Lion Rock 14: Reading Club Salon 2014, on Class and Inequality

Next week, I will attend the Reading Club Salon 2014, the 3rd annual round table discussion sponsored by the Lion Rock Institute (LRI), Hong Kong's free market think tank. The theme of this year's discussion will be "New Class, New Inequality?"

The theme of the EFN Asia Conference 2014, to be held also next week in the same hotel will be on Liberalism and Inequality. So the LRI event provides additional theoretical discussions to the EFN conference.

Unlike in the previous two Reading Club Salon in 2012 and 2013 where there were many reading materials, this year, there will be only three books to read. The sessions and books for the whole day discussion are:

Session I: Class vs. Inequality

• The New Class by Milovan Djilas (1957), Chp 3, The New Class

Session II: Inequality: Rooted in Economics?

• The New Class by Milovan Djilas (1957) Chp 4, The Party State

Session III: Attempts for an Equal Society: Creation of a New Inequality?

• The Adventures of Jonathan Gullible by Ken Schoolland (1995), Chp 26, 29, 36, 37

Session IV: The Path to a Truly Equal Society
• Healing Our World by Mary Ruwart (1992), Chp 8, 14, 18, 19, 20

And here are the two other books, hard copy.. I first met Ken and Mary in 2007 in Hawaii, during the first Pacific Rim Policy Exchange sponsored by the Americans for Tax Reforms (ATR), International Policy Network (IPN, London), Property Rights Alliance (PRA), LRI and the Grassroot Institute Hawaii (GIH).

From Djilas' book, Chapter 3:

The greatest illusioп vas tћat industrialization апd  collectivizatioп iп the U.S.S.R., апd destructioп of capitalist ownership, would result in а classless society.  Iп 1936, vheп tће new Coпstitutioп was promulgated, Stalin aпnouпced  tћat the "exploiting class"  ћаd ceased to exist. The capitalist and other classes of ancient origiп had iп fact been destroyed, but а new class, previously unkпovn t.o history, had been formed.

It is understandaЬle that this class, like those before it, should believe that the estaЬlishment of its pover vould result in happiness and freedom for all men….

This new class, the bureaucracy, or more accuтately the polltical bureaucracy, has all the characteristics of earlier ones as well as some пеw characteristics of its оwп. Its origiп had its special characteristics also, even tlюugh in essence it was similar to the begiпnings of other classes.

This is a straightforward discussion of the ugly nature of the bureaucratic class. Neither capitalists nor workers. Just plain regulators, tax/revenue collectors and spenders. They are the class that immediately becomes the ruling power after a successful socialist revolution, like what happened in Soviet Russia.

A "classless" society is impossible even in theory because government will always create a group of men and women, elected or appointed, who will command and control the rest of the population what are allowed and not allowed, what kind of penalties and fines to impose on violators, create new regulations and prohibitions  in order to address and correct past government failures.

Djilas continued,

In loose terrпs, as the new class becomes stronger and attains а more perceptible physiognomy, the role of the party diminishes. The core апd tће basis of the new class is created in the party and at its top, as well as in tће state political organs. The once live, corпpact party, full of initiative, is disappearing to Ьесоrпе transformed into the traditional oligarchy of the new class, irresistibly drawiпg into its ranks those who aspire to join tће nеw class and repressing those wћо ћаvе any ideals.

Тће party makes the class, but tће class grows as а result and uses the party as а basis. Тће class grows stronger, wћile the party grows weaker; this is the inescapable fate of every Communist раrtу in power.

As the state grows, the ambitions and desire for power of those who administer the state, the top Party officials and their lieutenants in the various bureaucracies also grow. I am not convinced though that the Communist Party becomes weaker as this political class becomes stronger. The Party is the chief machinery, the provider of institutional legality for the various polcies, programs and regulations of the state in ruling over ordinary mortals.

Discussions to be continued....
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See also 

Lion Rock 10: On Having Centralized or Self-Government, October 17, 2013 

Lion Rock 11: Barun Mitra on Democracy, Reading Salon 2013, October 28, 2013 

Lion Rock 12: Bill Stacey on Free Markets, Big Government and Hong Kong, March 10, 2014

Lion Rock 13: LRI Position on the Hong Kong Protests, October 08, 2014

Hayek in Asia 2: Shanghai Austrian Economics Summit 2012

Friedrich Hayek, an Austrian scholar in economics and legal/political philosophy who died 20 years ago, is famous among many free market-oriented scholars in Asia. Friedrich Mises, another Austrian scholar, is famous too.

The International Society for Individual Liberty (ISIL, http://www.isil.org/), a US-based libertarian organization, is co-sponsoring and financing a big conference in Asia, the Shanghai Austrian Economics Summit this coming July 20-23, 2012, in Double Tree by Hilton Hotel, Shanghai, China.

There will be 24 speakers, see the list here, http://shanghaisummit.wordpress.com/speakers/. Seven of them I personally know and have met at least once. From left to right:

1. Xingyuan Feng, CIPA-Unirule, China; 2. Barun Mitra, Liberty Institute, India

3.Hiroshi Yoshida, IPSA, FEI, Japan; 4. Rainer Heufers, Siap Solutions, Singapore

5. Ken Schooland, GIH, Hawaii, USA; 6. Tom Palmer, Cato-Atlas, USA; 7. Mary Ruwart, ISIL, USA

Barun and Xingyuan, I see them yearly since 2004 in different regional and international free market conferences and meetings. Sometimes I see them twice or thrice in one year, Barun especially as he would come to Manila as a speaker in other conferences here.

Hiroshi I've met in 2005 during the round table discussion on Hayek's book "The Constitution of Liberty" in Phuket, Thailand. Since then, I'd bump into him from time to time, but not yearly. Rainer worked at the Friedrich Naumann Foundation for Liberty (FNF) for many years, he helped organized the Economic Freedom Network (EFN) Asia annual conferences, and I have met him several times there.

Ken Schooland I've met twice, in Hawaii in 2007 then in Jakarta I think in 2010. He is the author of The Adventures of Jonathan Gullible: A Free Market Odyssey. Mary I've met only once, in Hawaii in 2007, while I've met Tom Palmer several times since 2008. He also came to Manila in 2009 and Minimal Government Thinkers helped organized four lectures for him in three universities here plus FNF Manila office.

I cannot attend this conference as I do not have a sponsor to pay for my plane fare and hotel, but I wish the organizers of this important event great success in terms of attracting more participants, especially from China. ISIL noted that Chinese scholar, Kenli "Li" Zhao Schoolland, has successfully organized Austrian Economics lectures in the past few years, so they have made this year's conference an international event.

I also hope that my other Chinese friend there from CIPA, Liu Junning, who at one time was considered the "Hayek of China" because of his deep intellectual discourse on liberty, rule of law, and other themes that Hayek discussed, would be able to attend. I heard a few years ago that the China communist government has marked him as a "dissident" and hence, is monitoring his movement.

Fellow defenders of individual liberty, free market and rule of law, in Asia and elsewhere, let us keep the torch burning.
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See also:
Top Asian free market think tanks, January 26, 2009
Hayek in Asia, September 20, 2010
Hayek 12: Friedrich Hayek's 20th Death Anniversary, March 26, 2012
(it has links to Hayek 1 to 11, discussion on some chapters of Hayek's book, "The Constitution of Liberty")
Why is Harry Thinking About Going to China? from HarryLeaks blog