Three Bows for Zhao Ziyang: Zhao is Dead, Long Live Zhao

China's economic "reforms" continue to take up much of the attention of China watchers. This is not surprising. The country is growing at a pace that has already transformed the global economic environment in significant and dramatic fashion. China has already accumulated enough U.S. government treasury bonds to give Beijing silent but substantial clout over U.S. policy-makers. But what about democraticization (giving Chinese citizens the right to hire and fire their leaders)?

Some hold out the unfounded hope that economic growth will inevitably bring political reform (translation: democraticization). This is not a law of nature. History is quite mixed about the correlation between economic success and democraticization. Economic success has often been coupled with political repression and the growth of undemocratic bureaucratic institutions. And democratic processes, such as voting procedures for the election of key government officials, is no guarantee that effective democracy will hold, that is, that the people will determine their political, economic, and cultural rules of the game/environment. Least we forget, Chinese citizens get plenty of opportunities to vote (and some of the local elections can be quite lively). Even in those societies where democracy is an integral aspect of the culture, such as the United States, there are signs that "progress," at least in recent times, has come with less, not more, democratic rights for citizens (as corporate power rises ever more prominently in the political calculus). This trend is exacerbated by international agreements, such as the World Trade Organization agreements, that supercede local laws and the combination of jingoism, poor educational training and an increasing concentration of media control. How can there be democracy without citizen access to a wide range of information and ideas and the capacity to think critically? Ultimately, democracy is not simply about procedures but about context.

This week's death of Zhao Ziyang, after 15 years of house arrest, reminds us that the current political leadership in China, a group of modernist-Marxists who argue that material transformation in China is all that really matters, inherited that mantle from the hard-liners (led by Deng Xiaoping) who ousted Zhao Ziyang (as prime minister and party leader) when he opposed the violent crackdown on the pro-democracy/pro-socialist/anti-corruption student uprising (epitomized by the protest gathering in Tiananmen Square). Zhao, who was a key innovator in the economic restructuring that set in motion twenty-five years of double digit economic growth, had sought to mediate a peaceful resolution to the student protests and to combine economic reforms with democraticization. Because of this, Zhao has come to represent the positive political possibilities lost in that moment in 1989 when the leadership of the Communist Party of China moved against its political liberals, especially Zhao, and took violent action against those courageous young people who were willing to give up their personal safety in pursuit of a better future for all Chinese citizens. Thus, all over China there are thousands, if not millions, of people who are silently (or not so silently) paying tribute to Zhao and hoping that his spirit will live on and that history will demonstrate the correctness of Zhao's ideas on democracy. Personally, I think it highly likely that one of these days Zhao Ziyang's name that will be held in high esteem by Chinese citizens and celebrated, both publicly and privately.

Apocalypse Now

Capitalism is going to last for 500 years. Okay, I said that to be provocative. I don't have a clue how long capitalism will be the dominant economic system on the planet. What I do know is that history does not indicate there is much prospect for an alternative system arising any time soon. After all, if you look out at the landscape of 21st century social life on the planet Earth, you find that pro-capitalist cultural, economic, and political processes dominate just about everywhere. Even the very definition of capitalism (a product of Marxian theory) has been hijacked by pro-capitalist ways of thinking and making sense of the world. Capitalism is no longer understood as a social system based on the exploitation of wage laborers. Now if you do a web search (or go the old fashioned look in a book route) you are likely to find definitions of capitalism that not only have no grounding in the original understanding but are completely at odds with that understanding. Rather than another system of restricting freedom (albeit to a lesser extent than slavery or feudalism), capitalism becomes a system defined by individual freedom. It's a rather clever intellectual turn-about.

The fact that those who are being exploited, those who work for wages creating all the wonderful stuff that gets hyper-marketed to us over every conceivable medium, are increasingly confused about the sources of their various maladies (blaming poor health, a polluted natural, work, and home environment, disintegrating family structures (and values), their bleak future prospects (social insecurity), etc. on everything but capitalism) is testimony to the success at reproducing the conditions for capitalism to prosper. It's Invasion of the Body Snatchers and most of the bodies have been snatched. As the U.S. demonstrates, you can give these folks the right to vote for any government they want and not have to worry. In the end, they will vote for the choices given to them and often choose the greater of the two evils, at that: selecting the candidate who promises to screw them over royally and who has given lots of prior indications of complete contempt for working people and their hopes and dreams.

But then didn't the pharoahs rule for over 3,000 years, their great architectural accomplishments based on a social system of state feudal and slave exploitation? I'm sure most of the workers were "conservative" and would not have tolerated hearing much dissent from their co-horts. Can't you see the "Reify the Pharaoh" and "Support our troops" bumper stickers on the camel's asses? Fundamental change in human social organization is never an easy matter (or hardly ever). And then again there's no guarantee that we'll even get a chance for another major change. Capitalism could even be the last form of social organization, providing an important condition for the end time. This would make Francis Fukuyama right, we would be living in the end of history. Apocalypse Now.

Sorry to sound so depressing.

The Year of Living Dangerously

I finally succumbed to the blog trend. Actually, this is my second time around. I started a blog under a pseudonym about four years ago and started posting comments on the relationship between cultural and economic processes, with lots of references to post-modernism and post-structuralism, but then I started wondering who would possibly be reading such meanderings and stopped. Why start again? Just giving in to cultural pressure? Probably. In any event, I'm in the end game of a long suffering text and finding a diversion from such a process is a common malady of writers, a-b-d grad students, and profs reaching "middle age." What will I talk about --- go to satya.us and you can get a pretty good impression of what I'm interested in. Economic development and comparative economic systems, corporate finance, Marxian theory, etc. These are all the same to me, although not to my profession. So I'll talk about it. And I'll talk about topical issues, just like all the other bloggers. This is really grassroots cultural democracy, after all. It is the only forum (with widescale reach, at least in theory) that isn't controlled by conservatives or neo-conservatives (fascists?).

Why the title of this inaugural blog? Because I think this is the year of living dangerously. The U.S. economy is poised for a fall (as is the stock market(s)). The U.S. dollar has finally stopped levitating against economic gravity. The tech sector has a new (although more modest) bubble. Does anyone really believe that Google generates sufficient value to justify its current price per share? (Love the company, hate the price.) The Chinese real estate bubble is poised to burst. The folks in the red states may finally start to figure out that their jobs are being shipped overseas and Iraqi oil is not going to flood into the country and bring 10 cent a gallon gasoline, and they just might slow down on buying Dodge Magnums, Ford Excursions, and Chevy pickup trucks (I'm surprised there's no commercial version of the Bradley fighting vehicle). Speaking of Iraq, the transition from colony to neocolony is perilous, but you don't need an economist to tell you that. Most of you know it just as well as any of the experts. And, although terrorism may be good for the Republican Party, it represents an increased risk for U.S. firms operating overseas (especially those operating overseas) and neocolonialism (and the violence it requires) has a way of spawning more, not less, of this particular form of opposition. The economy, financial and real estate market bubbles, Iraq . . . that's just for starters. I had to start somewhere. So I did.