Communism & capitalism
Oct. 16th, 2008 08:04 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
juliet(Disclaimer in advance: this following is largely speculation/rambling on my part based on very little direct experience and similarly little information. Factual correction more than welcome, as well as any other thoughts generally.)
China (where I was last week) and Vietnam (where I am now) are both, officially, Communist countries still. But from the bits I've been in, you wouldn't for a moment know it (other, I suppose, than the very heavy internet censorship practised by the Chinese government). Beijing is full of capitalist goodies, advertising (they have moving adverts projected on the subway tunnel walls while you're travelling through them, people! They're further in the future than London is!), technological shinies (was also impressed by light-up electronic maps in subway carriages, not to mention the massive prevalence of personal electronic whatsits[0]). Xi'an was a bit less TECHNOLOGICAL CAPITAL CITY WONDERLAND, but still prosperous and very much in the capitalist selling mode. Hanoi ditto - plenty of tech kit on sale, plenty of things being sold, by everyone & their many relatives.
So, no major surprise there - I think we all knew that the remaining "communist" states were fully taking part in global economics these days, and that means capitalism[1]. But what I'm wondering is: what does this mean for domestic politics? Is allowing on-the-ground capitalism a way of removing power from movements for political change? If, for the average person on the street, the reasons for wanting change are now primarily ideological, then they have a lot less impetus to support (and thereby potentially endanger themselves) movements pursuing that change.
(Especially, one might argue, when one can look at other countries having democratic elections and not necessarily see much practical difference between the various sides involved.)
For avoidance of doubt: I am not for one moment suggesting that democratic freedoms, or in particular freedom of expression, are unimportant. I might[2] argue that representative democracy as currently practised in the West is something of a con, and also that freedom of expression is far from always fully protected in a democracy either, but I'll leave both of those aside for now. The point is that agitating for change is time-consuming, energy-consuming, and potentially personal dangerous, and if some of the directly personal reasons for doing that (reasons to do with direct individual suffering) are removed, then it becomes harder to recruit. I find it difficult to imagine the sort of mass movements that happened in 1989 in the former Soviet bloc happening here and now, for example. (In China especially, of course, which is again a whole 'nother, and very depressing, discussion.)
The Vietnamese case is particularly interesting in that I've just been reading a book by Neil Sheehan, called "Two Cities: Hanoi and Saigon"[3], in which he mentions that communism in Vietnam is basically a historical accident, which arose because when they were ruled by the French, the only political support for Vietnamese independence in France was from the far-left. Does that make it more likely that communism here will just gradually fade away? In which case, will that just mean that whoever's in charge calls themselves one thing (the Party...) whilst being something else altogether? Has that already happened?
And, of course, it's not as simple as that, because while Beijing & doubtless other cities are modern and shiny and capitalist and whatnot, that's not the case as soon as you get out into the countryside. In both China & Vietnam I saw[4] people working fields by hand everywhere[5]; people with carts pulled by donkeys or water-buffalo; people who are obviously living a very low-tech, poor, peasant lifestyle of the sort that has been the case in this neck of the woods for a very, very long time. Would a political change make any difference to them? I doubt it; and in any case they certainly don't have the time or energy to do much about it, in general. In Hanoi many of the street vendors (who largely sell stuff they carry on their own shoulders, or at a push on a bicycle) are from villages just outside the city and are desperately poor; but they're also poor in part because they're trying to give their children more advantages, which mostly means education, which is expensive. Is that part of the capitalist dream?
A British woman I met on the train between Beijing and Hanoi said (roughly) that countries round here need some form of autocratic rule; that they couldn't cope with democracy because ethnic warfare would break out. I am very uncomfortable with that sort of generalisation (not to mention the fact that ethnic mistrust or problems along those lines are hardly limited to "round here") but also unclear how to respond to it. And if there are ways in which political change might happen here, are ethnic tensions likely to be a part of that - and if so, is that a reason to hope for a lack of change?
I am aware that this is a ramble, without conclusion. In part this is because I simply don't know enough - enough political history, enough political theory, enough political present - to come to any conclusions[6]. And in part it's because I'm not sure there are any conclusions available. If forced to make a prediction, I think my tentative one would be: things will continue to change gradually at the bottom and in practice, and less so at the top and in theory. I think there probably will come a point when the current system cracks under the contradictions; but with the potential global political/economic changes we're facing, it's far from clear how inevitable that is, or whether it'll be overtaken by other things.
[0] A side-note: last time I headed off to Foreign for any length of time was India in 2002, and I didn't take a phone or Walkman (this was pre-MP3 player, or at least pre-me-having-MP3 -player), as I was concerned about waving Western tech around, inviting theft, etc etc. This time, phones & MP3 players, or possibly phones that are MP3 players, are ubiquitous. I'm sure this isn't entirely true in, say, rural Chinese villages or similar, but it's a very obvious change nevertheless.
[1] At least it does until you've nationalised enough banks. Man, that is all very weird.
[2] Well. For "might" read "would", as at least some of you will know from bitter personal experience ;-)
[3] Which I would strongly recommend. I gather that his book "A Bright Shining Lie", about the US & the Vietnam War (which he covered extensively at the time as an on-the-ground journalist in the South), is famous, & after reading this one I intend to locate & read it. "Two Cities" is about him returning to Hanoi & Saigon in 1989, and the changes and lack of changes that he saw.
[4] One of the great things about taking the train - you get to see things!
[5] I also made many interesting observations about field/plot shapes & how this relates to hand-cultivation! Which I will refrain from sharing with people who aren't interested i.e. nearly everyone, I expect.
[6] Reading suggestions welcome; and I promise that this is the last footnote.
China (where I was last week) and Vietnam (where I am now) are both, officially, Communist countries still. But from the bits I've been in, you wouldn't for a moment know it (other, I suppose, than the very heavy internet censorship practised by the Chinese government). Beijing is full of capitalist goodies, advertising (they have moving adverts projected on the subway tunnel walls while you're travelling through them, people! They're further in the future than London is!), technological shinies (was also impressed by light-up electronic maps in subway carriages, not to mention the massive prevalence of personal electronic whatsits[0]). Xi'an was a bit less TECHNOLOGICAL CAPITAL CITY WONDERLAND, but still prosperous and very much in the capitalist selling mode. Hanoi ditto - plenty of tech kit on sale, plenty of things being sold, by everyone & their many relatives.
So, no major surprise there - I think we all knew that the remaining "communist" states were fully taking part in global economics these days, and that means capitalism[1]. But what I'm wondering is: what does this mean for domestic politics? Is allowing on-the-ground capitalism a way of removing power from movements for political change? If, for the average person on the street, the reasons for wanting change are now primarily ideological, then they have a lot less impetus to support (and thereby potentially endanger themselves) movements pursuing that change.
(Especially, one might argue, when one can look at other countries having democratic elections and not necessarily see much practical difference between the various sides involved.)
For avoidance of doubt: I am not for one moment suggesting that democratic freedoms, or in particular freedom of expression, are unimportant. I might[2] argue that representative democracy as currently practised in the West is something of a con, and also that freedom of expression is far from always fully protected in a democracy either, but I'll leave both of those aside for now. The point is that agitating for change is time-consuming, energy-consuming, and potentially personal dangerous, and if some of the directly personal reasons for doing that (reasons to do with direct individual suffering) are removed, then it becomes harder to recruit. I find it difficult to imagine the sort of mass movements that happened in 1989 in the former Soviet bloc happening here and now, for example. (In China especially, of course, which is again a whole 'nother, and very depressing, discussion.)
The Vietnamese case is particularly interesting in that I've just been reading a book by Neil Sheehan, called "Two Cities: Hanoi and Saigon"[3], in which he mentions that communism in Vietnam is basically a historical accident, which arose because when they were ruled by the French, the only political support for Vietnamese independence in France was from the far-left. Does that make it more likely that communism here will just gradually fade away? In which case, will that just mean that whoever's in charge calls themselves one thing (the Party...) whilst being something else altogether? Has that already happened?
And, of course, it's not as simple as that, because while Beijing & doubtless other cities are modern and shiny and capitalist and whatnot, that's not the case as soon as you get out into the countryside. In both China & Vietnam I saw[4] people working fields by hand everywhere[5]; people with carts pulled by donkeys or water-buffalo; people who are obviously living a very low-tech, poor, peasant lifestyle of the sort that has been the case in this neck of the woods for a very, very long time. Would a political change make any difference to them? I doubt it; and in any case they certainly don't have the time or energy to do much about it, in general. In Hanoi many of the street vendors (who largely sell stuff they carry on their own shoulders, or at a push on a bicycle) are from villages just outside the city and are desperately poor; but they're also poor in part because they're trying to give their children more advantages, which mostly means education, which is expensive. Is that part of the capitalist dream?
A British woman I met on the train between Beijing and Hanoi said (roughly) that countries round here need some form of autocratic rule; that they couldn't cope with democracy because ethnic warfare would break out. I am very uncomfortable with that sort of generalisation (not to mention the fact that ethnic mistrust or problems along those lines are hardly limited to "round here") but also unclear how to respond to it. And if there are ways in which political change might happen here, are ethnic tensions likely to be a part of that - and if so, is that a reason to hope for a lack of change?
I am aware that this is a ramble, without conclusion. In part this is because I simply don't know enough - enough political history, enough political theory, enough political present - to come to any conclusions[6]. And in part it's because I'm not sure there are any conclusions available. If forced to make a prediction, I think my tentative one would be: things will continue to change gradually at the bottom and in practice, and less so at the top and in theory. I think there probably will come a point when the current system cracks under the contradictions; but with the potential global political/economic changes we're facing, it's far from clear how inevitable that is, or whether it'll be overtaken by other things.
[0] A side-note: last time I headed off to Foreign for any length of time was India in 2002, and I didn't take a phone or Walkman (this was pre-MP3 player, or at least pre-me-having-MP3 -player), as I was concerned about waving Western tech around, inviting theft, etc etc. This time, phones & MP3 players, or possibly phones that are MP3 players, are ubiquitous. I'm sure this isn't entirely true in, say, rural Chinese villages or similar, but it's a very obvious change nevertheless.
[1] At least it does until you've nationalised enough banks. Man, that is all very weird.
[2] Well. For "might" read "would", as at least some of you will know from bitter personal experience ;-)
[3] Which I would strongly recommend. I gather that his book "A Bright Shining Lie", about the US & the Vietnam War (which he covered extensively at the time as an on-the-ground journalist in the South), is famous, & after reading this one I intend to locate & read it. "Two Cities" is about him returning to Hanoi & Saigon in 1989, and the changes and lack of changes that he saw.
[4] One of the great things about taking the train - you get to see things!
[5] I also made many interesting observations about field/plot shapes & how this relates to hand-cultivation! Which I will refrain from sharing with people who aren't interested i.e. nearly everyone, I expect.
[6] Reading suggestions welcome; and I promise that this is the last footnote.
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no subject
Date: 2008-10-16 02:27 pm (UTC)Consider Spain between WWII and the return of democracy. It wasn't communist country but it was single-party and repressive, and it underwent a bloodless transition to democracy following a few decades of rapid economic growth.
Spain also has independent-minded regions and while they do have a bit of a bombing problem, it's hardly a full-blown inter-ethnic war.
So clearly it's possible to make this transition even if the immediate economic driver for change is worked around. It might even be the best way; nobody having to die in a violent revolution is good, though of course if that means democracy comes twenty years later everybody gets up to twenty years less of the improvements democracy brings.
It's not very encouraging if you want a democratic China right now, but it's surely cause for plenty of hope in the long run.
no subject
Date: 2008-10-16 04:18 pm (UTC)Q: is it democracy that brings the improvements or the economic changes that have historically accompanied it?
is it democracy
Date: 2008-10-16 04:52 pm (UTC)You can plainly get a long way with just economic improvement, but I think there are things that will go better in free, democratic societies than unfree, authoritarian ones.
The Chinese milk scandal is a good example - their economic policies may have improved the lives of millions without democracy being involved, but I think it's fair to say that the reaction of the Chinese authorities would have been quicker if they'd had to face the possibility of losing an election over it, or if there'd been an assumption that someone would spill the beans.
That's not to say that an authoritarian state won't stop some such disasters, nor that they'll never happen in a democratic one, nor that we couldn't further improve Western societies. I just think a state that's practically accountable to its citizens (rather than merely theoretically so) will do better on this kind of thing.
Greater freedom of expression is another one. It's hard to put a monetary value (though it probably does have economic effects) on but it's valuable nonetheless.
no subject
Date: 2008-10-16 02:44 pm (UTC)Rallying points for the above might be ideological, but are just as likely in many societies to be ethnic. Autocracies can collapse more organically, because they are like companies rather than Governments, so 'failure' is a more likely outcome, and more likely to spread through the system if it is total in an individual part. Nonetheless, for the collapse of the Soviet Union I'd look at factors like oil production, oil prices (internal and external), and ethnic nationalists in the non-Russian SSRs.
In short, don't read political theory, read economics.
no subject
Date: 2008-10-16 04:22 pm (UTC)But yes: I think that was part of my point, that in China & Vietnam people are seeing enough financial benefits that they're not inclined to revolt.
Which countries? (yr comment re the summer)
I think with the Soviet Union there was some political/ideological stuff going on as well, no? This might just be my hazy memories of 1989 etc talking... But I suppose as you say, ideology as rallying point but economic issues driving it. (Not, of course, that the economics improved dramatically in Russia in the immediate post-change period...)
no subject
Date: 2008-10-17 08:33 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-10-16 04:39 pm (UTC)Yeesh. Remind me never to go there.
no subject
Date: 2008-10-17 02:42 am (UTC)