Vietnam's National Assembly began its opening session today, kicking off with the typical eye-glazingly dull speech by the presumptive next Prime Minister, talking about GDP growth targets, education reform, rural development, infrastructure enhancement, anti-corruption measures, and plans for full equitization of the state-owned sector over the next five years. Yawwwwwn. That's what you get in a one-party system, right? No incentive to entertain the people, no need to get people riled up and energized over the issues so they'll go out and vote: hence, placidity, dullness, and enervation, the fetishization of managerial competence and stability.
Hm.
A question arises. What if that system is...you know...better?
Here's the point: there are two remaining viable Communist states in the world, China and Vietnam. Both feature an intensely consensus-based culture of government. Both are run by a political elite with an increasingly technocratic character. Both feature an increasingly non-ideological national political creed, where growth and national wealth are the unified goal, and political allegiances or theoretical frameworks are secondary. These two countries are attempting to erect a system in which the Communist Party transforms itself into a pragmatic national governing class of mandarins, admitted according to criteria of merit as well as reliability, so that government becomes a kind of nonideological pragmatic technical function -- a sort of Government, Inc.
Will the people of these countries tolerate such a system? Won't they demand to participate in the political system? The answer, so far, seems to be: not really. Nobody in China or Vietnam really cares about political pluralism. Nobody particularly wants to vote for parties, or run for office. They're mainly interested in having exciting careers, getting ahead in business, making money, buying things, building lives for themselves. Sure, businessmen want input into economic and legal decisions; but such input can be ensured through consultative bodies (and usually is; in the US we call it "lobbying"). As for the average citizen...if they really want to participate in political life, they join the Party. But most don't.
And what if it works? What if it really is possible to establish political systems that work this way, at least in consensus-driven Asian cultures? What if they're stable, effective, economically sound?
And let's look at the comparison. What does democratic political culture in the US look like today? A series of flamboyant, ideologically incendiary, practically inconsequential "wedge issues" inserted into a mindless and fire-breathing media culture, all to give the citizenry a two-ring circus of political life in a desperate attempt to compete for their attention with celebrity culture, reality TV, and MMOGs. Honestly - the Minutemen? The Defense of Marriage Amendment? Or, though my heart and soul are with the Democrats, a special counsel investigation of Bush executive overreach X? Yes, yes, the investigations are necessary -- but is this what the sacred right of the people to self-government really comes down to? Tell me honestly: if you had a sensible, technocratically competent government that guaranteed solid economic growth, undertook major programs of redistribution to close the gap between globalization winners and losers, and set five-year targets for performance in every field and then MEASURED how well it had done every 5 years and figured out how to do better -- can you honestly say you wouldn't trade in your vote for that? Are you sure? Dead sure?
It's easy to exaggerate the claims here; and I just did, egregiously. Obviously, there's gotta be a lot right with the American system: we're the richest country in the world, while China still has a per capita GNP of like $3000 PPP; Vietnam is half that. They've got a long way to go yet. Their countries are riddled with corruption on a scale the US doesn't need to imagine. Their systems of justice are highly arbitrary and cruel in comparison to our own. They don't have universal health care any more than we do. And much of what's wrong with their systems can indeed be chalked up to the lack of separation of powers, the lack of accountability to voters.
Still. When you look at the narcissistic and pointless screamfest which America's polarized politics have become, it is by no means clear that we have a model which the Chinese and Vietnamese ought to be slavishly imitating. And when you look at some of the things they're doing right - and we're doing wrong - you wonder whether it might just be possible that a certain kind of technocratic capitalist Communism is going to be a viable alternative form of government, after all.