The Origins of the State

[aelephant]

I enjoyed these 2 podcasts, but it got me thinking, what is going on with China?

Stef points out that Kings stay in power by changing "you can't overthrow me" to "you mustn't overthrow me"; if you do, you're a sinner & you'll burn in hell or whatever. In states like the US, politicians stay in power by claiming they have the right to power because they were voted for.

In China they are atheists, so there is no threat of sin or punishment after death AND they aren't voted for. Is China setup just like a proto-human tribe where the alpha is only in power because no one is strong enough to overthrow him?

Just curious if Stef or anyone else has any thoughts about this. Hopefully I've understood the podcast. If I've made any mistakes please correct me.

 

Cheers!

- aelephant

[TDB]

 

I enjoyed these 2 podcasts, but it got me thinking, what is going on with China?

[...] Is China setup just like a proto-human tribe where the alpha is only in power because no one is strong enough to overthrow him?

 

It's a bit more complicated than that, but that's close enough. Weak government of the empire overthrown in 1911-1912 revolution, resulting in a weak nationalist government. Communist insurgency, Japanese invasion and occupation of Manchuria. Communists and Nationalists cease-fire to fight the Japanese, then resume hostilities after Japanese defeat. Mao comes out on top, uses Soviet style brutality for a while, then invents the cultural revolution.

Basic idea of the cultural revolution was that Mao is god, everyone else is suspect, anything old is bad and should be destroyed. (Most of the Chinese art from before 1950 that still exists, ironically, survived in places like the British museum.) Various factions vied to prove their supreme devotion to Mao. Schools were either closed or switched over to full-time political propaganda, and teachers were in danger from students, and students in danger from each other. Maximum slave on slave violence, with no one safe. Though of course there was a preferred victim class, vulnerable to anyone who felt like passing along the bad karma.

Then Mao died and Deng Xiaoping won the power struggle. According to the conventional story, he then came up with some brilliant reforms that turned the economy around. The revisionist version, documented by Kate Xiao Zhou in her book "How the Farmers Changed China," shows that the rural farmers had been pushing back against collective farming from the first, but that Mao had been sufficiently powerful and ruthless to crush resistance. During the power struggle after Mao's death, a secretive informal decollectivization began to spread from place to place. Farmers colluded with local officials to split up the collective land, allowing each family to work for themselves, so long as the grain quota was satisfied and the local officials could pretend to represent successful collective farms. This in turn led to a release of enormous creative energy, a surplus of agricultural goods, leading to informal markets and a wave of illegal internal migration. By the time the central government bureaucrats began to catch on to the reality of the situation, the beneficial results had become widely recognized and could not be turned back without a brutal and ruthless display of power and sacrifice of legitimacy. None the less, hard liners succeeded in formally outlawing many of the new activities. The new regime struggled to strangle the goose that laid the golden eggs, while trying to take credit for the eggs at the same time. The farmers responded by bribing officials to allow them to continue. This all displays the warped power of the informal sector/black market, as the economic boom lent legitimacy to the central government, and economic success combined with corruption led to entrenched stagnant politics. Most ironically, the Tiananmen protests led to a backlash, undermining the few actual reformers in the government.

So here we are. The internet and cell phones have weakened the party's ability to censor the news, so that some scandals and news of disasters has spread, the sort of thing that would have disappeared into the memory hole 30 years ago. Corruption is a fact of Chinese life. Things seems stable, but who knows?

[aelephant]

Really appreciate your reply. It is fascinating to read about.

I talked with some of my Chinese coworkers & they basically said that because the government controls the military & there is no alternative government, that is why the Communist Party is still in power. I do think the CP is still quite ruthless, they are just able to do it in a way that it doesn't get sensationalized. The other part is that they control the mainstream media almost completely, so the only place it would get it out is on the Internet or person to person. I believe that if an individual were hurting the government, they would make that person disappear immediately, no questions asked.

I've heard it said that a government that feels it has to control everything so tightly (the media, the censorship on the internet, etc) is a very fragile government. It makes some sense. The CP could also be fragile in the sense that within the party, there have to be struggles over who will wield what power & what will be passed on to whose kids.

[TDB]

 

Communist Party ...  control the mainstream media almost completely, so the only place it would get it out is on the Internet or person to person. I believe that if an individual were hurting the government, they would make that person disappear immediately, no questions asked.

 

Thanks for your kind words. I agree but have 2 small quibbles that are interesting to me.

During a recent train disaster the government forbade official media to even travel to the site or give any coverage. Photos taken by witnesses got out by cell phone and Internet, and became widely known and discussed. Then the government controlled media became too embarrassed to not cover it, pushed to get the ban lifted, and it got coverage. Obviously, we can't conclude that the problem is solved, but neither is it a dead issue. What used to be an airtight seal has become porous.

As for disappearing people, my impression is that this is less likely now, though for cynical reasons. The CCP bureaucrats prefer to make an example of anyone who manages to annoy or embarrass them. They have begun to develop their own variant of the western style PR jujitsu; if an embarrassing incident occurs, find a scapegoat, possibly even in government or state-owned enterprise, imprison him, denounce him, convict him, confiscate his wealth, declare that the system works, justice has been done, no need for reform.

[aelephant]

Interesting! I didn't know about the train incident. I thought they just wanted to control the media reporting until they had their story well-rehearsed.

Regarding making people disappear, I've heard about plain clothes police officers abducting journalists, never processing them officially, never telling them their being charged with any crime, confiscating their equipment & then releasing them after the event they were attempting to cover has blown over. To me if you can pick someone up off the street & hold them prisoner with no repercussions, it would be just as easy to hold them indefinitely or dispose of them. Quite scary to think about.

[Victor]

I think Stef's analysis is incomplete. It does not factor in corruption.

 

The state originates out of the asymmetry in the capacity to display violence. It first relies on armed thugs to come into being. It starts with promises to thugs, who do extraordinary things for very little pay, hoping to get rich in the future. There aren't enough riches to pay the thugs to maintain an empire indefinitely. And the more empire, the less wealth. This is unsustainable and most empires in history disbanded or collapsed at this point.

 

Religion introduced technologies of crowd control, and statists began using them to lower the cost of domination. This is where propaganda, spying and self-policing comes from. Culture adapts to push people to ignore the reality of their enslavement, I imagine in some sort of aversion of the death and destruction that usually comes along with regime change. Failure in this stage means people gradually adopt some foreign culture or belief system (mostly religious) and fall victim to another state (either a new one or a foreign one). This occurs instead of true freedom and a reduction of statism, mainly for two reasons: first states around the world dedicate an important portion of their efforts to eroding, subverting and distabilizing competitors to take away their tax farms through the formation of puppet regimes, and second, successful Cultural adaptation renders people dependent on domination.

 

But as time goes on and scandals, contradictions and enormous costs pile up, so does an enormous pressure for change pile up. This is where the technology of organized corruption extends the life of the state.

 

In any state you have several layers composing the structure of domination, each performing its own function for its own survival. The top layer is dominant for as long as the state survives and determines the survival of the state, because it determines the target of the state power and who is to benefit. It itself is the only one to blame for its own demise. If it fails to survive, the state fails to survive, and regime change occurs. In most states of the past this would be the king or emperor. But the growth of the banking sector allowed for the introduction of the republican form of government, where the ruling elite could step back and control the state without becoming public targets. In some countries there are dictators holding this positions. In Iran you have a religious leader.

 

There is a second layer of indispensable people for the survival of the state, legitimacy of the top layer rulers and the indirect administration of the violence of the state. This layer includes the mega-rich who mold public opinion through media empires. In most countries it includes top religious leaders. In smaller countries it may include strongly influential public figures (but this is not the case for the US). In most countries top military leaders are part of this layer, as the potential for regime change is vivid in the barrels of M16 and AK47 rifles. But thanks to the CIA and FBI, this is not the case for the US (currently, although I imagine that top NSA leaders may have already joined this layer). It's necessary to note that this layer is constantly colluding amongst itself and testing the ruling elite for efficacy. This class fights for its own survival by secretly backing and supporting challengers of strategy and action to the top rulers. This class is the first in line to receive benefits from the top rulers, as this layer alone is sufficient to prevent or allow regime change.

 

The third layer of the state is the interchangeables. It's the public figures, the political candidates, the "opinion makers", the legislators... the middlemen of the state.

 

A fourth layer is the thugs and brutes that do the dirty work of the state. The policemen and the government clerks.

 

I needed to explain all this to get my point on corruption across.

 

Systematic and organized corruption is a technology the top ruling class have introduced to extend their survival. It works by accelerating the rate of exchange of the interchangeables, minimizing the requirements to join this class, increasing the power and wealth controlled by this class to make it more appealing, in the hopes that potential power-hungry regime challengers get discouraged of full blown confrontation of the top rulers and the second layers, and instead are able to easily share a portion of state power. This class ruthlessly self-polices, because it is by design composed of dysfunctional sociopaths of mediocre intelligence whose feeble hold to very lucrative power is entangled in each-others hands. It is designed to self attack.

 

The Chinese Communist Party dedicates significant efforts to recruiting new party members, and the rewards and access to power once becoming a party member are unmatched by any other career.

 

So, first Kings stay in power by changing "you can't overthrow me" to "you mustn't overthrow me". Then they also say to those who are able to see the truth about that mustn't, "Ruling is good, so be a mini-ruler yourself and enjoy a share of the wealth and power".

 

I want to add that it is impossible to end the state by targeting any of these individual layers. If you substitute the top layer, you've just executed regime change, and the whole structure is itching to support and integrate with the newcomers so they can continue to make money and share power. If you instead aim for the Indispensable, it is such a varied and diverse group that it is hard to identify them as a real group or class. The challenge is making the case and proving these individuals are part of a conspiracy. You are called a conspiracy theorist and ridiculed as a nut. Targeting the interchangeables is a waste of time and effort, because there's a huge line of individuals willing to do almost anything to take their place and in essence continue what they were doing.

 

The only thread that binds them together and is their fundamental weakness is that they all exist, survive and thrive because of the original violence of the state. And because initiating violence is wrong and evil, they cannot reduce their investments in efforts to obscure, negate, confuse and hide the nature of their relations with the rest of us. By communicating the state is evil, you are blasting away enormous piles of money invested against that reality. You are pushing them to come back to the original strategy of hiring more thugs to keep their hold on power, when a good portion of their wealth and power was already distributed amongst the interchangeables. You are crippling their economics.

 

I would truly love your feedback.

[gwho]

There is a concept called "heaven", which is sky/god/heaven. so god is a concept rather than a personage. so they still used false morality to tell ppl it's bad to overthrow the king.