Ouroboros
Ouroboros
Andreas Schou's share of this post has instructive comments:
https://plus.google.com/+AndreasSchou/posts/Jgzhb3FJtGj
Originally shared by Perry Stroika
The unique characteristic of the Chinese system is its willingness to execute massive amounts of its own leaders. In fact, the CPC's willingness to appease the grievances of the masses with the blood of its own elites is the ultimate source of its strength, it's very foundation. Despite its troubles, it has proven to be a remarkably durable institution.
The Party, in effect, has managed to internalize and institutionalize revolutionary Terror. Once upon a time, Mao Zedong rose to power on the back of his ability to rouse a nation of peasants into murdering their landlords and expropriating their property. Decades later, he roused their children into violent revolt against the government he created. Now Xi Jinping, a child of one of Mao's high officials, himself imprisoned in that tumult of the Cultural Revolution, is instituting a new round of purges.
This is the characteristic pattern of the Party's response to social tension. When the masses are restless, it offers up a fresh crop of sacrificial victims from its own ranks. Revolt from outside becomes unnecessary. We have a sort of weird closed loop; the Party's officials become lax and corrupt, the masses grow angry, and that anger is appeased with a brutal culling. The very anger of the masses is internalized as a support for the regime.
Thus the Party has institutionalized revolt; it overthrows itself, attacks itself. The paradox is that this secures its position all the more firmly.
Compare this with the Soviets. Perhaps the fall of the Soviet Union became inevitable once the generation of leaders following Stalin tried to reform it. But Stalinism was not reformable. The very cruelty of the system was its foundation. Because it was not a normal state but a revolutionary state, it was born in purges and terror, and could not stop without changing its very nature.
If a new Stalin had emerged in the mid-50's to institute a new round of purges, the Soviet Union would probably still exist today. Instead it tried convert itself into a normal state, drifted about in a desultory manner for a few decades and collapsed. It's notable how its fall required no war. The old regime put up scarcely any fight. It simply gave up.
Xi Jinping, a Maoist of the old school, a man who has been on both sides of Revolutionary violence, and a student of history, of the fall of the Soviets, is not liable to make the same mistake. It is nto clear to me that Xi desires to be the new Mao, but he desires to preserve the the Party, and this is what the situation calls for. His personal predilections are irrelevant. It seems to me that the purges will only continue and intensify.
http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2015/06/11/former_security_chief_zhou_yongkang_given_life_sentence_for_corruption_no.html
Andreas Schou's share of this post has instructive comments:
https://plus.google.com/+AndreasSchou/posts/Jgzhb3FJtGj
Originally shared by Perry Stroika
The unique characteristic of the Chinese system is its willingness to execute massive amounts of its own leaders. In fact, the CPC's willingness to appease the grievances of the masses with the blood of its own elites is the ultimate source of its strength, it's very foundation. Despite its troubles, it has proven to be a remarkably durable institution.
The Party, in effect, has managed to internalize and institutionalize revolutionary Terror. Once upon a time, Mao Zedong rose to power on the back of his ability to rouse a nation of peasants into murdering their landlords and expropriating their property. Decades later, he roused their children into violent revolt against the government he created. Now Xi Jinping, a child of one of Mao's high officials, himself imprisoned in that tumult of the Cultural Revolution, is instituting a new round of purges.
This is the characteristic pattern of the Party's response to social tension. When the masses are restless, it offers up a fresh crop of sacrificial victims from its own ranks. Revolt from outside becomes unnecessary. We have a sort of weird closed loop; the Party's officials become lax and corrupt, the masses grow angry, and that anger is appeased with a brutal culling. The very anger of the masses is internalized as a support for the regime.
Thus the Party has institutionalized revolt; it overthrows itself, attacks itself. The paradox is that this secures its position all the more firmly.
Compare this with the Soviets. Perhaps the fall of the Soviet Union became inevitable once the generation of leaders following Stalin tried to reform it. But Stalinism was not reformable. The very cruelty of the system was its foundation. Because it was not a normal state but a revolutionary state, it was born in purges and terror, and could not stop without changing its very nature.
If a new Stalin had emerged in the mid-50's to institute a new round of purges, the Soviet Union would probably still exist today. Instead it tried convert itself into a normal state, drifted about in a desultory manner for a few decades and collapsed. It's notable how its fall required no war. The old regime put up scarcely any fight. It simply gave up.
Xi Jinping, a Maoist of the old school, a man who has been on both sides of Revolutionary violence, and a student of history, of the fall of the Soviets, is not liable to make the same mistake. It is nto clear to me that Xi desires to be the new Mao, but he desires to preserve the the Party, and this is what the situation calls for. His personal predilections are irrelevant. It seems to me that the purges will only continue and intensify.
http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2015/06/11/former_security_chief_zhou_yongkang_given_life_sentence_for_corruption_no.html
The Chinese dynastic cycle in miniature.
ReplyDeleteWinning and losing the Mandate from Heaven.
ReplyDeleteI suppose it is not as bad as North Korea, where the undesirables simply go to the dogs . . . .
ReplyDelete