Month: March 2018

The Common Good

Michael Shirrefs, an Australian researcher and journalist, and his wife came to visit me for an interview. We talked about politics, America, European unity and disunity, and finally the question whether we still have a concept of the common good. How does it look in Trump’s America where billionaires from the president down preach populism but are always ultimately, it seems, in pursuit of their self-enrichment? Do the Europeans still have a sense of a common destiny? Or is the project of a European Union now moribund – reduced to an increasingly unattractive bureaucratic order?

Answers don’t come easily. We find ourselves politically today in a state of exceptional uncertainty. Our world has become so multi-faceted that we find it increasingly difficult to say with confidence where we are and where we are going. To pick one example. The future of every country, including the US and China, will depend very much on the training and education of their young. But do we have a comprehensive view of the strengths and weaknesses of the educational systems of the US and China to be able to say where they will be relative to each other in the next generation? Our world is changing so quickly (in population size, technology, and environmental conditions) that the concepts we have used for so long to make sense of our political reality are losing their grip. Contemporary, manipulated mass “democracy” is no longer democracy in the classical sense. “Freedom” is no longer being free except in narrowly circumscribed situations. And even “politics” is no longer politics as we have known it without its capacity for cooperatively determining a common good. But we lack alternative, new concepts for describing adequately where we are. We find ourselves, in other words, in an empire of disorientation.

This is also the hour for political reflection and awareness or, to put it more ambitiously, the hour of political philosophy. Politics, in the truest sense, is the search for a common good, for a common understanding of the world that allows us to navigate our co-existence. Our question is whether we can revitalize this kind of politics and motivate a sense of the common good relevant for where we are now. We should not expect the political philosophers to tell us what this good will consist in. There is no fixed good to be determined once and for all through expert philosophical reasoning. There are, rather, many different ways to conceive this good and they are not all compatible with each other. Our search for security, for instance, may clash with our desire for freedom, our wish for progress with our adherence to tradition, our desire for justice with our need for liberality and forbearance. Politics is the appropriate domain in which we weigh such choices and affirm this or that common good.

There is a danger in finding ourselves in a world where the parameters of human existence are fixed. That is the totalitarianism Hannah Arendt has warned us about – an anti-political condition in which the cooperative search for the common good has been cut off. In Arendt’s view, this totalitarianism – exemplified in the last century by Soviet Communism and German National Socialism – is by no means a thing of the past. She does not assume that we are political by nature and by necessity. Being political is, rather, for her a human capacity that may atrophy. We may not yet be at this point. It appears offhand that the dark cloud of totalitarianism has receded, at least temporarily, from our coastline. But our new digital media with their potential for large-scale social control may still bring it back and now in an updated and streamlined form.

Totalitarianism is, however, not the only threat we face. Another is the possibility of a chaotic world in which we have abandoned the search for a common good in favor of an unconstrained free-for-all. A complete individualism is, perhaps, an impossible thing. We are social beings right from the moment we are born. We would not even be able to establish ourselves in our individuality without the use of language which exists always and only in the space between us. For all that, the neglect of the need for a common ground and a common good, can still create both misery and chaos.

Europe illustrates the difficulties we face. Its people have lived together for millennia but they have also been separated from each other for millennia by language, tradition, culture, religion, and political affiliation. They have fought each other in terrifyingly destructive wars. For that reason there has also already existed for some time the idea of a unified Europe. 150 years ago, Nietzsche, for instance, was writing of the sickness of European nationalism and his desire to be a good European. After 1945 and the devastations of the Second World War, the Europeans finally seemed to have found a way to make common cause. What united them was their shared belief that the horrors of the past must not be repeated. But that conviction has begun to fade and now the political unification of Europe appears imperiled because of a lack of common purpose. National identity seems to be the best, the Europeans can fall back on.  I agree with Nietzsche that this would be a terrible option. But a new common ground can be found only when the Europeans recognize their diversity as one of their distinctive features and make that the base of their common understanding.

“This is the way the world ends.” — Drowning in people

Last June a United Nations report predicted that the world’s population – now at 7.6 billion – was likely to increase to almost 10 billion by 2050 and to 11.2 billion by 2100. Now a Vienna based group of demographers have calculated that by 2070 the world’s population will reach ONLY 9.5 billion. This has been hailed as good news. Jesus Crespo Cuaresma from the Vienna University of Economics and Business has even concluded that “we can be richer without having to produce more” and that global environmental quality will improve.

The world’s human population is, in fact, already far above its optimum. We can see this everyday in our overcrowded cities. There are certainly some goods that can be multiplied to keep up with a growing population. But there are others that cannot. The artifacts and monuments of our cultural parts, for instance, cannot be reproduced at will. Mass tourism is in the process of transforming and destroying much of that heritage. And it is not obvious that the political and social forms of the past can be adapted to an ever-growing population. Mass democracy is not really democracy anymore.

The Stanford biologist Paul Ehrlich who 50 years ago wrote the controversial book, The Population Bomb, with his wife Anne, has suggested that the world’s optimum population is less than two billion people – 5.6 billion fewer than on the planet today. The question is whether and how we could ever get back to that number. We can think of some horrible ways in which this might happen. Ehrlich says: “To start, make modern contraception and back-up abortion available to all and give women full equal rights, pay and opportunities with men. I hope that would lead to a low enough total fertility rate that the needed shrinkage of population would follow. [But] it will take a very long time to humanely reduce total population to a size that is sustainable.”

Capitalism and Democracy. A Lesson from Hong Kong

The rise of Xi Jinping has made Hong Kong democrats increasingly nervous. But the main threat to their goal to make Hong Kong more democratic does not even come from the authorities in Beijing; it comes from their own home-grown capitalists. The case of Hong Kong raises broad questions about the state of global politics and the future of democracy.

When I last visited Hong Kong, I had a chance to talk to some of the young political activists who have come to the world’s attention through their prolonged occupation of the central section of Hong Kong. But what did they really stand for? I discovered that, though they had acted together in 2013, they were, in fact, divided into three separate factions. The most radical among them were calling for Hong Kong independence; a second group was seeking to assure Hong Kong’s local autonomy; and a third group was pushing for democratic reforms. At the time, I thought that the democratic activi sts had the best chance (and perhaps the only chance) to realize their ambitions. But since then, some of their leaders have been sent to jail and some of their elected representatives have been expelled from the Hong Kong legislature. These actions were taken by local authorities — though, probably, under some pressure from Beijing. But it is noteworthy how readily the Hong Kong authorities acted in tune with Beijing’s wishes.

Since Xi Jinping has come to power the mainland government has inserted itself more and more openly in the affairs of Hong Kong. This month, on March 4, 2018, a leading member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party’s Politburo warned a delegation of Hong Kong law makers: “Using the high degree of autonomy to reject, fight and erode the central government’s comprehensive jurisdiction is absolutely not allowed.” He added: “[Hong Kong] needs to manage the relationship between one country and two systems well … strictly act in accordance with the constitution and Basic Law … and organically meld the central government’s comprehensive jurisdiction with [the city’s] high degree of autonomy.” This restated Xi Jinping’s own call in October of last year for an “organic” melding of Beijing’s authority with the city’s semi-autonomous powers in order to assure Beijing’s “comprehensive jurisdiction” over Hong Kong.

In the same spirit, Wang Huning, Beijing’s new, powerful propaganda chief, has warned Hong Kong in the last few days that “no act that jeopardizes the Basic Law or Hong Kong’s long-term prosperity and stability can be tolerated … The central government also has zero tolerance of Hong Kong independence, and it must be seriously tackled, or even suppressed.” And he encouraged the people of Hong Kong to strengthen their “patriotism and sense of national identity.” They needed to understand that “the nation’s fate is closely related to them, and that … Hong Kong youth’s future and the country’s development are also inseparable.”

Beijing’s determination to bring about a re-unification with Taiwan has contributed to the anxiety of Hong Kong’s democratic activists. Right now, the mainland government is trying to lure Taiwan by offering it favorable trade and economic terms. But if these sweeteners fail to work, the mainland could move forcibly to seize the island. The message appears to be that the Taiwanese may go on enjoying their capitalist way of life but that they must submit themselves to the comprehensive jurisdiction of Beijing. General Han Weiguo, a People’s Liberation Army ground force chief, said a few days ago that the PLA hoped Taiwan’s problem could be solved peacefully, as soon as possible. “Taiwan should be unified, not by force, but peaceful means. But that doesn’t mean the problem could be postponed indefinitely. It should be solved as quickly as possible.” Taipei needed to appreciate the urgency of resolving the issue, Han said. Resolving the “Taiwan problem” is seen as a major step in achieving Xi’s goal of “national rejuvenation.”

While the central government keeps repeating the mantra of “one country, two systems” in addressing itself to Hong Kong, it is becoming increasingly uncertain how the mainland authorities want to interpret this dualism. Hong Kong has lived with some such dual arrangement for a long time. As a British creation it was governed directly from London without any democratic pretensions. At the same time, the colonial authorities allowed a completely unregulated capitalism to flourish. This dual arrangement of political impotence and economic freedom has proved largely unproblematic to the local capitalists. With the end of colonial rule, they quickly transferred their loyalty to Beijing. In their minds the formula “one country, two systems” means: we are willing to go along with Beijing’s political demands as long as we are left to go on minting money. And for their own economic reasons the Beijing authorities have been willing to accept this division of labor.

To return to the Hong Kong activists and their unsuccessful push for more democracy. They quickly found out that they were opposed not only by the central government but just as much by the Hong Kong capitalists who could see nothing but political conflict with Beijing and bad business at home in the agitation. The story is of interest for the rest of us, because it throws light on the relation of capitalism and democracy. We are often told that the two go naturally and, indeed, necessarily together. Hong Kong teaches us a different lesson.

And here is a nice update to this item from the South China Morning Post on March 18 concerning Li Ka-Shing, one of Hong Kong’s richest men:

"It has been common for Hong Kong’s billionaires to cultivate close personal relations with China’s top leaders. The scale of their investments on the mainland was seen as a mark of patriotism, especially during the early years when the country was opening up and badly needed overseas investors.
 
Li was among the first group of Hong Kong’s super-rich who won Beijing’s trust and in return were gradually able to reap the rewards of investing in the huge mainland market.

Li had an impressive list of peers at the time: Henry Fok Ying-tung, Beijing’s confidante who was elevated to the post of vice-chairman of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference; Y.K. Pao, “shipping king” and founder of Hong Kong’s World-Wide Shipping Group; Pao’s son-in-law Peter Woo Kwong-ching, former chairman of Wharf Group and one of the four candidates to become the city’s first chief executive after the 1997 handover; and Cha Chi-ming, the well-known industrialist and philanthropist who donated much to the country’s aerospace science development and other projects, and one of whose sons, Payson, was once the boss of the ill-fated Asia Television. 

The list goes on, but these were among the most prominent tycoons who forged lifelong friendships with top leaders such as Deng Xiaoping, Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao."

“The Owl of Minerva” – Where are we right now in philosophy? In need of a revolution.

Hegel famously wrote that the owl of Minerva starts its flight at dusk. He meant to say that philosophy, far from being avant-garde, is, in some ways, always behind its time. For first comes reality and only then, belatedly, comes our understanding of it. Our words and theories are always chasing after the facts.

But it appears that our philosophizing is now more seriously falling behind reality. We have entered an age of profound technological change. And this is affecting, in turn, our entire social and political reality. No aspect of human life is any longer stable. The tremors are passing certainly also through the academy. The humanities that were once at the center of academic life seem to be losing their footing. But our philosophers feel and see nothing. They are living in their homespun cocoon of familiar questions and topics and are happy when they have one of their papers published in a professional journal with a minute and diminishing readership.

This has not always been so. Both the “analytic” and the so-called “Continental” tradition in philosophy – the two movements that are still the main sources of our current philosophizing – had once a vitality and importance that is now sadly lacking. They related directly to the most pressing issues of their time: the crisis of mathematics and natural science that began in the late nineteenth century, the shaking up of our traditional conceptions of consciousness and the mind due to  psychology and linguistics, the cultural, moral, and political upheavals of the twentieth century. I often think that there was once a heroic age in analytic philosophy in which Frege, Russell, Moore, Wittgenstein, Carnap and others in their company systematically changed the contours of the subject. Similarly, we can make out a heroic period in the broadly differentiated field of Continental philosophy. From Nietzsche, through Husserl and Heidegger, to Sartre and Foucault (and again others in their company) these thinkers grappled with the most difficult issues of their time.

We may be too much in awe of this singularly creative moment in philosophy that began in the last quarter of the nineteenth century and lasted till the last quarter of the twentieth. But we are already half a century beyond that point and our reality is no longer the same. We are undergoing a revolution in all dimensions of our existence and we need a revolution in our thinking, too.

This is a good and a bad moment for philosophy. Good, because it gives room for adventurous spirits. Bad, because such spirits may not turn up and the subject may dwindle into scholastic irrelevance. Not all the great philosophers of the past have been academic teachers. It is always possible that the most productive philosophical thinking will once again take place outside the academy.

There is, surely, something presumptuous in trying to tell others how they should conduct themselves philosophically. It is also useless. If we want philosophy to take a different course, we have to take it ourselves and, perhaps, others will do the same. The best I can do is to say in a few words, how I myself mean to proceed at this point.

  1. Say “No” to the formalism that holds our thinking in such a straightjacket. We need to overcome our preoccupation with the Kantian conception of philosophy as a “purely conceptual” inquiry. This must be our objective, in particular, in ethics and politics – a move away from abstract normative theorizing into a diagnostic form of ethical and political thinking.  Even logic and mathematics may be thought of in concretely natural terms as a human and historical practice. Wittgenstein’s philosophy of mathematics can provide us with clues. Why should we think that a late eighteenth century thinker can be our major philosophical guide in the twenty-first century?
  2. Practice a determined realism – by which I don’t mean an attachment to metaphysical realism but keeping a philosophical eye on the actual, concrete, historical facts. That kind of realism will also be aware of the limits of our understanding of our reality- particularly when it comes to history, society, and politics. Think of varieties of localized skepticism as realistic options.
  3. Develop a philosophy of technology. It is technology that is changing our world. We need to think about the technical instruments but also of the techniques of their use. We need to look also at the social and political effects of technological change. We need to study how technology affects and changes the distribution of power, its dispersion and concentration. We need to have an eye on the destructive potential and side-effects of technological development both in the natural and the cultural domain.
  4. Make politics your first philosophy. We must conceive political philosophy as a comprehensive inquiry into human existence and look at all aspects of philosophy in a political manner. But this requires a broad conception of politics, one that treats politics and ethics as distinct but connected strata.

“The Owl of Minerva” – Where are we right now in philosophy? In need of a revolution.

Hegel famously wrote that the owl of Minerva starts its flight at dusk. He meant to say that philosophy, far from being avant-garde, is, in some ways, always behind its time. For first comes reality and only then, belatedly, comes our understanding of it. Our words and theories are always chasing after the facts.

But it appears that our philosophizing is now more seriously falling behind reality. We have entered an age of profound technological change. And this is affecting, in turn, our entire social and political reality. No aspect of human life is any longer stable. The tremors are passing certainly also through the academy. The humanities that were once at the center of academic life seem to be losing their footing. But our philosophers feel and see nothing. They are living in their homespun cocoon of familiar questions and topics and are happy when they have one of their papers published in a professional journal with a minute and diminishing readership.

This has not always been so. Both the “analytic” and the so-called “Continental” tradition in philosophy – the two movements that are still the main sources of our current philosophizing – had once a vitality and importance that is now sadly lacking. They related directly to the most pressing issues of their time: the crisis of mathematics and natural science that began in the late nineteenth century, the shaking up of our traditional conceptions of consciousness and the mind due to  psychology and linguistics, the cultural, moral, and political upheavals of the twentieth century. I often think that there was once a heroic age in analytic philosophy in which Frege, Russell, Moore, Wittgenstein, Carnap and others in their company systematically changed the contours of the subject. Similarly, we can make out a heroic period in the broadly differentiated field of Continental philosophy. From Nietzsche, through Husserl and Heidegger, to Sartre and Foucault (and again others in their company) these thinkers grappled with the most difficult issues of their time.

We may be too much in awe of this singularly creative moment in philosophy that began in the last quarter of the nineteenth century and lasted till the last quarter of the twentieth. But we are already half a century beyond that point and our reality is no longer the same. We are undergoing a revolution in all dimensions of our existence and we need a revolution in our thinking, too.

This is a good and a bad moment for philosophy. Good, because it gives room for adventurous spirits. Bad, because such spirits may not turn up and the subject may dwindle into scholastic irrelevance. Not all the great philosophers of the past have been academic teachers. It is always possible that the most productive philosophical thinking will once again take place outside the academy.

There is, surely, something presumptuous in trying to tell others how they should conduct themselves philosophically. It is also useless. If we want philosophy to take a different course, we have to take it ourselves and, perhaps, others will do the same. The best I can do is to say in a few words, how I myself mean to proceed at this point.

  1. Say “No” to the formalism that holds our thinking in such a straightjacket. We need to overcome our preoccupation with the Kantian conception of philosophy as a “purely conceptual” inquiry. This must be our objective, in particular, in ethics and politics – a move away from abstract normative theorizing into a diagnostic form of ethical and political thinking.  Even logic and mathematics may be thought of in concretely natural terms as a human and historical practice. Wittgenstein’s philosophy of mathematics can provide us with clues. Why should we think that a late eighteenth century thinker can be our major philosophical guide in the twenty-first century?
  2. Practice a determined realism – by which I don’t mean an attachment to metaphysical realism but keeping a philosophical eye on the actual, concrete, historical facts. That kind of realism will also be aware of the limits of our understanding of our reality- particularly when it comes to history, society, and politics. Think of varieties of localized skepticism as realistic options.
  3. Develop a philosophy of technology. It is technology that is changing our world. We need to think about the technical instruments but also of the techniques of their use. We need to look also at the social and political effects of technological change. We need to study how technology affects and changes the distribution of power, its dispersion and concentration. We need to have an eye on the destructive potential and side-effects of technological development both in the natural and the cultural domain.
  4. Make politics your first philosophy. We must conceive political philosophy as a comprehensive inquiry into human existence and look at all aspects of philosophy in a political manner. But this requires a broad conception of politics, one that treats politics and ethics as distinct but connected strata.

How to do political philosophy

We can distinguish three styles of political philosophy: (1) abstract normative theorizing, (2) political realism, (3) diagnostic practice.

My claim is that abstract normative theorizing is a dead end and that normative political considerations have to be based on an understanding of the political realities. Normative political thinking thus presupposes political realism. But how well do we actually understand the political realities? And what are the epistemic constraints on political philosophy? Political thinking as a diagnostic practice sets out to examine that question. It is evident that an understanding of the political realities presupposes diagnostic practice.

Abstract normative theorizing about politics has had a long history and is still the dominant form of political philosophy today. Normative political philosophers typically ask: What is the best form of political order? The polis (city-state)? The empire? The nation state? What is the best form of government? Monarchy? Democracy? The Republic? What is the standard for judging political actions? Justice? Legality? Legitimacy? Plato, Aristotle, and John Rawls characteristically proceed in this manner. In the Republic Plato seeks to show through philosophical reasoning that the rule of philosopher-kings is best. By the same kind of reasoning Aristotle seeks to establish in his Politics that the Greek polis is the best form of political order. And John Rawls seeks to establish in a similar fashion in his Theory of Justice that actions and institutions are just when they implement his two basic rules.

Raymond Geuss has in recent years made a strong case against normative theorizing of this kind. In his book Philosophy and Real Politics (Princeton 2008) Geuss writes: “Political philosophy must be realist.” (p. 9) It must be concerned in the first instance, he adds, “not with how people ought ideally (or ought ‘rationally’) to act … but rather with the way the social, economic, political etc. institutions actually operate.” (Ibid.) It must recognize that “politics is in the first instance about action and the context of action, not about mere beliefs or propositions.” (p. 11) It must accept that “politics is historically located,” (p. 13) It must also understand that “politics is more like the exercise of a craft or art” than an application of a theory. (p. 15) Its exercise depends on skill rather than theoretical understanding.

Geuss writes provocatively: “In my view, if political philosophy wishes to be at all connected with a serious understanding of politics, and thus become an effective source of orientation or a guide to action, it needs to return from the present reactionary forms of neo-Kantianism to something like the ‘realist’ view, or, to put it slightly differently, to neo-Leninism.” (p. 99) But what does he mean by “neo-Leninism”? According to Geuss: “Lenin defines politics with characteristic clarity and pithiness when he says that it is concerned with the question that keeps recurring in our political life: ‘Who, whom?’ … Although Lenin’s formula is basically correct, it is perhaps too dense and needs to be developed or extended… First of all, the formula should read not merely ‘Who whom?’ but, rather, ‘’Who [does] what to whom for whose benefit?’ with four distinct variables to be filled in, i.e., (1) Who, (2) What, (3) To whom, (4) for whose benefit? To think politically is to think about agency, power, and interests, and the relations among these.” (pp. 22 and 25) And so Geuss concludes: “If one takes this extended Leninist model as the matrix of political philosophy, certain consequences would seem to follow. The first is that it would be a mistake to believe that one could come to any substantive understanding of politics by discussing abstractly the good, the right, the true or the rational.” (p. 28)

But is political realism sufficient or must we not also consider the epistemic conditions under which it proceeds and, more generally, the epistemic conditions for any kind of political theorizing? Three kinds of questions arise here. The most general is, of course, how and to what extent the inhabitants of the political field understand that field and their own locatedness in it. Every inhabitant of that field is positioned in a distinctive temporal and spatial location. This will affect their perception of the field as a whole; it will provide them with specific insights but also limit their range of vision. Politics is, moreover, an active enterprise and not simply one of understanding. We find ourselves committed to action under non-ideal cognitive conditions. That is, we are forced to act when we have no full grasp of the situation in which we find ourselves; we may be unsure of the thought and intentions of other political actors; and we can never be completely confident about the consequences of our actions.

Political theorists can suspend judgment in cases where political agents may be forced to act. They can time to assemble their knowledge of the political situation, of the thoughts and intentions of the political actors, and of the consequences of their actions and can do so with some degree of detachment. But even they are confined in their range of vision by the spatio-temporal location they occupy. They may find their access to the past obstructed by the lack of traces left over in monuments, documents, or memories; they may discover their capacity for comprehending the present in all its vivid detail to be limited; and like everyone else in the political field they are unable to look clearly into the future. They may lack adequate concepts to organize and describe the political field and its complex, ever shifting conditions. The outcome has to be that the insights of the political realist will inevitably tenuous. As for the political actors themselves, the political field will always be a domain of uncertainty and often of also of disorientation for the political realist.

The diagnostic approach will finally also throw a critical light on the claims of the normative theorizers. We will want to ask what powers of reason and intuition the normative theorists has to rely on to make his claim and what confidence we can have in these powers since they themselves are products of particular circumstances. And there will be the further question of how we are to imagine the use of those norms that the normative theorizer claims to have discovered. Both the way up to the norms and the way from them to their application needs to be critically examined.

For the normative theorist, political philosophy is closely linked to prescriptive ethics. It may even be branch or application of ethics to the political field. For the political realist, political philosophy will be a part of ontology and related to what is now known as social ontology. For the diagnostic practitioner, questions concerning our knowledge of politics are primary and political philosophy will, in the first place, be an epistemology of knowledge under non-ideal conditions.Read more

President for Life

‘PRESIDENT FOR LIFE’ XI RISKS REPEAT OF CHINA’S MAO-ERA MISTAKES

A reliance on the strongman model of leadership poses dangers not only to the Chinese president – but to China itself

BY CARY HUANG
11 MAR 2018

An effort to clear the way for President Xi Jinping to stay in power indefinitely, by amending the state constitution to abolish term limits on the Chinese presidency, could become the most controversial political development of modern Chinese history – not only since the establishment of communist rule in 1949 but since the founding of the republic in 1911, when the last Chinese imperial dynasty was overthrown.

By eliminating the two-term limit, Xi will ensure that he can stay at the helm beyond 2023 when his second five-year term ends, enabling him to become president for life, if he so chooses. In political science, a president for life is regarded as a de facto monarch.

Xi has already achieved near-absolute dominance over the Chinese political system, having accumulated more power in his first term than any of his predecessors since Mao Zedong. Xi, nicknamed “China’s chairman of everything”, has taken personal control of policymaking on everything from politics, the economy, national security and foreign affairs to the internet, environment and maritime disputes. His political theory – “Xi Jinping thought” – has been enshrined in the party charter, an honour that puts it on par with Mao’s doctrine and superior to Deng Xiaoping’s.

In making constitutional changes to ensure his indefinite rule, China is morphing from one-party rule to one-man rule, backtracking to the Mao era. The development has in effect overturned the party’s most important political norms and rules regarding governance and power succession – rules that were agreed by post-Mao party leaders led by Deng. Apart from being the mastermind of China’s market reform and opening up, Deng also implemented major reforms aimed at preventing the revival of Maoism and particularly one-man dictatorships.

In setting up age and term limits, Deng’s aims were to avoid the excessive centralisation of power in the hands of one leader; to prevent personality cults; and to scrap the practice of lifelong service for senior officials. Deng also established a “collective leadership” system based on consensus building, power sharing and a mechanism for orderly successions.

While Xi has largely inherited Deng’s pragmatic economic policies, he has shown a determination to rewrite the rule book and revive some of Mao’s philosophy of rule. His fiercest critics accuse him of building a personality cult and indoctrinating the masses. Xi has expanded his clampdowns on corruption and political dissent into a broader crusade to root out anyone disloyal or who fails to comply with his orders.

A more centralised and top-down system might have the merit of allowing for expedited decision-making as Xi aims to lead China’s national rejuvenation at a critical historic juncture.

However, relying on the strongman model is risky, both for Xi himself and the country. It puts the steering wheel of the world’s most populous nation and second largest economy in the hands of one person, spelling danger when that helmsman gets old or ill – as was seen in Mao’s later days. The model makes it harder for Xi to avoid misjudgments and policy mistakes as few will dare to speak out. Removing term limits will help prevent future challenges to Xi’s authority and legitimacy, but the resurgence of strongman politics could intensify internal power struggles as factions will compete for the powers and resources once shared among all.

History has shown many political leaders who sought lifelong service have not managed to realise their vision. Some have been deposed long before their deaths, others have even been assassinated by political enemies. And even if Xi succeeds in becoming a lifelong leader, he would in all likelihood then face serious challenges in selecting a successor to continue his legacies after his death and guaranteeing a smooth transition of power. Mao repeatedly failed in this regard. The stakes could not be any higher: renewed hostility among political rivals and the repression of political dissent puts China at risk.2

Cary Huang, a senior writer with the South China Morning Post, has been a China affairs columnist since the 1990s

Can we define “populism”? Perhaps, but what is gained by this?

What is populism? The most serious mistake with this question is its (usually unspoken) assumption that where we have a single word there must be a single corresponding concept and that when we use the word to refer to a diverse number of things they must share a single common property however different they may look. Thus, when we call all kind of things and all number of people “populist,” you can be certain that they all have one and the same property in common. We are dealing thus with a single concept that, with some ingenuity, can be defined. We can call this the Platonic fallacy. In his dialogues Plato regularly proceeds in this way. He asks “what is justice?”, “what is holiness?”, “what is beauty?” and assumes that in each case there is a single thing – the idea of justice, of holiness, or of beauty – in which just, holy, and beautiful things participate. An alternative to this “essentialist” view holds that general terms mark similarities between the things to which they are applied or, in more complex cases, that they mark overlapping series of similarities between them. In the latter case we can speak of a “family resemblance” between those things. Two things called by a common name may belong to the same family – and thus be called by the same name – without having any significant similarities in common as long as they are part of a chain of overlapping similarities. Terms applying to social phenomena are best understood as family-resemblance notions.

We should resist then also an essentialist account of populism – or more correctly of the term “populism.” Two recent attempts at providing such an account can help us to illustrate what is problematic in essentialism. In an already widely published book (What is Populism? 2017) the political theorist Jan-Werner Müller offers us an intriguingly simple characterization. Populism, he writes, is anti-pluralism. But this will not do for a number of reasons. We might say, first of all, that anti-pluralism is something wider than populism, that populists maybe anti-pluralist but that anti-pluralists need not be populists. The great dogmatic religions, for instance, are inherently anti-pluralist since each one of them demands total acceptance of an entire set of doctrines. Exclusive social castes and classes, like the Indian Brahmin and the European high aristocracy, are also typically anti-pluralist since they will accept only those who are like themselves. But there is a second and deeper reason for questioning Müller’s formula. It is that human society is inherently pluralistic. This is true even in the most doctrinaire forms of religion. The novelist Peter DeVries once pointed this out when he wrote humorously of the Dutch evangelicals of the American Midwest: “One Dutchman a Christian, two Dutchmen a church, three Dutchmen heresy.” Closer inspection will always bring out that the adherents to the same dogmas will nevertheless interpret them in significantly different ways. The reason is due to “the indeterminacy of meaning” (as philosophers have called the phenomenon) which brings it about that two speakers using the same words will inevitably give them different meaning. If that is so, then what Müller calls “anti-pluralism” is in effect not opposed to all plurality, since that is effectively impossible; it is, rather, a discriminatory view which quietly accepts some kinds of plurality and rejects others. The important question will then be which differences serve as the base for discrimination and which do not. So, defining populism as anti-pluralism is always possible, but it leaves us with a notion that is more or less empty and thus not very useful.

In Populism. A Very Short Introduction (2017), Cas Mudde and Cristόbal Rovira Kaltwasser define populism with another simple formula. They define it “as a thin-centered ideology that considers society to be ultimately separated into two homogeneous and antagonist camps, ‘the pure people’ versus ‘the corrupt elite’, and which argues that politics should be an expression of the volonté générale (general will) of the people.” This is a little more substantive than Müller’s definition but not by much. Both definitions are, in fact, too formulaic to be of much practical use. Mudde-Kaltwasser seem to realize this because they are well aware of how open-ended the notions of “the people” and “the elite” are. But they assume that in different contexts, these notions will be fleshed out in one way or another and we will then have different substantive embodiments of populism. By calling populism a “thin-centered ideology” they mean to say, moreover, that “populism in itself” has little ideological content; but they assume once again that in its various embodiments it will acquire such content. All forms of populism have thus in their view one essential quality in common, but in actual reality they will vary though only in supposedly accidental characteristics. We can say in addition, just as in the case of Jan-Werner Müller’s formulation, that this leaves us with serious questions concerning the adequacy of the formula. The fundamental idea of a confrontation between a pure people and a corrupt elite is so general that it seems to fit many kinds of situation that we would not necessarily want to describe as populist; it seems to apply class conflict as conceived in the Marxist tradition but, in fact, also to every other form of revolutionary conflict. It fits, for instance, Nietzsche’s account of the slave revolt in morality in his Genealogy of Morals. Nietzsche is writing there of the collapse of ancient classical Greco-Roman civilization. Nothing can stop Mudde-Kaltwasser from insisting that the rise of Christianity was also a populist event. But we need to ask ourselves whether this way of using terms is illuminating. To treat all confrontations between a lower and a higher social class as populist appears much too broad to be of interest.

We should admit, instead, that there is no simple formula that can help us to understand populism. Populism is a complex and multi-dimensional phenomenon. We are, perhaps, better off trying to describe characteristic cases of populist politics. I

The place of America — in political philosophy

For those living in the United States, the conditions of American politics will, for obvious reasons, be of some interest. But given the economic, political, and military power of the US it is not surprising to discover that American politics is scrutinized all over the world. When one looks at the International media, it is striking how much attention they pay to American affairs.

Does this mean that American politics has also a particular interest for political philosophy? Well, certainly, as an exemplar of politics for American students of political philosophy. John Rawls’ classic Theory of Justice seems to have largely America in view, despite its aspirations of providing a universal theory.

It is also said that America’s political history provides a blueprint for the natural and perhaps even inevitable political development of other places in the world. In this story, the American republic and American democracy are assumed to be suitable paradigms for political order and practice everywhere else. But is this assumption realistic or will countries like China, for instance, always be following their own trajectory and one that does not necessarily lead to American style democracy? We must not forget that historically different countries have served as political models — ancient democratic Athens, Imperial Rome, and Revolutionary France. The role of America as a model for political development is by no means set in stone.

Another possibility is that because of its wealth and power the US is still serving the role of an avant-garde nation. Whatever happens here politically and economically, will eventually manifest itself in other parts of the world. So, if we find extreme forms of capitalism in the US or a deterioration of democratic life, similar forms of corruption are to be expected elsewhere. One immediate application of this thought is that the rise of Donald Trump signals a process that may extend to the rest of the world and has to be therefore of interest to political philosophy.

 

Why China matters – also in political philosophy

China is also becoming increasingly powerful in the economic, political, and military field with implication for the entire global balance of power. Finally, and not least important, China is one of the world’s richest civilizations with a continuous history of more than two thousand years. Its philosophers, writers, and visual artists deserve our recognition and admiration.

There are in addition some special reasons why political philosophers should pay attention to China. Our political philosophy has tended so far to be narrowly focused on our own Western tradition. It focuses till today almost exclusively on the Greeks of the classical age, the Romans of the Imperial age, and on European politics from the sixteenth century onwards with the addition, more recently of US American politics. As far as other political traditions are concerned, our political philosophers have either ignored them or simply applied their Western concepts and theories to the rest of the world. We have become used, for instance, to take just one example, to speak of the Chinese Empire projecting in this way our conception of the Roman and modern European empires to China. But are they really the same? The Chinese name for their state is “zhongguo” which means “middle realm” and thus speaks of a geographical order, not of a dominion. And were the Chinese rulers “emperors” in the same sense as the Romans? The Chinese emperor or “huangdi” was primarily a mediator between heaven and earth, whereas the Roman emperors were typically military commanders, as their title already indicates.

The classical Chinese philosophers have concerned themselves extensively with political matters and we would do well to study their writings – both for their intrinsic interest and asking ourselves to what extent they can illuminate contemporary Chinese politics. Is it, for instance, the case, as has been suggested, that the Communist Party of China has, in fact, recreated the Confucian bureaucratic order?

In looking at China, we may also discover that it operates with a very different large-scale picture of political history. Our Western view of that history has been, certainly since the Enlightenment, of political development as a linear, progressive movement. This may not be the predominant Chinese view. Luo Guanzhong’s historical novel The Romance of the Three Kingdom’s, written in the 14th century, tells the story of the disintegration of the “empire” and the rise and fall of local kingdoms at the end of the Han dynasty. The novel begins famously with the words: “Unity succeeds with division and division follows unity. One is bound to be replaced by the other after a long span of time. This is the way with things in the world.” The words suggest a cyclical course of development and this picture appears particularly apposite with respect to Chinese history in which the unity of the realm and its divisions have been a recurrent theme. We need to look, perhaps, at the preoccupation of China’s present rulers with the unity of China, and hence their obsession with the hankering for independence in Taiwan and Hong Kong, in this light.

A Bad Bargain

Joshua Green, Devil’s Bargain. Steve Bannon, Donald Trump, and the Nationalist Uprising, Penguin Books 2017, republished with a new preface 2018

Joshua Green’s book has been somewhat overshadowed by the publication of Michael Wolff’s Fire and Fury (Read more) but it adds significantly to Wolff’s account and corrects it at some important points. It tells in fascinating detail the story of bad bargain the American people accepted when they elected Trump.

Green, shows, in particular, how doggedly Trump had been pursuing the project of a presidential campaign. Over long years he had “developed many of the themes that became hallmarks of the eventual campaign – everything from the evils of Chinese currency manipulation to the economic damage that NAFTA inflicted on a broad swath of U. S. workers.” (p. 41) When Trump and Bannon finally met they discovered that “both believed, for instance, that the United States was constantly victimized in foreign trade deals.” (p. 93)

Green, whose book is based on extensive interviews with Bannon himself and his associates as well as with others in Trump’s circle, gives much credit to Bannon for Trump’s victory. He writes that “Trump wouldn’t be president if it weren’t for Bannon. Together their power and reach gave them strength and influence far beyond what either could have achieved on his own.” (p. 22) In a word, Bannon provided for Trump his own “hard-right nationalist politics” and “Trump sold this brand of nationalism with the same all-out conviction he brought to selling his own name. Whether he actually believed in it, he recognized that it was the key to closing the biggest deal of his life.” (p. xxix) It was Bannon, Green argues, who “supplied Trump with a fully formed, internally coherent worldview that accommodated Trump’s own feelings about trade and foreign threats, what Trump eventually dubbed ‘America First’ nationalism.” (p. 46) After their break, Trump sought, of course, to minimize the importance of Bannon for his presidential campaign. “Steve had very little to do with our historical victory,” he declared. (p. xxi)

Given Green’s premise of the importance of Bannon to Trump, it is obvious why he focuses so intensely on Bannon and his worldview — even more so than on Trump. Bannon is, in his eyes, clearly the more complex and more interesting character. Like Michael Wolff after him, Green highlights the volatility of Bannon’s career which took him from serving for seven years in the navy to Goldman Sachs as a banker, Hollywood and movie-making, two years spent on an anti-Clinton crusade, editor of Breitbart News and finally presidential adviser. Both authors also acknowledge the importance of Bannon’s Irish Catholic working-class background. But there are some differences in the two accounts. Green’s Bannon is more successful than Wolff’s and his development is more coherent. Green also makes much of Bannon’s long-standing preoccupation with Hillary Clinton and the ways he sought to undermine her.