(Reciting, to music.) Pearls and ruby rings . . . Ah, how can worldly things; Take the place of honor lost?; Can they compensate For my fallen state,Purchased as they were at such an awful cost? Bracelets . . . lavalieres . . . Can they dry my tears? Can they blind my eyes to shame? Can the brightest brooch Shield me from reproach? Can the purest diamond purify my name?
(Suddenly bright again; singing as she puts on enormous bracelets.) And yet, of course, these trinkets are endearing, ha ha! I'm oh, so glad my sapphire is a star, ha ha! I rather like a twenty-carat earring, ha ha! If I'm not pure, at least my jewels are! (Candide (1956 Libretto; A Comic Operetta based on Voltaire's satire; Book by Lillian Hellman; Score by Leonard Bernstein; Lyrics by Richard Wilbur; Other lyrics by John Latouche and Dorothy Parker) Act 1, Scene 3)
American elites, especially its academic, social media and influence elites, have been cultivating a variety of Leninism envy in the United States since the beginning of the destruction of European hegemony in 1914. It is true enough that between 1918 and 1945 these elites were divided between "left Leninism" (Marxism or the more palatable "Socialism" for the masses) and "right" Leninism (the fascism of the Italians, with or without its ethno-paranoias), and it is true enough that the discursive focus during this period was on a sort of techno-scientism that promised miracles in the form of alleviation from the stress of economic and political risk through techno-bureaucratic experts in communion with "knowledge workers" (and their apparatus and class structures, from low and middle level knowledge producers in the hard and social sciences, the blue collar workers, to elite academic knowledge mangers and theorists at the elite level) , and culture workers (to instruct the masses on the appropriate premises of the cognitive cages within which they might see the world and be better managed by the political and social "leadership"). This scientism spilled out everywhere--from the area of health and health care, to the elaboration of increasingly aspirational utopias of economics and politics, culture, religion and the like. A magic pill for everything and everything in need of a magic pill that would help propel society toward perfection under the guidance of its vanguard of social forces organized within a benign apparatus of well intentioned (and well informed) experts.
After 1945, of course, the fascist version of this holistic embrace of Leninist vanguardism (whether in the form of political vanguardism overseeing social, economic and cultural perfection) or of a dictatorship of the vanguard of experts that would undertaken to discover and operationalize all that was best for those under its charge) was discredited. But Leninism, in the form of vanguardism of both sorts was not. Instead it acquired a certain politics and normative basis from out of the cage of which it was quite difficult to escape--unless one thought to "
"Turn on, tune in, drop out" of society (as Timothy Leary popularized around the middle 1960s, variations of which continue to resonate to suit the times, see
here), 躺平 (literally laying flat/tang ping, roughly doing enough to get by) and 摆烂 (slacking off completely/
bǎi làn) (as has become popular in China of this century, the former suggesting the rebellion of doing the minimum to get by the latter of doing nothing at all), or find a home in fringe sects, though all of these scrupulously avoiding the fascist label which now became a fetish, an instrument of control, and a taboo. At the same time such rebellion could now be treated as a form of psychosis, political rebellion, social disruption, or the sort of anti social behaviors that a Leninist state of mind could "work on" to improve. Left Leninism, then, by the standards of the 1930s at least, came to dominate the first great global wave of cognitive convergence adherence to a variation of which was as essential to survival and success after the 1930s, as other all consuming cognitive cages had been in earlier historical epochs (religion, for example).
None of this is bad or good. All of it is consuming in ways that make it invisible to those within the cognitive cages in which they operate. Indeed, the extent of the triumph not only made its structures and premises, as well as its limitations and characters invisible; it also made then natural, int he sense that it might be inconceivable to think or operate and know the world any other way. While the West tends to disguise its own Leninism by pointing to its Marxist variant as a demonized heretical expression of the Leninist impulse, its own enthusiastic embrace of a centralized techno-bureaucratic managerialism grounded in the triumph of experts and knowledge that must be applied to a population to either solve their problems or bring them closer to perfection (as all of this is understood in time, place and space), can provide no more than a fig leaf to cover its own deep Leninist impulse.
But, then, that may be all that is required. And, indeed, the progeny or development of classical 1930s left Leninism, of the liberal democratic sort, can wrap itself up in the language of merit(ocracy), of the expert, and of the scientific rationalization of the good. It is as much an impulse of the sort of hyper-social (reconstruction of politics and the techno-institutional habitus of liberal democracy through an instrumental deployment of the techniques of social "deconstruction" to scientifically "prove" the structural corruption of a system they might wish to reshape to their own liking, as with it, the constitution of deviant thinking as pathological and fair game for reshaping. And it is always longing for that centralizing apparatus through which the institutionalized and hierarchically arranged tower of experts can better move social forces (including deplorables of whatever political sect they might believe they adhere to). That centralizing apparatus appears to be what connects Chinese MARXIST-Leninism (e.g., Brief
Reflections on 深入学习贯彻《中国共产党思想政治工作条例》[Thoroughly study and implement the
"Regulations on Ideological and Political Work of the Communist Party
of China"] and links therein) with LIBERAL DEMOCRATIC Leninism (either the institutionalist techno-bureaucratic managerialism of Europe or the transactional market oriented techno-bureaucratism of the U.S.). (Consider, The
American Leninist-Brain Trust Republic: Text of President Trump's
Executive Order, "Launching the Genesis Mission," and the Press Release
"President Trump Launches the Genesis Mission to Accelerate AI for
Scientific Discovery").
All of this, of course, is intimately tied to notions that in the 21st century might be understood as variations on the theme of "modernization" or "development. " One does not speak here about development in its more prosaic sense, but rather as the cognitive foundation within and through which one must be brought to understand the meaning, objectives and normative foundation of all human institutions, and within that large cluster, of the central role of vanguards of leading forces as the only (or best) means of moving a population (as the term was nicely elaborated by Foucault, eventually as bio-politics, in in the sense of indistinguishable components of a collective (its "statistics) or distinguishable components whose individual agency is useful for the collective and managed toward collective ends). It is, perhaps then, modernization/development, that serves as the common ground for the principal variations of post-1945 Leninism (political Leninism in China and exert tech-bureaucratic Leninism in liberal democracy).
That brings one to a very interesting expression of that unity of conception that is, as is necessary, masked by the difference in elaboration, serving then as a basis for competition, and from it, the triumph of one or another of the variations in a very nice Opinion piece written by Rahm Emanuel for the Wall Street Journal. Its title is "
Trump's Research Cuts Play Into China's Hands" and it seeks to make two larger points. The first is that the model of centralized and well managed curation of research must be situated at the apex levels of a governmental apparatus, though operated as an expression of the guiding ideology of that apparatus. The second (and perhaps for Mr. Emanuel the more important) is that President Trump, by failing to adhere to that core premise of American Leninism has failed the Nation and in so failing has provided the President's political opponents with an opportunity to win back control of the State apparatus. In traditional style for such arguments Mr. Emanuel focuses on the American's "Great Opponent" or Adversary--The People's Republic of China. The titles or descriptors recall what was once reserved for the religious realm and to Satan or Lucifer. There is of course irony here. Satan (
שָׂטָן), the adversary, opponent or questioner was the name that evoked his status after a fall from grace; Lucifer signified is role as "light bringer" but in this sense also as tempter. Satan is the great critical force requiring an examination of oneself; Lucifer is the bringer of light but also an invitation to consider the pathways toward "enlightenment" here understood also as a reference to modernity.
As is usual for these sorts of discursive exercises, Mr. Emanuel starts with the Luciferian dilemma for American liberal democracy--China envy. That envy is not of its systems, as such, but of what its system appears to be producing--things that Americans want but can't get. "America has long been envious of China’s advanced trains and factories. The high-speed train zipping from Shanghai to Beijing puts to shame the Amtrak Acela running half as fast between New York and Washington." That, he suggests, misses the point--"The real threat lies in other economic sectors." (Emanuel Essay). It lies in what Mr.Emanuel call's General Secretary Xi's "gutsy and perhaps counterintuitive decision to invest massively in an area of American strength--basic research." (Id.) Mr. Emanuel proffers a reason--one very similar to the "space race rationalization of the 1950s: China could not bear to accept the reality that American (or Western) researchers were able to develop a COVID vaccine faster "and with higher efficiency rates" than the Chinese from out of the bits and pieces of basic research scattered about at the time (Id.).
Yet that is also not Mr. Emanuel's point. Rather it is not that China is directing "significant money to quantum computing, fusion energy, military technology, artificial intelligence and other areas of research and development" (Id.), it is that this infusion of R&D funds are coming from and managed by the State for State purposes. In contrast, Mr. Emanuel mourns the actions of the Trump Administration that, to his way of thinking has cut public money, managed by and through a complex R&D bureaucracy, one tightly intertwined with the hierarchies of expertness in universities eager for the funds and willing to take direction (see here for core premises). That failure--the retreat of the State from the business of funding (and directing/managing R&D toward its own ends) that Mr. Emanuel mourns. "Mr. Trump's policy of cutting R&D funding endangers America's competitiveness, imperiling the likelihood that the next Apple, Google or Angen will be funded here."
The problem, then, with America, in the context of R&D, is that it is not longer true to its fundamental political line: that the State must serve as the vanguard under the leadership of which R&D can be undertaken in ways that suit whatever political objectives are compatible with the desires and interpretations of the current political leadership core. It doesn't matter whether are members of the Republican or Democratic faction, it only matters that both adhere to the fundamental political line. The problem, though, is deeper than that according to Mr. Emanuel. In a political normative order grounded in the leading role of the State and the embodiment and centralized organ of vanguard expert scientism about national life and its objectives (especially vis a vis competing vanguards), the key failing is with the vanguards provincial officials. Thus, Mr. Emanuel suggests, President Trump "isn't the only one to blame. Business leaders have watched this disaster unfold largely without speaking out, in most cases because they do not want to jeopardize the tax breaks and regulatory relief Mr. Trump was offering deep pocketed firms" (id.). And not just them
A rectification campaign, then, is in order. And it is to sketching out that rectification project that the bulk of the remainder of Mr. Emanuel's essay is devoted. "First, to keep pace with the Chinese, Washington needs to finance a new public investment fund devoted exclusively to science and research" (Id.). Mr. Emanuel proposes a new sort of "sin" tax, this time on virtual gambling businesses. And he posits the research finds as a sort of national investment in R&D of utility to the State. In that sense the proposal aligns with Chinese Leninism, though not its Marxist normative framework.
Second, Mr. Emanuel would "tighten the existing R&D credit, a benefit that is being gamed by forms that are no longer on the cutting edge" (id). Perhaps here Mr. Emanuel is evidencing concern that the credit can be used to develop video games (see here)--and yet the development of video game technologies, forms, and actions may indeed serve as basic research that substantially transforms tech innovation in unforeseen ways (see, e.g., here ("Military gaming isn’t just about soldiers playing commercial video games
during their free time. It’s about utilizing advanced simulation
technologies to create realistic training environments that are too
complex or too expensive to reproduce physically. The Army’s Synthetic Training Environment and CAE’s Naval Combat Systems Simulator for tactical training already demonstrate this concept")).
Third, the idea Mr. Emanuel is quite consciously political ("For Democrats, this plan doesn't only represent good policy..it's an opportunity to practice good politics (Id.)).The "good politics" turns out to be populist in a class oriented sort f way. The premise is simple, only the State is in the position to serve the best interests of the "little person" the content of which is best known to the state apparatus and its political leaders. The problem, as Mr. Emanuel sees it is that the leading forces of the industrial ¡sector, unlike the leading forces of the political sector, are bot incapable and uninterested in the best interests of the "little person". Borrowing from the "soft Marxism" of Anglo-European discourse of the last century, his unstated premise is that the interests of the proletariat and the capitalist class are not just not aligned bur are opposed. Only (again embracing the premises of and within the soft Marxism" Euro and classical American "democratic socialism" of the last century (perhaps not the current variation which is essential incoherent in its effort to please contradictory forces)) only the State can advance the interests of the masses and control the "selfish" power of the capitalist classes who are "in it" only for themselves. The result is the expression of the contradiction of pre 1939 classical contradiction in the spirit of Risa Luxembourg: "Rarely has a president managed to alienate so much of his winning coalition in such a short period." (Id.). Of course that is a necessary rhetorical trope and perhaps meant to hide the problem of social engineering (and cultural rectification campaign designed to augur in a new era of proper belief) at the heart of the last campaign, one which alienated the working classes perhaps as much as the current administration's economic policy alienate them now. Still, technological innovation may make it easier to make such cultural rectification campaigns more palatable in the future or at least easier to implement, with the State at the forefront.
There is much more that might be unpacked here. I note only the following:
1. The binary--basic research versus applied research--is both contested and historically contingent (see, e.g., Désirée Schauz, "What is Basic Research? Insights from Historical Semantics," Minerva (2014) 52:273–328). It does little to help understand the debate except by reference to the role of utility in both. That is, that the difference between basic and applied research is time. Where one speaks to funding basic research by the State, purpose and utility remain in the picture--and necessarily so. The only issue is the specificity of purpose in relation to a specific problem the solution to which requires a specific answer or approach. Neither Mr. Emanuel nor the Chinese Communist Party understand basic research as serendipity that at some future point might be unearthed and then applied to some future (and perhaps unforeseen) challenge. They both understand the concept as directed toward utility. In the case of China that connection is well theorized and developed through the concept of high quality or innovative development, one tied closely to the goals (long and short term) of Chinese Socialist modernization.
It was stated that education, science and technology, and talent function as a basic and strategic underpinning for Chinese modernization. We must fully implement the strategy of invigorating China through science and education, the strategy of developing a quality workforce, and the innovation-driven development strategy, make coordinated efforts to promote integrated reform of institutions and mechanisms pertaining to education, science and technology, and human resources, and improve the new system for mobilizing resources nationwide to make key technological breakthroughs. (Communique of the Third Plenary Session of the 20th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China)
These are undertaken toward State ends and ultimately help move the nation along the Socialist Path toward the establishment of a Communist society. The project is not basic research as such, but basic research guided by the needs of the State under the leadership of its vanguard CPC. Mr. Emanuel uses the notion instrumentally as a political trope. And yet it is a trope that has the same trajectories and effects--especially in its relationship between State guidance and the curation of funding. At the same time, he appears to suggest that basic research might well be best undertaken under the guidance of its expert techno-bureaucracies deeply intertwining state organs and the organs of knowledge production centers in universities (for example). There is little space for serendipity here--at least as between idea and funding.
2. The concept of science and research is itself also contested, and is politically contingent. The image Mr. Emanuel perhaps seeks to evoke is of the 18-20th century scientist generating key basic ideas that revolutionize a field, process, or way of thinking. Not so much a mad scientist, as one who is devoted to pushing the frontiers of a field in ways that make it possible to produce something useful. That leaves a lot of space for politics--and the free ranging of ignorance in the context of science in the 21st century. The focus implied are the traditional "hard" sciences; that leaves no space for "social science" much less the humanities. One is producing wonderful new innovations, but only respecting what might, at some point along the historical evolution of the ideology of science, something "scientific". And yet those distinctions may be falling away--for example the intertwining of philosophy with artificial intelligence, and religion with physics, etc. On the other hand quality innovation in the social science might produce the sort of radically transformative insights that might make it far easier to control the Republic's population and certainly to police its beliefs and behaviors. (L.C. Backer, "
Next Generation Law: Data Driven Governance and Accountability Based Regulatory Systems in the West, and in Social Credit Regimes in China"). And, indeed, Mr. Emanuel just assumes a purpose driven agenda on the part of the State-Knowledge industry complex toward their own ends (which by definition must be that of the public): "to augment national investments in basic research, defense, life science and energy technology" (id.). This, indeed makes it clearer--the object is essentially Leninist--not necessarily focused on basic research as such, but rather on research as a national investment producing goods that suit the needs of the State and its apparatus. That is not a bad thing; it is just not quite aligned with the rhetorical presumptions of Mr. Emanuel's proffered project. On the other hand, it is deeply aligned with the idea of State (or rather) vanguard leadership as a predicate for success. That is certainly true when measured against the Chinese model; on the other hand, it is not clear that this Republic is meant to emulate that model, even if it continues to embrace the Leninism of techno-bureaucratic expert leadership and guidance of the population through institutions of state and otherwise.
3. The idea that basic research R&D as a function of federal government investment ought to be undertaken in ways that Washington could get more bang for its buck" (id.) also suggests that it is not basic research that is being targeted--but like the Chinese approach after the 3rd and 4th Plenum, "targeted incremental research." (Id.). These also have a significant managerial aspect--one is not merely focusing on research but also on its institutional footprint in ways that are determined by the expert techno.-bureaucrats awarding these funds. Mr. Emanuel offers, for example, the suggestion of "awarded bonuses to investments in industrial campuses that cluster researchers, suppliers and manufacturing facilities." (Id.). One moves here far from the ideal of basic research to high quality production and innovation in the service of State objectives or high priority projects that in very little respects deviate from the Chinese model--other than in China the policy direction emerges from the Communist Party and in the U.S. from its expert techno-bureaucratic apparatus. Compare: " On a broader national scale, China has fostered more than 500,000
high‑tech enterprises over the past five years and now claims the
largest global share of sci‑tech innovation clusters." (China's new quality productive forces gather steam to turbocharge future growth). Not that this approach is either bad or good--but in both cases the State apparatus is at the center and driven by its own interests and concerns which then shape the pace, character and trajectories of innovation to suit its goals.
4. The object of this focus on basic research (the ostensible object of the essay), then, is essentially a means to an ends. That ends is politics, and the control of the apparatus of a guiding techno-bureaucracy in and as the State in ways that can then be used to reduce the power of the non-State sector to drive economic, social, cultural, and political agendas. "To become the party of economic growth again, we need to offer fresh ideas that keep America competitive as the global landscape evolves" (id). Thus the object is not the research and innovation, but rather the strategies for attaining and retaining power over an expanding governing public techno-bureaucracy.
5. Yet, at the end, what appears to irritate Mr. Emanuel most is not R&D (something that most elites paid lip service to over the last several decades, leaving it to the private sector to innovate and, what some might have argued, continuing to feed an institutional system of financing universities and others through deeply inter penetrative grant systems). What irritates Mr. Emanuel--and appears to serve as the inspiration for this essay--is the disdain that might have been felt at the rise of betting platforms in which individuals bet on all sorts of outcomes. "I am tired of watching people bet against America, rather than betting on our nation's success" (id.). This Mr. Emanuel finds offensive; and perhaps frightening because even Mr. Emanuel understands the predictive power of data rich platforms of betting on future events, a richness which one might tax (but not exploit) in 2026 rather than suppress when presented in 2003 as the "Policy Analysis Market,", a proposed Pentagon-funded futures market.
6. Of course it makes perfect sense for the State--the liberal democratic State--to invest in those projects that its leaders believe serve the national interest, as that is understood from time to time and as its trajectories change from election to election. It may be that the State is best suited to invest in serendipity--knowledge production originating in curiosity unconnected to anything of present value. To those ends the State might well serve as a router overseen by its techno-bureaucracies of experts, whose mandates are politically and policy driven but fashioned by elected officials as part of their fundamental political line effective until they no longer serve in office. But these are not the issues that appear to interest Mr. Emanuel. Instead one starts with the premise of the necessity and permanence of a generalized power over the national collective has come late and which is not,That authority has grown in line with the increase in the acceptability of State based compliance oriented managerialism, again grounded in the premise that everything is public policy and that experts are best suited to manage these policies for "optional" performance--but again ideally as understood from time to time and as its trajectories change from election to election. Where there is a separation between ownership of state power (in elected officials) and control (in the hands of expert techno-bureacrats in the administrative apparatus of the state), then one has the conditions suitable for liberal democratic Leninism, here guided by an expert vanguard produced and disciplined within self referencing systems of the production of experts in "knowledge factories" intimately connected to the State. It is in that context that Mr. Emanuel's arguments make the most sense.
7. For liberal democratic Leninist (unlike Marxist-Leninist) States, the question, then, comes to the issue of the role of the private sector in driving innovation, or better put the role of the State in guiding, lading, or financing the sort of innovation its leaders or bureaucracies prefer. This question is impossible, of course in Marxist Leninist States, where the core operating premise of the fundamental political line is that the State owns and controls all of the productive forces of the nation, and that the State serves as the instrumentality of its leading forces organized as a communist party tasked with the scientific movement of the nation, through the modernization of its productive forces, along the Socialist path toward the establishment of a communist society. These objectives, goals and premises ought not to trouble liberal democratic Leninist. The question then is the extent to which Marxist Leninist presumptions about the necessity of State control of productive forces also seep into liberal democratic state operation? The Trump Administration appears to take a view that the State interferes (or manages) only to advance national political interests but otherwise leaves it to the private sector to innovate as it wills (see, e.g., Liberal
Democratic Leninism in the Era of Artificial Intelligence and Tech
Driven Social Progress: Remarks by Director Kratsios at the Endless
Frontiers Retreat and "The Golden Age of American Innovation"; Reflections on "'Accelerating American Exports'--Remarks by Director Kratsios at the APEC Digital and AI Ministerial Meeting" ). The opposing party suggests a grander role for the State, one perhaps, in which State organs and their techno-bureaucrats provide the same service as the Party cadres undertake in China. What separates the two, then, is operationalization rather than the fundamental premise of State guidance and expert management. But more importantly, what appears to separate them is the presumption about the private sector and their role in the State. Mr. Emanuel presumes an unmanaged private sector will not produce innovation of the sort that America needs. He proposes greater State intervention. Perhaps that is exactly what is needed, but its justification may require a little more refinement if it to be squared with the fundamental political line of the nation which he seeks to advance. . . . And yet, of course, these trinkets are endearing, ha ha! I'm oh, so glad my sapphire is a star, ha ha! I rather like a twenty-carat earring, ha ha! If I'm not pure, at least my jewels are! (Candide (1956 Libretto; A Comic Operetta based on Voltaire's satire; Book by Lillian Hellman; Score by Leonard Bernstein; Lyrics by Richard Wilbur; Other lyrics by John Latouche and Dorothy Parker) Act 1, Scene 3)
8. And there it is. Mr. Emanuel's essay is far more interesting for the unstated premises driving his comparison with China than it may be for its political agenda setting (though that will be of primary interest to many). The functional comparison (on research output) hides a much richer conversation about the essence of comparison among systems whose fundamental political lines are incomparable (in the sense that they they start presumably some quite different sets of presumptions about the essence and purpose of a political economic model). In that sense what Mr. Emanuel does is to perhaps unconsciously align the fundamental political lens of both states at least with respect to the role of the state in managing "investment" in R&D. Yet to do that reveals what may be the essential connection between the two systems--their Leninism; understood in the sense of the presumption that systems work best when driven by a vanguard of leading forces whose role is to guide the nation toward the realization of some ideal or other. And certainly one can suppose that both systems do share an attachment to Leninism; the Chinese embracing a political Leninism, the Americans a system of institutionalized expert vanguardism. But assume the possibilities of a scientific rationalization of the pathways to systemic perfection through the application of the essential value of these vanguards. Both appear to harbor varying degrees of distrust of non-vanguard elements, which have to be managed for the attainment of the fundamental goals of the vanguard. But there the alignment ends; and with it the possibility of comparative analysis that suggests that if the Americans do what the Chinese did (substantial State control of investment in R&D), then the Americans can achieve what the Chinese are achieving. The relevant analysis, then, might center not on China but on (as Mr. Emanuel does) on the differing sensibilities respecting the practice and operation of American expert Leninism in the context of innovation and tech dominance. There comparison is possible. Mr. Trump's approach is more transactional and functionally differentiated--that State management and guidance is centered on those areas and objects reflecting a State interest. Mr. Emanuel's suggests more broadly institutional suggesting a distrust of the individual and bottom up innovation generally, one that requires State direction and management in the way that had developed into the State-academic industrial complex that has been the partial target of Mr. Trump's policies. Mr. Emanuel distrusts markets as a means of generating and developing popular desire; these are matters best left to experts and subsumed within a broad understanding of the necessities of macro-economic policy to be controlled (one way or another by the State). Mr. Trump likes transactions and a n environment that makes transactional activity easier, except to the extent that it interferes with State interest in their own transactions, which in ideal form are meant to enhance the transactional capacity of the non-State sector. While Mr. Emanuel appears to tend toward the view that markets are instruments of policy directed by experts; Mr. Trump tends toward the view that experts are instruments of policy directed through markets and their actors. One can build worlds in the space that separate the two. And that leaves China to (again) play the role of (necessary) of the bogeyman, useful only as the instrument for confronting a more real and closer to home target. That, then provides the basis of the witches sabbath that appears to be the shape of American politics in this unsettled time, one in which even the century old embrace of expert vanguardism may be ripe for engagement.
