The explo­sion of cap­i­tal­ism in Chi­na has many West­ern­ers ask­ing when polit­i­cal democ­ra­cy – as the ​“nat­ur­al” accom­pa­ni­ment of cap­i­tal­ism – will emerge. But a clos­er look quick­ly dis­pels any such hope.

Mod­ern-day Chi­na is not an ori­en­tal-despot­ic dis­tor­tion of cap­i­tal­ism, but rather the rep­e­ti­tion of capitalism’s devel­op­ment in Europe itself. In the ear­ly mod­ern era, most Euro­pean states were far from demo­c­ra­t­ic. And if they were demo­c­ra­t­ic (as was the case of the Nether­lands dur­ing the 17th cen­tu­ry), it was only a democ­ra­cy of the prop­er­tied lib­er­al elite, not of the work­ers. Con­di­tions for cap­i­tal­ism were cre­at­ed and sus­tained by a bru­tal state dic­ta­tor­ship, very much like today’s Chi­na. The state legal­ized vio­lent expro­pri­a­tions of the com­mon peo­ple, which turned them pro­le­tar­i­an. The state then dis­ci­plined them, teach­ing them to con­form to their new ancil­liary role.

The fea­tures we iden­ti­fy today with lib­er­al democ­ra­cy and free­dom (trade unions, uni­ver­sal vote, free­dom of the press, etc.) are far from nat­ur­al fruits of cap­i­tal­ism. The low­er class­es won them by wag­ing long, dif­fi­cult strug­gles through­out the 19th cen­tu­ry. Recall the list of demands that Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels made in the con­clu­sion of The Com­mu­nist Man­i­festo. With the excep­tion of the abo­li­tion of pri­vate prop­er­ty, most of them – such as a pro­gres­sive income tax, free pub­lic edu­ca­tion and abol­ish­ing child labor – are today wide­ly accept­ed in ​“bour­geois” democ­ra­cies, and all were gained as the result of pop­u­lar struggles.

So there is noth­ing exot­ic in today’s Chi­na: It is mere­ly repeat­ing our own for­got­ten past. But what about the after­thought of some West­ern lib­er­al crit­ics who ask how much faster China’s devel­op­ment would have been had the coun­try grown with­in the con­text of a polit­i­cal democ­ra­cy? The Ger­man-British philoso­pher Ralf Dahren­dorf has linked the increas­ing dis­trust in democ­ra­cy to the fact that, after every rev­o­lu­tion­ary change, the road to new pros­per­i­ty leads through a ​“val­ley of tears.” In oth­er words, after the break­down of state social­ism, a coun­try can­not imme­di­ate­ly become a suc­cess­ful mar­ket econ­o­my. The lim­it­ed – but real – social­ist wel­fare and secu­ri­ty have to be dis­man­tled, and these first steps are nec­es­sary and painful. For Dahren­dorf, this pas­sage through the ​“val­ley of tears” lasts longer than the aver­age peri­od between demo­c­ra­t­ic elec­tions. As a result, the temp­ta­tion is great for lead­ers of a demo­c­ra­t­ic coun­try to post­pone dif­fi­cult changes for short-term elec­toral gains.

In West­ern Europe, the move from wel­fare state to the new glob­al econ­o­my has involved painful renun­ci­a­tions, less secu­ri­ty and less guar­an­teed social care. In post-Com­mu­nist nations, the eco­nom­ic results of this new demo­c­ra­t­ic order have dis­ap­point­ed a large stra­ta of the pop­u­la­tion, who, in the glo­ri­ous days of 1989, equat­ed democ­ra­cy with the abun­dance of the West­ern con­sumerist soci­eties. And now, 20 years lat­er, when the abun­dance is still miss­ing, they blame democ­ra­cy itself.

Dahren­dorf, how­ev­er, fails to note the oppo­site temp­ta­tion: The belief that, if the major­i­ty of a pop­u­la­tion resists struc­tur­al changes in the econ­o­my, an enlight­ened elite should take pow­er, even by non-demo­c­ra­t­ic means, to lay the foun­da­tions for a tru­ly sta­ble democ­ra­cy. Along these lines, Newsweek colum­nist Fareed Zakaria points out how democ­ra­cy can only ​“catch on” in eco­nom­i­cal­ly devel­oped coun­tries. He says that if devel­op­ing coun­tries are ​“pre­ma­ture­ly democ­ra­tized,” then eco­nom­ic cat­a­stro­phe and polit­i­cal despo­tism will soon fol­low. It’s no won­der, then, that today’s most eco­nom­i­cal­ly suc­cess­ful devel­op­ing coun­tries (Tai­wan, South Korea, Chile) have embraced full democ­ra­cy only after a peri­od of author­i­tar­i­an rule.

Isn’t this line of rea­son­ing the best argu­ment for the Chi­nese way to cap­i­tal­ism as opposed to the Russ­ian way? In Rus­sia, after the col­lapse of Com­mu­nism, the gov­ern­ment adopt­ed ​“shock ther­a­py” and threw itself direct­ly into democ­ra­cy and the fast track to cap­i­tal­ism – with eco­nom­ic bank­rupt­cy as the result. (There are good rea­sons to be mod­est­ly para­noid here: Were the West­ern eco­nom­ic advis­ers to Pres­i­dent Boris Yeltsin who pro­posed this approach real­ly as inno­cent as they appeared? Or were they serv­ing U.S. strate­gic inter­ests by weak­en­ing Rus­sia economically?)

Chi­na, on the oth­er hand, has fol­lowed the path of Chile and South Korea in its pas­sage to cap­i­tal­ism, using unen­cum­bered author­i­tar­i­an state pow­er to con­trol the social costs and thus avoid chaos. The weird com­bi­na­tion of cap­i­tal­ism and Com­mu­nist rule proved to be a bless­ing (not even) in dis­guise for China.

The coun­try has devel­oped fast, not in spite of author­i­tar­i­an rule, but because of it. With Stal­in­ist-sound­ing para­noia, we are left to won­der, ​“Maybe those who wor­ry about China’s lack of democ­ra­cy are actu­al­ly wor­ried that its fast devel­op­ment could make it the next glob­al super­pow­er, there­by threat­en­ing West­ern primacy.”

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Today, the tragedy of the Great Leap For­ward is repeat­ing itself as a com­e­dy. It has become the rapid cap­i­tal­ist Great Leap For­ward into mod­ern­iza­tion, with the old slo­gan ​“iron foundry into every vil­lage” re-emerg­ing as ​“a sky­scraper into every street.” The supreme irony of his­to­ry is that Mao Zedong him­self cre­at­ed the ide­o­log­i­cal con­di­tions for rapid cap­i­tal­ist devel­op­ment. What was his call to the peo­ple, espe­cial­ly the young ones, in the Cul­tur­al Rev­o­lu­tion? Don’t wait for some­one else to tell you what to do, you have the right to rebel! So think and act for your­selves, destroy cul­tur­al relics, denounce and attack not only your elders, but also gov­ern­ment and par­ty offi­cials! Swipe away the repres­sive state mech­a­nisms and orga­nize your­self in communes!

And Mao’s call was heard. What fol­lowed was such an explo­sion of unre­strained pas­sion to dele­git­imize all forms of author­i­ty that, at the end, Mao had to call in the army to restore order. The para­dox is that the key bat­tle dur­ing the Cul­tur­al Rev­o­lu­tion was not between the Com­mu­nist Par­ty appa­ra­tus and the denounced tra­di­tion­al­ist ene­mies, but between the Com­mu­nist Par­ty and the forces that Mao him­self called into being.

A sim­i­lar dynam­ic is dis­cernible in today’s Chi­na. The Par­ty resus­ci­tates big ide­o­log­i­cal tra­di­tions in order to con­tain the dis­in­te­gra­tive con­se­quences of the cap­i­tal­ist explo­sion that the Par­ty itself cre­at­ed. It is with this in mind that one should read the recent cam­paign in Chi­na to revive Marx­ism as an effi­cient state ide­ol­o­gy. (Lit­er­al­ly hun­dreds of mil­lions of U.S. dol­lars are spent on this venture.)

Those who see this as a threat to cap­i­tal­ist lib­er­al­iza­tion total­ly miss the point. Strange as it may sound, this return of Marx­ism is the sign of the ulti­mate tri­umph of cap­i­tal­ism, the sign of its full insti­tu­tion­al­iza­tion. For exam­ple, Chi­na has tak­en recent legal mea­sures to guar­an­tee pri­vate prop­er­ty, a move that the West has hailed as a cru­cial step toward legal stability.

But what kind of Marx­ism is as appro­pri­ate for today’s Chi­na? First, let’s look at the dif­fer­ence between Marx­ism and Left­ism. Left­ism is a term that refers to any talk of work­ers’ lib­er­a­tion – from free trade unions to over­com­ing cap­i­tal­ism. But the Marx­ist the­sis says that devel­op­ing the forces of pro­duc­tion is the key to social progress, and it is this type of Marx­ist devel­op­ment that fos­ters the con­di­tions for the con­tin­u­ing fast ​“mod­ern­iza­tion.”

In today’s Chi­na, only the Com­mu­nist Party’s lead­ing role can sus­tain rapid mod­ern­iza­tion. The offi­cial (Con­fu­cian) term is that Chi­na should become a ​“har­mo­nious society.”

To put it in old Maoist terms, the main ene­my may appear to be the ​“bour­geois” threat. But, in the eyes of the rul­ing elite, the main ene­mies are instead the ​“prin­ci­pal con­tra­dic­tion” between unfet­tered cap­i­tal­ist devel­op­ment that the Com­mu­nist Par­ty rulers prof­it from and the threat of revolt by the work­ers and peasants.

Last year, the Chi­nese gov­ern­ment strength­ened some of its oppres­sive appa­ra­tus­es – includ­ing form­ing spe­cial units of riot police to crush pop­u­lar unrest. These police are the actu­al social expres­sion of what, in ide­ol­o­gy, appears as a revival of Marx­ism. In 1905, Trot­sky char­ac­ter­ized tsarist Rus­sia as ​“the vicious com­bi­na­tion of the Asian knout [whip] and the Euro­pean stock mar­ket.” Doesn’t this char­ac­ter­i­za­tion still hold for mod­ern-day China?

But what if the promised demo­c­ra­t­ic sec­ond act that fol­lows the author­i­tar­i­an val­ley of tears nev­er arrives? That is what is so unset­tling about today’s Chi­na: Its author­i­tar­i­an cap­i­tal­ism may not be mere­ly a remain­der of our past but a por­tent of our future.