Reflections on Leninism and the Chinese Communist Party's Control

Noah Smith & Brad DeLong Record the Podcast We, at Least, Would Like to Listen to!; Aspirationally Bi-Weekly (Meaning Every Other Week); Aspirationally an hour...

Key Insights:

* Someone is wrong on the internet! Specifically Brad… He needs to shape up and scrub his brain…

* Back in the 2000s, Brad argued that the U.S. should over the next few generations try to pass the baton of world leadership to a prosperous, democratic, liberal China…

* Back in the 2000s, Noah thought that Brad was wrong—he looked at the Chinese Communist Party, and he thought: communist parties do not do “coëxistence”…

* Noah understands people with a limitless authoritarian desire for power—people like Trump, Xi, Putin, and in the reverse Abe—and the systems that nurture and promote them…

* Why did Brad go wrong? Excessive reliance in the deep structures of his brain on the now 60-year-old Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy: Lord and Peasant in the Making of the Modern World.

* Why did Brad go wrong? A failure to understand Lenin’s party of a new type as a bureaucratic-cultural organization…

* Suggestions for what Brad DeLong should earn during his forthcoming stint in the reëducation camp are welcome…

* &, as always, Hexapodia…

References:

* Bear, Greg. 1985. Blood Music. New York: Arbor House. <https://www.lwcurrey.com/pages/books/103667/greg-bear/blood-music>.

* Brown, Kerry. 2022. Xi: A Study in Power. London: Icon Books.<https://www.kerry-brown.co.uk/books/xi-a-study-in-power>.

* Cai, Xia. 2022. "The Weakness of Xi Jinping: How Hubris and Paranoia Threaten China’s Future." Foreign Affairs. September/October. https://www.foreignaffairs.com/china/xi-jinping-china-weakness-hubris-paranoia-threaten-future.

* DeLong, J. Bradford. 2019. "What to Do About China?" Project Syndicate, June 5. <https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/china-america-relations-trump-diplomatic-weakness-by-j-bradford-delong-2019-06>.

* DeLong, J. Bradford. 2019. "America’s Superpower Panic". Project Syndicate, August 14. <https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/america-china-superpower-rivalry-history-by-j-bradford-delong-2019-08>.

* DeLong, J. Bradford. 2023. "Theses on China, the US, Political-Economic Systems, Global Value Chains, & the Relationship". Grasping Reality. Accessed June 19. <https://braddelong.substack.com/p/theses-on-china-e-us-political-economic>.

* Lampton, David M. 2019. Following the Leader: Ruling China, from Deng Xiaoping to Xi Jinping. Berkeley: University of California Press.ttps://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520303478/following-the-leader>.

* Moore, Barrington, Jr. 1966. Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy: Lord & Peasant in the Making of the Modern World. Boston: Beacon Press. <https://archive.org/details/socialoriginsofd0000unse_v4l0>.

* Pronin, Ivan, & Mikhail Stepichev. 1969. Leninist Standards of Party Life. Moscow: Progress Publishers. <https://archive.org/details/leninist-standardsof-party-life_202307>.

* Sandbu, Martin. 2022. “Brad DeLong: ‘The US is now an anti-globalisation outlier’”. Financial Times. November 23. <https://www.ft.com/content/791fe484-595f-44f9-86e7-55bdbbbd22e8>.

* Sasaki, Norihiko. 2023. "Functions and Significance of the Central Leading Group for Comprehensively Deepening Reforms and the Central Comprehensively Deepening Reforms Commission." Chinese Journal of Political Science 28 (3): 1-15. Accessed May 14, 2024. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/24761028.2023.2185394.

* Shambaugh, David, ed. 2020. China and the World. New York: Oxford University Press. <https://academic.oup.com/book/32164>.

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* Vinge, Vernor. 1999. A Deepness in the Sky. New York: Tor Books. <https://www.amazon.com/Deepness-Sky-Zones-Thought/dp/0812536355>.