Bulletin N° 1017
“The Last Emperor”
1987
https://www.123movie.lc/mov/the-last-emperor-1987/watching/
by Bernardo Bertollucci
(2:43:05)
The Plot: By 1950, the 44-year old Puyi, former
Emperor of China, has been in custody for five years since his capture by the
Red Army during the Soviet invasion of Manchuria. In the recently established
People's Republic of China, Puyi arrives as a
political prisoner and war criminal at the Fushun Prison. Soon after his
arrival, Puyi attempts suicide, but is quickly
rescued and told he must stand trial.
42 years earlier, in 1908, a
toddler Puyi is summoned to the Forbidden City by the
dying Empress Dowager Cixi. After telling him that
the previous emperor had died earlier that day, Cixi
tells Puyi that he is to be the next emperor. After
his coronation, Puyi, frightened by his new
surroundings, repeatedly expresses his wish to go home, but is denied. Despite
having scores of palace eunuchs and maids to wait on him, his only real friend
is his wet nurse, Ar Mo.
As he grows up, his upbringing is
confined entirely to the imperial palace and he is prohibited from leaving. One
day, he is visited by his younger brother, Pujie, who
tells him he is no longer Emperor and that China has become a republic; that
same day, Ar Mo is forced to leave. In 1919, the
kindly Reginald Johnston is appointed as Puyi's tutor
and gives him a Western-style education, and Puyi
becomes increasingly desirous to leave the Forbidden City. Johnston, wary of
the courtiers' expensive lifestyle, convinces Puyi
that the best way of achieving this is through marriage; Puyi
subsequently weds Wanrong, with Wenxiu
as a secondary consort.
Puyi then sets about reforming the
Forbidden City, including expelling the thieving palace eunuchs. However, in
1924, he himself is expelled from the palace and exiled to Tientsin following
the Beijing Coup. He leads a decadent life as a playboy and Anglophile, and
sides with Japan after the Mukden Incident. During this time, Wenxiu divorces him, but Wanrong
remains and eventually succumbs to opium addiction. In 1934, the Japanese crown
him "Emperor" of their puppet state of Manchukuo, though his supposed
political supremacy is undermined at every turn. Wanrong
gives birth to a child, but the baby is murdered at birth by the Japanese and
proclaimed stillborn. He remains the nominal ruler of the region until his
capture by the Red Army.
Under the Communist re-education
program for political prisoners, Puyi is coerced by
his interrogators to formally renounce his forced collaboration with the
Japanese invaders during the Second Sino-Japanese War. After heated discussions
with Jin Yuan, the warden of the Fushun Prison, and watching a film detailing
the wartime atrocities committed by the Japanese, Puyi
eventually recants and is considered rehabilitated by the government; he is
subsequently released in 1959.
Several years later in 1967, Puyi has become a simple gardener who lives a peasant
proletarian existence following the rise of Mao Zedong's
cult of personality and the Cultural Revolution. On his way home from work, he
happens upon a Red Guard parade, celebrating the rejection of landlordism by
the communists. He sees Jin Yuan, now one of the political prisoners punished
as an anti-revolutionary in the parade, forced to wear a dunce cap and a
sandwich board bearing punitive slogans.
Puyi later visits the Forbidden City
where he meets an assertive young boy wearing the red scarf of the Pioneer
Movement. The boy orders Puyi to step away from the
throne, but Puyi proves that he was indeed the Son of
Heaven before approaching the throne. Behind it, Puyi
finds a 60-year-old pet cricket that he was given by palace official Chen Baochen on his coronation day and gives it to the child.
Amazed by the gift, the boy turns to talk to Puyi,
but finds that he has disappeared.
In 1987, a tour guide leads a
group through the palace. Stopping in front of the throne, the guide sums up Puyi's life in a few, brief sentences, before concluding
that he died in 1967.
Subject: Who are we, as a social
class? : Being in
itself,
Being for itself,
and the Necessary Alliances.
Grenoble, France
New Years Eve 2021
Dear Colleagues and Friends of
CEIMSA,
We end this year with our final CEIMSA bulletin in which we continue our presentation of Barrington Moore, Jr’s classic study, Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy: Lord and Peasant in the making of the Modern World (1966). In the first part of this book Moore analyzed the revolutionary origins of capitalist democracy in three countries: England, France, and the USA. (Please see CEIMSA Bulletin N°’s 1012, 1013, and 1015 for the presentations of these three chapters.) We now turn to the second part of Moore’s influential study, “Three Routes to the Modern World in Asia,” in which he compares the historical transition of Communist China’s political economy with the Fascist rise to power in Japan and democracy in India. We begin with a presentation of Chapter 4, “The Decay of Imperialist China and the Origins of the Communist Variant.”
China is the one of the oldest civilizations still in existence, and its population has retained its common identity through millennia.* Writing developed in this Neolithic farming culture in the region of the Yellow River during the Shang Dynasty (1706-1123 B.C.), where artifacts dating from around 1300 B.C. have been discovered.
*Note: A brief history of China is available at the Wikipedia
site: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_China, but Moore’s interest is in an
analytical attempt to explain how China’s past determined its course of
development into a communist dictatorship (rather than a capitalist democracy).
“A long, long time ago,” writes Barrington Moore at the beginning of his historical study of social class relationships in pre-modern China and the specific social origins of dictatorship in this nation,
there was a school of philosophers in China whose
tenets called for a ‘rectification of names.’ They apparently believed that the
beginning of political and social wisdom was to call things by their right
names. Those who study China today are busy on a similar task; the names that
they bandy about are words such as ‘gentry,’ ‘feudalism,’ and ‘bureaucracy.’
The issue beneath this terminological debate is the decisive one with which our
inquiry must begin:
1) How were the upper classes connected with the land in
this society where the overwhelming majority were
tillers of the soil?
2) Did their power and authority rest ultimately on
control of landed property or was it an outcome of their near monopoly of
bureaucratic posts?
3) If it was a combination of the two, what was the
nature of this combination?
Some Western scholars stress the
bureaucratic character of the Chinese Empire and de-emphasize the link between
the Imperial service and landed property. Such an interpretation serves the
dual purpose of suggesting grounds for criticizing the Marxist derivation of
political power from economic power and for criticizing modern communist states
as a throwback to an alleged form of Oriental despotism. Marxists, and
especially the Chinese Communists, on the other hand, treat the Imperial era
and even the Koumintang period as a form of feudalism,
meaning a society in which most of the land is owned by landlords whose main
income derived from rent. By de-emphasizing its bureaucratic character,
Marxists conceal uncomfortable resemblances to their own practices. Feudalism
is, if anything, an even less apt characterization than bureaucracy. There was
no system of vassalage in Imperial China and only vary limited grants of land
in return for military services. Nevertheless the Marxist stress on landlordism
is thoroughly justified, as we shall see. In sum it seems to me that Western
scholars are struggling desperately to deny the connection between landholding
and political office, while Marxists try equally desperately to establish such
a connection.
What, then, was the connection? What were the decisive
characteristics of Chinese society during the last great dynasty, the Manchu
(1644-1911)? How did these structural features impart a direction to the subsequent
development of China that culminated in the middle of the twentieth century in the
communist victory? What characteristics of the Chinese landed upper class help
to account for the absence of any strong push toward parliamentary democracy as
the Imperial system broke down?
A few simple points stand out upon which there is widespread agreement
and that enable us to take preliminary bearings. First of all, long before our
story begins, the Chinese polity has eliminated the problem of a turbulent aristocracy
tied to the land. The stages by which this enormous transformation took place
do not concern us, except to mention that the famous system of examinations,
which helped the emperor to recruit a bureaucracy with which to fight the
aristocracy, played a part in it. The examination system was in working order
during the T’ang dynasty which ended in 907 A.D. By
the succeeding Sung dynasty, not much is left of the ancient aristocracy.
Whether this aristocracy was feudal, whether the earlier stage of Chinese
society prior to its first unification under the Ch’in during the third century
B.C deserves the appellation feudal, are questions that we may happily leave
aside.**
On the other hand, it is necessary to pay close attention to the problem
of whether or not a landed aristocracy continued to exist under a façade of
administrative centralization during the Manchu era, or the Ch’ing dynasty, as
it is generally known among sinologists. Everyone would agree to the existence
of a class of wealthy landed proprietors, though problems could arise in just where
to draw the line between wealthy and merely well-to-do. There is similar
widespread agreement on the existence of a class of officials and scholars, and
again problems of drawing the line within this group, though the line between
those who did and did not have tincture of academic culture was a sharp one.
There is also agreement on the point that the two groups overlapped and were
not absolutely identical. There were at least moderately rich landlords who did
not hold any form of academic degree, and there were degree holders who owned
no landed property. The exact degree of overlap is uncertain.
To stop short at this agreement, however, is to obscure the essentials.
Even if we had information about the exact proportion of individuals who
belonged to both groups, who were both landlords and officials or scholars, we
would not know very much. No physiologist would be content with knowing what percentage
of the human body was bone and what percentage as muscle. He wants to know how
bone and muscle work together in the course of the body’s activities. The same
kind of knowledge is necessary to understand the connection between landed
property, degree holding, and political office in China.
The mechanism that linked all of these was the family, or more precisely
the patrilineal lineage. In the agriculturally more
productive areas, especially the South, the lineage was more extended and is
known as the clan. The family as a social mechanism worked in the following
manner. Fortunes acquired through the Imperial service were invested in land, a
practice that continued well into modern times. A man accumulated this property
for the sake of the lineage. In turn many families with aristocratic
pretensions had to substantiate them by having a degree holder or prospective
degree holder whom it supported in the quite justifiable hope that he should
get an official position and use it to advance the family’s material fortunes.
Through the Imperial post, the scholar recouped or extended the family fortunes
and maintained the status of the lineage, thus closing the circle. The clan
worked in the same way, though as a larger group it included a substantial proportion
of straight-forward peasants. While official rank was in theory open to the
meanest peasant with talent and ambition, the absence of any widespread system
of popular education usually required that the student have the support of a
wealthy family for the long years of arduous study. Sometimes a wealthy family
whose children lacked academic promise would provide for a bright boy from a
poor background. Hence the link between office and wealth through the lineage was
one of the most important features of Chinese society. For these reasons it is justifiable
to refer to this upper class of scholar-officials and landlords as the gentry. There
are also other significant aspects of the connection that will appear if we
look closely at each in turn.
Without assuming that the landlord’s
role was either more or less important than the official’s, we may begin with
him. The first question that arises is how he managed to get the peasants to
work for him in the absence of feudal compulsions. Though details are lacking and
the subject to date one that scholars have yet to examine, the general answer
is fairly clear: by tenancy arrangement that do not differ in any essential way
from those under modern capitalism. With some regional variations, the tenancy
was in essence a form of sharecropping supplemented by hired labor, at least by
the beginning of the nineteenth century. The landlord, who was undoubtedly a
more prominent figure in some areas than in others, furnished the land, and the
peasants furnished the labor. The crop was divided between the two. Since the
landlord hardly produced land in the same way that a peasant produced labor, we
already have one good clue to the services provided by the Imperial
bureaucracy: it guaranteed his control over the land. A rich peasant who did
not have any pretensions to academic culture himself, but who might have hopes
for his son, would work in the fields like any other. But the scholar did not
work with his hands. Though the scholar-landlords lived in the countryside,
unlike their English and German counterparts (even some of the Russian and
French ones), they seemed to have played no part whatever in the actual work of
cultivation, not even a supervisory one. Their social position presents the
sharpest of all contrasts to the Japanese overlord, as we shall see in due
course. Many of the differences between the political fates of China and Japan,
in modern times as well as earlier, can be traced to this distinction. (pp.162-167)
[**Note:
What has been called ‘the examination system’ was introduced during the Han
dynasty (206 B.C. – 220 A.D.) and had developed its maximum political influence
during the Sun dynasty (960–1279 A.D.)
Under this arrangement the landlords had a definite interest in what is
loosely called overpopulation. An excess of peasants bid up the rents for the
landlord. If one hungry peasant was willing to bid half the crop in order to have
land to cultivate, a still hungrier one would be willing to bid a trifle more.
Such competition, of course, was not all there was to the relationship. Both custom
and the landlord’s own interest in the quality of his tenants prevented him from
tightening the screw as far as possible. Still the landlord’s interest in
having numerous peasants as at least potential tenants was a decisive element
in the situation.
Two features deserve special attention. Population pressure would serve
the landlord’s interest only so long as there was strong government keep order,
guarantee his property rights, and ensure the collection of his rents. This was
the task of the Imperial bureaucracy. Hence the overpopulation was not a simple
arithmetic ratio between land and men, but in China, as in Japan and India, it
had specific economic and political causes. Secondly, the institutional causes
long antedate the Western impact. Imperial concern lest the rising tide of population
might break through the dikes thrown up by Chinese society and sweep away the entire
system began to display itself as early as before the end of the second quarter
of the eighteenth century. Thus the pressure of population on the land is not,
as some Marxists have claimed, merely the consequence of the Western impact, or
the prevention of industrialization, the destruction of native handicrafts, and
the consequent ‘damming up’ the people on the land. All these things happened –
and greatly intensified a situation that already existed. Still the parasitic
landlord, whom we shall encounter in different forms and at different stages of
development in Japan and India, originated in China, too, prior to the Western
impact.
As already indicated, the landlord depended on the Imperial bureaucracy
to guarantee his property rights and to enforce the collection of rents in kind
or in cash. The bureaucracy served his purposes in several other important ways.
The landlord had a strong interest in proper irrigation in order to enable his tenets
to grow good crops. Hence local landlord families were constantly pressuring
the government to construct water-control systems, something they could do effectively
only if some member had an academic degree and the official contracts that such
a degree made possible. This type of wire-pulling appears to be the main
economic contribution of the landlord, taking the place of direct supervision
in the course of the agricultural cycle. Larger projects on provincial scale
were the work of provincial landlord cliques. Imperial projects were the work
of still more powerful cliques with a national vision. As Owen Lattimore has remarked, behind each Imperial project was a
powerful minister, and behind each minister a powerful body of landlords. These
facts, it seems to be, bring the notions of water-control and Oriental
bureaucracy into correct perspective. Secondly, the bureaucracy, rather than
land itself, offered the biggest material prizes. In the absence of
primogeniture, a wealthy family might find itself reduced to penury in a few generations
through equal division of inheritance. The main way to prevent this misfortune
was to send someone with academic aptitudes into the bureaucracy. Making his
fortune in this way, through formally illegal but socially accepted corruption,
this member could add to the family fortunes. The practice of buying land as an
investment and retiring to it after a career in office was quite common. Thus
the bureaucracy constituted an alternative way to squeezing an economic surplus
out of the peasants and city dwellers as well, about which we shall have more to
say shortly. By and large, bureaucracy seems to have been a more powerful and
effective instrument than landholding, though the one could not exist without
the other’. Landed wealth came out of the bureaucracy and depended on the
bureaucracy for its existence. On this score, the critics of a simplified Marxist
view have a strong point. Finally, for the landlord, Confucian doctrines and the
system of examinations gave legitimacy, at least in his own eyes, to his
superior social status and freedom from manual labor as long as some member of
the family, or an adopted bright youngster, could manage to acquire a degree.
In addition to the public works, mainly the irrigation projects already mentioned,
the chief task of the Imperial bureaucracy in actual practice was keeping the
peace and collecting taxes that became transmuted into books, painting, poetry,
concubines, and similar paraphernalia that in other civilizations also make
life rather bearable for the upper classes. The problem of keeping the peace
was in China mainly a domestic one before the Western intrusion, which began in
earnest during the middle of the nineteenth century when internal decay had already
made one of its periodic reappearances. On the whole, the foreign threat was
limited to periodic conquest by barbarians. When these had conquered enough
territory and established themselves as a new dynasty, they adapted themselves
to the prevailing social pattern. During the Imperial era, Chinese rulers did
not face the problem of continuous military competition on more or less equal
terms with other rulers. Hence the standing army did not absorb a large proportion
of the society’s resources nor impose a bias on the development of the state as
it did in France and even more in Prussia. Nor was the problem of keeping the
peace one of checking powerful barons at home, though there were some
similarities in a time of decay. Rather, it was one of not squeezing the
peasants so hard that they would run off and become bandits or feed an
insurrection led by dissatisfied elements in the upper
class.
The absence of any effective mechanism to prevent such a squeeze may have
been one of the fundamental structural weaknesses of the system. It was in the
interest of the dynasty to collect taxes fairly and efficiently. But it had few
means to ensure that this was done, and very limited personnel. On the other
hand, the individual official had a strong incentive to line his pockets as
best he could, merely refraining from such flagrant corruption and extortion as
to cause a scandal had hence damage his career. This point deserves closer
examination.
In any preindustrial society, the attempt to establish a large-scale
bureaucracy soon runs into the difficulty that it is very hard to extract
enough resources from the population to pay salaries and thereby make officials
dependent on their superiors. The way in which the rulers try to get around
this difficulty has a tremendous impact on the whole social structure. The
French solution was the sale of offices, the Russian one, suitable to Russia’s
huge expanse of territory, was the granting of estates with serfs in return for
service in the tsarist officialdom. The Chinese solution was to permit more or les open corruption. Max Weber cites an estimate that the
extralegal income of an official amounted to about four times his regular
salary; a modern investigator comes up with the much higher figure of some
sixteen to nineteen times the regular salary. The exact amount will probably
remain an historical secret; we may be content with the assurance that it was
large.
Naturally this practice substantially reduced the effectiveness of
control from the center, which varied a great deal at different historical
periods.
. . .
It seems fair to say that the system
was highly exploitative in the strictly objective sense of taking more out of
the society in resources than it put back in the form of services rendered. On
the other hand, because it had to be exploitative in order to work at all, it
also had to leave the undying population very much on its own devices. There
was simply no possibility of reordering the daily life of the people in a way
modern totalitarian regimes do, or even as formally democratic ones to a lesser
extent do in the course of prolonged national emergency. There were futile attempts
to control the life of the people, as will be discussed shortly. But deliberate
cruelty on a massive scale, as compared with neglect and selfishness, was beyond
the range of the system.
Before discussing more specific problems connected with the final agony
of this system, it will be well to notice one further structural feature,
partly because of its comparative interest in relation to Japan. The examination
system tended to breed an oversupply of prospective bureaucrats, particularly
in its late years. At the bottom of the official system of ranking was large
number of degree candidates (sheng- yüan), a transitional group between those qualified to
hold office and the commoners. Whether they should be counted as regular
members of the gentry or not is a matter of dispute among specialists. Their
difficult position at the bottom of the ladder of privilege recalls that of the
lower ranks of the samurai in Japan during the nineteenth century. Both contributed
nuclei of opposition to the prevailing system. While in Japan a significant
minority in this group provided much of the impetus toward modernization, in
China this energy mainly dissipated itself in fruitless revolt and insurrection
within the prevailing framework. Doubtless the cramping effect of the
examination system was partly responsible for the difference. Still, the
reasons run much deeper. They have to do with the way in which Chinese society
choked off modernization until it was too late for piecemeal adoption. To some
of the more recent aspects of this huge problem we may now turn. . . . (pp.168-174)
The
Gentry and the World
of Commerce.
Imperial Chinese society never crated an urban trading and manufacturing
class comparable to that which grew out of the later stages of feudalism in Western
Europe, though at times there were some starts in this direction. Imperial
success in uniting the country may be advanced as one of the more obvious reasons
for the difference. In Europe the conflict between Pope and Emperor, between
kings and nobles, helped the merchants in the cities to break through the crust
of the traditional agrarian society because they constituted a valuable source
of power in this many-sided competition. It is noteworthy in Europe the breakthrough
occurred first in Italy where the feudal system was generally weaker. The
Chinese examination system also deflected ambitious individuals away from
commerce. This aspect is noticeable in one of the later abortive spurts toward commercial
expansion during the fifteen century. A French historian goes so far as to
speak of a ‘grand bourgeoisie finacière’ competing
with the gentry for first place at this time, but adds significantly that this
new bourgeoisie directed its children toward the examinations. Another
historian makes the interesting suggestion that the diffusion of printing may
have increased the absorptive capacities of the mandarinate. Printing made it possible for some of
the smaller merchants to acquire sufficient literary culture to obtain an
official post. Though the expense of taking the examinations remained an important
barrier, access to official posts became somewhat easier. He presents some
striking evidence of the attractiveness of the Imperial service. A number of
these merchants castrated themselves in order to become eunuchs and enjoy a
position close to the throne. Those who castrated themselves enjoyed a special
advantage, since they already had the education ordinary eunuchs (the main
competitor of the scholar-officials at court) were forbidden to seek.
Probing a little deeper, one may readily perceive that money-making
activities represented a dangerous threat to the scholar-officials because it
constituted an alternative ladder of prestige and an alternative ground of
legitimacy for high social status. No amount of Confucian talk and no amount of
sumptuary legislation could be expected to conceal forever the simple fact that
someone who made lots of money could buy the good things of life, including
even a substantial measure of deference. If the situation were allowed to get
out of hand, all the painfully acquired classical culture would become useless
and obsolete. Behind this conflict of cultures and value systems, and as its
very root, were powerful material interests. Tradition as such was a feeble barrier
to commerce; those who wanted to could find justification for it in the
Confucian classics. At any rate the gentry were perspicacious enough, in the short
run, to see to it that the situation did not get out of hand. They taxed commerce
to absorb the profits for themselves. Or they turned it into a state monopoly
and kept the most lucrative positions for themselves. The salt trade” was the
most important monopoly. The attitude of the officials was mainly exploitative.
Commerce, like the land, was something to be milked for the benefit of a cultivated
upper class. Once again we see that the Imperial bureaucracy served s an
instrument for pumping resources out of the population and into the hands of
the rulers, who remained careful in the meantime to control any developments
that might threaten their privileges.
With the decay of the Imperial apparatus, noticeable before the end of the
eighteenth century, its capacity to absorb and control commercial elements
inevitably declined. Even if the Imperial system had been in full vigor, it
could scarcely have resisted the new forces undermining it. For behind these
forces came the military and diplomatic thrust of the West, blunted only as the
greed of one power checked the cupidity of its rivals. By the second half of the
nineteenth century, the traditional rule of scholar-official had disintegrated
in the coastal cities. There a new hybrid society had already emerged in which power
and social position no longer rested securely in the hands of those with a
classical education. After the conclusion of the Opium War in 1842, the compradors
spread through all the treaty ports of China. These men served in a variety of
capacities as intermediaries between decaying Chinese officialdom and the
foreign merchants. Their position was ambiguous. By shady methods they could
accumulate great fortunes to live a life of cultivated ease. On the other hand,
many Chinese condemned them as servants of the foreign devils who were
destroying the foundations of Chinese society. From this point onward, much of China’s
social and diplomatic history becomes a record of Chinese attempts to keep this
hybrid society in check and of contrary efforts by stronger powers to use it as
an entering wedge for their commercial and political interests.
. . .
Not until 1910 did the Chinese business class begin
to show some definite signs of emerging from official influence and domination.
A recent study gives the impression that the Chinese merchant was well on the
way toward emancipation from dependence on the foreigner by the end of the
nineteenth century. Still the decisive areas remained in foreign hands for much
longer. The whole indigenous commercial and industrial impulse remained puny.
By the end of the Imperial regime, there was said to be some 10,000 ‘factories’
in China. Of these, only 363 employed mechanical power. The rest used only
human or animal power.
Thus China, like Russia, entered the modern era with a numerically small
and politically dependent middle class. The stratum did not develop an
independent ideology of its own as it did in Western Europe. Nevertheless it
played an important part in undermining the mandarin state and creating new
political groupings in the attempt to replace it. The growth of this class
along the coast combined with the breakup of the empire into regional satrapies
in a way that foreshadowed the combination of ‘bourgeois’ and militarist roles
in the hay-day of the warlords (roughly 1911 to 1927) and on into the
Kuomintang era. An early example (1870-1893) of this general development is Li
Hung-chang, who for twenty-five years ‘moved toward
single-handed control over foreign affairs, domination of the maritime customs revenue,
monopoly of armaments production, and complete control of the military forces
in the northern half of the empire. Furthermore a substantial amalgamation
gradually took place between sections of the gentry (and later their successors
turned landlords pure and simple) and urban leaders in trade, finance, and
industry. This amalgam provided the chief social underpinning of the Kuomintang,
an attempt to revive the essence of the Imperial system, that is, political
support of landlordism with a combination of gangsterism
indigenous to China and a veneer of pseudo-Confucianism that displays interesting
resemblances to Western fascism, to be discussed in more detail later. This
combination arose in very large measure out of the gentry’s failure to make the
transition form preindustrial to commercial forms of farming.
The reasons for this failure will not occupy our attention.(pp.174-178)
The Failure to Adopt Commercial Agriculture.
A cultural and psychological explanation, to the effect that the methodical
pursuit of profit even in agriculture was incompatible with the Confucian ideal
of stylized leisure, rapidly runs into difficulties. Western scholarship, it
seems to me, has overemphasized the significance of the condescending attitude
of the Chinese upper stratum toward the Western barbarians. As mentioned in the
preceding section, where the Chinese gentry had the opportunity to take up the
technical civilization of the West and even some of its some if its social
habits, there were a number who did not hesitate to do so.
. . .
A more convincing explanation may be constructed from an examination of the
material and political conditions (that existed in China at the time that the modern
world made its impact. Although cities existed in China, there was no rapidly
growing urban population with at least moderately diffused and increasing property
that could act as a stimulus to rationalized production for the market. To
judge form the situation at a later date, the proximity of a towns or city mainly
served to stimulate peasant truck gardening, the cultivation of fruit and
vegetables that could be taken into the market by hand. Imperial policy in the
early and vigorous days of the dynasty may have opposed the formation of large
landed estates. In the second half of the nineteenth century big estates did dominate
parts of the empire. Although the point would bear further investigation, it
seem that a big estate was often simply an agglomeration of small properties,
that is, composed of more peasants who therefore gave the proprietor a larger
aggregate rent.
Here we approach the nub of the matter. The Chinese landlord-tenant
relationship was a political device for squeezing an economic surplus out of
the peasants and turning it into the amenities of civilization. (What the
peasant did and did not get out of the relationship is an important aspect that
we may neglect for the moment.)In the absence of a big urban market, there was
little reason to change it, perhaps even less possibility of doing so.
Ambitious and energetic individuals under the Empire got themselves a bureaucratic post in
order to add to the family acres.
. . .
Thus it does not appear that any innate lack of adaptability prevented the
Chinese gentry from making a successful transition to the modern world. More
important was the lack of incentive and the presence in this historical
situation of other and readier alternatives. For much of the time there was not
enough of a market to make the effort worthwhile. When and where the market did
appear, it turned the gentry into rentiers
with political connections rather than into agrarian entrepreneurs. Only a
minority made this step. .. . Given the
conditions that they faced, it is very difficult to see what else they could
have done. Like the decline of any ruling class, the fate of the Chinese
gentry, far from the most unattractive ruling class in history, has its share
of tragedy.(pp.178-180)
Collapse of the Imperial System and the Rise
of the Warlords.
In all the major countries of Europe
the struggle between the crown was for a very long
time one of the decisive elements of politics. Everywhere, even in Russia, one
may perceive at some point the development of estates, what German historians
call Stände, status groups with a substantial
degree of corporate identity and publically recognized immunities that they
defended jealously against other groups and especially against the crown. The
onset of modernization affected this struggle in a variety of ways depending on
the time and situation in which it began. In England it was favorable to the
development of parliamentary democracy; on the continent, it was much less so
or even generally unfavorable, though there was usually at some point an aristocratic
liberal opposition.
During the period under discussion, the Chinese landed upper classes did
not develop any significant principled opposition to the Imperial system. There
were no doubt some who took up Western parliamentary notions as an intellectual
plaything, but there
was no political movement of opposition with substantial roots in Chinese
conditions. Some circumstances favoring such a development were present. The
Chinese official class – here I speak of degree holders whether landlords or
not – had a strong sense of corporate identity, as well as privileges and
immunities recognized by the Emperor and to a considerable extent by wide
sections of the public. In Europe under feudalism aristocrats created privileges,
immunities, and a sense of corporate identity, institutions that some historians
regard as a major part to the impulse that culminated in parliamentary
democracy. In China any such impulse faced much greater obstacles. Landed
property in Chinese society would not easily serve as a basis for political
power separate from the political mechanism that made it pay. The Imperial
system was not only a way making property pay, it was
a way of getting property, too.
The fact that circumstances generally precluded the emergence of a
liberal aristocratic opposition decreased the flexibility of China’s response
to a totally novel historic challenge and helps to explain one new feature that
we encounter in the Chinese case, the nearly complete disintegration of the
central government. A regime, many of whose key features had lasted for
centuries, simply fell apart in less than a hundred yeas
under the impact of Western blows.(pp.181-182)
We will conclude this discussion of social class consciousness
and the necessary alliances in Chinese history next year . . . .
Sincerely,
Francis McCollum Feeley
--
Professeur honoraire de l'Université
Grenoble-Alpes
Ancien Directeur des
Researches
Université de Paris-Nanterre
Director of The Center for the Advanced Study
of American Institutions and Social Movements
(CEIMSA-in-Exile)
The University of California-San Diego
http://www.ceimsa.org
a.
On the Fundamental Differences Between
Capitalist ‘Democracy’ and Socialist Democracy
by Danny Haiphong
+
Class War Heats Up
https://www.counterpunch.org/2021/10/29/class-war-heats-up/
by Eve Ottenberg
+
Democracy is as Fragile Now as it was
During My Father’s Time in Weimar Germany
by Patrick Cockburn
+
Australia in 2021: "What the Media Won't Tell You"
(Part 2)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wxMtKvuiJRI
with reallygraceful
(8:40)
===========
b.
‘MAN-MADE SUPER VIRUS’
with Rand Paul
(6:09)
+
Inventor
of mRNA Vaccines Says Fauci Killed 500,000 People
by Deliberately Blocking
Life-Savers Ivermectin/HCQ
+
'Thousands Died Because Fauci Ignored Natural Immunity'
by Ron Paul
(4:51)
+
Japan’s COVID Rates PLUMMETING – But
Why?
with Jimmy Dore
(14:41)
+
Bill
Gates Laughs At Punishing the Unvaccinated
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_F7yM-_aKL0
with Jimmy Dore
(11:23)
===========
c.
Slow-motion
execution of Julian Assange
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mua9wksjnmY
with Chris Hedges
(28:50)
+
PEN America and the Betrayal of Julian Assange
https://scheerpost.com/2021/12/27/hedges-pen-america-and-the-betrayal-of-julian-assange/
by Chris Hedges
===========
d.
Angela Davis Speaks on Abolition,
Justice for Palestine
and Critical Race Theory
with Amy Goodman
(20:25)
+
The Real Antidote to Inflation
https://www.counterpunch.org/2021/12/28/the-real-antidote-to-inflation/
by Ellen Brown
+
Here's
How The Energy Crisis Turns Into Hunger And Then... War?
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/heres-how-energy-crisis-turns-hunger-and-then-war
by Chris Macintosh
+
Solutions:
Survival Currency
https://www.corbettreport.com/survivalcurrency/
with James Corbett
(1:00:31)
===========
e.
TRUST
ULTRA TRUST NAOMI
https://www.bitchute.com/video/05OsGCekumz9/
by Spacebusters
(1:24:48)
+
Techno-Tyranny: How The US National Security State Is Using
Coronavirus To
Fulfill
An Orwellian Vision
by Whitney Webb
+
‘Don’t
Look Up’ Is No Laughing Matter
https://consortiumnews.com/2021/12/27/dont-look-up-is-no-laughing-matter/
by Joe Lauria
+
Russian
Roulette ‘Vaccines’ Classified By The FDA:
‘Gene
Transfer Technologies’
by Ziontruth
+
Graphene Hydroxide in the mRNA
Vaccine Vial:
Assassination
of Dr. Andreas Noack
https://www.globalresearch.ca/graphene-hydroxide-in-the-mrna-vaccine-vial-dr-andre-noack/5763548
===========
f.
From:
News from Underground [mailto:nobody@simplelists.com]
Sent: Monday, December 27, 2021 1:25 AM
Subject: Daily digest for nfu@simplelists.com
___________________
1)
Booster #17 by Mark Crispin Miller (26
Dec 2021 11:17 EST)
Reply
to list
Genius.
https://www.bitchute.com/video/ZhFZIOppSDUJ/
2)
How to tell if you've
been jabbed with an especially toxic brew by Mark Crispin Miller (26
Dec 2021 12:27 EST)
Reply
to list
From Dr. Mike Yeadon:
This extraordinary “web app” permits anyone
with a Covid19 vaccine batch code to enter that code & learn whether you’ve
been injected with a “hot lot” or something less harmful.
A team of five independent scientists / researchers
(four of whom are very capable data analysts) have reviewed the data in VAERS,
discovering that, while most batch numbers are associated with low numbers of
adverse event reports, around 1% of batches are associated with extraordinary
rates of adverse events including deaths.
We understand that the vaccine makers have
legal immunity against prosecution.
That means if you’ve been injured, you
can’t sue them.
But their indemnity does NOT cover breaking
various federal laws relating to product consistency. It’s a very serious crime
to allow “adulterated product” to be sent out. When such products cross a state
line, further offences are committed.
Legal eagles are moving on this aspect
& I hope the revelation that there are extraordinary degrees of
variability, batch to batch, in terms of toxicity.
I hope this information & tool will be
of use to some people seeking answers.
Best wishes,
Mike
Dr Mike Yeadon
Ps: please distribute this as widely as you
can.
3)
New York Times editor
drops dead hours after his booster shot, as NOT reported by the New York Times
(or any outlet other than the COVID Blog) by Mark Crispin Miller (26
Dec 2021 12:34 EST)
Reply
to list
From Prof. Alonzo Bickerstaffe:
The Media Lie: Carlos
Tejada, Deputy Asia Editor for The
New York Times, Dies at 49 - The New York Times (nytimes.com)
The Media Truth: Carlos
Tejada: 49-year-old Wall Street Journal and New York
Times writer posts booster shot photo on Instagram,
dead hours later - The COVID Blog
The way you tell the lie is always with a
fairly consistent pattern of telling 2/3rds of the truth: 1.) Yes, he died. 2.)
Yes, he died of a heart attack. 3.) Omit: his heart attack was caused by the
booster.
-----------------------------------------------------
“The Reality is that all is vanity, and the
Truth is that everything is a gift of God. Reality prevents the Truth from
being an evasion, while the Truth prevents Reality from being hopeless.”
Jacques Ellul,
Reason For Being (Meditations on Ecclesiastes)
4)
BBC DJ/broadcaster
Janice Long, 66, dies "after a short illness" by Mark Crispin Miller (26
Dec 2021 12:48 EST)
Reply
to list
This is big news throughout the British
press, with all the usual ostentatious grieving and NO clue as to exactly what
that "short illness" was.
https://www.thesun.co.uk/tvandshowbiz/17146735/janice-long-who-illness/
5)
While no one on
"the left" admits they LOVE Trump's push for "vaccination,"
Alex Jones and David Martin tell it like it is by Mark Crispin Miller (26
Dec 2021 13:08 EST)
">Reply
to list
Dr.David Martin: Why does Trump keep promoting the
‘vaccines’?
Alex Jones
Issues Emergency Christmas Message to President Trump on Covid
Injections
Infowars.com
December 26th
2021, 6:53 am
https://www.infowars.com/posts/can-trump-stop-pushing-covid-lethal-injections/
6) SMOING GUN: First systematic "vax"
death autopsies show kill lymphocytes attacked hearts, lungs and other organs,
in 90% of sudden deaths by Mark Crispin Miller (26 Dec 2021 14:12
EST)
Reply to list
Dr. Bhakti deals with this latest discovery in his most
powerful video yet:
First
Systematic Vaccine Death Autopsies Show Immune System Attacking Own Organs,
Politicians on Notice | Coronavirus News
Dec. 24, 2021
https://coronanews123.wordpress.com/2021/12/24/first-systematic-vaccine-death-autopsies-show-immune-systems-attacking-own-organs/
Politicians
on notice of Crimes Against Humanity.
At a “Gold Standard Covid Science in Practice:
Interdisciplinary Symposium,” a virtual event on December 10,
2021, a top German pathologist presented findings from a first-ever
comprehensive, independent set of autopsies of people who died soon after the
Pfizer or Moderna mRNA experimental COVID vaccine
products. Most of the deceaseds’ immune systems had
attacked the body’s own organs, showing similar patterns of lymphocytes
accumulation in never-before-seen phenomena.
The findings
are announced as doctors and scientists who have long disapproved of and called
for a halt to the mass roll-out of the substances long before Phase III clinical trials are
complete, which is at the earliest the end of 2022, say that too little is
known about the mRNA spike protein”s long-term
effects in the body. [Links to doctors’ calls for halts to mass “vaccinations,”
partial list: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. ]
The autopsies
were performed by ProfessorDr. Arne Burkhardt, former head
of Institute of Pathology in Reutlingen for 18 years. Dr. Burkhardt
taught at the Universities of Hamburg, Berne and Tübingen.
Subsequently, he worked as an independent practicing pathologist with
consulting contracts with laboratories in the US. Burkhardt
has published more than 150 scientific articles in German and international
scientific journals. He has audited and certified institutes of pathology
in Germany.
Click on the link for the rest.
7) CORRECTION: US pilot deaths have increased by 85%, NOT by
1,750% by Mark Crispin Miller (26 Dec 2021 16:45
EST)
From Kathy Dopp:
CORRECTION
of 12/13/2021 article: US pilot deaths increase by 1,750% after covid
vaccine rollout
I was
contacted by a pilot who suggested some corrections: He said,
" I am a retired United Airlines pilot. As far as I know the
deaths are reported and published when ALPA is notified of the death. The
deaths are only reported once in the magazine. In the October, 2021 issue the
list for 2019 shows one pilot dying. That does not mean that only one pilot
died in 2019. In the October, 2020 issue 4 deaths are reported for 2019 and 34
for 2020. In the Jan/Feb 2021 2 deaths are reported for 2019 and 26 for 2020.
You have to tabulate the number of deaths for each year by using the data from each
monthly magazine to find out the total number of reported deaths in a
particular year."
Thus, here
are the pilot deaths known now by year for 2019, 2020, 2021:
2019: 1 + 4
+2 = 7 pilot deaths reported in total
2020: 34 + 26
= 60 pilot deaths reported in total
2021: 111
pilot deaths reported in total as of Oct 2021
Thus, the US
pilot death rate increase in 2021 is more correctly reported currently *so far*
is 85% higher than in 2020 (the pandemic year) and is 1486% higher than in
2019?
And the
pandemic death rate increase in 2020 was 757% higher than in 2019?
8) Journalists Against COVID Censorship call for Christmas
truce between the "vaccinated" and "unvaccinated"
by Mark Crispin Miller (26 Dec 2021 17:52
EST)
Reply to list
A noble gesture, if, surely, futile.
Ramola D posted: " Holding the Line Press Release | Ramola D | Dec 26, 2021 Journalists united against Covid censorship in the UK, USA, and elsewhere, including
this writer, call for a Christmas truce between the vaccinated and unvaccinated
factions and urge a revisitin"
New post on The EveryDay Concerned Citizen
Holding the Line, Journalists Against Covid Censorship | Journalists call for Christmas truce to
stop division turning into war
byRamola D
Holding the Line Press Release | Ramola D | Dec 26, 2021
Journalists united against Covid censorship in the UK, USA, and elsewhere, including
this writer, call for a Christmas truce between the vaccinated and unvaccinated
factions and urge a revisiting of awareness of basic freedoms for all people of
speech, discourse, and medical choice. Christmas Press Release re-posted below,
please share widely. Holding The Line posts important news on censorship versus
freedom at their website.
From Sainbury’s Christmas Truce commercial marking the 100th
anniversary of this WWI phenomenon/Christmas Day 1914 when Germans, French and British marked a truce
along the Western Front
1914 Christmas Truce/Image: Public Domain
Society has
become polarised around the issue of Covid vaccines and it is worrying to imagine where this
schism could be pushing normally right thinking people.
There are two
camps drawing battle lines in the digital world, those who are injected and
demand everyone else be injected, and those who want to remain uninjected for now or permanently while keeping their
freedoms.
In the
non-digital world there is another group, which outnumbers both the other two
groups put together, that simply wants the vaccinated and unvaccinated to be
able to coexist in peace.
Let’s move
back to the first group for a moment, though, as it seeks to influence the
largest of the three groups. This group is small in number but sometimes has
the platforms to shout loudest.
Without
naming names, as HTL understands that hostility against journalists and
commentators is rising in parallel with hostility against the unvaccinated,
here are some headlines from this month.
The
unvaccinated have become a lethal liability we can ill-afford
Make the unnjabbed face their own lockdown so we can live our lives
It's time to
punish Britain's five million vaccine refuseniks:
They put us all at risk of more restrictions. So why shouldn't we curb some of
their freedoms?
There have
been several precursors to the robust views above that have also been topped by
equally strong headlines in national newspapers this year, including: “No job.
No entry. No NHS access; It is only a matter of time before we turn on the
unvaccinated.”
The language
is stark and unambiguous, and appears to be written by people who believe the
unvaccinated are a huge problem for society, a problem great enough to warrant
the loss of freedoms and punishment.
The power of
these headlines should not be underestimated, indeed
many readers only ever read the headlines of a story and perhaps the first two
or three paragraphs if the author is lucky.
So how will
those headlines make the third group feel, the one that wants to live in peace
with their unvaccinated/vaccinated brothers and sisters?
If they are
unvaccinated they are possibly going to be feeling anxious and this could lead
to fear and even anger against the vaccinated. Perhaps they will be led into
thinking many injected people share the opinions expressed in those headlines.
If they are
vaccinated they are also possibly going to be feeling anxious and this could
lead to fear and even anger against the unvaccinated. Perhaps they will be led
into thinking the uninjected could be disrupting
everyone’s lives or, worse still, causing the death of others.
And so we now
have a split in this third group, many of whom will join with either of the
other two groups, depending on their vaccine status.
Is the language
used in those headlines something we should be worried about? Are polarised splits in opinion a fact of life, something we
just have to deal with? Or is there a way we can encourage respectful debate
and perhaps even move aside the debate altogether and allow for peaceful
coexistence between opposing groups?
Perhaps a
Christmas truce is needed. Even if it is temporary, let us for today try and
live with each other, injected and uninjected,
accepting and respecting other points of view.
If we can
then perhaps hold on to that feeling of mutual respect, it can lead to understanding, and from there to coexistence in peace.
We emailed
four major UK newspapers for a right of reply to this article but none
responded within the specified time frame of three working days.
Happy
holidays to one and all from the team at HTL.
Date:
December 25, 2021
RELATED:
Ramola D | December 26, 2021 at 10:41 am | Tags: against censorship, Christmas Truce, Freedom of Speech, Holding the Line, medical freedoms | Categories: COVID-19, Vaccinations, Vaccine Mandates, Vaccines, Waking Up | URL: https://wp.me/p4RXGz-eAi
---
Support News from Underground: https://bit.ly/NFUSupport
Visit News from Underground: https://markcrispinmiller.com
For archives, please go to: https://archives.simplelists.com/nfu
===========
g.
Selected Articles: Video: Ex-Pfizer Chief Scientist Dr. Michael
Yeadon: Mass Murder with Vaccine Passports/Top Up Vaccines
+
How the Endless Boosters Will Destroy Immune Function
https://www.globalresearch.ca/how-endless-boosters-will-destroy-immune-function/5765690
Why Have New York City COVID Hospitalizations Spiked Amid 90
Percent Vaccinated Population?
+
Video: Digital Tyranny and the Rockefeller-Gates WHO "Vaxx
-Certificate
Passport": Towards a World War III Scenario
https://www.globalresearch.ca/worldwide-resistance-against-vaccine-covid-fraud/5755538
by Peter
Koenig
+
Natural Infection Creates Antibodies For 'All Coronaviruses,'
Nurses Rehired & Boosters Wane In Days
with Ryan
Cristián
(2:08:20)
+
The Omicron Con, Sanctions On Unvaxed & After 3 Months Vaxed
More Likely To Be Infected Than Unvaxed
with Ryan
Cristián
(2:32:36)
+
Long-Sought Digital ID Pushed Under COVID Guise Despite COVID
Jabs Never Having Stopped Transmission
with Ryan
Cristián
(2:02:33)
===========
h.
From: The Grayzone
[mailto:grayzoneproject@gmail.com]
Sent: Sunday, December 26, 2021
Subject: Leaked files expose Syria psyops veteran astroturfing BreadTube star to
counter Covid restriction critics
|
===========
i.
America’s Foreign Policy Dilemma
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/56937.htm
by Paul Craig Roberts
+
US Cautions Against Iran’s Optimism Over Nuclear Deal Talks
https://news.antiwar.com/2021/12/28/us-cautions-against-irans-optimism-over-nuclear-deal-talks/
by David DeCamp
+
Psy Ops as the Key to Understanding What Russia Has Been Doing
Lately
To Force a
US-NATO Capitulation
https://www.antiwar.com/blog/2021/12/26/psy-ops-as-the-key-to-understanding-what-russia-has-been-doing-lately-to-force-a-us-nato-capitulation/
by Gilbert Doctorow
+
Some Ukrainians see NATO as a defense from Russia. Others feel
membership would
forfeit more of Ukraine’s sovereignty
https://truthout.org/articles/ukrainians-are-far-from-unified-on-nato-let-them-decide-for-themselves/?utm_source=Truthout&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Truthout+Share+Buttons
+
Donbass — Russia and DPR Fear Chemical Weapons Provocation
by Ukraine with US Help
https://www.globalresearch.ca/donbass-russia-dpr-fear-chemical-weapons-provocation-ukraine-us-help/5765693
+
“Shadow NATO” Hangs Heavy over “Greater Scandinavia”
and the Arctic
https://www.globalresearch.ca/spectre-shadow-nato-hangs-heavy-over-greater-scandinavia/5765718
===========
j.
Unveiled Documents Expose Countless
Civilian Deaths
and War Crimes Committed by US
https://www.antiwar.com/blog/2021/12/23/unveiled-documents-expose-countless-civilian-deaths-and-war-crimes-committed-by-us/
by Paul Antonopoulos
+
Civilian Casualty Files Reveal U.S. Hid Thousands of Deaths in
Middle
East Air War
with Azmat Khan
(18:40)
+
Why the Pentagon failed another audit
by Brad Howard
+
'Alarming' Levels of 'Forever Chemicals' Found in Water Near US
Bases in Okinawa
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2021/12/28/alarming-levels-forever-chemicals-found-water-near-us-bases-okinawa
Native Hawaiians Fight US Navy for Polluting Island’s Water
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7mMsGi11F-U
by EmpireFiles
(11:35)
===========
k.
In 2022,
Israeli Military Plans to Continue Air Campaign in Syria
by David DeCamp
+
2021 in review: A year of struggle and victories
for the Palestinian cause
by Yumna Patel
+
Palestinians
pay tribute to Desmond Tutu
https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/palestinians-pay-tribute-desmond-tutu
by Ali Abunimah
===========
l.
The Vaccine
Monopolies Must Be Broken
https://www.commondreams.org/views/2021/12/28/vaccine-monopolies-must-be-broken
by Winnie Byanyima
+
Omicron Could
Mark the End – Halt the Vaccine Rollout
by Colin Todhunter and Dr. Peter McCullough
+
ODMS:
‘Oxygen Deprivation Mask Syndrome’
Now Sweeping Across the Globe
https://www.globalresearch.ca/odms-oxygen-deprivation-mask-syndrome-sweeping-across-globe/5764285
by S.D. Wells
+
U.S. death rate soared 17 percent in
2020,
final CDC mortality report concludes
by Kaitlin Sullivan
===========
m.
Unpatented Shot Dubbed 'The World's Covid-19 Vaccine' Wins
Emergency Approval in India
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2021/12/28/unpatented-shot-dubbed-worlds-covid-19-vaccine-wins-emergency-approval-india
by Jake Johnson
+
India restricts foreign funding for Mother Teresa’s charity
Philanthropy News
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/12/27/india-freezes-accounts-mother-teresa-charity-hate-attacks-christians
by Al Jazeera
===========
n.
January 7:
Showdown at Supreme Court over Biden Vax Mandates
https://www.globalresearch.ca/january-7-showdown-supreme-court-biden-vax-mandates/5765696
+
With Abortion Access in Peril, States Move to Protect
Reproductive Rights in 2022
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2021/12/28/abortion-access-peril-states-move-protect-reproductive-rights-2022
+
Federal Class-Action Suit Filed Over Haitian Migrants 'Abused
and
Dehumanized' at US Border
+
American Gulag: Inside the U.S.’ Massive Prison System
https://www.mintpressnews.com/american-gulag-inside-u-s-massive-prison-system-chris-hedges/279342/
by Lowkey