Lev Navrozov
Friday, Oct. 17, 2003

Under this headline came an AP report from Beijing on Oct. 2, 2003, in response to Hu Jintao’s speech in which he called for “efforts to expand citizens’ orderly participation in political affairs and guarantee the people’s rights to carry out democratic election.”

The AP Beijing correspondent (Joe McDonald) ends his report by quoting an “expert” saying that “China could see direct elections within a year at the country level.”

A move toward democracy? But what is democracy? This is an ambivalent word, applied in particular by Lenin, Hitler, Stalin and Mao to their dictatorships. When I lectured at a Midwestern American university, a local professor stood up during the question-and-answer period after my lecture and asked why I applied the word “democracy” to the United States – surely the United States is a constitutional republic, not a democracy.

I answered that strictly speaking he was right. The ancient Athenian term “democracy,” as the opposite of “aristocracy,” was first applied in the 19th century to universal suffrage. Thus, in England there was aristocracy, not democracy, because the upper house of Parliament consisted of un-elected lords (aristocrats), and because many adults, such as women, had no right to vote, even in the elections to the lower house of Parliament.

It is universal suffrage that came to be associated with “democracy,” but even today the form of government of the United States is, officially, “constitutional republic,” and that of England “constitutional monarchy.” We can call the form of government of both of them in the past two centuries “constitutionalism,” meaning that the power of the king, the prime minister or the president is limited by the courts and legislature.

Today a Westerner usually means by “democracy” above all constitutionalism. What about freedom, also associated with democracy?

A dictator can permit his subjects any freedom to do anything, except restricting his absolutism. Lenin, a dictator who had publicly voiced throughout his life his determination to eliminate private enterprise (capitalism) all over the world, seized power in Russia in 1917 for that purpose – and in 1921 permitted virtually unlimited private enterprise (capitalism). But Lenin did not yield an inch to constitutionalism.

In the 1930s Stalin banned private enterprise (capitalism), for a dictator can ban as he can permit. Lenin permitted capitalism, while Stalin (allegedly his most faithful disciple) banned it. A delegation from Stalin’s Russia went to Mao’s China to celebrate an anniversary of the foundation of the People’s Republic of China. The “march-past of working people” in Mao’s Beijing was copied from the same in Stalin’s Moscow. A column of marchers would appear on the capital’s main square, and the announcer would shout, “Here are marching our magnificent workers of the Electrical Machinery Plant.” Then another column would appear, and the Soviet delegates would not believe their ears. “Here are marching,” shouted the announcer, “our magnificent businessmen.”

Today private enterprise in Hu’s China is developed no worse than it was in Lenin’s Russia (or in Hitler’s Germany).

So? This has nothing to do with constitutionalism. This is dictatorship, permitting what the dictator considers useful for his power.

Universal suffrage? The Soviet voters were told from 1936 onward (under Stalin and his successors) that theirs were the world’s most democratic elections, and the Soviet universal suffrage knew no exceptions or exemptions. Here was an example. Suppose an American voter was bedridden. He would not vote. Now in the Soviet elections the ballot box was brought to whoever was sick!

Why did more than 99 percent of the Soviet voters vote for the candidates the Soviet rulers approved and put on the ballots? Because many or most voters were afraid to “vote against.” Secret ballot? But what if they were found out by their fingerprints?

Yes, the elections in Hu’s China may be as democratic as they were in Stalin’s Russia. But in the absence of constitutionalism, the fear to vote “incorrectly” will be as great.

On Dec. 31, 2002, it was announced in the United States that Channel 4 (television) was to show a documentary from China in which a Chinese “performance artist” would eat the flesh of a dead (stillborn) baby.

Neither Channel 4 nor most of its American audience seemed to have understood what it was all about. In the United States, “performance artists” became in the second half of the 20th century the extreme manifestations of the “freedom of expression” at post-modern art shows.

The Chinese “performance artists” have outdone their American and European colleagues – one of them, Zhu Yu, is eating at art exhibitions the flesh of a dead (stillborn) baby. In other words, the “freedom of expression” in China exceeds or surpasses that in the United States or Western Europe today.

But such boundless freedom of expression was permitted in China in the 13th century when an Italian named Marco Polo visited the country. In particular, he witnessed absolute religious tolerance – indeed, the rulers professed no religion. So, why should they have persecuted anyone on religious grounds?

On the other hand, those who encroached or infringed on the holy of holies – absolutism – had to carry poison because no one could stand the Chinese torture, but the police knew how to make the arrested criminal vomit the poison.

In the post-Roman West and in Russia much attention was paid for many centuries to the soul or psyche of a subject or a citizen. If a Westerner of the time of Marco Polo had started eating the flesh of a dead (stillborn) baby as a public “performance,” he would have been burned at the stake as a heretic or confined to a psychiatric asylum as a dangerous lunatic.

If this performance had occurred in Nazi Germany, it would have been immediately nipped in the bud as Jewish, sick, degenerate and detrimental to Aryan mental health and German patriotism. In Soviet Russia it would have been prevented as Western bourgeois decay, poisoning Soviet minds. But in China – well, it is permitted, as it might have been in the 13th century.

However, if Zhu Yu had, instead of eating the flesh of a dead (stillborn) baby, displayed a very modest poster: “Let us limit absolutism in China and move to constitutionalism as the English did in the 13th century,” he would have better swallow poison as in the times of Marco Polo’s visit to China.

Since 1949 China has not moved an inch away from absolutism and toward constitutionalism.

As for capitalism, I am sure it will thrive in Hu’s China as it did in Lenin’s Russia and will help to burrow into Western science and technology in order to develop nano and other superweapons. The elections will be as democratic as they were in Stalin’s Russia. And the permitted freedoms of expression will be as striking in China in the 21st century as they were in the 13th.

Before the 20th century, the century of many dictatorships, the kings, tsars and emperors ruled under absolutism by the right of their royal birth. A dictator has no more royal blood than anyone else. Why should he, and not somebody else, rule? Hence Lenin was not just succeeded by Stalin. The oligarchy, led by Stalin and Trotsky, virtually put Lenin under house arrest under the pretext of his sickness.

Then Stalin and Trotsky fought for power, and Stalin had Trotsky exiled, and later assassinated, while other members of the oligarchy were “put on trial” as spies, terrorists and saboteurs under Trotsky’s leadership.

In the 1960s, the oligarchy, led by Brezhnev, overthrew Khrushchev, and the struggle resumed after Brezhnev’s death.

A similar oligarchic struggle for absolute power in China does not prove that there is no dictatorship in China or that China is moving toward constitutionalism.

The link to my book online is www.levnavrozov.com. My e-mail address is navlev@cloud9.net. You can also request our webmaster@levnavrozov.com to send you by e-mail my outline of my book.

Editor's note:
Harry Wu reveals the real China – Click Here Now

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