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Accountability was embodied by reforms that paid commune
members according to the value that they created
rather than according to the arbitrary judgment of a cadre
leader. After Chinese communes moved from a system
characterized primarily by government privilege and cronyism
to a system that integrated the liberal principles of
property rights, accountability, and voluntary exchange,
these communities became more prosperous and competitive.
In spite of the few vestiges of cadre power that
remained after the 1980 reform, economic growth in people’s
communes reduced absolute poverty and increased
vertical mobility. 7 Additionally, these reforms largely
diminished cadre leaders’ and affiliated parties’ abilities
to enrich themselves at their constituents’ expense. The
returns to private entrepreneurship in rural communes
that adopted reform efforts far outstrip the corresponding
returns to political privilege. 8 It simply does not pay
as much to be a crony in a more liberal, market economy.
The tendency of communist systems to devolve into
cronyism largely stems from a lack of accountability of
a leadership that is not personally bound to its constituents
beyond what public duty requires. Recent inquiries
into the natures of governance and morality suggest that
shared moral systems can act as a “glue” that binds planners
with those for whom they are planning and therefore
reduces the tendency to defect from the public good. For
instance, moral psychologist Jonathan Haidt suggests
that the common moral dimensions of popular religions
lower the transaction costs of interacting with other
believers and therefore contribute to social harmony. 9
This finding would suggest that a communist system
fundamentally grounded in religion and nationality, like
34 LIBERALISM AND CRONYISM