Translation from Chinese by Sherwin Lu
EDITOR’S NOTE: In a perspective that relates political process to economic power, current conditions to history, and one country’s status to international situation, this brief discussion on democracy and centralism is very insightful and enlightening.
China’s political system after the 1949 revolution was based on the principle of democratic centralism, which assimilated and developed what is reasonable in both Chinese and Western political traditions, and should be, in theory at least, the best choice while in practice it would take a longer time for step-by-step improvements. In the three decades under Mao’s leadership, China’s political life was on the whole a big step forward from that before 1949 but still had big problems; while the post-reform 30 years have also seen improvements and severe problems as well, and even obvious retrogression – especially, as the worst result of indiscriminate Westernization in many areas, the rebirth of bureaucratic comprador capital interest groups and their infiltration and serious interference in the economic and political life on all levels of the society are posing as the main impediment to the restoration and completion of a democratically centralized government system. With this understanding, the editor agrees with the author in saying that “While big financial capital pushes for democracy in politics, a centralized government can promote economic democracy…” and that “Throughout the contemporary world, it has been the political system in China that is closest to real democracy…”
THE TEXT
The democracy much talked about in today’s discourse is the political institution modeled after that of the modern Western countries. Essentially, there has been no democracy in the Western world that serves the interests of the lower classes; in this sense, All Western democracies are pseudo ones. What distinguishes them from autocracy is not that their people are the real masters of their countries, as in actuality their real masters have been a certain core financial oligarchic family together with a few dependent agent families and those elites in various social circles serving their interests. The only difference is that their reign over the society is not realized through a centralized government; they do not need an autocratic government – what they need is to weaken the government’s control as much as possible over the society lest it should challenge their hegemonic status.
Western democratic political system was established during Jewish financial capitalist groups’ fight against European aristocracy on the core conviction that government power should be weakened and divided so as to reduce as much as possible its capability of controlling the society, especially its economy. The separation of powers, state control of armed forces, and market economy are all implementations of the above principle. With the government’s central power over political, economical and military affairs thus diminished, financial monopoly capital, as the government’s and all enterprises’ obligee, becomes a power system atop the nation-state and the true master of the society. In short, the democratic political system was designed with the purpose of dwarfing a centralized government so as to maintain capital’s tyranny, not serving the interests of the whole population as has been propagandized. It is in essence another form of tyranny, just the opposite of their professed idea of liberty.
The above understanding explains why democracy as is is not a cure for social problems but a bane to human happiness. In modern history, it destroyed all European nation-states and disrupted the process towards the political unification of Europe, making it possible for big financial capital to subject all European countries and peoples to slavery. Meanwhile, in contemporary times, almost all the countries that has adopted Western democracy, except the few rich ones in Europe and America, have been reduced into a state of poverty, chaos, and turmoil. This is not because of the differences in ethnic tradition but what has been expected from democracy, i.e., to divide people and create conflicts between different social classes, ethnic and other groups, to prevent them from becoming a unified force, and to prevent the emergence of a strong government so as to secure private financial capital’s control and hegemony over the society. What has saved the few rich European and American countries from severe turmoil is their superior economic status that has nothing to do with their internal political system but was brought about by their advantaged position in the distribution order of the capitalized world. Suppose big financial capital abandoned the U.S., removing it from atop the global distribution system, then North America with its existing political system would witness turmoil and chaos much more violent than those happening in Africa.
The electoral system in Western-style democracies is a political system that legalizes bribery. The candidates raise their campaign funds through legally accepting such briberies. And the contemporary general election system is the most absurd political system in human history, as it was the product of ancient city-states and to apply it to modern conditions is just like having the human species returning to the remote times when people drilled wood to make fire. General election was feasible in ancient times because the population of a city-state at that time only amounted to one thousand or so. But nowadays, a big city may have a population of ten million, many times that of the whole ancient Greek world; it is like a fable to elect a leader from such a large population in the same old way. While folks of a Greek city-state knew or knew about each other in a large degree, the sole major source of information in contemporary times is the media that, being controlled by monopoly capital, hardly provides objectively truthful information on crucial issues.
An even greater drawback of the system lies in the fact that the candidates are not chosen by the general electorate but by major political parties that, under the democratic system, are all puppets with the financial oligarchy as the wirepuller behind the scenes – hence, whoever is elected makes no fundamental difference.
The role played by democratic politics in social life is similar to a performing art show. Its political institution bears much resemblance to the entertainment industry, with its politicians doing a job not essentially different from that of movie or television stars, i.e., to attract public attention and entertain people. What a sight it was to behold the bourgeois revolution under the anti-feudal banner ended in adopting a political model that was even more primitive than the feudal system! What is even more anomalous is that this kind of regression has not been objected to in Western social theories that have been dominated by evolutionism.
The operating pattern of political parties in the democratic system determines that all politicians would pursue their own interests at the expense of those of the nation-state. This is essentially why big financial capital spares no efforts to propagandize democratic politics through the academic and media institutions under its control. Only when democratic political systems are established throughout the world, would it be possible to lessen the cohesion of all nation-states, exhaust their strength through endless internal strife and prevent them from forming shared political convictions and unified central authorities. Then the oligarchic financial capitalists would be able to buy over leaders of rivaling parties separately and place agents in all social fields and classes so as to directly or indirectly use all social forces to their own advantage. The power of control over the economic fields lost to thus weakened national governments would then be usurped by foreign financial capital, facilitating its hold on the life lines of national economies and its efforts to put them under the capitalist world distribution system. This process serves well as a footnote to the history of China and all countries and peoples of the world.
The reason why China is averse to a democratic political system lies in the fact that there is no private big financial capital in China that is powerful enough to withstand Jewish financial hegemony and only the Chinese traditional centralized government model can provide the countervailing power. Once the Chinese government loses its absolute control and monopoly over the society, especially its economic and financial realms, foreign big capital would definitely infiltrate into these fields in no time, further erode government control over all other areas, and finally, by dissociating the armed forces, make the government a mere figurehead. If this happens, China would be reduced again to an economic colony of the world capitalist empire and, being much divided like a heap of loose sand, became an ideal field for foreign financial hegemonists to implement their long-cherished scheme to exterminate the Chinese nation. Therefore, whether or not to shun democracy and strengthen government power is not only an issue bearing on the economic and cultural fields but, what is more critical, is a matter of life or death for the whole nation.
China needs to resist what is advocated in the name of “political democracy”. While division of power is the kernel of democracy, the most effective countermeasure should be centralization and monopoly of authority. While big financial capital pushes for democracy in politics, a centralized government can promote economic democracy, i.e., to prohibit private families from operating financial businesses and levy high taxes on inheritance so as to remove the threat to the government from big private capital. This is actually an extension of the same philosophy as embodied in China’s traditional policy of “regulating commerce and protecting agriculture (重农抑商)”, which should not be regarded as a mere label for the so-called agricultural economic model of traditional China, as has been so alleged by some ignorant scholars.
Throughout the contemporary world, it is the political system in China that is closest to real democracy, where power is centralized but not (as has been the case in the West) controlled by one or a few families, either imperial or aristocratic or plutocratic, either through hereditary succession or through monopoly of national economy and hence of the political process. This is what modern capitalist system can never achieve, its power structure being currently based on such vestiges of feudalism as hereditary plutocracy and racism, indicating, among other injustices, the backwardness of capitalism.
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