Free enterprise

Press, 16 August 1980, Page 14

Free enterprise

.Sir, —ln reply, to M, Creel, one cannot repress a sense of wonder at his amazing conviction-that the men at the top in Soviet affairs are' above suspicion, and are beyond all terriptation to abuse their power, This is tantamount to saying they are not human at all. Though I am not especially starry-eyed about aspects of United States government, I am at least cheered by the fact that investigative journalism in that country is alive and well, and that not even a United States President is safe from the probing public eye. One looks in vain in the latest. copy of “Soviet News” for the searching, incisive questioning that a Carter or even a Muldoon would undergo. Instead Leonid Brezhnev fields a set of innocuous questions from Pravda editors, safe in the knowledge that all will toe the party line, and that no prickly comments will pin him wriggling to the wall. — Yours etc., HANK GOORN. August 14, 1980.

Sir, — Jane Ford’s statement (August 14), “History proves socialism suppresses development and limits freedom” breaks down under analysis,. The vast majority in, say, Russia, China or Eastern Europe enjoyed neither development nor freedom until their respective revolutions this Century, Amnesty International lists 120 countries which consistently violate human rights and suppress most freedoms. Information available recently in ‘Time” and “The New Internationalist” shows that of this 120, 74 have capitalist economic, and social systems, 27 are mixed and only 19 socialist. .Only 22 were. classed as “democracies”. Under Castro’s brand of socialism, Cuba, once among the poorest natio®s in Latin America now has the highest literacy, employment and life expectancy and the lowest disease and infant and adult mortality rates of the whole area. Economic growth is impressive. Most of the rest of Latin America “enjoys” the dubious fruits of unrestricted free enterprise. —- Yours, etc., ' M. T. MOORE,. August 14, 1980.

Sir, ■ — In reply to 'M. T. Moore’s praise of Red China, •. it is revealing to compare socialist Red China, with its capitalist .counterpart, Taiwan, Both nations are popu-

lated by survivors of the old Chinese system? This system was ' not one' of/ con-, stitutional free enterprise as M. T. Moore asserts, but a totalitarian feudal regime •• : much like Red China today.' Red China now despite - 30 years of turmoil -and massive secret foreign aid (e.g. the Rockefeller’s Expdrt-Im--port Bank) is still one of Asia’s poorest nations. Taiwan has the.second highest, . living standards ;jn Asia, and out-exports Red China 30 to one. An estimated 50 million have been killed in, ‘Red China since the revolution./ If this is M. T. Moore’s idea of the “greatest benefit io the greatest number’? he operates from a ( different , moral base from /ine.;/?—.. Yours, etc., .'■.../ : . / TREVOR-LOUDON. ..'/' August 14, 1980. '■ ?, /