I have rather deliberately chosen this somewhat unorthodox title, keeping in mind the late P. N. Haksar's abiding interest in socialism, Marxism in particular. He died in 1998 with a feeling of deep anguish, as the world turned virtually upside down after the fall of the Soviet Union. This paper is an attempt to understand what went wrong with socialism in the twentieth century, an age marked by pluralism and increasing diversification of knowledge. The central argument of the paper is that, notwithstanding socialism's compatibility with pluralism in its original vision, socialism failed because of its inability to negotiate the question of pluralism. In a way this is a tribute to the late Haksar too, who himself possessed a creative mind with a pluralist temperament.

The collapse of socialism as a practice in the last decade of the twentieth century has evoked two major yet contradictory explanations. First, socialism failed, because, following the advent of perestroika and glasnost under Gorbachev, it was infected with the virus of pluralism, the beginning of which was made supposedly by Khrushchev in the 20th Congress in 1956. Second, socialism's failure is attributed to the fact that it was not sufficiently pluralist, notwithstanding Gorbachev's efforts to democratize the Soviet system. In fact, in the last days of the Gorbachev era, these two opposite positions were represented by Nina Andreyeva and Boris Yeltsin respectively. While the first position is generally considered Stalinist, the second position is an advocacy for liberalism.

Introduction

This chapter focuses on linkages between economic growth, employment creation, and poverty alleviation. Broadly speaking, the fruit of economic growth is distributed through income opportunities and social policies that redistribute income, such as progressive taxation and social security, and that enhance economic opportunities of the deprived, such as education and public health. Because of limited space, the chapter's scope of discussion is confined to economic growth and poverty alleviation through employment. The chapter focuses on employment, not other forms of income opportunities, because employment is often the only reliable means of income for most citizens and the deprived. It is increasingly accepted that realizing high economic growth alone does not necessarily guarantee poverty alleviation. The economic and labor market performances in Indonesia during the decade after the Asian financial crisis (AFC), corroborate this observation, and similar evidence abounds elsewhere in the world. This chapter thus sheds light on the relations between economic growth, employment creation, and poverty alleviation in Indonesia in order to gain insight into strengthening the linkages.

The effect of economic growth on poverty reduction depends largely on the employment parameter that connects the two. Creation of employment can be considered as a function of economic growth, but the relation is not linear, because many variables affect the capacity of the economy to generate employment, which will be discussed in the first half of this chapter.

Aimed at an English constituency, the Romanist Dublin featured the European press. Additional motifs were press liberty and Dublin rivals.

1. [Robertson, James B.]. “Gerbet on the Eucharist.” 1 (1836): 200–21.

Review of Considerations sur la Dogme by Abbé Ph. Gerbet tagged him as the editor in 1824 of the monthly Mémorial Catholique, “a journal distinguished not less for its literary talents than for its excellent principles.”

2. [Quin, M.J.]. “Wraxall's Memoirs.” 1 (1836): 343–67.

Review of Sir N. W. Wraxall's book aired his quest to identify Junius.

3. [Howitt, William]. “Literature of the Aristocracy, and the Literature of Genius.” 2 (1836–37): 111–29.

Highlighted the “sudden” proliferation of serials from which readers acquired much knowledge. “Every class of people has its periodical organ of enquiry and intelligence.” Expensive annuals shaped taste, but many suffered from poor writing done by amateurs, often friends of the publisher. Cheap offerings, principally the Penny Magazine and Chambers's Journal, relied on the steam press to publish practical information gleaned from many sources.

4. [Russell, C. W.]. “The Dublin Society.” 2 (1836–37): 226–44.

Illuminated the Royal Dublin Society “news-room” valued by its members.

5. [O'Connell, John]. “Recent Opinions upon America.” 2 (1836–37): 354–67.

Verified that many articles in British newspapers headlined the United States.

6. [Wiseman, Nicholas]. “Summary Review of French Catholic Literature, from September 1836 to March 1837.” 2 (1836–37): 588–603.

Research has shown that the number of ethnic Chinese in China who came from Hong Kong, Taiwan and Southeast Asia grew significantly with China's open-door policy in the 1980s, and they soon became the biggest foreign investors in China (Huang 2003). According to official reports, more than 80 percent of the total foreign investments in China came from Overseas Chinese sources (see Table 3.1) (Chen and Hu 1997; Huang 1998). Studies also revealed that in China, 18 to 20 million people were employed by Overseas Chinese–owned or Overseas Chinese–invested enterprises by the end of 1994 (Tracy and Lever-Tracy 1997). Both of the quotations at the beginning of this chapter show that Overseas Chinese have been seen by politicians and intellectuals alike as bridge builders who, especially after the Tiananmen crackdown in 1989, have emerged as an important group in providing the capital and expertise for fueling China's rapid economic growth.

Objectives

The Indonesian economy has performed well in recent years. It recovered from the 1997 Asian financial crisis and grew at an average of 5.2% during 2001–2008, which compared favorably with other major Southeast Asian economies. Despite the global economic crisis, the economy posted a growth rate of 4.5% in 2009—one of the highest in Southeast Asia. Nevertheless, the challenges faced by the economy remain formidable. The rate of economic growth in recent years has not been at par with the average the country achieved between 1967 and 1997. The pace of poverty reduction has slowed, and the poverty incidence, at 14.2% in 2009, was only 3.5 percentage points lower than that in 1996. Income and non-income disparities across the country's regions and across the urban–rural divide remain wide. In addition, the expected fall in commodity prices, continued uncertainty about the recovery of the global economy, and tightening of domestic credit further threaten investment and private consumption and in turn hamper the pace of economic growth and poverty reduction.

The Indonesian government is committed to sustaining and improving the growth it has attained in recent years. This commitment is embodied in the current medium-term development plan and will be carried forward in succeeding ones. The creation of a prosperous Indonesia through economic and social development is one of the current plan's three major agenda items.

Introduction

The current climate, food, fuel, and water crises have convinced many countries, including Indonesia, that a diff erent model of economic growth is needed. “Green growth”—a growth path that places longterm developmental and environmental sustainability at its core—has emerged as a desirable paradigm in Indonesia, and the concept of a low carbon, green economy has moved into the mainstream of the country's policy discourse over the recent years. Indonesia's green growth strategy rightly recognizes that the country's sustainability depends not only on the pace of physical and human capital accumulation, but also on its natural capital.

However, transforming the growth trajectory to one that is green, resilient, and sustainable is by no means an easy task. This is because of the multiple and simultaneous challenges of dealing with unavoidable and uncertain climate risks; attaining energy security; improving access to energy; managing scarce resources, particularly forests, land, and water; and finding ways to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions while creating new economic opportunities and minimizing adverse social consequences. A number of barriers stand in the way of achieving these goals.

As in other developing countries, natural capital is a significant share of total wealth in Indonesia, greater than the share of physical capital (World Bank 2006b). Green growth is therefore essential for Indonesia's longterm sustainability. Broadly, environmentally unsustainable growth may be attributed to two sources: (1) global environmental risks, particularly associated with the impacts of climate change; and (2) the degradation of environmental and natural resources that occurs locally (Figure 12.1).

In 1925 Stalin appointed Kaganovich as general secretary of the Ukrainian Communist Party. This was his first major assignment and a sign of the high regard in which he was held. The appointment was part of the shuffling of personnel in the struggle for succession following Lenin's death. The Ukrainian leadership was deeply divided over key issues concerning the best way to consolidate Soviet power, the nature of the Soviet federal system and the degree of autonomy to be retained by the republic within the USSR. Nationalities policy and the measures taken to placate Ukrainian national feeling, embodied in the strategy of ‘Ukrainization’, generated intense disagreement. Economic policy provided another issues of conflict. The struggle to control Ukraine was bound up with the wider struggle to gain control of the party at the all-union level. With his assignment to Ukraine, Kaganovich was required to steer a course between the contending factions in the republic while satisfying Stalin's desire to consolidate his control.

The New Economic Policy was primarily an economic strategy aimed at fostering economic recovery by using the market, taxation and pricing policy. But NEP was also a political strategy. Within the limitation of the one-party state, an attempt was made to nurture a degree of popular compliance, if not consent, for the Soviet regime. Within this framework a broader strategy for the development of the Soviet regime began to be evolved.

Sponsored by Unitarians and the precursor of the elder National Review, the Prospective situated the press in a variety of contexts.

1. [Thom, J. H.]. “Sydney Smith.” 1 (1845): 171–207.

Designated Smith as the first editor of the Edinburgh Review, 1802–03, and a contributor until 1829. Quoted him on the Review's impact.

2. “Benjamin Constant.” 1 (1845): 356–91.

Denominated Constant a “Newspaper Editor” because he launched the French Constitutionnel.

3. [Gallenga, Antonio]. “Italy, the Pope, and the Jesuits.” 3 (1847): 423–60.

Vetoed Vincenzo Gioberti's proposal for limited censorship in the face of official behavior in Italy. Tuscany, obeying an Austrian order, suppressed the Antologia, and Rome restricted its papers generally.

4. “David Copperfield, and Pendennis.” 7 (1851): 157–91.

Essay on the styles and themes of Charles Dickens and W. M. Thackeray thought that Thackeray undermined respect for periodicals in his Pendennis. He painted Pendennis as a man scribbling “trifles for annuals and magazines” or reviewing books “only half read, in a flippant presumptuous way in a weekly,” a character more dominant than Dickens' Warrington, an “honest” guide of opinion with “valuable facts and ideas” based on study.

5. [Beard, Charles]. “Uncle Tom's Cabin.” 8 (1852): 490–513.

Review of Harriet Beecher Stowe's book lamented that the “editor of a Free-soil paper” had recently been lynched, not surprising because public opinion was an effective censor of the press in the American South.

From the same house as the Quarterly Review, Murray's surveyed British, Irish, and American journalism.

1. [Arnold, E. A.]. “Editorial Announcement.” 1 (1887): 1–2.

Confirmed that the “place once occupied by Monthly publications, as direct and powerful organs of Party, is now filled by Daily and Weekly newspapers; but the influence of Periodical Literature has been transferred to a wider and more independent sphere. In the pages of a Review or Magazine, carefully matured opinions may still be expounded by acknowledged authorities with greater completeness and deliberation than is possible in the Daily Press.” “Political Articles will invariably be signed by their Authors, who alone are to be held responsible for the opinions they express.”

2. Bunsen, George von. “What Germany Is About.” 1 (1887): 115–27.

Balanced a new German (unnamed) fortnightly on poetry against German fiction that ignored journalists.

3. G., M. “Some Odd Numbers.” 2 (1887): 481–90.

Flipped through a batch of 1834 periodicals, among them the Monthly Repository, the Edinburgh Review, and Fraser's, Tait's, and the New Monthly magazines. Quoted Leigh Hunt's London Journal, an eight-page weekly “clearly printed triple-columned,” on the variety of periodicals in that year. Periodicals in 1887 spanned more subjects at a low price but lacked the quality of the Journal because the pace of contemporary life diminished interest in “high thought.”

The founding of the Comintern in 1919 was historically destined to be an alternative to the reformism of the Second International. Consequently, the Third International, throughout its life, was confronted with the problem of providing a real Left, Leninist critique of European social democracy, the main exponent of reformism. Ironically, however, it is this very meaning of Leninism which right from the beginning became a kind of thorn in the flesh in the Comintern's life. Sharp disagreements, criticisms and counter criticisms centred around the issue of what would be the correct perspective of the leftism couched in the phraseology of Leninism. The years between 1924 and 1934 witnessed the unfolding of various currents and crosscurrents related to this question and the eventual closure of this issue. The period under consideration is unique in the sense that it signified initially a gradual and then a complete break with the “mass line” and the united front strategy adopted by the Third Congress of the Comintern in 1921. In other words, this was the time which witnessed a crystallization of the Comintern's understanding of leftism, climaxed by the advent of the “third period” after the Sixth Congress in 1928.

Historically speaking, the rising curve of leftism in the Comintern during this period ran parallel to the growth of Stalinism in the USSR and the growing dissension within the CPSU(B), spearheaded most forcefully and systematically by Trotsky and subsequently by Bukharin in the late 1920s and early 1930s.

Seeking a mass market, Charles J. Longman's endeavor scanned the press of several nations.

1. Howells, W. D. “Lexington.” 1 (1882–83): 41–61.

Observed that American men read mostly newspapers; women, books; both sexes, magazines.

2. Freeman, Edward A. “Some Points in American Speech and Customs, II.” 1 (1882–83): 314–34.

Admitted that American newspaper interviewing could be unpleasant when a reporter posed unfair questions.

3. Boyes, John Fred[erick]. “In Memoriam – Dutton Cook.” 3 (1883–84): 179–87.

Honored Edward Dutton Cook who lived in the era when journalism emerged as a “career.” He published his first article in Chambers's Journal and others in the Gentleman's Magazine, All the Year Round, and Temple Bar. Once acting editor of the Cornhill Magazine, he achieved his greatest fame as theatre critic of the Pall Mall Gazette and World.

4. Layard, Gertrude. “Armand Carrel.” 5 (1884–85): 48–53.

Saluted Carrel, “the great French journalist,” whose early newspaper columns were on the military. He then wrote about politics for gazettes and magazines until January 1830 when he began the National with Adolphe Thiers. In July, when the king cancelled press liberties, journalists assembled at the National offices planning a resistance that subsequently helped to drive Charles X from power. Carrel, who knew the power of the daily, soon made the National “the ablest and most influential political journal.”

This essay tries to address one central question that Marxism in the twenty-first century is trying to confront. This centres around one possible weakness of Marxist theory, namely, the vision of socialism as an alternative to capitalism. Generations of Marxists have been inspired by the success of Marxism as a theory to accomplish a revolution, which incorporates within it a strategy to effect the breakdown of an exploitative system. This involves the Marxist understanding of leadership, organization and mass mobilization, as evident particularly in the victory of the October Revolution in Russia in 1917. While Lenin was the architect of this practice of materializing a revolution, the effect of this vision being the formation of the Comintern in 1919, his untimely death in 1924 seriously hindered the working out of the vision of socialism as a way of life, as an alternative to capitalism. What happened thereafter was virtually a transfer of the strategy and outlook of centralization, which is the essential element in the making of a revolution, to the making of socialism itself, leading ultimately to the collapse of the USSR and its East European allies in 1991. Rapidly the impression gained ground that, while Marxism as a strategy of making a revolution has proved correct more than once, its claim to provide a better, that is, a socialist, alternative has proved to be an illusion.

The Great Terror from 1936 to 1938 transformed the Soviet system. It erupted unexpectedly and with little warning. It developed through a series of steps acquiring momentum. In the first half of 1936 Kaganovich and Ordzhonikidze both spoke publicly against mass repression of their own cadres. In this they stood in clear opposition to Yezhov, the most vocal advocate of punitive measures against those deemed to be enemies of the state. Stalin's ability to use repression in the economy in 1933 had been thwarted by Ordzhonikidze and Kaganovich. By July 1936 he had decided to unleash a new witch-hunt. Kaganovich was required to change his stance on this issue. His shifting outlook and role sheds light on the way in which the Terror was initiated and on how the vozhd' managed his relations with his deputies. The rationalization for the Terror provided by Kaganovich at the time and subsequently provides a key to understanding the tortured logic of those involved in implementing these measures. The mass repression of 1936 was shaped in part by the long shadow cast by collectivization, dekulakization and the famine, which remained issues of bitter recriminations. In industry and transport the problem of low labour efficiency and the disappointing return on investment generated conflicting viewpoints between those who saw the problems as stemming from obstruction and wrecking and those who saw the problems as rooted in the rigidities of the state-owned, planned economy.

This book is a sociological study of religion which analyzes the influence of the Christian values of Overseas Chinese entrepreneurs on the emerging market economy of China. The purpose of the book is to examine how, and to what extent, Christian values and ethics, that is, how Christians see the world and interpret the meaning of their actions, affect the business practices of Overseas Chinese Christian entrepreneurs in China, as well as their possible social consequences. It is important in this introductory chapter first to discuss the uneasy relationship between religion and economics in general as groundwork for this research. Following this, the chapter moves on to provide the background for the economic and religious changes in China after 1978, emphasizing foreign investments, as well as Christianity in post-1978 China, to set these issues in context. This chapter ends with an outline of the purpose, methodology and chapter plan of the book.

Religion and Economics

The relationship between religion and economics is both controversial and complex. Many hold the view that these two areas are (or should be) separate, and at the extreme end, there are those who hold the view that religion and economics are incompatible and would likely create “a clash of civilizations” (Capaldi, 2005). Samuelson (1979, 718), for example, argues that “putting stress on these non-economic factors does not solve the problem of explanation [of economic issues]. It poses new problems.”

Reinventing itself regularly, the New Review expounded on anonymity and “new journalism.”

1. Coleridge, [John Duke, 1st Baron]. “Matthew Arnold.” 1 (1889): 111–24, 217–32.

Rated some of Arnold's columns on the American press “absurd and contemptible” but not unusual in journalism. The French regularly blasted the brutality of British newspapers.

2. Bigelow, Poultney. “The German Emperor.” 1 (1889): 243–57.

Personified Wilhelm II as a man with “little patience” for his supposed enemies in journalism. For example, the “Deutsche Rundschau, the leading literary review, was seized by police because it published a section of the late Emperor's diary.”

3. O'Connor, T. P. “The New Journalism.” 1 (1889): 423–34.

Configured New Journalism as “more personal in tone.” Reporting the “appearance, the habits, the clothes, or the home and social life” of an individual had previously been “an impertinence and almost…an indecency.” “Personal journalism” in 1889 was “healthy…rational” because it gave to history a picture of a whole person, but it should be selective, which was not a trait of the American press. Gossip should never extend to “slander, scandal… personal attack.” Still, it was better to be outspoken because “the public suffer a great deal more from the cowardice than from the audacity of journalism, from the suppression than from the publication of awkward facts.” Newspapers should not hesitate to expose fraud, as in advertisements, because editors were timid or needed money.

The essays in this volume cover a period of about thirty years, namely, the last two decades of the twentieth century and the first decade of the new millennium. Marked by a complex set of events, this has been a period of transition of Marxism from a rather ossified to a more flexible and open understanding. This was a time which witnessed the birth of a new kind of interpretation of socialism generated from within the Soviet bloc, identified with Mikhail Gorbachev's ambitious programme of perestroika and glasnost. Suddenly it appeared that Marxism had entered a new age, coming up with a great promise for the future. This, however, did not happen. By 1991, as the Soviet Union, together with the East European bloc, crumbled, Marxism seemed to have entered a period of unprecedented crisis across the globe. This swing of the pendulum of history put Marxism on trial, raising questions concerning its very existence, relevance and future. The situation became particularly complex when, by the end of the 1990s and the beginning of the new century, it was evident that the rise of postmodernism was a new and powerful challenge to the universalist claims of Marxism. Besides, the crisis of Marxism sparked off new debates relating to Stalinism and its democratic alternative, recognition of the revolutionary-humanist currents in the Marxist tradition, associated with figures like Antonio Gramsci and Rosa Luxemburg, who have been traditionally considered as representatives of Western Marxism and excluded from the purview of official Marxism.