Deng Xiaoping, a late main opponent to Mao in the communist party and a victim of his prosecution, has begun to end the cruel “cultural revolution“ with its terror to all who were not followers of the “massimo leader”. Then, slowly, the doors to the rest of the world also began to open. If they also open to our basic Western concepts, in principle building on the ideas of the French Revolution (liberté, egalité, fraternité), is not for sure. It can be practically seen in all emerging countries with such a history, when they drift away from the stoneage communist ideology, that the pendulum first swings in the opposite direction. No wonder. Many of these countries haven’t anything like a long record of democratic development based on freedom of speech and press. But even “free” countries which apparently should have these occasionally fail and take on a sort of censorship. In the course of long years and as a result of many different pluralistic influences, the pendulum will find its balance in most cases, probably also in China.
Both of these antagonistic archetypes, socialism and capitalism, have their own value, but also their inherent abyss’s, and brought together could form a useful, coordinating system. Capitalism stands for individuality, for production of goods (supply and demand, if needed or not), for profits, for recession, for competition, for egoism and in its most brutal appearance for economical Darwinism (survival of the fittest), pushing aside the weaker. The opponent socialism can clip the motor capitalism when it is over-touring and creating deep injustice. It can be the advocate for social balance and justice, for appropriate payment, and for protecting the weaker to a certain extent against impoverishment. But the orthodox adaptation is prone to gather unlimited power in the hand of one party. And, if it has an isolated, unique position in a country, can give birth to a long list of evils: uniformly brainwashed public opinion, totalitarianism in all social structures and areas, repressing individuals who don’t comply with this one-way system. Any form of individuality is at least critical and might be harshly repressed if the ruling party feel offended by this.
China, in this scheme of concepts, has now moved on to a rough form of capitalism, but the party does give only a finger’s breadth on civil rights to the people. The majority of people, for centuries embedded in an autocratic and feudalistic structure, don’t perhaps miss civil rights. They have to make their living, and some want to become increasingly richer (the opportunities are there). The sooner, the better, they think – and most of them keep their mouths shut, giving evidenced to the fact that the intermeshing of capitalism and socialism has not yet really begun.
