Unclear on the Concepts
Boris Johnson, in The Spectator: They love capitalism, but not elections
It was towards the end of my trip to China that the tall, beautiful communist-party girl turned and asked the killer question.
It's bad enough that the title of this article and its very first sentence - even when their words are defined down to only the most bland, common denominator of meanings - flatly contradict themselves. It's simply infuriating to see it so permeate a piece of writing.
While keeping in mind that the author believes the Chinese "love capitalism" and have successfully bucked the notion that "free-market capitalism and democracy must go hand-in-hand," read these words of his from the rest of the article (copied from here):
I came away with an impression of a gloriously venal capitalist explosion being controlled by an unrepentant Bolshevik system...
The market, otherwise known as the sum of all voluntary trades among legitimate property owners, is under control by Bolsheviks or Bolshevik-wannabes. You know, the people who were primarily responsible for the creation of the Soviet Union and who were led by people like Vladimir Lenin, Vyacheslav Molotov, Joseph Stalin, and Leon Trotsky. All BFF with capitalists, for sure!
..., and - this is the key thing - with the patriotic support of almost all the intelligentsia.[...]
'But what if you want to get involved in politics,' I asked. 'What do you do?' 'You must join the communist party, and work for the government,' said Lucy, a girl on my left. 'It is a great honour to join the communist party..."
[...]
...let me assure you that I found the same story everywhere...
Widespread intellectual devotion to the system amongst those not in the ruling class. The hints of a society that is, at the very least, generally skeptical of individualistic ideas.
At the end of our session at the journalism college a pale, intense academic came up privately and said of course I was right to say that journalism should root out corruption, 'but we must also care about stability,' he said, and there is the nub.[...]
It is a clich� worth repeating that the Chinese have a [...] deep unwillingness to be seen to do anything that is extrovert, embarrassing, satirical, flatulent, foolish, irreverent...[t]hey have a different concept of the relation between the individual and society, and a distrust of any kind of seditious argument, let alone satire. It's not so much that they would be shocked by Voltaire. They would be shocked by Aristophanes.
[...]
Wasn't it absurd that the state was blocking access to Wikipedia, the online encyclopaedia, particularly since it seemed to have been written by Maoists anyway? And every time the students responded that it wasn't such a problem, that there were ways round it, I was struck by their apathy, their acquiescence, their un-Tiananmen spirit, their willingness to accept the arguments for 'stability' and the public good...
No, strike that; the open advocacy of collectivistic ideas. Stability is merely a code word for being primarily concerned with keeping the living in a manageable stasis whether they suffocate or just push on with mediocrity. The Public Good is thin shielding from the foggily incoherent demand that some definable majority of a population should usually get what it wants, implying the more fundamental assumption that the more people who agree on something the more valid, moral, and accurate to reality their ideas are.
All of this, of course, embraces the epistemology that the individual is not fit to judge, value, and act wisely, for neither his benefit nor for the benefit of others, and whose "atomistic" and "short-sighted" reason must be authenticated (if not supplanted outright) by the reasoning of other people...really any other people as long as they outnumber him or her and those who agree with him or her.
It is a clich� worth repeating that the Chinese have a colossal, 4,000-year-old respect for authority...[...]
They want to do it the authoritarian way, the Chinese way, partly because the fear of disorder is so strong...
[...]
In fact, the more people like me insist on rabbiting on about democracy, the more the Chinese must inwardly resolve to vindicate their own specialness and their own solution, complete with prison camps, mass capital punishment, and getting fired if you have more than one baby...
[...]
'But what about Chairman Mao?' I asked. I had been stunned, in Beijing, to find his warty visage still looming over the entrance to the Forbidden City, and to see the crowds of reverential citizens still visiting the mausoleum of a man who, in his 27-year reign, was responsible for the deaths of 70 million people and who therefore, in the evil tyrant stakes, knocks Hitler and Stalin into a cocked hat. Surely it was time to break with the legacy of Mao? This time it was a spiky-haired young lawyer called Harry who dealt gently with my misconceptions. 'Different times produce different heroes,' he said. 'We cannot put ourselves in the position that Mao was in.'
[...]
When I asked the lecturers in journalism to name their professional heroes, they looked utterly bemused, eventually naming Edgar Snow, the American stooge and hagiographer of Mao.
[...]
China will never rule the world as long as the Forbidden City is adorned with the face of the biggest mass murderer in history.
My emphasis.
Not only is there entirely common support for the elevation of the society above the individuals whom comprise it, there is little desire to eradicate from honor one of the very few people on the planet with whom the concept of the tyrannical, ruthlessly brutal head of state is widely personified. People like Mao embody democide.
I often refer to myself as a pessimist. I don't think things are irrevocably ruined for all time and deplore that the best I can hope for is either a clear field of view to witness and comment rudely upon The Collapse of Civilization or a death mercifully soon. I am convinced people can be peacefully persuaded to change their philosophy.
However I was not so much of a pessimist that you could convince me someone considered worth listening to would seriously think a culture that:
- rejected independent, private business,
- wasn't hostile to the coerced collectivism of state-imposed central planning,
- rejected individualism, and
- wasn't ashamed of their affinity for a man who gave the orders and threats that directly lead to the murders of so many tens of millions of people for attempting to disagree with him;
is a "free-market capitalist" culture, a culture that "loves capitalism."
No, seriously, you couldn't convince me. It turns out I inaccurately estimated the distance to the dark bottom.
Some people, mostly of unsound mind, would assert #4 does apply to what they say are nations that live with free market or free market-like systems. Think the accusations leveled against the CEOs of gun manufacturers, alcohol companies, the tobacco industry, and oil conglomerates. I trust that at least some of the people reading this can identify the complete inappropriateness of the comparison.
The other three are different. I will claim right here that you won't find a person amenable to reason on this planet who thinks being for government control of private businesses, being at best apathetic about the state's violent economic and social planning, and being against rugged individualism are characteristics of a capitalist! It's almost the direct opposite of that!
People are complaining all the time that capitalists want to be removed from the shackles of the state. People are complaining all the time that businesses want to be regulated less. People are complaining all the time that capitalists are stubborn individualists who reject the legitimate demands of society and only care about themselves.
This is a whole new sensation of wonder for me. I know I operate with a very precise definition of capitalism with which most folks would find fault, but not only do I see people getting that wrong, I see them even getting their criticism totally backwards.
What the fuck is so capitalistic - so free market - about "technically communist" China!? Reader, when you think of China, do you think of a haven for private enterprise? Is modern China on your short list of countries that practice the economics of the Austrian School, let alone Frederic Bastiat, James Buchanan, Milton Friedman, Friedrich von Hayek, Henry Hazlitt, David Ricardo, Jean-Baptiste Say, Adam Smith, Walter Williams, and so on?
Hu Jintao and the Chinese Communist Party are not what I associate with private property, free association, and voluntary trade...and if someone is going to have the presence of mind to describe a culture as free-market capitalist, it ought to be a culture that respects those three institutions. I don't think there is one nation today that substantially respects any two of them.
China's outward signs of capitalism (defined these days as merely the generation of wealth by superficially private for-profit businesses) have conned another. Boris Johnson doesn't know what he's talking about.
UPDATED 5/2/2006 10:03pm
Newsweek International: The New State Capitalists:
Led by China and Russia, state companies are both consolidating control at home and expanding aggressively abroad, in some cases effectively reversing the privatization campaigns first unleashed in the West a quarter century ago.[...]
Ever since Deng Xiaoping drove China onto the capitalist road back in 1978, foreigners have poured in, assuming the economy would ultimately end up in private hands. But Beijing never declared such intentions, and with each passing year it becomes more apparent that China is not in transition to a privately owned economy. What the leadership refers to as "Socialism with Chinese Characteristics" is a sustainable and competitive hybrid form of state capitalism.
[...]
In China, according to official statistics, purely state-owned enterprises now account for about 17 percent of China's GDP, down from more than 80 percent in 1978. But many analysts say the official statistics overstate the trend, in part by removing all joint ventures from the state sector, even when the state retains control, and by ignoring the domination of many supposedly private firms by former state officials who remain ruling-party members. By some estimates, government-linked companies still account for half of China's GDP and much of its dynamism: all but one of 22 Chinese firms that rank among the world's top 2,000 companies, according to Forbes, have ties to the government.
[...]
China's state sector continues to grow, while the local private sector (not including joint ventures) struggles, says MIT economist Yasheng Huang. Within China, state conglomerates hogged the vast majority of new bank loans given in 2005, for example; of the 1,600 companies listed on the country's domestic stock exchanges today, fewer than 50 are private.
China is not a capitalist society.
UPDATED 7/4/2006 11:15am
Here are some more of those signs of the free market so rampaging through China these days: China Defends Proposed Law to Fine Media:
China defended a proposed law that would fine media reporting on riots and disasters without official approval, saying Monday it wants to encourage responsible journalism - not punish independent reporting.