China’s Valley of Tears: Is authoritarian capitalism the future?

[marmar]

from In These Times:



China’s Valley of Tears
Is authoritarian capitalism the future?
By Slavoj Zizek


The explosion of capitalism in China has many Westerners asking when political democracy—as the “natural” accompaniment of capitalism—will emerge. But a closer look quickly dispels any such hope.

Modern-day China is not an oriental-despotic distortion of capitalism, but rather the repetition of capitalism’s development in Europe itself. In the early modern era, most European states were far from democratic. And if they were democratic (as was the case of the Netherlands during the 17th century), it was only a democracy of the propertied liberal elite, not of the workers. Conditions for capitalism were created and sustained by a brutal state dictatorship, very much like today’s China. The state legalized violent expropriations of the common people, which turned them proletarian. The state then disciplined them, teaching them to conform to their new ancilliary role.

The features we identify today with liberal democracy and freedom (trade unions, universal vote, freedom of the press, etc.) are far from natural fruits of capitalism. The lower classes won them by waging long, difficult struggles throughout the 19th century. Recall the list of demands that Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels made in the conclusion of The Communist Manifesto. With the exception of the abolition of private property, most of them—such as a progressive income tax, free public education and abolishing child labor—are today widely accepted in “bourgeois” democracies, and all were gained as the result of popular struggles.

So there is nothing exotic in today’s China: It is merely repeating our own forgotten past. But what about the afterthought of some Western liberal critics who ask how much faster China’s development would have been had the country grown within the context of a political democracy? The German-British philosopher Ralf Dahrendorf has linked the increasing distrust in democracy to the fact that, after every revolutionary change, the road to new prosperity leads through a “valley of tears.” In other words, after the breakdown of state socialism, a country cannot immediately become a successful market economy. The limited—but real—socialist welfare and security have to be dismantled, and these first steps are necessary and painful. For Dahrendorf, this passage through the “valley of tears” lasts longer than the average period between democratic elections. As a result, the temptation is great for leaders of a democratic country to postpone difficult changes for short-term electoral gains. .....(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/3425/chinas_valley_of_tears/

[Demeter]

1. Democracy Is the Result of Many Earlier Decisions

1. aristocracy is bad
2. abuse of power is bad
3. all people are created equal


There's not one word about Capitalism in there, because it has nothing to do with Democracy.
If anything, Capitalism Abhores Democracy, and will seek to subvert it at every opportunity.

Our Founding Fathers couldn't conceive of a time when America would have filled up, its Manifest Destiny to stretch from the Atlantic to the Pacific fulfilled. Malcontents and the disadvantaged in their day always had the option of going west.

That's why our task for the next few generations will be getting a Choke Collar on Capitalism.

Teddy and Franklin Roosevelt, traitors to their Propertied Class, both knew this need in a Democracy to keep power and wealth from accumulating in great hoards to benefit a few families. And they succeeded for a while. But it is a job for Constant Vigilance.

[BridgeTheGap]

2. I believe this will change. There will be a grassroots groundswell

for democracy in China.

[L0oniX]

3. China is the death of this country n/t

[Joanne98]

4. YES! that's why the US blocks any attempt to bring democracy to China!

Wall Street likes it just the way it is! Someday we will be in the same boat! Freedom for the market, slavery for the human race!