Is China a democracy?

To advertise our alternative view on what makes China tick, we have decided to make Chapter 9 of our book ‘Has China Devised a Superior Path to Wealth Creation? The Role of Secular Values’ available free of charge. Interestingly, after the publication of our book, China launched the term ‘whole process democracy’, which seems to say more or less the same as we are stating in our chapter, where our explanation adds a solid academic framework to the Chinese political statement.

This chapter deals with the notion of democracy and shows how different sets of cultural values result in different ways of realising democracy, i.e. ways in which citizens of a nation can influence the making and execution of policies that affect their day to day living environment.

This book employs the 7-Dimension model of measuring national cultures developed by one of the authors, Fons Trompenaars, enlarged with a dimension from the model of Geert Hofstede. This model of measurable culture allows researchers to determine the cultural profile of each nation and to compare the models of two or more cultures much more accurately than the previously used descriptive models. It is also a transnational model, not linked to a particular culture. Chinese (and many Western) researchers like to flaunt with Confucius as the first prophet of Chinese culture. We do recognise the value of Confucius’ Analects and cite this work in this book. However, describing Chinese culture as ‘Confucian’, makes it hard to compare that culture with, e.g., German culture, as we would first need to measure the ‘Confucian-ness’ of German culture.

What we can measure is the degree to which Chinese and Germans give priority to the interests of a group or to the interests of the individual members of the group. This refers to the dimension Individualist – Communitarian. German culture ends up closer to the Individualist end of this dimension, and the Chinese to the Communitarian end. This does not mean that ‘Chinese culture is Communitarian’. Japanese culture is also Communitarian, but closer to the end of the dimension, indicating that Japanese culture is more Communitarian than Chinese culture.

We can continue measuring Chinese and German culture using the other dimensions of the model. The result offers an in-depth insight in the differences and similarities between the two cultures. This is not the place to discuss all dimension. We will list them here as an indication of what you can expect when you start reading this book.

Universal rules---------------------------------------Particular exceptions

Individualism/self-interest--------------------------Community/benefit others

Specific points and parts----------------------------Diffuse patterns & wholes

Inner-directed by convictions----------------------Outer-directed by responsibilities

Achieved status---------------------------------------Ascribed status

Sequential time---------------------------------------Synchronous time

Self-indulgence---------------------------------------Self-control

Short-term---------------------------------------------Long-term

Not all these dimensions will be employed in this chapter.

?????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????Chapter 9

????????????????????????????????Will China bring an end to Democracy??

Almost nothing does China more harm in the estimation of the world, than the accusation that it is not a democracy and has no announced intention of becoming one. It is accused of totalitarianism. This is profoundly disturbing to the world for several reasons. First China has the largest population on earth at 1.4 billion and it suggests that large populations may not be able to cohere democratically. In a world population that is exploding this is bad news.?India has the world’s second largest population and democracy there shows signs of morphing into Hindu nationalism with Muslims as second-class citizens. Secondly, we are used to the idea that democracy and prosperity go together and nearly all the world’s most affluent nations are democracies in the sense that they elect their leaders. The success of the PRC threatens that assumption.?Thirdly China’s amazing surge in growth is likely to be emulated by emerging economies in general and now these may wonder whether becoming more democratic is necessary. That economic success has to do with “freedom” is the cornerstone of economic orthodoxy and now it seems that those foundations are shaky. How can the Chinese be so “unfree” yet prosper? Could the goal of fast economic growth pre-empt democracy? Is it possible that democracy and rapid economic growth are enemies? We shall proceed as follows

·??????China’s negation of democratic orthodoxy

·??????Is democracy defined by voting or by consensus?

·??????What cultures show in public and what they hide

·??????Is verbal conflict always a reliable substitute for physical conflict???

·??????What is essential to both democracy and business growth is dialogue

·??????Two concepts of liberty: Freedom from and Freedom for

·??????The Hedgehog and the Fox: Do we cast dollar ballots in a free market?

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·??????China’s negation of democratic orthodoxy

From the beginning of this book, we have argued that China negates Western values, that it produces the photographic “negative” of what the West believes in, the mirror image that transposes us from left to right and right to left. Yet that contrast is not necessarily dangerous or destructive but is a useful counterpoint to how we think, the other side of social and political reality. Western democracy grew up in the in the shadow of drama and theatre. When we play, we are pretending. In the case of tragedy, we are simulating some of life’s more dire episodes but in a way that allows us to contemplate this more calmly, but without actually experiencing the trauma and the horror.

We can look into some of the darkest recesses of our souls and still retain composure. Above all we can substitute words and simulations for the violence of what would otherwise destroy us. “Jaw, jaw is better than war, war,” was how Winston Churchill put it. Note that democracy assumes that the population is in conflict about the right way for a government to proceed, that this should be verbally debated without violence or the threat of violence and that the debate is won by one side of this division and is lost by the other side.?The majority on any subject should be allowed to rule and to get its way. The electorate votes for or against those enacting these debates, depending on their approval. The idea is to move from division to at least majority agreement????

The Chinese believe in moving between contrasts, but have exactly the opposite starting point. That which is most important is unity and that in order to reach this some division is inevitable but must be kept under control. We can well imagine the reasons for this. The world’s largest population is all too easily divided. Growing rice demands cooperation by the community and that without this all will die. Civil wars were historically accompanied by mass starvation in their aftermaths, as in the Warring States period, centuries of bitter conflict brought to an end by the Qin dynasty. Indeed, the Chinese are haunted by the prospect of disorder. It is their nightmare, as evidenced in the Tiananmen Square, protests which were violently suppressed. Regrettable although this was, all democratic states retain for themselves a monopoly of lawful violence. They will suppress rioting, as the US has done many times and many democracies would have put an end to the kind of disorder recently witnessed in Hong Kong, in a far shorter period. Let us chart this.

What is legitimate is Division & Verbal debate and conflict, in which Individual representatives debate Specific issues on which rival parties have opposed views. They are unlikely to reach full unity or agreement but at least the majority will get its way and broad agreement may come in the years that follow. This happened in the case of votes for women, the tolerance for homosexuality, the end of capital punishment, etc. In contrast China puts its faith in Unity, harmony and agreement. This takes place amid Diffuse Relations within an Orderly Community. The real question we have to face is can these unified relationships accommodate conflicts over divided opinions? If they can then China could end up with entire values continua and will approximate democracy but by a different path. It will gradually allow more and more differences of opinion to enter into the single party which governs the nation. It is hard to condemn what the Chinese value since it is what democracy is supposed to lead to. Division is supposed to end in the unity of, for example, the US Civil Rights Act. Verbal debate on women’s rights is supposed to end in agreement and their full inclusion in society. Brexit is supposed to end up in a more unified nation making its way in the world.???

·??????Is Democracy defined by of voting or by reaching a consensus????????

There are at least two essential aspects to democracy. One is choosing a leader and/or policy by voting, so that the leader/policy is then supported by a majority of the electorate. The second is that a negotiated consensus is achieved on several key issues including the rights of minorities.

The data shown above reveals that voting and beating opposition parties is most desired by the West, while negotiated consensus is most desired by the East The top six nations advocating negotiated consensus are all East Asian. Nine of the top twelve are East Asian. The bottom eight, all advocating voting, are in North America or Europe.?Voting is not by itself sufficient. Among those voted into office was Adolph Hitler. An elective dictatorship is of no value and voting for your tribe and religion in no contribution to democracy. America tends to institute votes as quickly as possible, as in Vietnam and during the Arab Spring but where these elect an intolerant clique, little is gained. They must want to negotiate not purge. In fact, both values are needed for democracy to work. It is no use winning the election if you then attack all those who opposed you.

Once again, these differences can be explained by where on our continua cultures fall. This is a contest for Specific Votes and the Majority of Individuals will win and their party will then assume power. What this leads to in the top left quadrant where Most articulate candidate wins most votes. Pericles, the spokesman for Athenian democracy was brilliantly eloquent. The benches in Britain’s House of Commons are two sword-lengths apart. It is words that count and these are too often used as rapiers. On the other side we have Diffuse relations within a Coherent Community of people engaged with one another. This leads to Negotiated Consensus laboriously worked through. Much of this in invisible and takes place behind the scenes. Where this consensus is broad and inclusive, much better decisions will be reached and it is not a surprise that many Asian tiger economies feature among the negotiators. A high-quality product is well-designed, cheap to manufacture, easy to service, appealing to look at, economic to operate – all such qualities need to be negotiated among experts and nothing less than consensus will do. The advantage of consensus is that it includes more people and where there are dissenting voices their particular objections can be taken into consideration, while those out-voted “lose” and may then shut up.

Voting tends to be a quick and easy way of making decisions while negotiating is long and much harder. In debates you score points off each other. In negotiation you engage, sometimes deeply.?In the first you disparage the viewpoints of the other, in the second you take them on board and include them. A democracy based on voting may not be effective at business and politicians may mess things up. A democracy based on consensus will be more effective at business and politicians may be of help. Voting gives power to the verbally adept, while negotiating gives power to those you can engage. We need to walk our talk, not just talk. Ironically the Chinese do count votes as well as negotiating. They have learned from us. The government has a huge number of polls on public opinion from everything ranging from the Red army to garbage collection. It knows exactly how popular it is across many issues. You negotiate, work out solutions then poll the people concerned to see if these solutions are welcome. If that is dictatorship then it is of a very unusual kind.

There are also “democratic parties” in China, whose task is to critique and qualify what the government in China does. However, all these accept the right of the Communist party to rule and make the final decisions. The point of those parties is to improve those decisions and to champion other possibilities, not to dispute the party’s right to rule or to try and replace it. The idea is that the ruling structure is stable and that unity reigns.

What cultures show in public and what they hide?

Cultures tend to put in the shop window what they are proud of and what they idealize and to consign the values they like less to operate in privacy behind the scenes. This tends to add to the hostility the West feels towards China and is probably reciprocated by that culture. For example, when we see hundreds of dark-suited people, sitting in straight rows, clapping a speech by their President, this appears to the West as a rubber stamp for the leader of a single party, which will broke no opposition, a virtual dictatorship. These are not thinking people but catspaws. Yet if this is true why are so many of their decisions of such high quality? How have they abolished so much disease and poverty? Why are they in the fast lane economically???But for the Chinese dutiful applause means agreement, consensus, order, loyalty and harmony on the subject of where the country is heading. The nation is moving forward together towards greater prosperity and world leadership.

To some degree the image of clapping functionaries is deceptive, because the Chinese congress is applauding what has already been decided. The purpose of the meeting is NOT to make decisions but to celebrate decisions already worked out behind closed doors.?Yes, indeed there is consensus but this was hard-won through very tough negotiations. Behind the scenes there was principled dissent and fierce disagreement, until at length an agreed position was hammered out which the speaker is now announcing. This fighting took place in the corridors of power and in private meetings not visible to any audience, but because the Chinese admire consensus while disliking conflict and disorder, only half the reality is shown to the general public. What they are less proud of, the in-fighting, is hidden from our view. Yet this is exactly what we would approve of, were we allowed to see it! They are not mindless automatons after all. They are changing the world profoundly. And the applause may be a sincere relief. It was a hard slog to get there!

We are unable to tell the reader what goes on behind the closed doors of a one-party state in China. We do not know and only a few do, but it clearly is NOT totalitarianism in the usual sense of the word, in which power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Top-down rule by one person is ultimately stupid and destructive. Totalitarians do not emancipate hundreds of millions from poverty or spur the fastest economic growth the world has ever witnessed. Given the quality of Chinese decision-making and its lead in sustainable technologies and greening the economy, some kind of negotiated consensus must be going on behind closed doors. The seemingly bland consensus in public is the fruit of much wrangling in private.

It also works the other way around. In the West we put conflict and adversary relationships in the front window and hide any consensus and by-partisanship out of sight as if it were boring, which it often is. Our press and media relish noisy confrontations, love building people up only to dash them down again. Prime Minister’s Question Time in the UK has no bona fide questions at all and no one is genuinely in search of information. It is a series of insults and accusations which fly back and forth between parties. It is featured on US TV not for its news value – it has little of interest for Americans – but for its entertainment. Grown men are watched insulting one another with “witty” repartee.

We love insulting language, for example, “He has sat so long on the fence that iron has entered into his soul.” When Dennis Healey was being questioned in a mild manner by Geoffrey Howe, he likened it to “being savaged by a dead sheep” Note that these barbs are intended to show that your opponent is not adversarial enough. An Australian politician was called “a little shiver looking for a spine to run up.”?America thinks nothing of portraying Hillary Clinton in convict garb and shouting “lock her up” although no legal proceedings were being taken against her then or since. Is this democracy??Is altering the sound-track on Joe Biden’s speeches to make these incoherent and then accusing him of senility democratic? What kind of business emerges from people shouting and abusing each other??No wonder business distrusts politics and “office politics” is deplored.???

What we essentially have is a different belief system in West and East as to whether Conflict or Consensus should be put in the foreground, while the other form stays in the background. Should we flourish harmony and hide strife, or celebrate strife and insulting language and somehow hope that rivals will retain some scant affection for each other? Most Westerners would admit that adversary relationships in politics has got out of hand so parties cannot even agree on fighting COVID -19 and whether to wear a mask. Many die as a consequence. China has handled it much better. We can diagram this.

A combination of Individual jousts and Specific words, used largely for dramatic effect, as if on stage, leads to our top left quadrant Verbal Strife in the foreground, consensus in the background. Both sides respect parliamentary procedure. In contrast a combination of Diffuse bonds and Community Benefit creates the caption in our bottom right quadrant Consensus in the foreground, verbal strife in the background. Here the result of hidden disputation is announced. Each culture flaunts what it is proud of and hides what it is less proud of.?There are of course major differences in style. Strife that is in public is exaggerated for theatrical effect. Strife that is private can retain mutual respect. We all know negotiations are going badly when their content is leaked to the press. If you take a very public position, a “red line”, it is hard to retreat. In a trial by jury the trial must be public but the jury deliberates in secret. All viable systems are a mixture of the two.

We find this in business too. In the West a meeting is called to discuss an issue and many people who are present have a say. All differences of opinion get aired, even where a decision is not reached at the meeting. At least those deciding know the climate of opinion. In the East a meeting is called to announce an agreement and those present are expected to endorse, applaud and administer the same. They may have been privately consulted in the process of coming to that agreement, depending on how influential they are. It is less a hierarchy than an inner-circle of those in the know. If you start disagreeing at this point during the meeting, you spoil the party.?????

·??????Is verbal conflict always a sure substitute for physical conflict???

An important difference between specific and diffuse cultures is that the first can easily sever words from actions and objections to what that person has said to objections to the very existence of that person him/herself. “That is crazy!” refers less to the person and any insanity in her/him and more to the specific words spoken, which you regard as absurd. But to a diffuse culture, craziness connects the words to the person who uttered them whose insanity you are claiming, if not the insanity his/her entire family! It is a mortal insult. The West sees adversarial speech as a performance. Two lawyers from the same firm may prosecute and defend a prisoner. They are likely friends, yet their duty is to oppose each other, which they will do without incurring the slightest rancour. In a diffuse culture such separations are not so easily made. Rude remarks strip persons of “face” and expose them to shame. It is an attempt to attack their relationships to others and make the whole community hostile. You are undermining their sense of honour.??

An illustration of how very are different are cultural reactions to insults, especially in shame cultures discussed in Chapter 7, we have the famous Japanese saga of the 47 Ronin. The word refers to samurai warriors who lack a master and are drifting. The master they aspired to serve was publicly insulted by a powerful enemy. The law at that time forbade violence, yet they felt honour-bound to avenge the insult and stop the process of drifting. Their sense of service to a master was the reason for their existence. Their “solution” was to kill the man who had insulted their would-be master and then commit mass suicide to punish themselves. What the story illustrates is that insulting words make violence more likely to occur. This undermines the whole Western theory of democracy, that you fight with words, instead of swords and this will calm you down, so you settle differences non-violently. In large parts of Asia verbal rudeness heralds coming violence.????

This helps explain why East Asian nations who try to imitate parliamentary democracy encounter several difficulties. Every few months we can see that Taiwanese legislators have literally hurled themselves at each other. There is a tangle of fighting bodies on the floor of the House! The quarrel between the Hong Kong government and protestors seems irresolvable as reproaches escalate on both sides. China promised one nation---two systems for some fifty years. But the Hong Kong demonstrators called for severance from China, not one nation but two and this in China’s view was a breach in the agreement they had made. One of the two systems could not call for the break-up of the one nation. This would impede unity after 50 years.

?In Singapore you can be sued for insulting a representative of the government even if you are an MP yourself and you soon run out of money to defend yourself. No rude language is tolerated and no real opposition has ever been elected. It is clear that the culture does not approve of bad language and verbal jousting which assails the dignity of those in office. No protests against the war in Iraq were permitted. These get out of hand as people shout at each other. These are all pro-Western East-Asian cultures who elect leaders, but their approach to democracy is very different

Specificity allows different kinds of conduct in different kinds of situation. You shout rude words in a court-room or the parliament building because these are arenas for verbal conflict. But you would not do this in the dining room or the street, unless you were demonstrating as part of a throng. The Chinese may be correct in believing that rude words are a prelude to physical violence, as the first diffuses into the second. In their culture this is often the case, yet we see this as the “suppression of free speech.” The West agrees with William Blake, “I was angry with a friend. I told my wrath, my wrath did end.” Unfortunately, in much of East Asia the opposite happens. Rude words catch fire.?Shame people publicly and this raises their ire and they resort to violence.???

·???????What is essential to both democracy and to business development is dialogue ?

We take the view that democratic dialogue is essential to a just society, to business development and to creating wealth. All successful business is “democratic” in the sense that it allows its stakeholders to participate and rewards them fairly according to their several contributions. A one-party state that negotiates consensus and regularly polls its people is capable of dialogue and of counting opinions to see how that dialogue is faring. This is what the PRC does. We have no proof that dialogue is taking place, since we cannot witness this, but given the quality of decision making we assume it happens and that the world’s first merit-based administrative apparatus is doing good work as it has for much of two millennia. That China does not have our kind of democracy and does not seem to want it, is all too true. The real question is does it have a dialogue among its rulers and is this as effective or more effective than ours? This strikes us as, at least, a possibility.

The vital role of dialogue in business and civic affairs was illustrated by the religious sect called Quakers, active in both Britain and the USA and also known as the Society of Friends. They hold regular face-to-face meetings in which God supposedly enters into each person and his/her discussion. They are pledged to peace and see dialogue as the alternative to war. The Quakers as a group were barred from most professions and from major universities, so they had to help themselves and each other to found their own enterprises.?They tithed themselves to pay for apprentices some two centuries before skill training caught on or networks became the norm. Their word was their bond and they became famed in finance because they never reneged on verbal promises shouted out in exchanges.?They rarely went to courts but arbitrated their own disputes so as to remain friends. They believed God was inside each of us and spoke through that person who should be respected. ?

What matters in a democracy is that we hear each other out and in the current wave of populism, polarization and public insults this is happening less and less. Liberals and conservatives in the USA positively loath each other. Two Presidents were recently installed with a lower vote than their opponents, making a mockery of majority decisions. Between them these two “minority” Presidents appointed five Supreme Court justices for life!?It costs millions of dollars to be elected to Congress and to defend your seat. Only by taking money from moneyed lobbyists can this be afforded. Democracy stops at the water’s edge and America becomes the world’s first superpower in the “democratic” world telling others what they should do. Is all this really democracy? If the media is really lying to us and manufacturing fake news, if Democrats drink the blood of abused children and steal elections from Trump, then democracy has little hope anyway. We are flying blind. We are lying to ourselves. If the “deep state” is engaged in a conspiracy against Americans then it is all over in any case. Why bother to vote at all? The whole system is corrupt. A virus to destroy religious faith is even now being distributed.?This situation can be charted.

Here we have taken three of our dimensions Specific??------ Diffuse, Individualism--------Community and Inner-directed ------Outer-directed, Cultures that rely on Specific Words, Individual votes and initiatives are in the top-left quadrant. Between them these constitute Democracy as wild accusations followed by election. This is typical of the USA, UK and Northwest Europe. ?However, this may not be quite enough. We also need Diffuse relations within Community responsiveness. When we combine these two, we get the caption at bottom right Democracy as Dialogue & learning to understand. There is nothing to stop this dialogue from polling public opinion to see if it is on course. While electing people by voting is rarely attempted by any business, respectful dialogue has everything to do with raising the quality of products and improving the level of service to customers. There would seem to be two paths to democracy, one to do with voting, polling and choosing and the other that has to do with treating each other with enough respect to elicit harmony from “opposed” viewpoints. It is the combination of both that succeeds. Indeed, the habit of polling used by the Chinese government creates feedback from the public on each important issue, while the manifesto at a general election has a whole raft of proposals which must be accepted entirely and may never be delivered where circumstances change.

When we look at public trust in government as measured by Pew, we find that trust in the US government as Kennedy came to power stood at 73% in the early Sixties and has declined to around 23% today. Gallup found that two thirds of Americans were very or somewhat dissatisfied with the way the nation was being governed. The Edelman Trust Barometer, an American research company, found that the highest trust in the world was in China at 84%, then India 70%, South Korea 45%, Germany 43%, Japan 37%, UK 36%, Spain 34% and the USA 33% and France 33%. The Western democracies are not doing too well. Economic growth seems to have a lot to do with satisfaction. Polling in the USA in August 2020 reported that 47% of its citizens would refuse to take a vaccine against COVID 19, such is their distrust of government. Unless this improves the plague may linger.

Democracy-as-negotiated-consensus actually helps business. The government engages business in a useful fashion and backs technologies likely to save the planet. But democracy-as-an-adversary-procedure and an exchange of insults hurts business, pitting managers against workers, suppliers against customers. Your employees may join the opposition. Governments are thought to prey on businesses through taxes and drag them through the courts to exact retribution.???

?Two concepts of liberty, freedom from and freedom to

That there were two concepts of liberty was proposed in a famous Oxford lecture by Isaiah Berlin in 1958. He contrasted “freedom from” coercion, interference, discipline and constraint with “freedom to” ?grow, develop, improve, learn and live. He called the first negative freedom and the second positive freedom. Neither was sufficient on its own and what was needed was a dialectical interaction between the two. Those who are most concerned with “freedom from”, see the government or state as reducing the freedom of the individual to choose by regulation and deliberate oppression which it is our duty to resist. While it is useful to have “the trains run on time” and this makes a contribution to “freedom to”, Hitler diminished “freedom from”, by way of monstrous coercion on a far larger scale. He lifted Germany out of the Depression, for which he won the allegiance of many but at what price??In some cases, “freedom from” allows an individual to alert millions of people as did the Chinese doctor in Wuhan who first drew attention to the corona virus at the cost of reproof and ultimately losing his own life to the disease.

As we saw by our original question about whether people worked “to be as free as possible”, private enterprise is seen as an avenue for free expression and many believe that people should be coerced as little as possible by the state, hence economic liberalism, laissez-faire and belief in the “free market”. One of the reasons for Britain’s first industrial revolution was the government’s tolerance for Non-Conformity. These minority groups contributed more than 50% of entrepreneurs to the nation despite being a small minority of the populace. That said they were still barred from many professions, which made them concentrate on business even more.?????

But what about “freedom to”? The situation of an Oxford Don and that of an Egyptian peasant was very different Berlin noted. If we were to ask the poor whether they wanted more money the verdict would be near-unanimous. If we were to ask whether not having to sleep on the street, to have transport that was twice as fast, or whether breathing clean air and drinking clean water was desirable, the verdict would be much the same. Emancipating 850 million from poverty and almost banishing illiteracy is “freedom to” on a colossal scale, poverty even diminishes the freedom to stay alive for very long. Many more poor people and minorities of colour are dying from COVID 19.

We associate the police with being coerced, but if a woman could not walk alone without being assaulted, then her freedom would be vastly diminished. The coercion of would-be rapists is necessary to a free citizenry. It is clear that “freedom to” has more appeal to less affluent and more needy people, since our basic needs for food, shelter and not dying from the corona virus, are all much the same.?So, should people not wearing masks be arrested and fined? Clearly the two freedoms are not easy bed fellows.?There is also likely to be disagreement on this subject by those who champion the individualism of the mostly middle-class and those who champion the welfare of the?broader community. If 40% to 50% of the populations refuse masks, vaccination and social distancing, then the pandemic never ends, but festers among those refusing.

Our own view is that the West exaggerates “freedom from” or negative freedom, has clung to free-market doctrines too long and too tenaciously and greatly under-estimates what positive freedom or “freedom to” can accomplish.?We think both kinds of freedom are equally important but that if you want to grow an economy quickly then “freedom to” needs to be embraced and given prominence, while “freedom from” keeps watch over civil rights and safe-guards spontaneity. For the truth is that the two freedoms are not as far apart as is alleged and cursing governments is a poor remedy. It is simply untrue that all laws are coercive. As Sir Thomas More pointed out “the law is a broad highway, on which, so long as he keeps to it, a person may walk freely in matters of conscience.” The law protects our rights to associate, to assemble, to be of influence and to dissent. The law preserves our property. The truth is there is a measure of freedom within the law. It is our chosen relationships made legal and endorsed by the state.

The same can said of all relationships. What friends or lovers give to one another is the freedom to be themselves. Partners are promised support for being the best mother, father, provider, producer or creator that they can be. We give each other room to grow. Freedom is used to confer benefits upon the community which usually pays us for our trouble. And it is the community which teaches us how to be independent. In short, we need diffuse relationships and a supportive community if we are to be truly free.

?It is the same with various disciplines. Of course, if the government puts us forcibly into uniform and marches us up and down, then our freedom is greatly diminished, but we cannot be verbally or mathematically innovative unless we submit to the disciplines of literacy and numeracy at which Chinese children so far exceed ours. You must copy first if you wish to create later on. You must learn the language in which you seek free expression. To be a black-belt judo champion is a form of free expression but not one free of years of discipline and study.?As Confucius pointed out where you master yourself the state need not interfere. Honouring your parents still leaves you free to do that in a number of particular ways. Freedom and responsibility to others are intertwined.??

So, we have Legal obligations often imposed by governments upon our Individual freedom. Since we are all out for ourselves in a competitive world, the government must sometimes restrain us, so we need to fight for our Negative Freedom or escape from being coerced by government. Socrates for example, refused to stop teaching and refused to stop inquiring into the greater improvement of the soul. But we also have Particular purposes by which we hope to improve Community responsibility and this will need individual freedom to act. This leads us to Positive Freedom, or capacity to grow, develop & prosper through government. Socrates although condemned to death had only to ride into the sunset and into exile to save his own life. But he refused because he was not seeking to save his individuality but the bond between him as an individual and his beloved community of Athens. He refused to sever that tie because it was where the “soul” or psyche resided. We could say he died for the dialectic relationship between the two, which was of course the basis for his teaching, the dialogue which alone sustains us. We never quite know which mix of opposites serves society the best. But we should at least consider whether China and much of East Asia is closer to the right combination than is the West.

·??????The Hedgehog and the Fox. Do we cast “dollar ballots” in free markets???????????????????

One of the persisting arguments is that democracy is somehow tied in with the free-market. That when we go out shopping, we are “voting” for what we want while leaving what we do not want on the shelves. It follows from this that the market, free from interference by governments, is a pristine image of democracy, reflecting the free choices of consumers, that fast-food-with-coke is some kind of surrogate sovereignty for the people. The truth is that the “free market” never existed in reality and that all governments everywhere, the USA especially, have massively intervened. In the case of the US to the tune of billions spent in 2019 on weapons and deploying these. The market does not rest on a pink cloud in the sky. It is in our midst and is battered by wars, by pandemics, political policies, by climate change, by mass migration, by famine, and by periodic panics on financial markets.?It is tossed on oceans of turbulence quite unrelated to economics.

A thinker who throws some light on this phenomenon is, once again, Isaiah Berlin. In his 1953 book he likened socio-economic doctrines to The Hedgehog and the Fox. He quotes the Greek poet Archilochus, “The fox knows many things but the hedgehog knows one big thing.” He argues that these two creatures figuratively divide many writers and thinkers down the ages. His book was about the two minds of Leo Tolstoy as revealed in War and Peace. We think these two visions divide the Anglo-American cultures and economies from those of China and East Asia. He writes as follows.

“ For there exists a great chasm between those on the one side who relate everything to a single, central vision, one system, more or less articulate in terms of which they understand, think and feel, a single, universal, organizing principle, in terms of which all they have to say is significant – and on the other side those who would pursue many ends, often unrelated and even contradictory, connected if at all in some de facto way, for some psychological or physiological cause…”?The first is centrifugal, spinning outwards from one source. The second is centripetal, spinning inwards from many sources. The latter begins with scattered and diffuse notions and moves on many levels, seizing upon the essence within the variety of experiences.?The fox is pluralistic and diverse. The hedgehog single minded and encompassing. The fox doubts he can ever understand it all and works on the pieces he knows best, passing his labours on to the next generation, not claiming to have a universal science that explains-it-all. The Hedgehog strives without ceasing to give unifying shape to what he believes. Every spike is buried in the body of the hedgehog, all variety leads to a single unity.?The ideal of the Market Mechanism as some universal fusion, similar to the notion of a melting pot, is very much a hedgehog.????

We agree with the Harvard scholar, Dani Rodrik, who sees mainstream, orthodox economics, which applies the liberal paradigm to markets and to everything and everywhere within them, as a hedgehog phenomenon. While the heterodox political economists, like John Maynard Keynes or John Kenneth Galbraith, are foxes, searching out particular national, social and world issues, often on the borderline of their disciplines. This makes them mavericks. The alleged “wisdom” of market forces is almost impossible to falsify since we nearly always intervene when something goes wrong and it is impossible to say what would have happened and how soon it would have happened had we not intervened. That markets swing back into balance at some stage is a matter of faith not observation, since we dare not wait and it is politically impossible to do so.

There is not anything that market forces cannot “explain”. It is like a cerebral sponge absorbing everything and objecting to most conscious acts of remedy, so that attempts to ease starvation in the Irish Potato Famine was roundly denounced by economists as preventing a market remedy, like growing other foodstuffs. The dream is of a universal science that explains everything and mere people will be sacrificed to this if necessary. Since the “pure” unfettered market is an ideal not a reality, it is easy to blame the stop-gap remedies hastily applied for anything that went wrong. The Great Depression was not caused by market failure but by the desperate expedients of politicians and their ill-judged remedial efforts. It was not tried and found wanting. It was hard and not tried.

The Market Mechanism has a very suspicious resemblance to an absentee Protestant Deity who has replaced himself with a celestial clock which He first wound up then left for His faithful to find and to worship. It rewards the enterprising and punishes the slothful and inefficient, imposes discipline on us all and is a moral lesson.?Could it be that so far as being “scientific” this paradigm is actually religious and inspires devotion among its followers? Is it perhaps an offshoot of Monotheism? Is it true that we do not actually make moral choices at all, but simply follow a cash nexus to gain as much as possible, that we are all the pawns of an economic determinism more powerful than we are? Should we let it sweep us along to a nirvana of ever higher consumption? We can diagram this.

We have the Dream of Universal Science at the top of our chart combining with the Individual Achievement, on the left, between them they constitute The Hedgehog Market Mechanism that unifies transactions and explains all. ?Market forces explain everything that happens and where they do not, it is our fault for intervening and messing things about.?The Chinese take a very different interest in Particular projects to which the Community and government has Ascribed significance and needs to be addressed by companies strategically positioned to do so. This constitutes Fox-like solutions to varieties of global threat with saleable outcomes. These include renewable sources of energy, better infra-structure, faster and better transport, self-sustaining green cities, etc. Note that the operation of market forces is not denied, but this is used to raise the price of No. 3 lug-head bolts when these are in danger of running short. It is a way of taking care of millions of small details, not an excuse for using the economy for no greater purpose than lug-heads, consumer credit or fast-food.

Faced with thousands of new technologies appearing the world over, the Chinese pick those that are particularly useful in halting say - pandemics, or purifying the air, capturing carbon etc. ?Markets certainly throw up these technologies but governments seize upon the most valuable of these and sponsor them. Given meagre government funds from taxation in most of the world, inviting large companies to work on such issues is not un-democratic and may be the only path to large-scale remedy. The Chinese are on to something important, using selected market forces for fox-like, ad hoc solutions.

In the picture, we illustrate what we mean by “market worship”. It is tragic that just when our planet needs massive interventions by all governments, that we have an unfalsifiable theory that advocates letting go of the rudder, letting people consume those trivialities which come with excessive incomes and drift towards disaster.??The “free” market explains everything yet nothing of importance to our survival. Democracy must be able to stop COVID 19, the extinction of species, the impoverishment of millions and that means preferring one market force to another and summoning this to our aid.

·??????We heartily approve of democracy, yet it is poorly justified and explained ??

Finally, we would like to say that we heartily approve of democracy and we would like the PRC to study it and perhaps adopt its own particular variation, but one serious problem for the West is that it has never clearly defined what democracy is and is not. It is because of this failure of definition that we are proving so blind to the current descent into populism and vicious polarization. You can win an election by encouraging groups to hate each other and by the legal suppression of minority votes. Our view is that real democracy has always been about resolving dilemmas, but in the West,?we call these “checks and balances” and we largely miss the role of respectful relationships.

If we look at what makes for real democracy, we note that opposite values are dovetailed .

Rules check and limit?????????????????????????????????????????????????????what particular rivals may do

We persuade publicly?????????????????????????????????????????????????????but vote secretly?

The opposition dissents??????????????????????????????????????????????????but is loyal to crown/constitution??????

I disagree with what you say??????????????????????????????????????????but agree with your right to say it???

The community?elects the…?????????????????????????????????????????individual who exercises conscience ?

We give physical power…?????????????????????????????????????????????to the most articulate candidate

We indict those we suspect?????????????????????????????????????????????but regard them as innocent

Justice is seen to be done?????????????????????????????????????????????????but juries deliberate unseen

The executive is checked?????????????????????????????????????????????????by parliament & the judiciary

Any legal changes must…??????????????????????????????????????????????have continuity with past decisions

By democracy diverse people…?????????????????????????????????????get included in making choices

Between all these contrasts there is tension but also harmony where we can achieve a reconciliation of both values. Diverse people are more likely to quarrel AND more likely to find a creative, inclusive solution. If we did not have a secret ballot the effects of bribes would be known. If communities elected delegates not individual representatives, conscience could not be brought to bear. Trump did not just disagree with Biden but attacked and failed to agree on the electoral process itself. If he lost the process must have been unfair! If certain out-groups are attacked as being criminally inclined, they will not be included.?If we do not know what is essential to democracy, we cannot defend it and tyrants will be elected. Democracies require agreement as to procedure and are threatened by any the withdrawal of this. What good governance requires is an integration of the norms listed above among others. Checks and balances are not enough. We need respectful dialogue and mutual understanding.

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This chapter was published earlier on the site of the Transnational Foundation for Peace and Future Research.