The “Minister of Production in the Collectivist State” as a Third Way of the Market: China Between Ethics and Growth

Abstract

This paper proposes a comparison between the Chinese social-economic system of today and the economic planning system theorized by Enrico Barone in 1908, which described in his famous paper ”The minister of production in the collectivist state”. The work stems from a critical reflection on the premises of the capitalist market system. From Adam Smith to J. M. Keynes (included), economists have identified in traditional capitalistmodels (search for maximum profit, economic efficiency, free competition system) the best economic system, universally implementable, feasible and infallible in democratic capitalist contexts. In the history of economic ideas have always been clear gap between the ”capitalist system” and the ”collectivist system”. The choice of a government had to fall back on one or on the other system. The first considered ”good”, the second considered ”bad” for economic growth. Times since September 11, 2001, however, seem to have debunked the myth of capitalism as the only model of democratic growth: Asia and China have given the world a lesson in humility. China has shown that although not being a democratic country could developed a robust and highly competitive economic model that has weakened the pillars of the western capitalism. China through Confucianism and Taoism has been able to establish the new global economic laws: low labour costs, low prices, mass production of low quality with a mixed mercantilist philosophy which is unknown to the Western world: the silent, smooth, radical trade expansion. As in a game of dominoes, China has been able to drop the capitalism safeties and America had to bow its head and agree to no longer be the only great power in the international scenario. But the peculiarity of this work is not only to define the root causes of China's success in the West; also reflects the fact that an Italian economist (Enrico Barone), in 1908, predicted analytically and developed a theoretical system very similar to that of China nowadays, between capitalism and collectivism (a third way of the market). The Asian culture has developed a market system that has proven to be accommodating to the needs of the capitalist market and to grasp the development opportunities that the same Western capitalism has offered.