The Cowshed: memories of the Chinese cultural revolution by Ji Xianlin
An extraordinary book. This episode of history is strange but at the same time a bit familiar. Marxism puts "class struggle" as one of the foundations of politics. That makes class labels an extremely powerful weapon. Whether it is at the top of the national party or in the smallest village committees, all it takes is a tiny minority of sociopaths to figure out this weapon will get them power, and it leads to inevitable escalations of ostracism: capitalists, bourgeois, petit bourgeois, kulaks, liberals, the list of enemy classes always grows. The rituals become crazier, the language itself becomes insane, and the violence extreme. The Chinese cultural revolution is perhaps the largest ever version of this process. The "cancel culture" of western society in the 2010s is almost harmless by comparison but it is a prototype of this process. If you can imagine it raised to the n-th power, multiplied by a lot of cruelty and sadism, growing for a couple of decades of political madness, you can maybe get a sense of what it might have been like in China from the mid 60s to the mid 70s. Or you can just read this book.
As I write this, for some reason I'm reminded of a book by Elie Wiesel, which I read years ago, I can't remember what the title is, but it's not one of his famous one, maybe Paroles d'étranger? They are not similar, Wiesel talking about the Holocaust is much more emotional and philosophical, while Ji has a very matter-of-fact style, almost journalistic. But deep down, it kind of makes me feel the same way. Shudder.
The Anarchy: The East India Company, Corporate Violence, and the Pillage of an Empire by William Dalrymple
Everyone knows that India was a British colony. This book is about what happened before that, long before the administrators in khaki shorts and funny hats etc. A few random observations:
- At the beginning, in the year 1600, it was not the British government, but a private company with shareholders in London, equipped with a "charter" from the King (basically a business license), that decided to go trade in India. I am against the idea of business licensing in general, and reading this book didn't change my mind about that to say the least!
- During most of this time, the British could not even imagine controlling India. On the contrary, they were in awe of the wealth and power of India. They had to curry favor, and beg for permission from the Mughal authorities. Their focus was to compete with other Europeans especially the French, and make money by connecting the wealth of India with Europe. If you went back to say 1700 and told a British guy in India that his successors would rule the country, it would seem completely ridiculous.
- Over 250 years, through incredible ups and downs, the company evolved from simply trading, to participating in the politics of the empire, to eventually dominating the country militarily, and then gradually being replaced by the British government. The more famous period of colonialism as we know it was less than 100 years, from 1858, when the British government nationalized the company, until 1947.
- Nowadays, the biggest companies in the global stock market are 20 to 50 years old. But the British East India Company occupied an equivalent position for over 200 years!
- Interestingly, the British started dominating India politically right around the time when they started losing their colonies in North America which became the USA. There are actually quite a few people who fought in the American war of independence, the conquest of the Mughal Empire in India, and the Napoleonic wars in Europe. Can you imagine? Pretty dramatic couple of decades.
Singapore has no oil, nor gold. No forests, no farmland. They barely even have enough fresh water to drink. Their biggest neighbors, Malaysia, Indonesia or China were hostile to them most of this time. How did they pull of this miracle? They do have a pretty great location for trade. But then again so does Djibouti. Much of their population came through the Darwinian process of migration. But same can be said for many other countries. Will this book will not give you the "one weird trick to go from third world to first world"? No. There are a lot of factors. Many of them kind of boring. And some the choices the government made are questionable, some policies are bad. And a lot are good. You have to read the whole story to get it.
There is however one implicit meta-lesson: sometimes history hinges on exceptional individuals. Reading this book, you can't help but realize just how bad most political leaders are compared to Lee Kwan Yew. Lee may very well embody the best combination of intelligence, wisdom, integrity and competence found in any political leader of the 20th century.
This book is the bizarro world complement to the story Lee Kwan Yew's Singapore. Set in neighboring Malaysia in the early 21st century, it is also a true story. But there's no wisdom, no integrity. No long term vision. Just the opposite. But it is a fascinating story of a young guy who managed to skillfully tap into the veins of corruption at the highest levels of finance and politics, swindle his way to billions, and briefly reach the very top of the strange world of obscene consumption. Lots of huge deals, celebrities, yachts, that kind of stuff. The book is not just entertaining, but it is also well researched and does a good job of explaining the financial mechanics of the story.
This is quite simply one of the best works of science fiction I've ever read. Of course it has excellent technological imagination, but is also precise scientifically, and really deep philosophically. And the human story is really good too. In fact it starts right where this post started, in the cultural revolution of China of the 1960s. I don't want to give too much away, but the space and time scale of the story is just about as big as it can be without exploding your head.
No comments:
Post a Comment