Legal Commentary

No matter how he changes his mind, I always end up disagreeing with Francis Fukuyama.  His triumphalism about American-style democracy and capitalism in ?The End of History? struck me as hopelessly crude (as well as self-serving); Fukuyama had put the ideas of the great left-wing Hegelian thinker Alexander Kojeve through a neocon sausage machine.   At first glance, Fukuyama?s praise of China in yesterday?s Financial Times oped is more in the spirit of Kojeve. After all, Kojeve had sometimes defended Stalin:  if you wanted to rush a feudal society and economy into the industrial age, you couldn?t behave like a perfect gentleman.  Along similar lines, Fukuyama now suggests that American democracy is no system to imitate if you need to get big results in a hurry.  China?s virtue, says Fukuyama, is that the political system can make ?large, complex decisions? quickly and well.

Being in a hurry is an age-old reason why intellectuals sometimes have a soft spot for autocrats, as Leo Strauss pointed out (consider his debate with Kojeve about tyranny). 

Fukuyama fudges the real issue by suggesting equivalence between democracy and the sensitivity of the Chinese leadership to some quarters of ?public opinion?.  Without endorsing a lie, can one speak of ?public opinion? in a country where dissent is ruthlessly suppressed and no expense or effort is made to filter the Internet?   

Machiavelli himself admitted that even tyrants need friends and supporters.  But the political ideal of democracy is different.   It?s not just about enough backing to shove the right answer down people?s throats; it?s about the sense of freedom and equality we feel when we debate and negotiate with each other over what needs to be done, the process of public justification.

Nowhere is Fukuyama more wrong than in his suggestion that the American system with its checks and balances is less equipped to deal with the long term than China.  China?s leaders have the tools, in the short run, to suppress ethnic and class conflict (the latter?s existence acknowledged by Fukuyama).  But in the long haul, the governing elite is trapped by their own commitment to one-party rule.  They have no plausible mechanisms for mediating potentially explosive social and cultural differences.  They can only hope to keep the lid on as long as possible.  Fukuyama describes the American system as ?polarized?.  He has been reading too many Chinese Communist Party tracts if he really doesn?t see the seriousness of the fault lines in China.  And they are exponentially more frightening than America?s divisions, since so far there is no ability to imagine alternatives other than repression or collapse.

Don?t get me wrong.  I admire the success of the Chinese leadership in bringing millions of people out of dire poverty, creating a dynamic middle class.   Some of the initiatives on green energy are impressive, too; this has to be weighed against the general refusal to cooperate on climate change as a global commons problem.  I agree with Fukuyama about the correctness of the Chinese response to the financial crisis-and contrary to many American critics, I also think that the currency policy is broadly justified.  But is Fukuyama right that shortcomings in the US response to the crisis can be blamed on the American system of democratic government?  Until recently at least the Obama Administration may have been listening to the wrong economists.   The framers seem to have given the Executive branch some pretty powerful tools of macroeconomic policy.  Failure to use them aggressively can?t be explained by the difficulties of negotiating with Congress.

We need a reality check about China?s economic success.   China?s investment in industrial espionage is a powerful testament to its dependence on the kind of innovation that is produced by free societies; much of China?s growth has derived from competitive wages but that?s not a sustainable basis for prosperity since there are other low and lower-wage economies that are open to investment and technology, and they are rapidly catching up (I?ve talked to managers of multinational firms who are already moving out of China to more attractive sites of production).  I?m by no means a Sinophobe and I think that China?s leaders have made some good calls.  But the challenges and dilemmas they face into the future make me all the more impressed with the accomplishments that freedom and democracy have brought to America and to other societies that have taken the wager of pluralism and ordered liberty.