Nine-Tenths of the Law

Image by Wesley Tingey.

The Chinese Revolution focused its wrath—rather famously, or infamously—on the landlord class. Mao Zedong viewed agrarian land reform as a crucial jewel in the crown of his new China. Nobody should applaud the bloody excesses of the land reform program, which in an overly literal interpretation of the expression “abolish the landlord class” led to the deaths of many thousands of people accused of being landlords. But it’s hard to avoid the conclusion that, in today’s...