The Christian Science Monitor had a cover story a couple of weeks back titled, "What Would Mao Say?" that was most illuminating. The first three paragraphs say it all.
Yang Youwei owns a slaughterhouse, holds a big chunk of shares in a nearby coal mine, sits on the coal mine board, and runs the company that sells the mine's production. He drives a black Rolls-Royce. He walks like a capitalist; he talks like a capitalist. He is easily the richest man in this small village 300 miles south of Beijing. And he is also Yangjiaxiang's top communist, secretary of the local party.
Welcome to the paradoxical world of today's Chinese Communist Party.
Modern day China is an excellent illustration of why there is virtually no chance of the world ever seeing a truly totalitarian government ever again. Sure, we still have our stragglers like North Korea and Iran as well as failed states in Africa and the Middle East but these are obvious outliers. If want to be in the global marketplace, you have to adapt and that means embracing capitalism, unfettered trade, and free markets. If not, you are going to be on the outside and much less prosperous. This is why I chuckle and shake my head when I hear the Right blow bowel after bowel about the looming threat of communism. It failed. And even a country like China, with all its military might and government control, can't stop it.
Mao would be outraged and likely confounded, as the article notes, to see how terribly wrong he was in his vision for China. What would he say?
He would be speechless.
2 comments:
I'm not sure why you form this inextricable link between totalitarianism and communism. It's only in the last hundred years that communist governments even existed, yet totalitarianism was the norm for millennia, in the form of feudalist and religious monarchies.
Henry VIII was a murderer, a tyrant and religious absolutist. The Ottoman Empire was a religious tyranny. The tsars of Russia were autocrats until 1917, the kings of France were arrogant dictators until the French Revolution.
Even in the last century the majority of totalitarian governments were not communist. Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, Imperial Japan were not communist. Iran, Saudi Arabia, and many other middle eastern countries are right-wing totalitarian regimes that use religion to justify their authority. Tunisia and Egypt are still in flux, but but they were right-wing totalitarian regimes until their revolutions. Iraq under Saddam and Syria today are nominally socialist, but no more so than any other modern European or North American country. Tyrants like Charles Taylor in Africa have no real political agenda other than naked power.
The real menace today is not totalitarian communism, but an oligarchic corporate kleptocracy that controls all the levers of government and society. That's what Russia and China are evolving into. It provides a modicum of illusory freedom by granting citizens modern comforts. China allows no significant voting for national office, while Russia has "elections" that offer no real choices because the Kremlin jails anyone who has a chance of beating Putin.
The political alignment of tyranny is irrelevant. In the end, a small group of people with money and power exert their will on the rest of society, taking away their rights and choices. Atheistic communist tyrannies are actually a harder sell, because the entire philosophical basis of communism is that everyone is equal and everyone should contribute and benefit equally in society.
Right-wing religious capitalism is a much better fit for totalitarianism, because God and Allah reward showers gifts upon those they choose to lead the people on the righteous path, and the prophets should lead the masses because the masses are inherently sinful and are easily led astray by Satan. Strong leaders who know right from wrong have to take firm control.
Divine right of kings, and all that...
Wow, that is some impressive stupid there N.
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