Xi Jinping's Semiotics of Marxism (名实) and the Coding Languages of Knowledge Platforms: Tian Xinming, "Do a good job in philosophy and social sciences as a fundamental principle: the inheritance and development of Marxism by General Secretary Xi Jinping's important expositions on philosophy and social sciences" [田心铭, 做好哲学社会科学工作的根本遵循——习近平总书记关于哲学社会科学重要论述对马克思主义的继承和发展]

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Human grunt at each other in systematic ways.  An individual's grunting is self satisfying. It is especially satisfying if the individual developed a system of grunting that served an internal objective. But if that is the case, grunting would be unnecessary since the individual would have only themselves as both speaker and audience. Grunting becomes a more interesting phenomenon when it is directed to others.  Grunting becomes a system of communication. Communication itself becomes an object, the objectification of which is to develop an identity between the grunt pattern and its object. 

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That process of identification itself requires a number of predicate steps. Among them the consciousness of a thing that is apart form other things, the premises under which an object is identifiable as something apart from others,  One can differentiate between a stone and a leaf on the basis of all sorts of conceptually identifiable distinctions, yet one need not distinguish between stones. Stones are all the same unless there is a further refinement : gold is different from quartz. All these differences acquire significance not in and of themselves  but because of the value invested in their difference.  And then at last one can return to the grunting of an individual now in a community of individuals. The individuals must somehow arrive at a consensus of how they approach the objects around them, how they invest them with qualities and how that relates to the ordering of the world.  As grunting turns to communication, it refines complex systems of values that determine what can be seem how it can be identified and where it can be placed withing systems of principles and premises around which the collective of grunting individuals  can share meanings. To grunt in a way that others understand is to embrace the world view of those to whom one grunts. 

Homer was able to construct (or imagine) a closed form because he had a clear idea of the agricultural and warrior culture of his own day. He knew his world, he knew its laws, causes, and effects. That is why he was able to give it form.. There is, however, another mode of artistic representation, one where we do not know the boundaries o what we wish to portray. . . We cannot provide a definition by essence and so, to be able to talk about it, to make it comprehensible or in some way perceivable, we list its properties. . . . (Humberto Eco, The Infinity of Lists (Alistair McEwen (trans); NY: Rizzoli, 2009), p. 15).

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Cultures tied to the tradition of Abrahamic religions encounter this semiotic reality of signifying the world around the central figure of humanity under the leadership of God (Gen 2:118-19 (Adam naming all of the creatures brought before him by God), and lists.  Lists are found throughout the Bible and provide a detailed description of historical connection, of pedigree, of the passage of time, and of the thing that is listed by reference to the quality the lists chronicle in common (eg, Gen 5:1-32 (the generations separating Adam from Noah and the first destruction of humanity). Guiguzi speaks of Ming  (名)--of naming, of defining accurately, and of drawing distinctions, a concept that itself  was closely though controversially tied to that of shi (实) of actuality, truth, or essence of the thing names (Guiguzi, Guiguzi: China’s First Treatise on Rhetoric: A Critical Translation and Commentary (Hui Wu (trans) (Carbondale: Southern Illinois Universit Press, 2016), p. 156; 60 n. 26.

Consciousness of the ideological foundations of meaning is critical to the role of the priest, the guide, the vanguard, the teacher, or any sub-collective charged with the preservation of orthodoxy. It is the role of the priest as the critical factor in the protection of language-meaning against the power of which Nietzsche  wrote (e.g., Abed Azzam, Nietzsche Versus Paul (Columbia University Press, 2015)). It is this same power that animates--and vindicates--the role of the Leninist vanguard in its struggle to guide the masses toward the establishment of a communist society and thus shape the ideology of language and its instrumental qualities for class struggle (first) and in a Chinese Leninist sense all historical contradictions thereafter) (for an early Soviet text on Marxist semiotics, Valentin N. Voloshinov [Mikhail Bakhtin], Marxism and the Philosophy of Language (Ladislav Matejka & I. R. Titunik (Trans); Harvard University Press 1986 (1928)). 

That this process of conscious semiotics in the service of the vanguard is well understood at least among some advanced intellectual circles in China is underscored by Tian Xinming's quite interesting essay just circulated 5 August 2022:  "Do a good job in philosophy and social sciences as a fundamental principle: the inheritance and development of Marxism by General Secretary Xi Jinping's important expositions on philosophy and social sciences" [田心铭, 做好哲学社会科学工作的根本遵循——习近平总书记关于哲学社会科学重要论述对马克思主义的继承和发展]. Tian attempts to view Marxism through a semiotic lens as the meta rationalizing premise against which human understanding and the organization of human collectives can be understood and evaluated.

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事物的质是其本身所固有的、使它成为该事物而同其他事物区别开来的规定性。“根本标志”所体现的，是一个事物成为该事物的根本特征。坚持“根本标志”，就是坚持事物的根本性质。这一重要论断指明了，马克思主义是当代中国哲学社会科学本身所固有的指导思想、理论基础。一个学科或一种学术体系、话语体系，如果不以马克思主义为指导，不具备这一根本性质、根本标志，就丧失了作为当代中国哲学社会科学之构成部分而存在和发展的资格。[The quality of a thing is the determinacy inherent in itself that distinguishes it from other things. What the "fundamental sign" embodies is that a thing becomes the fundamental characteristic of that thing. To adhere to the "fundamental sign" is to adhere to the fundamental nature of things. This important conclusion points out that Marxism is the guiding ideology and theoretical basis inherent in contemporary Chinese philosophy and social sciences. If a discipline or an academic system or discourse system is not guided by Marxism and does not possess this fundamental nature and symbol, it will lose its qualification to exist and develop as an integral part of contemporary Chinese philosophy and social sciences.] (田心铭, 做好哲学社会科学工作的根本遵循, supra)

And that is the point ascribed to the underlying framing premise of Leninism in its New Era.

哲学社会科学作为上层建筑的一部分，是由一定社会的经济基础决定的。不同社会中哲学社会科学的根本区别，归根到底取决于不同社会形态、社会制度之间的区别。Philosophy and social sciences, as part of the superstructure, are determined by the economic base of a certain society. The fundamental differences between philosophy and social sciences in different societies depend in the final analysis on the differences between different social forms and social systems. [田心铭, 做好哲学社会科学工作的根本遵循, supra)

Tian quotes Xi: "If you do not adhere to the guidance of Marxism, philosophy and social sciences will lose their soul, lose their direction, and ultimately fail to play their due role." (“不坚持以马克思主义为指导，哲学社会科学就会失去灵魂、迷失方向，最终也不能发挥应有作用。”). To that end a theory of fundamental signs (“根本标志”论) is deployed. It's object is to rationalize the value of the lens through which knowledge is organized and extracted from the tangible and intangible world around.

这就要求当代中国哲学社会科学各学科的研究和建设，在充分吸收其他国家哲学社会科学有益成果的同时，决不可失去自己所特有的马克思主义立场、观点、方法，在世界观、历史观、方法论和重大原则问题上必须划清马克思主义与非马克思主义的界限。(This requires that the research and construction of various disciplines of contemporary Chinese philosophy and social sciences, while fully absorbing the beneficial achievements of other countries' philosophy and social sciences, must not lose their own unique Marxist standpoints, viewpoints, and methods. In terms of methodology and major principles, the boundaries between Marxism and non-Marxism must be drawn.) (田心铭, 做好哲学社会科学工作的根本遵循, supra)

It is not the grunting, then, that is critical to collective constructions of knowledge; it is grunting in unison that is key--where the key to the grunting is well managed.  From here it is a direct step to a semiotic theory of knowledge and its organization into academic fields as sub disciplines of Marxism applied to the social contradictions the overcoming of which are the principal duty of the leading social forces organized in the form of a Leninist Party.

 知识和理论是用概念来表达的。概念是反映事物特有属性的思维形态，它以语词的形式表达思想的内容。概念就其内容来说是理论和知识的表达，就其语言形式来说就是话语。一个学科表达其知识和理论的概念，构成了该学科的话语体系。知识、理论和概念的关系，就是学术内容和表达学术内容的话语的关系。一个学科成体系的理论、知识和概念的统一，就是学术体系和话语体系的统一。学术体系和话语体系是不可分割的。学术体系是揭示本学科对象的本质和规律的成体系的理论和知识；话语体系是理论和知识的语词表达，是学术体系的表现形式和语言载体。(Knowledge and theories are expressed in concepts. Concept is a thinking form that reflects the unique attributes of things, and it expresses the content of thoughts in the form of words. Concepts are expressions of theory and knowledge in terms of their content, and discourses in terms of their linguistic form. The concepts of a discipline expressing its knowledge and theories constitute the discourse system of the discipline. The relationship between knowledge, theory, and concepts is the relationship between academic content and the discourse that expresses the academic content. The unity of the theory, knowledge and concept of a discipline is the unity of the academic system and the discourse system. The academic system and the discourse system are inseparable. The academic system is a systematic theory and knowledge that reveals the essence and laws of the subject object; the discourse system is the verbal expression of the theory and knowledge, and the manifestation and language carrier of the academic system.) (田心铭, 做好哲学社会科学工作的根本遵循, supra)

Marxism is thus understood an both endogenous and exogenous to the ordering and disciplining of knowledge--but it is not a mere field of knowledge discipline itself.  In this way, Marxism is object, symbol, and interpretant--it is a thing and its signification. "So, the way that smoke generates or determines an interpretant sign of its object, fire, is by focusing our attention upon the physical connection between smoke and fire." (Peirce’s Theory of Signs, §1.3). 

 指导思想和学术资源是两个不同的问题，既不能将它们截然分开，又不能把二者混同起来。指导思想是一元的，学术资源是多样的。. . . 把马克思主义作为学术资源，不是替代或否定它作为指导思想的地位，不是把指导思想降低为学术资源，而是在坚持指导思想的同时，又把它作为最重要的学术资源。[Guiding ideology and academic resources are two different issues, which can neither be completely separated nor confused. The guiding ideology is unified, and the academic resources are diverse. . . . Taking Marxism as an academic resource is not to replace or deny its status as a guiding ideology, nor to reduce the guiding ideology to an academic resource, but to regard it as the most important academic resource while adhering to the guiding ideology.] (田心铭, 做好哲学社会科学工作的根本遵循, supra)

It is also the object within which signification is possible and within which objectification, signification and interpretation may occur. It is only within the self-reflexive framework of New Era Marxism, Tian suggests, that the academic disciplines may function , under the guidance of the vanguard tasked with the proper cultivation of the system of knowledge itself.  The object here is to provide a semiotic approach to the core Leninist concept of Marxism as a guiding ideology. "方法成为贯穿整个学科的灵魂。[Method becomes the soul of the whole discipline.] (田心铭, 做好哲学社会科学工作的根本遵循, supra). Tian then bends a number of excerpts from the speeches and remarks of Xi Jinping to underline and support this thesis. 

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At its base, one encounters here a semiotics of objectification. It is the object--Marxism--that is the central element on which knowledge may be properly built, curated, and deployed.  Objectification here is not to be understood in the sense of reducing an abstraction to an incarnation.  Rather, the better analogy is to an interactive platform--where the self-reflexive conceptual universe of Marxism, as coded by the leading forces political vanguard, is itself the comprehensive platform within which knowledge can be produced and consumed. That platform, of course, may be connected to others--those for example of liberal democratic or theocratic knowledge universes.  But the platforms are interactive, not fused, and the quality of knowledge is not transposable without conversion to the language of the operating system that drives each platform.  Marxism is the platform, as well as the coding language of that platform. It is the programming language designed not to communicate to computers but to the social actors who constitute its users and producers.  What is produced by other coding systems is unusable within the Marxist platform unless it is translated--the way that one computer language may require translation for use on a platform run on a different language. That language is not merely the communication or description, but the character of the knowledge universe itself, its communicative and symbolic significance, and its digestibility by consumers.  Here one moves from the semiotics of closed systems to the semiotics of the catalogue (Humberto Eco, The Infinity of Lists, supra) and an ordering that in the form of the list which is the detritus of platform activity, serves to give it shape, that is to define and contain it by the recognition of characteristics worth listing.

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Tian, effectively, suggests the increasingly comprehensive nature of Chinese Leninist detachment from systems with which until 2013 or so, it appears to converge. This is a semiotics of difference, to be sure; but also one of communicative and coding variation that is meant to reflect the tastes and core premises on which communicative platforms are constructed and operate.  It lastly suggests that such platforms are unlikely to be compatible any time soon. The semiotics of Marxism, then, is also one not merely of detachment, but of necessary incomprehensibility between systems without a class of well regulated (and monitored) translators. Where globalization posited a movement toward a singular platforms (with many sub-platforms); New Era Leninism suggests--with Marxism as the coding language. The issue of translation, of course, remains.  And where translation becomes a key element of platform utility--as it must be in the production of knowledge--the primary challenge for the coding language as the incarnation and instrumentalization of ideology, translation (inbound and projected outward to other platform-coding-knowledge/language systems), becomes the primary problem for a communicative theory of Marxism (or liberal democracy for that matter).

The text of the essay follows in the original and a crude English translation.

Frank Ravitch and Larry Catá Backer discuss Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, 597 US -- (No. 19–1392, June 24, 2022); the Implications for Religion Clause Jurisprudence.

 

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 Frank S. Ravitch and I  published the 4th Edition to our casebook, Law and Religion: Cases and Materials (West Academic, 2021; ISBN 978-1-64708-764-7) in the summer of 2021. The Preface nicely describes our aims for the book:

This book focuses on Law and Religion. The book covers three general topics: 1) Church/State Law (issues arising under the First Amendment to the United States Constitution and statutes such as the Religious Freedom Restoration Act); 2) Religious Law (the role and substance of law in various religious traditions); and 3) Comparative Law and Religion (the law relating to religious freedom in other countries). Most books in this field have little or no material on the latter two topics. The bulk of this book is devoted to First Amendment Law, but the book also provides an overview of Jewish Law (Halakha), Islamic Law (Shari’ah), Buddhist conceptions of law, Catholic Canon Law, Protestant conceptions of law, and Hindu law as well as significant background on comparative Law and Religion. The discussion of First Amendment law integrates cases, questions and narrative to provide an in-depth understanding of the Religion Clauses of the United States Constitution.

Each topic in this book begins with a brief narrative discussion of the topic, followed by relevant cases and articles, and finally notes and questions. The goal of the narrative is to provide students with context (the forest) so that they can grapple with the many complex issues that are raised in the cases and articles (the trees). The sections on religious law and comparative law will follow a similar format.

We have tried to add a comparative law element to the study of the jurisprudence of religious liberties in the United States by tying that study to the broader global conversations and currents in the development of legal frameworks for the protection of religious liberty. We hope all of this can be accomplished in ways that are useful for law students not just in the US (though US students are our principal audience) but elsewhere as well. 

To enrich the casebook materials Frank and I have started producing a series of video discussions of key cases from the jurisprudence. We hope students and faculty may find the discussions of some use as they consider the casebook materials or as a springboard to deeper discussion of themes and complications raised in the cases.   These may be used by faculty and students to enrich their consideration of the casebook materials or as a springboard to deeper discussion of themes and complications raised in the cases.  

We discuss the pedagogy of the casebook here: Frank S. Ravitch and Larry Catá Backer Talk Pedagogy and Approach as they Introduce the 4th Edition to their Casebook, Law and Religion: Cases and Materials (West Academic, 2021)

 To date we have videos discussing the following cases: 

1.  Fulton v. City of Philadelphia, 593 U.S. -- (2021)

2. Everson v. Board of Education of Ewing Tp., 330 U.S. 1 (1947)

3. Engle v. Vitale, 370 US 421 (1962), and Sch Dist Abington Twnshp v. Schempp, 374 US 203 (1963).

4.  Lee v. Weisman, 505 U.S. 577 (1992).

5.  Student Initiated Prayer and Moment of Silence Cases (Santa Fe Independent School Dist. v. Doe, 530 US 290 (2000); Wallace v. Jaffree, 472 US 38 (1985).

6.  Creationism, Intelligent Design, and Evolution; Reading Edwards v. Aguillard 482 US 578 (1987) and Kitzmiller v. Dover Area Sch. Dist, 400 F.Supp.2d 707 (2005).

7.  Ceremonial Deism, the Role of Custom and Tradition, Marsh v. Chambers, 463 U.S. 783 (1983), and Town of Greece v. Galloway, 572 U.S. 565 (2014).

8.  Free Exercise, Establishment and the Mandatory Funding of Religious Education, Carson v. Makin, 597 U.S. --- (No. 20–1088; June 21, 2022)

9.  Kennedy v. Bremerton School District, 597 U.S. ___ (No. 21-41827 June 2022): Murder in the Cathedral--The Lemon Test is Dead, Establishment Reduced to Spectre; Long Live Free Exercise as a Jurisprudence of History (27 June 2022).

10.  Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, 597 US  -- (No. 19–1392, . June 24, 2022): The Religion Clause Implications.

The 2021-2022 Term of the Supreme Court produced three important Religion Clause decisions. We have discussed two of them:   Carson v. Makin, 597 U.S. --- (No. 20–1088; June 21, 2022); and Kennedy v. Bremerton School District, 597 U.S. ___ (No. 21-41827 June 2022). For this conversation we focus on Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, 597 US  -- (No. 19–1392,  June 24, 2022).  

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At first blush, the decision might appear to be an odd choice for discussion. The case was argued primarily on the basis of the transformation of federalism principles, on the new approaches to the constitutionalization of so called unenumerated rights in the federal constitution, and on the role and mechanics of stare decisis.  

Nonetheless the Dobbs decision carries with it consequences that are already connecting it, its jurisprudence, and the principles that may be derived form both, into the heart of emerging Religion Clause jurisprudence. Within weeks of the decision, "Seven clergy members have filed five lawsuits in Florida contending that the state’s abortion restrictions burden their religious beliefs, speech and conduct." (Clergy members contend Florida abortion law violates their religious freedom; 5 suits are filed).  That implicates the emerging jurisprudence of Free Exercise ion two levels.  One touches on the constitutional transformation of Free Exercise (in cases like Kennedy v. Bremerton Sch. Dist 2022) and its reinterpretation of Lukumi Babaluaye and its progeny.  The second touches on the application of the sometimes stricter Free Exercise protections in state religious freedom restoration acts. For example, Florida's Religious Freedom Restoration Act  provides that the state “shall not substantially burden a person’s exercise of religion, even if the burden results from a rule of general applicability,” absent a showing by the state that the challenged application of the law law furthers a compelling government interest and is the least restrictive means of furthering that interest. Here the jurisprudence will be complicated by the intersections of interest.  But what Kennedy teaches us is that the jurisprudence will no longer be centered on science but on religion. 

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Related to this intimate connection between Dobbs and emerging Free Exercise jurisprudence is its connection to the Establishment Clause and its limitations.  While Dobbs delegates authority over the development of termination rights to states, that delegation must be undertaken in the shadow of the limits of the Establishment Clause--both with respect to the limits of accommodation and the floor of toleration built into the Clause.  That may become a critical consideration  where state legislative measures are unavoidably tied to the furthering of one particular religious perspective.  One is not arguing the science here but its religious interpretation. Here Carson v. Makin may suggest the possibility of challenge to legislation that is clearly based on the interpretive ideologies of a specific group of sects in the face of the expanding application of principles of neutrality in the construction of state burdens and privileges.  Further development of neutrality principles are therefore also unavoidable, At its base will be the tug of war between principles of personhood (for example in the Georgia statute) and individual autonomy.  

The implications, of course, run much deeper.  Consider this an invitation to delve more deeply into the possibilities.  Whatever direction the jurisprudence takes, it is clear that it will be undertaken to a large extent  with the language of religion and in the shadow of the Religion Clauses.

The Video recording of  this conversation may be accessed HERE.

 It is also available on the Coalition for Peace & Ethics YouTube Channel HERE.

The Contest for Discursive Supremacy With the Liberal Democratic Masses: Nancy Pelosi (Speaker of the US House of Representatives) Versus Qin Gang (Chinese Ambassador to the United States)

 

 The contest for the control of the discourse about Speaker of the US House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi's visit to Taiwan rages--in the liberal democratic West.  It rages, as well, under the guidance and leadership of its leading press organs. These organs, of course, are closely tied to the complex economic structures of ownership within which they are nestled. To some extent, then decisions about amplification of voices, narrative centering, and legitimacy nudging reflects as much the insertion of these press elements into the discourse itself rather than as agents of reporting. It also serves their self interest, augmenting their role as gatekeepers and curators of information and its interpretation for the (sometimes educated) masses whose management is an essential feature of liberal democracy as practices in the United States. A sign of the importance of their role is the extent to which political figures seek to use and be used by such press apparatus to advance their agendas, make their cases, or curry favor with this or that group--including the relatively small and quite self reflexive collective clique of people who manage the great US press organs.  The role of the press, thus understood, is indeed, critical to the proper functioning of the complicated and diffused power systems of liberal democracy.

This is well known. 

It is well known enough for foreigners to seek to use the press as an outlet for participation in national debates. The efforts, of course, are meant to make their case, or to make the case for their vanguards, with the American people--and others in the liberals democratic camp.  At worst, it reflects the sort of direct projection of foreign views that in a Marxist Leninist context might be evidence of taboo black hand (黑手) foreign interference in international national affairs . But Americans are very broad minded about this--as long as one avoids too close an association with the voting process or elections.  The line is fairly murky though; clearer, in China than in the US.

Still, the temptation--for both foreigners, leading domestic political figures, and the Washington Post is too great to resist. And the press provides a well developed field on which the war, already commenced, may be fought on its discursive front lines.

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And thus the great debate on exhibit in the discursive Colosseum that is the Washington Post between Nancy Pelosi (Why I’m leading a congressional delegation to Taiwan (2 August 2022)) and the response by Qin Gang, Chinese Ambassador to the US: Why China Objects to Pelosi's Visit to Taiwan (4 August 2022)). Together they suggest the great gulf that now divides the two imperial lifeworlds, a gap that makes it virtually impossible to communicate--if only because the definitions of a common vocabulary now are given sometimes quite different meanings and emphasis depending on whether they are used by the US or the Chinese side--a strategically useful set of incomprehensibility built into a common language. The object, of course is internal, language drift reflects the imperatives of growing ideological divides that are reflected in language and word meaning. But it is also instrumental--it is much easier to manage opinion if one can appeal to an opponent's masses using common language but in an uncommon way. If done well, even the most sophisticated cadres of the Washington Post and their political-class circle, will find it difficult to disentangle and can themselves be more amendable to directed curation. In this case, the temptation to evidence one's ignorance and strong sense of self was irresistible to the good people at the Post: The Post's View: Pelosi should go to Taiwan — when the time is right.  

One should be interested in the views of leading press organs--if only because they are important instruments of popular mobilization.  More important, though, are the opinions of leading figures in what is shaping up to the agreement by the United States and China that NOW is the time to more openly reshape the fundamental relationship between the imperial structures of the US and China, and that Taiwan will serve nicely as the inflection point for this pivot into the new era of pose-global empire and imperial redrawing of the global map. 

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Make no mistake, one ought not to read with view for the truth or correctness of what is put in their respective text. Their factual verities are as solid as sand in the desert on a windy day; even as the ideological foundation on which this sand blows provides much more solid footing. That is hardly the point of either Mrs. Pelosi's argument, or Mr. Qin's reply.  Instead it is the atmospherics and discursive significations that make these short statements worth the read. Thus, their factual verities are useful only as a means to the identification of taxonomies of meaning and their underlying ideology--a grimoire of incantations in the form of rationalized systems of interpretation as applied ideology. These interpretive statements proffered up for consumption as fact vest a specific signification of key events that provide much richer clues about the distance between empires, their intentions, and the ideological chasm that may make any sort of resolution (other than status quo) impossible. Both statements are rich in that way.

In that context, sovereignty stands out.  One can understand Chinese frustrations--having spent the greater part of almost a century and a half making up for the decay and political failings of the imperial machinery in its twilight on the basis of 19th and early 20th century notions of hyper sovereignty, their history in that respect is thwarted precisely because much of the rest of the world has now moved on. The basis of their sovereign claims are strong--viewed from the vantage point of 1943. But in a world that has been transformed at the international level because of the institutions crafted after 1945, all of the ideology either becomes meaningless to the rest of the world or threatening to the post-global world order in which sovereignty has been fractured, divided and exercised in new and transnational ways. The Chinese will find this hard going.  That lesson may be learned in the Taiwan crisis; more likely in after action reports about challenges to the Belt and Road project. At the same time one can understand US frustration as well. 

The Americans find themselves on the defensive with respect to a system they appear incapable of making work in their own heartland. And their inaction in the face of direct and indirect challenges to what has been a clear ideological victory in the early 1990s, has now reduced the Anglo-European-US vision of an internationalized order grounded in free movement and an increasingly legalized system of human (and sustainability) rights (the "the rules-based international order" highlighted in the G7 statement), to a paridy of itself. That, compounded with debilitating internecine warfare (on personal, political. ideological, and cultural grounds) of its own entrenched nomenklatura and political elites (in the organs of public power, economic institutions and among the intelligentsia) have produced the pathetic spectacle of the necessity for the Speaker of the US House of Representatives to take the decisive action that neither recent Democratic nor Republican Administrations have been able to muster with some modicum of national solidarity. 

The Americans have lost their way in the present as much as the Chinese have gotten lost in the ideology of their recent history. That sense of being lost, of being swallowed up by forces now beyond singular control, that is what these interventions mirror back to us.  And that intensifies the danger of reckless adventurism, and miscalculation far more than any sort of clearheaded thinking.  The decisions have been taken; the trajectories are increasingly hard to modify; and their consequences will extend well beyond an island whose sovereignty has been transferred through the legitimating (for a long time) process of colonization, de-indigenization, and military victory by those who then had the power to make good on those acts and decisions (here, here, here, here, here).

 

On the G7 Foreign Ministers’ "Statement on Preserving Peace and Stability Across the Taiwan Strait"

 

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Mrs. Pelosi's visit to Taiwan produced the expected theatrics. It comes in two forms. The first is military: war games and maneuvers inching closer and closer to Taiwanese territory (here). The second was to impose US style targeted sanctions and diplomatic ghosting on misbehaving states (see here ("China cancelled a meeting between Wang and his Japanese counterpart Yoshimasa Hayashi on the sidelines of ASEAN events in Cambodia,")).

Liberal Democracy, though, has learned a lesson or two of united front politics. And so in the wake of Mrs. Pelosi's Taiwan visit, the G7 issued the following ministerial statement--to China: 

The text of the following statement was released by the G7 foreign ministers of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States of America, and the High Representative of the European Union.

Begin Text:

We, the G7 Foreign Ministers of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, the United States of America, and the High Representative of the European Union, reaffirm our shared commitment to maintaining the rules-based international order, peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait and beyond.

We are concerned by recent and announced threatening actions by the People’s Republic of China (PRC), particularly live-fire exercises and economic coercion, which risk unnecessary escalation. There is no justification to use a visit as pretext for aggressive military activity in the Taiwan Strait. It is normal and routine for legislators from our countries to travel internationally. The PRC’s escalatory response risks increasing tensions and destabilizing the region.

We call on the PRC not to unilaterally change the status quo by force in the region, and to resolve cross-Strait differences by peaceful means. There is no change in the respective one China policies, where applicable, and basic positions on Taiwan of the G7 members.

We reiterate our shared and steadfast commitment to maintaining peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait and encourage all parties to remain calm, exercise restraint, act with transparency, and maintain open lines of communication to prevent misunderstanding.

End Text (G7 Statement).

 The Ministerial Statement was interesting for a number of reasons.  First it provides a clever exercise in using Chinese rhetorical tropes now turned against China.  The references  to avoidance of changing the status quo, of resolution by peaceful means echo some of the Chinese discursive tropes in defining their position in the Russo-Ukrainian war. Second, it is another vehicle for elaborating and projecting the discursive trope of the "rules-based international order" as the signature ideological anthem of the liberal democratic order, one which has become the "go to" slogan of the Americans since the spectacular meeting between the Americans and Chinese in Anchorage in 2021 (see here). Third, it appears that the continued commitment to a one China policy does not necessarily mean what the Chinese think it means.  Here the roles of China and the international community are reversed compared to Hong Kong. 

That change in polarity also changes the dynamics in which a conversation about a "rules based international order" can become one about  a set of functionally differentiated divisions of sovereign rights. While Chinese control was decisive in  the extension of classical unitary sovereignty in Hong Kong; this was a control conceded by all parties.  In Taiwan, that concession is much more ambiguous; and tentative; and if it was less so in 1972, it has now morphed  into a significant movement away from classical to functionally differentiated (ie "rules based international ordering") sovereignty. That, more than anything else is likely extremely infuriating to the Chinese, because it deviates from the Hong Kong approach and because it remains unfinished business from the as yet complete victory of the Communist revolutionary vanguard in 1949.It is also bound up in the narrative of national resurrection (rejuvenation)--to pick up from that moment before the decline of the late Qing reduced China to  a weak power. To that end the only possible road leads straight back to the 1840s and the rise of the vision of unitary sovereignty that climaxed for the rest of the world in 1945.

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi rejected their statement, and chided them for ignoring the provocation that had come from the U.S. side. "It groundlessly criticises China for taking such measures, which are reasonable and legitimate steps to safeguard its sovereignty and territorial integrity," Wang said in a statement issued by his ministry.  "From where have they received such a prerogative? Who has given them such qualification to? To shield the infringer of rights and to accuse their defenders - how inexplicable!" The G7 statement had aroused "great indignation" among the Chinese people, he said. "Today's China is no longer the China of the 19th century. History should not repeat itself, and it will never repeat itself!" (China scolds G7 foreign ministers over Taiwan statement)

And yet the move toward functionally differentiated sovereignty remains both a work in progress and carries with it some dangers if turned back on its authors and their own sovereign arrangements.  It suggests limits to national aspirations that may bite as hard on the liberal democratic side (eg indigenous peoples) as it does on the Marxist Leninist side (national reunification narratives). On the other hand, production based global empire  can more easiy absorb variation in sovereignty better than its predecessors.  There may be nothing particularly odd within the ideology of internationalism inherent from the construction of the post 1945 international system, of shared sovereignty, of a separation between territorial and governance sovereignty, and of the creation of territories  whose governance autonomy is vested in a notion of the superior sovereign rights of a "rules-based international order." It is to the fleshing to of that ordering that will be the great task of the emerging supra-national orders--Marxist Leninist and liberal democratic, in the new era. Both sides have now taken their discursive positions; both are committed to their semiotic stance; both are becoming increasingly inflexible as the space for maneuver is deliberately reduced. At the end of what is coming is great change--the pathways there, however, are not yet clear.

The Führerprinzip of International Relations: Transcript of Speaker Nancy Pelosi Opening Remarks at Bilateral Meeting with Vice President of the Legislative Yuan of Taiwan and the Chinese Foreign Ministry Statement in Response

 

Pix Credit HERE

 Human Beings are really quite simple creatures. They tend to understand things only in relation to themselves.  Unless it is possible to personalize events, the events themselves remain incomprehensible, Perhaps that s why people still tend to envision the divine in their own image.

Perhaps that is why the constant need for the personification of great institutional or cultural movements remains appealing.  Perhaps as well, the persistence in the hope-belief that there is a core of individuals who personify the great abstract forces tat drive  human events.  The Führerprinzip of history--unless one can incarnate large historical forces into a person whose person hood is subsumed within a larger institutional body, then those large forces either do not exist or exist in a state of irrational chaos.

It is in this context that the leaders of large institution can be best understood as avatars of the more abstracted objects that they incarnate rather than represent. The difference is important--representation keeps the representative and the represented separate, the connection is exogenous; incarnation fuses the two so that the body of the person and that of the represented become inseparable--the abstracted institution becomes identified with the body  of those who bear its authority. The consequences can at times be dramatic--especially where collectives freely embrace this reconstitution of the body of a leader as the essence of the institution. 

The visit by the US Speaker of the House of Representatives to Taiwan presents one such important example of the type. For reasons that remain obscure, the ruling classes of China and the United States have chosen to invest the visit of Mrs. Pelosi with the significance of a medieval or feudal epic.  She--and her counterpart leadership core in China--now personify both nations, their peoples, and their respective wills, responsibilities, ideologies, and duties.  Their actions become the theater on the stages of which political tragedy may be played out.

That, in any case, is the way that the apparatus of both states have chosen to interpret Mrs. Pelosi's visit: a challenge, an incarnation of political will, an opportunity, and an expression of the quickly changing relative power of two empires played out against some unfinished  business left over from the Chinese Civil War and the quite changeable status of sovereign authority in Taiwan.  That, certainly, is how the Chinese vanguard has chosen to play this--as an intensification of what had been an irritant a generation ago, now willed into a moment of existential challenge. In some sense the same applies to the calculus of the US vanguard--though the calculus is more complicated because of the factionalized and functionally differentiated diffusion of power in that system within a broad and loosely connected governing collective. 

And so, what might have been treated as a matter-of-fact visit that underlines continued tension in the relationship between the US and China, within a key territory in which the widening gap between Marxist Leninist and liberal democratic  perspectives on sovereignty, international law, and self determination are refined, has become a contest over the exercise of power to impose one or the other position. Hong Kong in 2019-2020 might be now better understood as a dress rehearsal for what is happening in Taiwan today. And the victory of China in Hing Kong has provided their vanguard with the sense that something like that can be made to apply to Taiwan as well.  The international community which lost heavily in Hong Kong sees Taiwan in very different terms--as the territory in which it is possible to develop a more sophisticated implementation of international sovereign operation of territories  the ultimate political sovereignty of which is conceded. For the liberal democratic camp, Taiwan can remain formally a part of China, but that doesn't even begin to answer the question about the exercise of operational authority.  Formal territorial sovereignty can be detached from authority to govern or interfere. That follows where one accepts the principle that national sovereignty and governmental control are not identical. This position failed in the context of Hong Kong (see my discussion here, and here) but the idea survives.  And Taiwan might well prove to be a better context in which it can be successfully implemented.  

In their own crude ways, the avatars for the American and Chinese positions, self-consciously or not, in the drama of Mrs. Pelosi's visit to Taiwan, have brought this conversation back to center stage. Middling bureaucrats, academics, and press organs prefer to stoke its more lurid elements: will this bring the US and China closer to war? Will China invade Taiwan? How will this affect relations between the two states? In what ways will China revenge itself for its own self generated loss of ace? and the like. All very interesting, but beside the point.  Here one encounters the The Führerprinzip of international relations better considered through three different lenses--detachment, self-reflexive alliance and refinement of ideological difference as the boundaries of empire.

1. Detachment. One would have to be substantially clueless not to consider the core implications of this little blow up. It follows a long term trend that merely accelerated after 2013-2016 and the broadened during the pandemic.  It isn't that these empires are isolating--rather they are no longer looking to converge. That now shows up in a number of different ways--trade wars and economic disagreement as a cover for reshaping supply chains and building dual circulation economies; networks of support with territorial annexation at the peripheries of empire (the Russo-Ukrainian war an important marker); and the sharpening if ideological difference then manifested in all aspects of social, political, and cultural life.   An important element of this the contest over peripheral territories that are claimed by distinctive ideologies of sovereignty. That is Taiwan. For China the Hong Kong solution is the only one on the table; for the international community functionally differentiated sovereignty is the only way to reconcile the territorial claims of China and the ideological claims of the global systems of law-norms.

Pix credit here

2. Self-Reflexive Alliance. It follows that one must read Taiwan, and this visit, in the shadow of the larger context of the Russo-Ukrainian War. In one sense it serves as an interesting disruptive projection of countermove designed to destabilize the Asian front of that war. In another, it helps set the stage for a potential "bargain" with the Russians to avoid formal partition but deliver effective control to Russia under an internationally supervised mandate. Or it is just the reconstitution of the East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere in its liberal democratic model and a means of raising the risk-price of Chinese actions to fulfill territorial ambitions in Taiwan and within the 9-Dash line. Mrs. Pelosi's visit, then, may serve as an interesting move on the Asian front of the Russo-Ukrainian War. It underlines a counter thrust to the years of efforts by the Chinese to reduce or eliminate Taiwan's presence on the international stage by reducing the number of states that recognize Taiwan and by ensuring that it is permitted only a peripheral presence in international organizations. It and the Chinese response may be as important for its internal politics as for the drama of its international relations effects. The visit merely symbolizes what has already been occurring on the American side with legislation that is meant to detach American supply chains and markets from product or investment sources in ideologically sensitive areas in China, even as China effectively attempts something similar through its control of its internal markets and its borders as against disfavored states, their goods, and individuals.

3. Refinement of ideological difference. The borders of pre-globalization empire was territory; post global empire marks its borders by ideology. That is what is on offer--the Chinese "prosperity and stability model against the liberal democratic rights model of the US. Both Mrs. Pelosi's remarks and the response of the Chinese Foreign Ministry are redolent with the aromas of these ideological divisions.  As Mrs. Pelosi concluded in her remarks: "But our visit was about human rights, was about unfair trade practices, and it was about security issues of technology, dangerous technologies being transferred to rogue countries to countries of concern.  So our – over the years, it's always been about security, economy and governance." To which the Chinese Foreign Ministry must respond: "The United States, for its part, has been attempting to use Taiwan to contain China. It constantly distorts, obscures and hollows out the one-China principle, steps up its official exchanges with Taiwan, and emboldens "Taiwan independence" separatist activities. These moves, like playing with fire, are extremely dangerous. Those who play with fire will perish by it." A position for which reunification along traditional lines is the only solution. 

Pix Credit here

 It is, of course, too late for compromise. It is also far too late to  hope for the return to an era of convergence.  It is as well long past when one could pretend that globalization has not been transforming into the mechanism for the construction of new empires of mutual dependence and solidarity. What remains to be sorted are the peripheries--and the means by which the core of empire will be tempted to use its dependencies to weaken its rivals (the Russian situation) or to institutionalize a more rational system for inter-imperial relations suitable to the times. Of course, Chinese military drills might also embolden the Quad to more energetically navigate within the 9 Dash Line area and to more aggressively patrol territories held by Japan and claimed by China.

The Chinese talk about playing with fire (玩火必自焚 (When you play with fire you will get burned). They are right. But fire has no ideology and it does not favor either party.  The US may be playing with fire in Taiwan, but China lit that conflagration with its adventurism (arguably in a tenuous relation with its own basic political line) in its role in the Russo-Ukrainian war. What this is not about is either Mrs. Pelosi and her team of visitors or the Chinese core of leadership--the avatars through which these actions are manifested. Indeed, whether to not China invades Taiwan will not change but perhaps accelerate and sharpen the three trends identified here. It is not clear that the advantage, at the moment, is worth the cost especially as measured in the lives of those who will serve as payment for the decisions of those who face no similar danger.

 Decide for yourselves. The Transcript of Speaker Nancy Pelosi Opening Remarks at Bilateral Meeting with Vice President of the Legislative Yuan of Taiwan Tsai Chi-chang and the Statement by China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Pelosi's visit to Taiwan follow.

 

From the ASCE Blog: Luis Luis on "Cuba: Handling of the Dollar Crunch"

 

 

The Association for the Study of the Cuba Economy (ASCE) is a non-profit, non-political organization that pursues the study of Cuba in a broad sense, with particular emphasis on the financial, economic, social, legal and environmental aspects of Cuba today and its process of transition and reforms. Its blog presents original contributions on the Cuban economy and society.  These essays remind us both of the challenges to normalization, and the future difficulties of reform as Cuba considers the extent to which it means to plug back into the global economy.

  There is a new article on ASCE Blog, "Cuba: Handling of the Dollar Crunch". A summary follows:

Cuba’s external liquidity crisis continues as data shows net international bank assets became negative in 2021. At the same time commercial lenders and official institutions including Chinese entities are cutting credit lines to the island. The government attempts to manage the crisis by sequestering dollar flows from remittances and Cuban doctors rather than by effective measures that boost international competitiveness and make Cuba attractive to foreign capital. Cuba is a high-risk place for foreigners to lend and invest. There is no evidence that the Cuban communist party is ready to move towards a necessary broad liberalization of the economy.

The Essay follows below

 

Thirty Second Annual Meeting of ASCE: “Cuba: What is Happening and Cuba and the Environment” --Tentative Program

 

 

 

The Thirty Second Annual Meeting of ASCE:  “Cuba:  What is Happening and Cuba and the Environment” will be held in person at Florida International University in Miami, Florida, September 15-17, 2022. 

 

Please go to ascecuba.org to register for the conference (click in the membership tab).  Rooms has been reserved at the Nuvo Suites Hotel at the discount rate of $119 until 30 days before the start of the conference.  The Nuvo Suites are close to FIU.  Instructions to reserve the hotel are also in ascecuba.org.

 

The preliminary program for the Conference follows: