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Wangja
Joined: 17 May 2004
Location: Seoul, Yongsan
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 Posted: Thu Jun 09, 2005 3:39 pm Post subject: |
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| soviet_man wrote: |
59 years and still counting Wangja. |
That's a lot of time to practice. Have they got it right yet? Are collective farms a success?
And I suppose in this case we measure success not by a simple profit and loss account but by how well they provide food for the nation. |
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Cthulhu
Joined: 02 Feb 2003
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| Posted: Thu Jun 09, 2005 4:33 pm Post subject: |
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| Wangja wrote: |
| soviet_man wrote: |
59 years and still counting Wangja. |
That's a lot of time to practice. Have they got it right yet? Are collective farms a success?
And I suppose in this case we measure success not by a simple profit and .
loss account but by how well they provide food for the nation. |
The answer to that seems pretty clear.
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But what Pyongyang won't admit is that the impact of natural disaster would have been much less on a rational farm system following sensible policies. For a start, the goal of self-sufficiency - never met - was mad, in a land 80 percent mountainous. In old Korea, the south, itself not exactly flat, was the ricebowl. Just as crazy was the means, which focused on boosting output of the two main grain crops, maize and rice, at the expense of everything else: other grains, fruit, vegetables, root crops, pulses, and livestock.
Foreign aid workers, who only got access after 1995, reckon this unbalanced diet was already breeding malnutrition by the 1980s. It also harmed the land, in two ways. Overdosing on inorganic fertilizer at first raised yields, but again by the 1980s had exhausted the soil. So the emphasis switched to terracing ever-higher up hillsides: a crazy place to try to grow maize, exacerbating already severe deforestation. Needless to say, farmers who owned their land and sold to market would never have been so dumb. It takes collectivized agriculture, its goals imposed as edicts from on high, to mess up as big-time as this. |
http://www.atimes.com/koreas/CE23Dg02.html |
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sonofthedarkstranger
Joined: 15 Jan 2003
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| Posted: Fri Jun 10, 2005 5:27 am Post subject: |
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Hey, good article. I like the part where the N Korean deputy minister admits that his people are starving.
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| On May 15, Choe Su-hon, one of Pyongyang's nine deputy foreign ministers, quantified the grim truth at a Unicef conference in Beijing. Almost a quarter of a million people - 220,000 to be exact - died of famine between 1995 and 1998. As a result, and also due to medical shortages, average life expectancy fell from 73.2 in 1993 to 66.8 in 1999. Showing who exactly bore the brunt, infant mortality (under 5s) almost doubled from 27 to 48 per 1,000 people. Choe also gave data on a related disaster: his country's wider health care crisis. In 1994, 86 percent of people had access to save drinking water; by 1996, only 53 percent did. And the rate of vaccination against polio and measles fell from 90 percent in 1990 to just 50 percent by 1997. |
Straight from the horses mouth.
A "generalization" and a "myth?" Noone's fooled.
soviet_man? |
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soviet_man
Joined: 23 Apr 2005
Location: Seoul
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| Posted: Fri Jun 10, 2005 5:30 am Post subject: |
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| That's a lot of time to practice. Have they got it right yet? |
Yes. If it were so reviled and hated, it would have ceased decades ago.
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| Are collective farms a success? |
A 100% state controlled collective farm is functional and successful.
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| And I suppose in this case we measure success not by a simple profit and loss account but by how well they provide food for the nation. |
If people are profiting - the system is not socialist.
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| But what Pyongyang won't admit is that the impact of natural disaster would have been much less on a rational farm system following sensible policies. |
A state farm is 100% responsible to the state.
A private farm is not responsible to anyone, if their crops fail.
That in it itself, is not a "sensible policy". |
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sonofthedarkstranger
Joined: 15 Jan 2003
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| Posted: Fri Jun 10, 2005 5:51 am Post subject: |
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| Yes. If it were so reviled and hated, it would have ceased decades ago. |
That would follow if and only if the people had any say in the matter. But they don't have a voice, do they?
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| A 100% state controlled collective farm is functional and successful. |
Depends on how you define success. For you, I suspect it would mean state ownership and control as an ends in itself. For me, the measure is whether or not people can eat. I would happily embrace communism if it filled people's bellies. It doesn't, so i don't.
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| If people are profiting - the system is not socialist. |
If people are eating - the system is not communist.
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A state farm is 100% responsible to the state.
A private farm is not responsible to anyone, if their crops fail.
That in it itself, is not a "sensible policy". |
So ideology trumps practicality and reality once again... 
Read the article. North and South korea were both hit by disastrous weather. Noone died hungry in the South. In the North, hundreds of thousands died, and that's just the official line. Juche is a delusion. |
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Cthulhu
Joined: 02 Feb 2003
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| Posted: Fri Jun 10, 2005 6:09 am Post subject: |
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Soviet Man, as mentioned by sonofthedarkstranger, are you defining success in collective farming in North Korea purely in terms of following socialist ideology correctly (i.e., it's a collective farm, therefore it's a success) or do you actually consider the notion of farming to have some bearing on the situation (i.e., a farm that is poorly planned and generally useless is considered to be a failure)?
Most people think a successful ideology should have something to be successful about--abstract concepts that don't pan out just don't cut it. It would, however, explain why these types of socialist theory are so poorly regarded outside of coffee houses. |
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soviet_man
Joined: 23 Apr 2005
Location: Seoul
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| Posted: Sat Jun 11, 2005 1:23 am Post subject: |
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| Quote: |
| Soviet Man, as mentioned by sonofthedarkstranger, are you defining success in collective farming in North Korea purely in terms of following socialist ideology correctly (i.e., it's a collective farm, therefore it's a success) or do you actually consider the notion of farming to have some bearing on the situation (i.e., a farm that is poorly planned and generally useless is considered to be a failure)? |
I think I can safely say that a system (capitalism) can be judged to have "failed" when over 75% of the world live in poverty.
5 Billion people are hungry, not because there isn't enough food to feed everyone in the world - but because capitalism keeps food beyond their financial means.
Justifying capitalism because it is *not communism* DOES NOT give it any greater legitimacy than defending it merely for dogmatic reasons.
In the case of the DPRK, if there were popular opposition to the DPRK leadership, there would be a coup and the DPRK state would collapse. But there isn't. |
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funplanet
Joined: 20 Jun 2003
Location: The new Bucheon!
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| Posted: Sat Jun 11, 2005 3:27 am Post subject: |
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Capitalism is not the cause of hunger nor poverty in large parts of the world...take off your rose glasses, sovietman...
Capitalism is the most liberating system the world has ever seen.... |
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Nowhere Man
Joined: 08 Feb 2004
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| Posted: Sat Jun 11, 2005 6:54 am Post subject: ... |
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