensions as instruments for creating an apparatus state that will be the master, not servant, of society...
...As in the USSR prior to collectivization, the prices paid by the state are lower than what the peasants can obtain in free sales: consequently, they are unwilling to deliver their quotas...
...The peasant who works three or four times harder on his own little plot than on the land of the collective is obviously a frustrated man...
...This game is tough and ruthless...
...Even if conditions in Indo-China were stabilized, which is most unlikely, and if fighting were to cease in Malaya, Burma and other trouble spots, which is also unlikely, there would be only a breathing spell...
...This internal crisis does not prevent Peking from fostering little or indirect wars outside its borders...
...For these reasons—and for others that cannot be discussed here...
...The masters of this Communist bloc have frankly announced their aim of ultimate global dominion, and the leading non-Communist nations have with equal clarity stated their determination not to let the Communists have their way...
...Of course, in most areas of Asia agrarian problems outweigh industrial and commercial problems...
...The tragedy of Marxism unfolds with particular clarity in certain groups of Asian intellectuals who call themselves socialist, often with an overtly Leninist tinge...
...But he never seriously analyzed the problem of total statism...
...Formally the villagers comply, but only formally...
...International tension cannot end so long as a gigantic Communist bloc confronts a loose agglomeration of industrial and preindustrial non-Communist nations...
...It scarcely needs saying that political, military and socio-economic strength are by no means identical...
...Manifestly also where their interests will be given bold, constructive consideration...
...But the experience of the last decades has shown that, even when subjective socialists are in the seats of power, total statism leads not to a higher form of human freedom but to an extreme form of what Marx once called "general slavery...
...But in terms of social structure they remained single-centered, that is, the middle and working classes and the independent associations remained weak as they always had been...
...A country with sound social and economic conditions may, if it fails to protect itself through proper political alignments and defense measures, be overcome by a less advanced but militarily more powerful enemy...
...Citizens of non-Communist countries can do little to influence the situation within the Communist orbit...
...Wherever the Communists get a civil war going, they make it a standard practice to distribute land to the poorer villagers in order to gain mass support in their struggle for dictatorial power...
...Moreover, the peasants are reluctant to pool their land in producers' cooperatives...
...And where shall the non-Communist Asian workers go...
...For such sentiment tends to prevent a colonial or oncecolonial people from identifying themselves with a political camp that, under other circumstances, they would consider theirs...
...It is obvious that, for Japan, even a small increase in foreign trade would be important...
...Thus, breathing spell or not, the land question remains highly significant...
...The success of such a policy depends in part on the political leaders, but to a decisive degree it depends on the intelligentsia, who, as opinion-makers, vitally influence the policy-makers...
...It is the recognition of such facts that leads the USSR to express its desire for global "peace" so ardently at this time...
...Manifestly where their interests will be taken care of, not temporarily and dishonestly", but permanently and honestly...
...but, under suitable conditions, the Communists profit enormously from it...
...Once they achieve this primary objective, they take the land away again by establishing collectives and producers' cooperatives...
...Would trade with Communist China solve the Japanese export problem...
...Similar trends are apparent in Communist China...
...In 1953, their resistance assumed such dimensions that the "People's Government" had to take special measures to overcome it...
...To disguise the drive for a monopoly of political power as an unselfish, democratic and "socialist" effort is tempting...
...this is so even in Japan...
...By Karl A. Wittfogel Breathing Spell in Asia Unrest in Communist countries may prevent a major military outbreak in Asia, but bold reforms are needed to preserve freedom where it still exists No realistic observer of world affairs will view the Geneva agreements as inaugurating a genuine peace in Asia...
...When these countries attained independence, they generally became democratic on the governmental level...
...Yet, it certainly is a deterrent to a major war...
...Decidedly not...
...If, nevertheless, trade barriers between the two global sectors are lowered, we may at least have the satisfaction of seeing a confusing myth destroyed in Japan—the myth of the miraculous benefits to be derived from trade with Communist China...
...Each side will keep on bulwarking its position by improving its political, military and socio-economic conditions...
...Marx accused the early socialists of being economic Utopians, and he held that their position became increasingly reactionary as social conditions improved...
...Many of us have shared Marx's Utopian dreams...
...In either case, the policymakers of England and America would do well to recognize that, in order to maintain itself as a modern and democratic industrial country, Japan must be given free access to the markets of the free world...
...Thus, he indulged in a political utopianism that is potentially much more reactionary than that of the early nineteenth-century socialists...
...On the other hand, in a prolonged conflict good (and bad) social and economic conditions may be decisive in shaping the people's will to fight...
...Essentially, the Chinese Communists want capital goods, whereas Japan produces primarily consumers' goods...
...Where shall the peasants of nonCommunist Asia go...
...Communist-party directives show that the Chinese peasants strongly resent the enforced sale of grain to the Government...
...But in varying degrees they can improve conditions in the free world...
...In non-Communist Asia, industrially advanced countries like Japan have serious difficulty in selling their products abroad...
...In the USSR during World War II, entire national groups defected: the collective farms arc still centers of extreme discontent...
...The fact that Mao's regime has had to admonish its peasants (Chinese peasants are worldfamous for the subtlety of their farming) to till their land carefully and not "blindly" run away to the cities is indicative of the crisis smoldering in the countryside...
...In many cases (but not including Japan), their countries were Oriental despotisms before they came under Western colonialism...
Vol. 37 • August 1954 • No. 35
