The Chinese know? What, all 1.3 billion of them?Originally Posted by Fuchs
I suspect you'd find that there's as little consensus in China as anywhere else, and a very considerable degree of discontent with the established order. Paradoxically, this discontent is often most prominent among those who might be called the winners under the established order... though a serious economic disruption and consequent unemployment is likely to get the commoners pretty fired up as well.
“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary”
H.L. Mencken
I am under the impression that my choice of words meant "a strong enough majority of those who care about politics at all".
Accurate choice of words is nice and all, but sometimes there's a superior trade-off to be had if you risk being misunderstood once in a while and in exchange can skip entire book volumes of writing over the course of a few years.
People tend to be annoyed or bored by super-accurate writing styles anyway.
"Consumerism" certainly disintegrates society. The strongest and most integrated societies on the planet are unabashedly consumerist, but they were not subjected to a socialist or a communist system and then introduced to globalisation! They evolved differently.
Unbridled consumerism unleashed by globalisation does affect nations that till now have been subjected to socialist or communist governance where life is dictated and decided from the womb to the tomb. And where daily necessities were shoddy and substandard as per western standards.
Globalisation and consumerism gives the citizenry a ‘freedom’ that they cannot fathom or handle. As it grows on the citizenry, the individual aspirations and desires soar. However, the State is in no position to address the same.
In such a scenario, a section of society by various means, fair or foul, enjoy the new found societal structure acquiring immense wealth, while the majority continues to wallow, and what is worse, is that they do not have the ‘safety’ of the socialist or communist system based on the womb to the tomb policy.
The gap between the haves and have nots increases, the gap between the rural and the urban, the gap between the industrialist and the worker, the gap between the farmer and the owner of the food mart increases and all this causes disharmony.
The real poor, who have no hope in hell to compete, take to arms and there is insurrection, the rationale given for such insurrection can be many, but is basically social injustice, inequality and poverty.
Therefore, the environment is ideal for exploitation, be it by forces within or by any external power that wishes to do so!
Just look around!
Don't confine to China alone!
Last edited by Ray; 01-18-2012 at 06:29 AM.
Ok, correct me if I'm wrong, but it sounds like you mean to say something like...
a strong enough majority of those who care about politics at all... know and understand that the pseudo-communist regime is their best hope for unity in peace, for a powerful China which can resist even foreign great powers.
Upon what evidence is that conclusion based?
Where would you have us look? In which formerly communist states are the "real poor" taking to arms in insurrection?
Even if the transition out of communism and the rise of consumerism creates some degree of disruptive force, what can anyone do about it? Try to preserve a detested system that nobody wants to keep? Tell people they won't be allowed to acquire more goods because that would disintegrate society? I suspect that efforts to forcibly repress emergent consumerism in order to prevent these rather hypothetical disintegrating effects would disintegrate things a lot faster and cause a lot more rebellion than consumerism would.
Last edited by Dayuhan; 01-18-2012 at 11:59 AM.
“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary”
H.L. Mencken
Selective reading will only confuse issues.
The key sentence is - Don't confine to China alone!
In a totalitarian regime, it is not that easy to organise an insurrection, but there are other countries too where the gap has widened a wee too large to close it and there is insurrection!
Crass Consumerism can be controlled and of that there is no doubt. One cannot replicate the West overnight. Anything done suddenly will have negative repercussions.
Last edited by Ray; 01-18-2012 at 02:33 PM.
Are we talking about totalitarian regimes or about post-communist states turning to consumerism? Not a whole lot of overlap there.
In my experience "crass consumerism" usually refers to somebody else trying to get what he wants. What we want is never crass.
How would you propose to repress acquisitive impulses in post-communist environments? Restrict people's incomes? Control the goods available for purchase? Doesn't that suggest a return to communism, or something much like it?
Obviously one can't prove such a contention either way, but I doubt that many who watch China on a day to day basis would agree that there's that level of consensus supporting the pseudo-communist regime. There's a great deal of discontent in China, and if they encounter serious economic problems - which is looking more likely by the day - it's hard to say what will happen.
“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary”
H.L. Mencken
I am talking about countries across the globe that did not follow western economic models.
It is obvious that What we want cannot be crass, but what one wants to satiate vanity or keeping up with the Joneses is what could be termed as ‘crass’ almost vulgar and nouveau riche.
Indeed, one can argue as to so what? True, but when such a Nation has people who can flaunt wealth which was not possible under a command economy, people do tend to believe that wealth is ill gotten and at the expense of the honest taxpayers. Result: Discontent!
As from Crass commercialism, the link below indicates that your interpretation - "crass consumerism" usually refers to somebody else trying to get what he wants. - is at variation to it.
The link indicates that it is a term referring to articles of culture which are based mostly on capitalist pursuits, while masquerading as being material of substance.
The 'crass' aspect of this is the thinness of the disguise, as many capitalist cultural ventures do not make attempts to hide their true purpose. In capitalist societies, such articles are very common, and so what is crass commercialism depends largely on perception.
(http://www.knowledgerush.com/kr/ency...commercialism/)
One does not restrict income to achieve limiting the symbols of vanity that creates a social discontent (and that is important for nations emerging with baby steps from the shadow of command economies i.e. State controlled economies). One merely increases the prices through taxation (which will go to the State coffers and help generate faster movement towards a market driven economy and narrowing the gap between social order). It would be something on the lines of heavy taxation on cigarettes in the UK to discourage smoking. Of course, there are possibly many other ways too!
It is obvious that such steps are hardly a return to communism.
In so far as China is concerned, there is discontent, as I discern, mainly because of the widening gap between the haves and have nots, the disparity between rural vs urban development and the disharmony in development between the interiors of China vs the coastal belt.
There must be many other reasons for the social unrest in China.
One could peruse “Social Instability in China: Causes, Consequences, and Implications”
http://csis.org/files/media/csis/eve...r_abstract.pdf
Last edited by Ray; 01-19-2012 at 01:24 PM.
It's an official line from China, component of their propaganda (thus widely known there), plausible, reinforced by history, I didn't find a single bit of evidence to the contrary for years since I learned about this aspect of Chinese political culture.
That may not be a positive proof, but I doubt there's a negative one either.
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