Review – The Party

The Party: The Secret World of China’s Communist Rulers

by Richard McGregor, published 2010

Thus it is obvious that the only visible, tangible government we have is made up of these professed agents or representatives of a secret band of robbers and murderers, who, to cover up, or gloss over, their robberies and murders, have taken to themselves the title of “the people of the United States”; and who, on the pretense of being “the people of the United States,” assert their right to subject to their dominion, and to control and dispose of at their pleasure, all property and persons found in the United States.

~Lysander Spooner, “No Treason, no. 6, The Constitution of No Authority“, 1867

The “secret” at the heart of this book is that the nation of China has been ruled, since 1949, by an unelected confederacy of gangsters calling themselves “The Communist Party of China”, who wield extra-judicial power over Chinese society up to and including superiority over the so-called sovereign government of China. In other words, the Chinese government does not discipline members of the Party, but rather members of the Party discipline members of the Party, and everyone else.

I see three interesting questions raised by this fact, none of which appear to be addressed by the text:

1. How is it that a private “political” organization (ie, mafia) came to control an entire country like China, including its government?
2. If members of the Party are not answerable to the Chinese government or the Chinese people, who are they answerable to (what restraints, if any, are there on their power and why)?
3. If the Party controls everything and is the real source of opportunity in Chinese society, why wouldn’t a rational, ambitious person make it their goal to enter the Party and thus enjoy their rewards?

The first question is not addressed because this is not a work of history as much as it is an exploration of the mechanical functioning of Chinese politics. But the question should interest us nonetheless, because if it has happened in China, it’s possible it could happen somewhere else, or more cynically, that it has happened somewhere else (I’m not talking about the USSR, or Cuba, or North Korea here…) and may be it is happening somewhere else right this moment. If murderous gangs can get control of extremely populous, ancient and fairly homogenous societies as a kind of accident of history, there is nothing to be done about it. But if there is some kind of predictable pattern to this kind of exploitation, there may be a similarly predictable pattern for defending civilization against it or unwinding such a menace once installed.

The second question is not addressed because the book’s focus is really about China narrowly, not China in the context of international political structures. Within the domestic domain, the author suggests that the Party’s control is essentially ironclad. If you can murder tens of millions of people by starvation or as collateral in a kind of cultural war, and continue on in power, you don’t seem to have many internal threats to your power. What is it that seems to get the Party’s panties in a bunch? The risk of failing to impress the outside world with a spectacular 2008 Beijing Olympic Games when revelations about a mass infant poisoning via tainted baby formula come to light. Why doesn’t a market for political control exist within China, but it does seem to exist outside of China? Who is a realistic potential hegemonic external ruler of China in the post-colonial era?

The third question is not addressed because it is taken as given by the author that the Party is an immoral institution and thus no reasonable person would want to participate in it. The people who stand outside the Party, or who are demonstrated as being victims of it, are painted as the good guys, just trying to get by, while the Party members highlighted are discussed in menacing terms, from afar, almost like a kind of wild animal whose motivations do not merit spending time trying to understand. But if your society has been co-opted by a secret band of murderers and thieves, isn’t joining forces with them your best and most rational chance for survival, at least while a domestic market for political control seems non-existent?

And what of our own society, in the West generally and in the United States specifically? It seems like choosing not to be political, to not only avoid participating in politics but to avoid membership in political parties and ambition within their institutional frameworks, seems to be a choice to cede social and even a measure of individual control to those who choose otherwise. Why play the victim? What good is morality when it is a tool of your own undoing?

Of course, a party that everyone is invited to join has no advantage in exploitation, so it must have some meaningful criteria for excluding people and thus ensuring a supply of victims from which it can extract its privileges.