Like
others, Ryan reasonably selects as Exhibit A of the criminal indictment the
Chinese famines of 1958-61, with a death toll of 25-40 million, he reports, a
sizeable chunk of the 100 million corpses the “recording angels”
attribute to “Communism” (whatever that is, but let us use the
conventional term). The terrible atrocity fully merits the harsh condemnation it
has received for many years, renewed here. It is, furthermore, proper to
attribute the famine to Communism. That conclusion was established most
authoritatively in the work of economist Amartya Sen, whose comparison of the
Chinese famine to the record of democratic India received particular attention
when he won the Nobel Prize a few years ago.
Writing
in the early 1980s, Sen observed that India had suffered no such famine. He
attributed the India-China difference to India’s “political system of
adversarial journalism and opposition,” while in contrast, China’s
totalitarian regime suffered from “misinformation” that undercut a
serious response, and there was “little political pressure” from
opposition groups and an informed public (Jean Dreze and Amartya Sen, Hunger
and Public Action, 1989; they estimate deaths at 16.5 to 29.5 million).
The
example stands as a dramatic “criminal indictment” of totalitarian
Communism, exactly as Ryan writes. But before closing the book on the indictment
we might want to turn to the other half of Sen’s India-China comparison, which
somehow never seems to surface despite the emphasis Sen placed on it. He
observes that India and China had “similarities that were quite
striking” when development planning began 50 years ago, including death
rates. “But there is little doubt that as far as morbidity, mortality and
longevity are concerned, China has a large and decisive lead over India”
(in education and other social indicators as well). He estimates the excess of
mortality in India over China to be close to 4 million a year: “India seems
to manage to fill its cupboard with more skeletons every eight years than China
put there in its years of shame,” 1958-1961 (Dreze and Sen).
In
both cases, the outcomes have to do with the “ideological
predispositions” of the political systems: for China, relatively equitable
distribution of medical resources, including rural health services, and public
distribution of food, all lacking in India. This was before 1979, when “the
downward trend in mortality [in China] has been at least halted, and possibly
reversed,” thanks to the market reforms instituted that year.
Overcoming
amnesia, suppose we now apply the methodology of the Black Book and its
reviewers to the full story, not just the doctrinally acceptable half. We
therefore conclude that in India the democratic capitalist
“experiment” since 1947 has caused more deaths than in the entire
history of the “colossal, wholly failed…experiment” of Communism
everywhere since 1917: over 100 million deaths by 1979, tens of millions more
since, in India alone.
