Top

Published in:

2019 | OriginalPaper | Chapter

4. The Second Phase: A “Starry-eyed” Joan Robinson

Author : Pervez Tahir

Published in: Making Sense of Joan Robinson on China

Publisher: Springer International Publishing

Activate our intelligent search to find suitable subject content or patents.

search-config

AI-assisted search

Off

Abstract

Joan Robinson’s writings on China after the Sino-Soviet ideological dispute and before the death of Mao betray a general bias towards the Maoist view. Even if it was a sympathetic observer’s attempt to counterbalance the US-led policy of isolating China, she did not have any special information to uncritically accept the official Chinese pronouncements. She failed to realise that the great leap forward and the rush towards farm collectivisation led to a massive famine, besides the return of orthodoxy to population control and family planning. Her original position that collectivisation without mechanisation cannot deliver the desired agricultural surplus changed to justifying it as a blend of individual incentive and collective advantage. The sudden withdrawal of Soviet assistance in 1960 led her to believe that national independence had priority over economic independence, even if it required nuclear testing. In the return of the abandoned ideas of the leap with a militant ideology as cultural revolution, Joan Robinson thought that the moment had arrived for the ideas which were ahead of time during the leap.

Dont have a licence yet? Then find out more about our products and how to get one now:

Springer Professional "Wirtschaft+Technik"

Online-Abonnement

Mit Springer Professional "Wirtschaft+Technik" erhalten Sie Zugriff auf:

über 102.000 Bücher
über 537 Zeitschriften

aus folgenden Fachgebieten:

Automobil + Motoren
Bauwesen + Immobilien
Business IT + Informatik
Elektrotechnik + Elektronik
Energie + Nachhaltigkeit
Finance + Banking
Management + Führung
Marketing + Vertrieb
Maschinenbau + Werkstoffe
Versicherung + Risiko

Jetzt Wissensvorsprung sichern!

inform now

Springer Professional "Wirtschaft"

Online-Abonnement

Mit Springer Professional "Wirtschaft" erhalten Sie Zugriff auf:

über 67.000 Bücher
über 340 Zeitschriften

aus folgenden Fachgebieten:

Bauwesen + Immobilien
Business IT + Informatik
Finance + Banking
Management + Führung
Marketing + Vertrieb
Versicherung + Risiko

Jetzt Wissensvorsprung sichern!

inform now

previous chapter The First Phase: Thoughts on Socialist Development in a Backward Overpopulated Economy

next chapter The Third Phase: Self-criticism

See Brammall’s doctoral dissertation at the University of Cambridge (1989).

What Joan Robinson called Marxist orthodoxy was not exclusive to China. The Soviet Union and North Korea did not encourage family planning. Cuba encouraged it “only mildly” (Robinson, 1965d, 545, 1966b, 17).

Robinson (1964c, 9) mentions seven different districts and Robinson (1964d, 5) states the number of provinces to be four.

Joan Robinson was not oblivious of the fact that a number of brigades and some communes were also the basic accounting unit (Robinson, 1964e, 289). It was not “a Bed of Procrustes into which everyone is thrust” (Robinson, 1964b, 201).

I am grateful to Liu Minquan for allowing me to see parts of the research-in-progress for his doctoral dissertation for the University of Oxford.

The same author, reviewing Robinson (1964h) in the same place, noted that though “she deliberately seeks to present the Chinese viewpoint as a corrective to the flood of hostile comment she overdoes the whitewashing” (Hayward, 1966, 98–9).

She was confused about the procurement prices of fruits and vegetables, sometimes “settled in advance, but selling prices to the public vary” and at others “procurement prices are lowered” (Robinson, 1964c, 8, d, 6).

As vegetable production is more profitable than grain, she also noted that the Chinese economists were debating the issue of socialist rent and the techniques of mopping it up without disturbing the incentives. “For the time being it lies where it falls” (Robinson, 1964d, 6). As Zhong (1961) noted: “[T]he differential rent attributable to land with favourable natural conditions should, in general, be kept by production teams concerned.” See Nolan (1983c) for a discussion of differential rent and distributional change.

See also Robinson (1971b).

Liu Suinian and Wu Qungan (1986, 241–2).

The special issue of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists on China, which reproduced Robinson (1964d) as Robinson (1966c), also carried an article by Gray (1966), which did suggest, albeit in a sympathetic tone, that the movement towards collectivisation was not consistent with the declared aim of gradualism.

See Yuming Sheng’s doctoral dissertation, University of Cambridge.

Quoting Che Guevara she observed “that in Latin America the Chinese point of view corresponds more closely to experience than the Russian” (Robinson, 1964f, 238).

Indeed, she was so enamoured by the new Chinese strategy that she started to prescribe it to other developing countries. For instance, she told Pakistanis that the Chinese principle of walking on both legs was “very clearly” applicable to their economy (Robinson, 1964i, 6).

Even before China, according to Joan Robinson, the North Koreans departed from the Soviet model. The first three years of their seven-year plan stressed basic needs, allowing “the authorities [to] go all out for expansion of basic industries again” in the remaining period of the plan (Robinson, 1965d, 543). However, Joan Robinson saw it as a continuing strategy in China, rather than the North Korean’s tactical retreat. This “sharp break” was noted in the case of Cuba as well (Robinson, 1966b, 13). Preece (1968, 297), however, considered the Chinese experience as confirming the correctness of heavy industry priority.

“I was inclined to doubt whether this could really be true until I saw something of what technical self-reliance has done for North Korea” (Robinson, 1965c, 11).

She also held the Chinese brief in the Sino-Indian border conflict. A great admirer of the Indian intellectuals’ “capacity for detachment”, she had to “admit that it wore a bit thin in autumn of 1962” (Robinson, 1967a, 111).

See Robinson (1942b, 1951b). See also Robinson (1952b) and a denunciation of it in Times Literary Supplement on 25 July 1952, titled “Mrs. Robinson’s Sprightly Conference Sketch Book” (485).

See New York Times, 27 June 1952. See also Robinson (1953b, c, 1956f, 1960f).

13 June 1953.

The Economist, 28 November 1953.

The reference to “a Chinese friend” in Robinson (1952b, 6) and to “C” in Robinson (1954a, 24) is to Chi Chao-ting.

She would vote Labour but was not a “Labourite economist”. See Turner (1989, 210, 241). A Labour Party card forms part of the JVR Collection, King’s College, Cambridge.

Broadsheet (January 1964, 1).

Broadsheet (March 1964, 1).

The Soviet position was not stated fairly. See Churchward (1966, 100). Even a decade later, the Soviet propaganda seemed to her to partly “reflect Russian envy that in China the peasantry is being absorbed into socialism and the production of food keeps ahead of the growth of population” (Robinson, 1976d, 17).

The bomb was supported against her general stance of pacifism (Robinson, 1965c, 14–15).

Needham (1965, 2, 1985, 19–20). Author’s interview with Ronald Berger, 20 February (1987).

A Marxist and author of From Marx to Mao Tse-tung, published by the China Policy Study Group (CPSG) in 1971.

Broadsheet (December 1981, 1).

See Gittings (1985, 23). See also China Now, May–June 1980, which deals with “advance or retreat” after Mao.

This is a recurrent theme of her Economic Philosophy (Robinson, 1962a).

The reference here is to Yang Hsien-chen’s idea of dialectics as a quest for unity and reconciliation and Mao’s theory of continuing conflict and contradiction under socialism.

Robinson (1965c, 11).

Although no bigger than the erstwhile lower-form cooperative, the team still comprised 30–40 households (Robinson, 1968e, 685), a size considered not so small by Peter Nolan.

See Liu Suinian and Wu Qungan (1986, 241–334).

Page references to Robinson (1973a), which reproduces Robinson (1967h).

Ajit Singh’s letter to the author, 6 January (1989). See also Singh (1979, 592–3). Paine (1974, 91) too believed that Joan Robinson’s description of the system showed how China avoided Soviet-type queuing.

See Robinson (1964l, 80–1, m, 493, g, 2, h, 89–91, g, 46–50, h, 40–7). See also Robinson (1970g, 102–4, f, 3–5) and Robinson and Eatwell (1973, 320–1).

Joan Robinson’s interest in the cultural revolution presents an interesting contrast with the “cultural evolution” perspective of her Economic Philosophy and an interest in the work of Ayres. See Aires (1944) and JVR Collection, viii/Ayres. King’s College, Cambridge. See also Phillips (1971, 354–8).

Later he described the cultural revolution as “a veritable heresy of Maoist ideology” and “a great and horrible mistake” (Needham, 1978, 832, 1985, 20).

SACU News, December 1967.

JVR Collection, ii/36. King’s College, Cambridge. In Robinson (1978e, 62) she observed: “Along with the concept of freedom goes freedom of the market, and the philosophy of orthodox economics is that the pursuit of self-interest will lead to the benefit of society. By this means the moral problem is abolished. The moral problem is concerned with the conflict between individual interest and the interest of society.”

A number of development economists, who became concerned about income distribution and rural development at the start of the seventies, “looked to China as a possible model” (Perkins, 1983, 345).

For whose benefit?

Tintner and Peek (1976, 374–5), after pinpointing the lack of a systematic view of cooperation based on New Left values, refer to Joan Robinson’s Economic Management to state that “Usually the point is made that such a system presently prevails in China.” Economic Management, however, does not contain a clearly expressed theory of cooperation. It merely describes the Chinese system after the cultural revolution. Joan Robinson did not develop any systematic theory of capitalist inequality. For her views on distribution under different systems, see Robinson (1967k).

Robinson (1972a) was more explicit—“For use, not for profit” was its title.

No. 49 (1967, 15).

Mao’s interview with Snow was published in The Sunday Times, 2 May 1971.

Later she admitted that “we all had a lot of wind in our heads” during the cultural revolution (Robinson, 1978c, 4).

The capitalists receiving interest on the value of their former assets and those given executive positions “melted in the fire of the Cultural Revolution” (Robinson, 1969a, 125).

Although the purge denied before had taken place and the “chief heretic” (Robinson, 1965c, 12) was no more in the job, she satisfied herself by saying that it was not a Stalin-style purge (Robinson, 1969a, 20). According to Macfarquhar, “a generation of leaders disappeared. They did not go to their deaths as had Stalin’s victims; but they were denounced not merely for mistakes during the years prior to cultural revolution, but for actions spanning their entire careers. Their contributions to the Chinese revolution were denied; their lifetimes of dedicated work were declared null and void” (1974, 3).

For suggesting that “[t]he thought of Mao Tse-tung may curdle into strange forms when it is injected into other civilisations” (Robinson, 1968b, 5), the British equivalent of the Red Guards called her “a hireling of the capitalist class” (SACU News, June–July 1968, 4). She retorted by describing them as “ultra-left” (Robinson, 1968d, 5), a label that would later be used for the Chinese Red Guards as well.

The reference is to the following statement issued by Hisinhua on 15 March 1968: “China’s Khrushchev said, with ulterior motives: ‘Do as the masses want’ and ‘mainly depend on the spontaneity of the mass movement’. Such statements as these plainly show how he opposed the Party leadership and peddled anarchism.”

One reviewer remarked: “There is a certain sadness in seeing so eminent a scholar reduced to saying that a statement was ‘not intended as a contribution to historical analysis’ when what is meant is that it was a blatant lie” (Bell, 1969, 339).

For instance, she remarked in the case of Sri Lanka that the trouble with its “economy has not been too much exploitation but too little” (Robinson, 1959, 71).

Riskin (1987, 184–6) talks of useless industrial production, sluggish agriculture and “unknown degrees of statistical exaggeration”.

This lecture was published as Robinson (1970d) and reproduced as Robinson (1970e, 1971a).

On the seriousness of this problem, see Nolan (1983c).

Comparisons were often drawn with India. For instance, while agreeing with Beckerman on the desirability of growth, she asked: “Has he compared the slums of Calcutta with the neat housing estates of Shanghai?” (Robinson, 1974f, 20).

Robinson (1967b, 222–3).

As noted above, the work of Liu Minquan (1989, 1990) shows that views like that of Joan Robinson on labour supply and incentives are seriously flawed.

“It is forbidden to deal in produce that comes under the state plan—grain, oil seeds, cotton etc.—it is forbidden to buy for re-sale and there is a ceiling to every price. Under the ceiling, prices are settled by supply and demand. Households can sell their private produce and handicrafts and the team may sell fruit and vegetables outside their regular contracts” (Robinson, 1973f, 9).

She also underscored the impossibility of working “out such a delicate system of profit ratios as to get exactly the desirable product mix” (Robinson, 1973f, 3).

The Times of 26 June 1972 headlined a wage hike with effect from July 1971 thus: “China returns material incentives to worker.” Joan Robinson footnoted the heading, where she mentioned the wage hike in Robinson (1972a, 6). While the last-mentioned article formed part of Economic Management, the paragraph which mentions the wage hike is without the footnote about the material incentives (Robinson, 1973f, 2). In Robinson (1972b, 132), the news about the restoration of material incentives in industry is dismissed as a rumour.

Capital accumulation jumped up from 23.2 per cent in 1969 to 32.9 and 34.1 per cent in 1970 and 1971 respectively. Again in 1971, wage payments and foodgrain sales—demand—dangerously exceeded consumer goods and marketable grain—supply. See Liu Suinian and Wu Qungan (1986, 374–5).

Rawsski (1975, 758) finds this “assertion” to be “a dubious suggestion which is contradicted by subsequent passages linking profits with investment”.

It was recognised that “bureaucracy [in China] is performing the functions, not only of the civil service in the capitalist countries, but also a large part of private business” (Robinson, 1973f, 20).