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Topic: 'Free Tibet' flags made in China
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Catchfire
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 4019
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posted 13 May 2008 02:02 AM
Slavoj Žižek's letter to the LRB: quote: The media imposes certain stories on us, and the one about Tibet goes like this. The People’s Republic of China, which, back in 1949, illegally occupied Tibet, has for decades engaged in the brutal and systematic destruction not only of the Tibetan religion, but of the Tibetans themselves. Recently, the Tibetans’ protests against Chinese occupation were again crushed by military force. Since China is hosting the 2008 Olympics, it is the duty of all of us who love democracy and freedom to put pressure on China to give back to the Tibetans what it stole from them. A country with such a dismal human rights record cannot be allowed to use the noble Olympic spectacle to whitewash its image. What will our governments do? Will they, as usual, cede to economic pragmatism, or will they summon the strength to put ethical and political values above short-term economic interests?There are complications in this story of ‘good guys versus bad guys’. It is not the case that Tibet was an independent country until 1949, when it was suddenly occupied by China. The history of relations between Tibet and China is a long and complex one, in which China has often played the role of a protective overlord: the anti-Communist Kuomintang also insisted on Chinese sovereignty over Tibet. Before 1949, Tibet was no Shangri-la, but an extremely harsh feudal society, poor (life expectancy was barely over 30), corrupt and fractured by civil wars (the most recent one, between two monastic factions, took place in 1948, when the Red Army was already knocking at the door). Fearing social unrest and disintegration, the ruling elite prohibited industrial development, so that metal, for example, had to be imported from India. [...] One of the main reasons so many people in the West participate in the protests against China is ideological: Tibetan Buddhism, deftly propagated by the Dalai Lama, is one of the chief points of reference for the hedonist New Age spirituality that has become so popular in recent times. Tibet has become a mythic entity onto which we project our dreams. When people mourn the loss of an authentic Tibetan way of life, it isn’t because they care about real Tibetans: what they want from Tibetans is that they be authentically spiritual for us, so that we can continue playing our crazy consumerist game. ‘Si vous ętes pris dans le ręve de l’autre,’ Gilles Deleuze wrote, ‘vous ętes foutu.’ The protesters against China are right to counter the Beijing Olympic motto – ‘One World, One Dream’ – with ‘One World, Many Dreams’. But they should be aware that they are imprisoning Tibetans in their own dream. [...] The question is often asked: given the explosion of capitalism in China, when will democracy assert itself there, as capital’s ‘natural’ political form of organisation? The question is often put another way: how much faster would China’s development have been if it had been combined with political democracy? But can the assumption be made so easily? In a TV interview a couple of years ago, Ralf Dahrendorf linked the increasing distrust of democracy in post-Communist Eastern Europe to the fact that, after every revolutionary change, the road to new prosperity leads through a ‘vale of tears’. After socialism breaks down the limited, but real, systems of socialist welfare and security have to be dismantled, and these first steps are necessarily painful. The same goes for Western Europe, where the passage from the welfare state model to the new global economy involves painful renunciations, less security, less guaranteed social care. Dahrendorf notes that this transition lasts longer than the average period between democratic elections, so that there is a great temptation to postpone these changes for short-term electoral gain. Fareed Zakaria has pointed out that democracy can only ‘catch on’ in economically developed countries: if developing countries are ‘prematurely democratised’, the result is a populism that ends in economic catastrophe and political despotism. No wonder that today’s economically most successful Third World countries (Taiwan, South Korea, Chile) embraced full democracy only after a period of authoritarian rule. Following this path, the Chinese used unencumbered authoritarian state power to control the social costs of the transition to capitalism. The weird combination of capitalism and Communist rule proved not to be a ridiculous paradox, but a blessing. China has developed so fast not in spite of authoritarian Communist rule, but because of it. There is a further paradox at work here. What if the promised second stage, the democracy that follows the authoritarian vale of tears, never arrives? This, perhaps, is what is so unsettling about China today: the suspicion that its authoritarian capitalism is not merely a reminder of our past – of the process of capitalist accumulation which, in Europe, took place from the 16th to the 18th century – but a sign of our future? What if the combination of the Asian knout and the European stock market proves economically more efficient than liberal capitalism? What if democracy, as we understand it, is no longer the condition and motor of economic development, but an obstacle to it?
From: On the heather | Registered: Apr 2003
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Catchfire
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 4019
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posted 13 May 2008 05:00 AM
Hmm, I think perhaps that readers might be ignoring the cynicism that is running through his usage of "democracy." The letter is above all critical and skeptical of capitalism and questions the popular confluence of capitalism and democracy. So, he obviously, doesn't think that authoritarianism is "good" (he is a leftist philosopher, incidentally)--but that capitalism seems to think that it is necessary to enact the kind of "democracy" the West values.He is cynically attacking this assumption by suggesting that perhaps, drawing from the China example, that "democracy" needs not follow from authoritarian capitalism at all (a la Pinochet) but perhaps the danger of China is that it's brand of capitalism is what awaits us all. What "other points" are questionable? [ 13 May 2008: Message edited by: Catchfire ]
From: On the heather | Registered: Apr 2003
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Catchfire
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 4019
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posted 13 May 2008 08:35 AM
Well, I suppose I can take your point that his usage was casual, but I think your being too hard on a parenthetical (literally) point that is less about the democratic situation in Chile than the way the actors of capitalism effect the social change they desire. In fact, the letter is critical (at least cynical), not supportive of the idea that capitalist democracy requires a stage of authoritarianism.For me, the salient point of his letter is that we elevate Tibetan national self-determination in order to purchase our own consumerist largesse. And as a result, we criticize China in a way that suggests a linear narrative from 'communist' authoritarian state towards 'democracy', when in fact, the authoritarian capitalism might not be the growing pains of a contemporary capitalist state and be the kind of future we, in the West, can look forward to. If anything, the letter is a warning against the West's complicitous behaviour with dictatorships where the 'end justifies the means'. Žižek forwards the cautious reminder that the means just might be the end, and we might be next.
From: On the heather | Registered: Apr 2003
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Catchfire
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 4019
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posted 13 May 2008 08:49 AM
I don't get your point. What did you substitute for China? For authoritarian regimes? For democracy?You know, if you're not going to read the letter, you could at least refrain from posting in the thread. ETA: nice link, ll. [ 13 May 2008: Message edited by: Catchfire ]
From: On the heather | Registered: Apr 2003
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