According to the article quoted below, former Cambodian communists are studying the thought of Peter Drucker. Drucker wrote many influential articles and books. My favorite is his article praising his teacher Joseph Schumpeter, written in the year that Schumpeter would have turned 100.
(p. A4) MALAI, Cambodia — For years, Tep Khunnal was the devoted personal secretary of Pol Pot, staying loyal to the charismatic ultracommunist leader even as the Khmer Rouge movement collapsed around them in the late 1990s.
Forced to reinvent himself after Pol Pot’s death, he fled to this outpost on the Thai border and began following a different sort of guru: the Austrian-American management theorist and business consultant Peter Drucker.
“I realized that some other countries, in South America, in Japan, they studied Drucker, and they used Drucker’s ideas and made the countries prosperous,” he said.
The residents of this dusty but bustling town are almost all former Khmer Rouge soldiers or cadres and their families, but they have come to embrace capitalism with almost as much vigor as they once fought to destroy class distinctions, free trade and even money itself.
Mr. Tep Khunnal helped lead the way, as a founder of an agricultural export company and a small microfinance bank for farmers before rising to become the district governor. From that position, he encouraged his constituents to follow suit.
. . .
“We joined the communists, and now we have joined the capitalists, which is much better,” said Dim Sok, a local official.
. . .
Mr. Tep Khunnal, 67, retired from government and business a few years ago and now devotes his time to spreading Drucker’s ideas across the country. He teaches at a university in a neighboring province and is translating the theorist’s work into Khmer. He has even compiled his favorite bits of Drucker’s wisdom into a small handbook.
. . .
He said he began reading about economics while serving as a Khmer Rouge envoy to the United Nations in the 1980s. Although he liked Milton Friedman, the free-market economist, and Frederick Taylor, who pioneered scientific management, he was most drawn to Drucker’s insistence that employees were central to an enterprise’s success.
“What I find interesting for me is that he talks about individuals, he gives power to individuals, not to collectivism,” he said of Drucker. “Frederick Taylor in the early 20th century, he talked about efficiency, but Drucker talked about effectiveness.”
For the full story, see:
JULIA WALLACE. “MALAI JOURNAL; Pol Pot’s Former Followers Become Cadres for Capitalism.” The New York Times (Thurs., MARCH 23, 2017): A4.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date MARCH 22, 2017, and has the title “MALAI JOURNAL; They Smashed Banks for Pol Pot. Now They’re Founding Them.”)
The article by Drucker on Schumpeter, mentioned by me above, is:
Drucker, Peter F. “Modern Prophets: Schumpeter or Keynes?” Forbes (May 23, 1983): 24-28.