Political systems, II.

Jiwei Ci in his book Moral China in the Age of Reform talks about two different strategies followed by human beings to acquire agency: agency-through-identification and agency-through-freedom. The latter is the method of choice in modern (liberal) democracies, while the former is found in traditional Eastern societies such as China and India as well as in Maoist China. To understand a people and their politics, and, more, the differences between the East and the West, I believe that understanding well these two concepts is important, hence this post about these two strategies.

The strategy of agency-through-identification is about identifying yourself with someone (else): this belief gives you the feeling of a free agent and the power to do things what you would interpret as in accordance with whom or what you believe in. The constraint is a prerequisite of belief; thereafter, the interpretation may be left to you, making you feel an agent, controlling your own subjectivity, thus giving you a sense of power, a freedom. This freedom may be illusory or manipulated, but you may never realise it as long as you are a believer. The range of actions for a believer are manifold: he or she may interpret it even to kill others or to do other things which otherwise would be socially sanctioned; as long as you identify with the someone else, you have a wide range of actions available. (You would normally be conditioned to not think of this constraint at all; identifying with that someone else would never come into question.) Traditional India with its caste system (especially when fluid) is one such example of this system: once you believe in the fate, you do not question your assigned status and role, and having accepted that, you could reinterpret your role as much as you would like, even crossing to other statuses, all within the belief system. It is like coming to a game of cards on a table: you may believe yourself and others to be the cardmakers as well as cardplayers, and you wouldn't be surprised to see a fifth ace of the same colour, since the cardmaker could of course make new cards on the fly as long as he or she does not question others' cards and cardmakings. The freedom seems unlimited once you have believed in a role, identified with being a cardmaker or a cardplayer. The creative drama at play even stimulates you to conceive of and add new suits on the fly.

The strategy of agency-through-freedom is about the freedom to choose from a given set of possibilities identified as legal for you by the society: this gives you the illusion that you have the freedom to do what you wish, even though it would only be from a socially sanctioned set. You can mix and match the sanctioned possibilities, thus playing with identifications to a certain extent, but can never go out of them. The constraint thus is the lack of creativity: they set the dance moves allowed, though their sequence you are free to readjust. (You would normally be conditioned to not think of this constraint at all: that any other dance move is possible would never come to your mind.) Modern (liberal) democracies are one such example of the system, and this traces its origins to the importance of a contract in Western societies (for the Word has held immense importance in Biblical societies). (The Western societies of old have already been evolving to this point for many centuries, especially since the rise of Protestantism.) It is like coming to a game of cards on a table: there is only a fixed number and variety of cards, and you can only play with those cards, though of course you could make any move with those cards. You are only a cardplayer, not a cardmaker. The freedom seems unlimited once you are happy with those cards and like the order of it all. It even stimulates you for greater cunning to either circumvent the rules or best your opponent's way of thinking.

Imagine now the collision that must have happened when the West met the East: whether in India, China or Japan. The Indians were adding aces and even suits on the fly; the Westerners were aghast, finding it cheating or even, worse, savagery, finding the East as uncivilised; they wanted the contracts of cards, suits, rounds, everything fixed. They wanted to "reform" the Easterners. Some of the Easterners did get educated or were educated ("enlightened" or "reformed") in the Western ways, and then, naturally, a confusion arose in Eastern societies, notably in India, colonised by the British and taught many British ways. The presence or absence of contract was seen and felt by some: it was cheating for some, it was creativeness for others. A modern democracy (with two marketplaces of intellectual and ideological being open) was chosen as the way to go by India, thus a contract-respecting society, and in 1990 the liberalisation was complete with the opening up of the economic marketplace as well: however, it is not that India's nature itself of being a creative society changed with this political structural change. Hence, a new set of knaves, India's present-day political leaders, arose from this pell-mell: they saw a golden chance of appropriating power through exploiting this confusion. They could make cards on the fly using the first method and playing the cardmaker, and then say these are the only cards to play and new ones are not permitted, using the second method: in this way, you surreptitiously use the social acceptance (in an Eastern society) of the first method (agency-as-identification), and then exclude all other cards, all creativity in favour of only your cards using the second method (agency-as-freedom) using the tools of a society in Westernization: in this way, you hijack the agency of those others who until now were also cardmakers. (As a more specific instance, you pretend to be dharmic or national, for remember that identification is the form of agency as society's nature has not changed, then introduce your cards in the play as now a valid cardmaker, now start claiming that there could only be fixed cards and that anyone introducing their cards is against dharma or nation, which argument seems very plausible, even cogent, as after all the norms of the state are now of having a particular set and playing by that, and then you start excluding the possibility of introducing other cards by others; and this process could keep going on, thus a single player designing the set in their way completely, not letting others having their cards in the game. This disgruntles both those who expect contracts to be the be-all as the opportunist is continuously changing cards by reinforcing identification as strategy, and those who adhere to the identity but because their cards are at the mercy of the opportunist, are unable to play any longer. Eventually, the tension can only build up, and inevitably it results in a shattering of the tension through violent means.) You have now an added advantage against those whose agency you are hijacking: some of them still playing the old game, they are trying to act as cardmakers and not questioning your cardmakings, without realising that you are on the side playing a parallel process of discarding some cards (their cards) for ever from the game. By the late time they realise it, your cards are dominant in the game, for remember that in any game a card carries a certain different value than others. (In any society, some things are valued and some are not: those things may well be different in different societies, but a value attribution is inevitably there in any human society, plus an absence of attribution itself for whatever is not on a society's horizon.)

I will continue.