loot

 

U.S. President Nixon trip to China, 1972

Book:  Prisoners of Time

written by Christopher Clark

reviewed by Andrew Anthony in

The Guardian

(August 10, 2021)

reader comments

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                         I've mostly thought that there are two main factors at work in China.  One is that the country has never experienced anything remotely resembling democracy and it is certainly plausible that many may have a fear, gratefully encouraged by the government, of the instability it might bring.  

The other, of course, is that there has been a huge improvement in living standards for most people in the country over the last four decades.  The obvious question is, to what degree did that improvement depend on the appalling tyranny of the government - could it have happened in a democracy.  

I suspect many Chinese think not.  

But those two factors are intertwined because the government has to keep the economic plates spinning at all costs to maintain their otherwise non-existent legitimacy and must fear that environmental and world economic factors could destroy it, hence their need for ever increasing levels of tyranny, along with constantly stoked nationalism as a distraction.

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                                  "And why do so many who should know better go along with the unhindered concentration of power in one person?"

I think the short (and overly simplistic) answer is a combination of genetics and laziness.

Humanity has been genetically programmed to follow alpha behaviours (it confers organisational advantage and thus has been bred in) and they can't be bothered to think about difficult things, so they'd rather outsource it to someone who sounds like they know what they're talking about.

Step forward the charismatic "strong man" type.  With inevitable consequences.

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                             'Step forward the charismatic strong man type.  With inevitable consequences.'

A succinct summing up of a conclusion reached by Plato, Aristotle and Polybius.  Two millennia later we are still struggling to deal with it.

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                                                 I think most people do want stability, largely as a matter of individual psychology - most people are more comfortable with the familiar and the predictable, even where that may be authoritarian and even though they don't like it, because they can then know how to navigate their lives through the authoritarianism.

This is particularly true IMO in those countries which have a history of instability and uncertainty, and where the population know from long experience how to survive authoritarian governments, and where day to day life for the majority can feel very precarious financially.  Yes they do consent, but not because they want to, but because they have no alternative if they want a quiet life and to see their families survive.

People want the certainty of knowing they have a home, a job, and income, however paltry it is.  People will put up with all the oppression and indignities, if that is not threatened.  Or to put it another way, they will not be inclined to upset the status quo for fear of losing what little they may currently have.  Hence the ability of countries like Belarus and Russia to persist with authoritarianism.

                    Lukashenko, for instance, will know that for all the protest of dissidents, so long as the state continues to pay pensions to older people and offer certainty of homes and jobs, there is unlikely to be any major kick back sufficient to topple him, and therefore he can repress with impunity.

        It is quite striking, that in comparison with the west, how apolitical most people are in Eastern Europe and how 'accommodating' they are of corrupt and failing politicians.  Having lived for many years as part of the USSR, even now people's memories, including folk memories, of how to survive, are very strong and persistent.  Including being unwilling to even talk privately in their own homes about political matters.

Of course, this is not the whole story.  It does not explain why some people enthusiastically embrace authoritarianism, for example.  But the inertia generated by the need to survive in large parts of the population, does go a long way, IMO, to explain why authoritarian regimes persist, and why they are able to find the space to prosper and extend their power.

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                                                 "Economic stagnation is fairly strongly linked to the rise of reactionary ideas."  

And we've had 40 years of a system that prides itself on making normal people's lives feel insecure while siphoning off the loot to a tiny elite.

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