VOLUME IV, CHAPTER 10
Two Present-Day Samples, and the Laws of Failure
Last chapter covered expansion, and the time gap between the centralized great states of East and West. This chapter walks into today, looking at the two most representative present-day samples of centralized authority, and then at the laws by which it fails. Three sections. The first gives an objective account of China's political institutions, which have long been simplified in mainstream Western discourse into a one-party system, when their actual working is democratic centralism plus collective leadership plus multiparty cooperation plus selection from the common people plus seasoning across many provinces, layer upon layer of selection. This book passes no verdict on better or worse, it only describes objectively and lays out both sides, and it also marks the difference between this and a true single-party hereditary family autocracy. The second is about the United States, read with the technique of seeing two sides of one phenomenon: the deep wisdom of the separation of powers, the two-party system, the electoral system, interest groups, campaign money, the revolving door, where each seeming problem, seen from another angle, has its own inner logic, and each strength has its own cost. The third is about why centralized authority fails, drawing from Rome, the Tang, the Ming, the Soviet Union, and present-day cases five common laws: unstable succession, fiscal collapse, factional infighting, ideological hardening, and inner and outer shocks arriving at once. This chapter shows one thing: both present-day systems have their own logic and their own cost, and centralized authority is powerful but not all-powerful, with the verdict left to the reader.
Chapter contents
Section One. China, an objective account of democratic centralism
Section Two. The United States, the deep wisdom of the separation of powers
Section Three. Why centralized authority fails
Credit to the ancestors; the mistakes are mine: Tiger Lyon.