Do not give away all your money, then become a poor borrower. China has been growing extremely rapidly for a long time, but an important shift in its growth pattern occurred at the time of global financial crisis. During the six years up to 2007, China’s gross domestic product (GDP) grew at an average rate of 11 percent, with investment equaling 41.5 percent of GDP. The current account surplus was rising in this period, reaching over 10 percent of GDP. In 2023, China’s GDP is 5.3 percent. Beijing has unveiled a raft of measures, including more public works spending, interest rate cuts, property easing and efforts to shore up the private sector, after growth momentum in the World’s second-largest economy dropped. The government’s ability to spur growth has been hamstrung by fears over debt risks and a fragile yuan. These and other characteristics of Chinese communism, however, can be properly understood only if we look at Chinese communism as a whole, and then compare it with the Soviet Russian system. What is characteristic, first of all, of the Chinese revolution, is the fact that it is primarily a peasant revolution, and not a workers’ revolution. It has been often remarked that this very fact alone shows that it is not a revolution in the Marxist sense. The Chinese leaders had a tough job to find the theoretical formula to bridge this obvious contradiction, and there is no need here to follow the fine points of their argument. The revolution followed an increasing course of collectivization in the agrarian sector, which in 1958 culminated in the Constitution of the Communes. #RandolphHarris 1 of 18
In order to appreciate China’s agricultural problem one has to consider the fact that while the United States of America has at least 600,000 square miles of land under cultivation, with a population of 325,000,000, China has only 425,000 square miles of cultivated land with a population of about 1.1 trillion. However, while there is little prospect of increasing this area to any considerable extent, there is a possibility of increasing the production of food by means of irrigation and fertilization, which would add minerals to the soil. (One must note here what could be done here if part of America’s surplus food, for the storage of which we pay more than the cost of our entire economic assistance from Asia, could be given to China on terms of inexpensive and long-term credits.) Aside from the insufficient arable land, China suffers from her primitive agricultural techniques. This can be seen most clearly from the following figures: in the United States of America it takes 1.2 man-days to cultivate and harvest an acre of wheat, while it China it takes 26 man-days. It seems that in the first Five Year Plan, collectivization did not do ore than increase the annual output by 2.65 percent, which is little more than the population increase of 2.2 percent. (The official Chinese statistic claim 5.7 percent in output.) The relative smallness of China’s agricultural base is still more aggravated by the fact that China exports a considerable amount of foodstuffs to pay for her industrialization. This results in a very poor diet for her peasants. #RandolphHarris 2 of 18
However, there seems to be a reason to assume that China can obtain a much better food supply for her peasants once her industrial output permits her to produce tractors, fertilizers, and irrigation facilities, and to buy foodstuffs from other parts of the World, especially from Southeast Asia. Having this in view the Chinese government has put the whole emphasis on the industrialization of the country. So far, even if one does not fully accept the Chinese figures, the results of the process of industrialization are quite impressive. A recent Western estimate of China’s gross national product for 2023, as stated above is 5.3 percent, their economy is valued at $17.73 trillion USD, and in 2022 China accounted for 19 percent of global output. If one compares them with the rate of growth in other Asiatic countries, these figures are all the more impressive. The Indian GDP for 2023 is 6.4 percent, and the economy is valued at $3.18 trillion. If this development continues in the same fashion, it hardly needs to be emphasized that the Chinese example will prove to be so attractive for India and other developing countries that their population may become willing to pay the price of regimentation and loss of freedom in exchange for economic improvement, hope, and the satisfaction of national pride. It is interesting to compare the Chinese and the Indian figures with those of Japan, which is 1.03 percent GDP, while her economy is valued at $4.23 trillion. The performance of the Japanese indicates that it is possible for a non-Communist country to make rapid economic progress without resorting to totalitarian methods, but Japan is no longer an underdeveloped country, and it is in comparison with other nations around the World that Communist China’s rate of growth takes on a particular significance. #RandolphHarris 3 of 18
Closely related to China’s industrial progress is, of course, the growth of her military strength. Needless to say that China is not lacking in manpower, and for that matter, in a disciplined one, instilled with national pride and fanaticism. However, in addition China can increasingly produce her own military equipment. Estimates are of course quite unreliable on this score, but China has been able to manufacture her own atomic and thermonuclear weapons. The latest assessment from the Defense Department said China had increased its arsenal of operational nuclear warheads from an estimated 400 in 2021 to more than 500 as of May of 2023. The most important point for American foreign policy is, not only to understand the nature of the Chinese Communist regime, but to appreciate its differences with Russia and the conflicts between the two regimes which follow from these differences. Until not so long ago, Soviet Russia and Communist China were treated as if they were twins. (This kind of approach is still to be found in the press and in many utterances of the less informed politicians.) What is deceptive about the relations between the Soviet Union and China is the fact that they have the same ideological system and a political alliance. For those who can not see the differences between ideologies and facts, this means that the two systems are more or less identical. The truth is, however, that the reality of the two systems is radically different in spite of their ideological similarity. The Soviet Union has changes from a revolutionary workers’ and peasants’ state to a politically conservative industrial managerialism. #RandolphHarris 4 of 18
Soviet Russia is the last of the great European states arriving at a full industrialization, and is in the process of becoming one of the richest most powerful “have” states in the World. Its ideology is still that of revolution, Marxism, et cetera, but this ideology is increasingly wearing thin, as far as its effective influence on the minds and hearts of people is concerned. The ideology of a society with equality, brotherliness, and classlessness, of the withering away of the state, is more and more in contrast to the reality of a society built along rigid class differences. Communist China, as of today, is one of the “have” nations so much so that the United States of America is now borrowing from China. And as the United States of America continues to send billions of dollars to other developing nations, they are also putting them in the position to become the next China and compete with America for World supremacy, as the American standard of living declines. China is awakening under the leadership of gifted, resolute, and uncorrupt men, the very same men who started and won the revolution. They are nationalistic, proud, and sensitive to any kind of slight from the West. They have decided to transform China into a powerful industrialized state, and to become one of the leading powers in the World. There is (so far) little corruption. #RandolphHarris 5 of 18
The Chinese leaders have a concept of communism which is in radical opposition to that of Mr. Marx. While his system of communism aimed at the emancipation and the full unfolding of the individual, the Chinese Communists attempt to the collectivization of individuals in order to make them indistinguishable members of a collective; they suppress individuality for the sake of society. Consequently they believe that their system of “communes,” in which the vast majority of all Chinese are already organized, is a step toward the realization of communism. They are creating a new form of religion, a peculiar mixture of enlightenment ideology blended with the cultivation and exploitation of guilt and shame. Different as their system is from anything Mr. Marx meant by socialism (or by communism), it is equally different from the Russian industrial managerialism. It is only slightly exaggerated to say that the Chinese, the “blue ants” as they are often called in Russia, appeared to the West in 1917 to 1920. Even though Soviet Russia and China were and still are allied by their common antagonism to the West, and by their common ideology, there is an increasing schism between the two powers. This conflict rests upon several factors. The most important one is probably the fact that Russia is today part of the rich status quo World of the West, and China has become a major lender to the United States of America. This is a conflict of a very different nature than the one between Russia and the West. The latter is a battle between two blocs which have much more in common economically than Russia has with China; China, in her effort to become the leader of the colonial revolution, to bring communism to India, Indonesia, America, the Middle East, and Latin America, is as much or more of a potential threat to the Soviet Union than to the United States of America. #RandolphHarris 6 of 18
If China wanted new territory for her ever-increasing population, thinly populated Siberia would be more tempting than the densely populated part of Southern and Southeastern Asia. In addition to the potential threat as the leader of the colonial revolution, the Chinese leadership constitutes another threat to the Soviet Union’s position as the leader of the Communist World. The Chinese Communist, since coming to power, have stated that their own revolution is a “classic example” and the model for other revolution in Asia and all other underdeveloped countries. Since they started the commune system, the Chinese leaders claim that the Russians are behind them on the road to a Communist society. China today is a rich society striving for control over America with tremendous force as America’s politicians can be bought by the highest bidder. These are not the same people that built this nation from the ground up, so they have less pride in America than their ancestors did, therefore, they are willing to sell her out. These politicians have not spilled blood for this land and many of them look down on veterans as if they are their pieces on a chess board to fight their wars while they get rich. Russia is a rich society trying to develop and to preserve what she has. While the World seems on the verge of a Third World War, America is also going through a silent revolution. With the cost of living being so high, many people are fighting for the guaranteed income. The most important reason for the acceptance of the concept is that it might drastically enhance the freedom of the individual. #RandolphHarris 7 of 18
Until now in human history, man has been limited in his freedom to act by two factors: the use of force on the part of the rulers (essentially their capacity to kill the dissenters), and, more importantly, the threat of starvation against all who were unwilling to accept the conditions of work and social existence that were imposed on them. Whoever was not willing to accept these conditions, even if there was no other force used against one, was confronted with the threat of starvation. The principle prevailing throughout most of human history in the past and present (in capitalism as well as in the Soviet Union) is “He who does not work shall not eat.” This threat forced man not only to act in accordance with what was demanded of him, but also to think and to feel in such a way that he would not even be tempted to act differently. The fact that past history is based on the principle of the threat of starvation has, in the last analysis, its source in the fact that, with the exception of certain primitive societies, man has lived on the level of scarcity, both economically and psychologically. There were never sufficient material goods to satisfy the needs of all; usually a small group of “directors” took for themselves all that their hearts desired, and the many who could not sit at the table were told that it was God’s or Nature’s law that this should be so. However, it must be noted that the main factor in this is not the greed of the “directors,” but the low level of material productivity. A guaranteed income, which becomes possible in the era of economic abundance, could for the first-time free man from the threat of starvation, and thus make him truly free and independent from any economic threat. #RandolphHarris 8 of 18
Nobody would have to accept conditions of work merely because he otherwise would be afraid of starving; a talented or ambitious man or woman could learn new skills to prepare himself or herself for a different kind of occupation. A woman could leave her husband, an adolescent his family. If they did not have to fear hunger, people would learn to be no longer afraid. (This holds true, of course, only if there is also no political threat that inhibits man’s free thought, speech, and action.) Guaranteed income would not only establish freedom as a reality rather than a slogan, it would also establish a principle deeply rooted in Western religious and humanist tradition: man has the right to live, regardless! This right to live, to have food, shelter, medical care, education, et cetera, is an intrinsic human right that cannot be restricted by any condition, not even the one that he must be socially “useful.” The shift from a psychology of scarcity produces anxiety, envy, egotism (to be seen most drastically in peasant cultures all over the World). A psychology of abundance produces initiative, faith in life, solidarity. The fact is that most men are still geared psychologically to the economic facts of scarcity, when the industrial World is in the process of entering a new era of economic abundance. However, because of this psychological “lag” many people cannot even understand new ideas as presented in the concept of a guaranteed income, because traditional ideas are usually determined by feelings that originated in previous forms of social existence. A further effect of a guaranteed income, coupled with greatly diminished working hours for all, would be that the spiritual and religious problems of human existence would become real and imperative. #RandolphHarris 9 of 18
Until now man has been occupied with work (or has been too tired after work) to be too seriously concerned with such problems as “What is the meaning of life?” “What do I believe in?” “What are my values?” “Who am I?” et cetera. If he ceases to be mainly occupied by work, he will either be free to confront these problems seriously, or he will become half mad from direct or compensated boredom. From all this it would follow that economic abundance, liberation from fear of starvation, would mark the transition from a prehuman to a truly human society. Balancing this picture, it is necessary to raise some objection against, or questions about, the concept of a guaranteed income. The most obvious question is whether a guaranteed income would not reduce the incentive for work. Aside from the fact that there is already no work for an ever-increasing sector of the population, and hence that the question of incentive for these people is irrelevant, the objection is nevertheless a serious once. I believe, however, that it can be demonstrated that material incentive is by no means the only incentive for work and effort. First of all there are other incentives: pride, social recognition, pleasure in work itself, et cetera. Examples of this fact are not lacking. The most obvious one to quote is the work of scientists, artists, et cetera, whose outstanding achievements were not motivated by the incentive of monetary profit, but by a mixture of various factors: most of all, interest in the work they were doing; also pride in their achievements, or the wish for fame. #RandolphHarris 10 of 18
However, obvious as this example may seem, it is not entirely convincing, because it can be said that these outstanding people could make extraordinary efforts precisely because they were extraordinarily gifted, and hence they are no example for the reactions of the average person. This objection does not seem to be valid, however, if we consider the incentives for the activities of people who do not share the outstanding qualities of the great creative persons. What efforts are made in the field of all sports, of many kinds of hobbies, where there are no material incentives of any kind! To what extent interest in the work process itself can be an incentive for working was clearly demonstrated for the first time by Professor Mayo in his classic study at the Chicago Hawthrone Works of the Western Electric Company. The very fact that unskilled women workers were drawn into the experiment work productivity of which they were the subjects, the fact that they became interested and active participants in the experiment, resulted in increasing productivity, and even their physical health improved. The problem becomes even clearer when we consider older forms of societies. The efficiency and incorruptibility of the traditional Prussian civil service were famous, in spite of the fact that monetary rewards were very low; in this case such concepts as honour, loyalty, duty, were the determining motivations for efficient work. Still another factor appears when we consider preindustrial societies (like the medieval European society, or half-feudal societies in the beginning of this century in Latin America.) In these societies the carpenter, for instance, wanted to earn enough to satisfy the needs of his traditional standard of living, and would refuse to work more in order to earn more than he needed. #RandolphHarris 11 of 18
Secondly, it is a fact that man, by nature, is not lazy, but on the contrary, suffers from the results of inactivity. People might prefer not to work for one or two months, but the vast majority would bed to work, even if they were not paid for it. The fields of child development and mental illness offer abundant data in this connection; what is needed is a systematic investigation in which the available data are organized and analyzed from the standpoint of “laziness as disease,” and more date are collected in new and pertinent investigations. However, if money is not to be the main incentive, then work in its technical or social aspects would have to be sufficiently attractive and interesting to outweigh the unpleasure of inactivity. Modern, alienated man is deeply bored (usually unconsciously), and hence has a yearning for laziness, rather than for activity. This yearning itself is, however, a symptom of our “pathology of normalcy.” Presumably misuse of the guaranteed income would disappear after a short time, just as people would not overeat on sweets after a few weeks, assuming they would not have to pay for them. Another objection is the following: Will the disappearance of the fear of starvation really make man so much freer, considering that those who earn a comfortable living are probably just as afraid to lose a job that gives them, let us say $150,000 a year, as are those who might go hungry if they were to lose their jobs? If this objection is valid, then the guaranteed income would increase the freedom of the large majority, but not that of the middle and upper classes. #RandolphHarris 12 of 18
In order to understand this objection fully we have to consider the spirit of contemporary industrial society. Man has transformed himself into a homo consumens. He is voracious, passive, and tries to compensate for his inner emptiness by continuous and ever-increasing consumption (there are many clinical examples for this mechanism in cases of overeating, overbuying, overdrinking, as a reaction to depression and anxiety); he consumes cigarettes, liquor, pleasures of the flesh, movies, travel, as well as education, books, lectures, and art. He appears to be active, “thrilled,” yet deep down he is anxious, lonely, depressed, and bored (boredom can be defined as that type of chronic depression that can successfully be compensated by consumption). Twenty-first century industrialism has created this new psychological type, homo consumens, primarily for economic reasons, id est, the need for mass consumption, which is stimulated and manipulated by advertising. However, the character type, once created, also influences the economy and makes the principles of ever-increasing satisfaction appear rational and realistic. Contemporary man has an unlimited hunger for more and more consumption. From this follow several consequences: if there is no limit to the greed for consumption, and since in the foreseeable future no economy can produce enough for unlimited consumption for everybody, there can never be true “abundance” (psychologically speaking) as long as the character structure of homo consumnes remains dominant. #RandolphHarris 13 of 18
For the greedy person there is always scarcity, since he never has enough, regardless of how much he has. Furthermore he feel covetous and competitive with regard to everybody else; hence he is basically isolated and frightened. He cannot really enjoy art or other cultural stimulations, since he remains basically greedy. This means that those who lived on the guaranteed-income level would feel frustrated and worthless, and those who earned more would remain prisoners of circumstances, because they would be frightened and lose the possibility for maximum consumption. For these reasons I believe that guaranteed income without a change from the principle of maximal consumption would only take care of certain problems (economical and social) but would not have the radical effect it should. In bad markets, everybody is hungry and all the energies go into demanding that commissions be raised. One of our learned economists has described our economic system as “state socialism for the rich.” If socialism is the public ownership of the major institutions and industries of the nation, maybe we are just taking a unique way of getting there. It seems that all great things, in order to inscribe eternal demands in the heart of man, must first walk the Earth as monstrous and frightening masks: dogmatic philosophy was such a mask—for example, the Vedanta teaching in Asia, Platonism in Europe. Let us not be ungrateful to it, though one must also admit that the worst, the most protracted and most dangerous of all errors hitherto was a dogmatic error, namely, Plato’s invention of pure spirit and of the Good in itself. #RandolphHarris 14 of 18
Now that it has been overcome, however, now that Europe breathes free of this incubus and might at least enjoy a healthier—sleep, we whose task is precisely to be awake, are the heirs of all the strength fostered by the struggle against this error. Of course, it meant standing truth on its head and even denying perspective, the fundamental condition of all life, in speaking of spirit and the Good, as Plato did; indeed, like a physician, one might well ask, “How did such a disease manage to grow on the most beautiful plant of antiquity, on Plato? Did the evil Socrates corrupt him, after all? Could Socrates have been a corrupter of the youth, after all? And did he deserve the hemlock?—But the struggle against Plato or, to put it more intelligibly for “the people,” the struggle against Christian-ecclesiastical forces of millennia—for Christianity is Platonism for the “the people”—has created in Europe a magnificent tension of the spirit such as has never before existed on Earth: with such a tightly strung bow, we can now shoot at the most distant targets. Of course, European man feels this tension as a kind of need and distress; and twice already attempts have been made, in the grand style, to slacken the bow: once by Jesuitism, then a second time by democratic Enlightenment—which, with this assistance of freedom of the press and the reading of newspapers, just might bring it about that the spirit no longer feels itself in any kind of “need”! (The Germans invented gunpowder—all due respect there! However, then, they made up for it: they incented the printing press.) #RandolphHarris 15 of 18
However, we, we who are neither Jesuits nor democrats nor even sufficiently German, we good Europeans and free, very free spirits—we still have it, the full need of the spirit and the full tension of the bow! And perhaps the arrow, too, the task, who knows? The goal…those who thus, by prayer, bring to light these hidden workings are, by experience, widening their horizon in knowledge of one’s work as a tempter, and becoming better able to cowork with the Spirit of God in the deliverance of others from the powers of darkness, it is essential to be able to recognize what they are doing. Paul, on one occasion, did not say “circumstances” but “Satan hindered me” (1 Thessalonians 2.18), because he was able to recognize when circumstances, or the Holy Spirit (Acts 16.6), or Satan, hindered or restrained him in his life and service. There are degrees also in the results of temptation. After the wilderness temptation, which settled vast and eternal issues, the devil left Christ, but he returned to Him again and again with other degrees of temptation (John 12.27; Matt. 22.15), both direct and indirect. If Christology is intimately related to ecclesiology, so that the structure of the incarnation serves as a paradigm for the structure of the church, the question is not the union of God and man in Jesus the Christ, but the appearance in him of essential manhood under the conditions of existence. Similarly, the Spirit elevates man’s spirit to the transcendent unity of unambiguous life, that is, to an experiential realization this his humanity shares in essential manhood insofar as it is actualized. The actualization is fragmentary and the experience fleeting, but the impact of this revelation enkindles the courage to be what one should be. #RandolphHarris 16 of 18
The distortions and ambiguities of existential life are not thereby banished, but one has glimpsed the New Being which alone is worthy of our ultimate concern. And the fact that all men participate in and are destined for the New Being—otherwise they would have given up the struggle to be—draws them together in the Spiritual Community. Through the New Being they are reunited to God, the ground of all being, and the power which flows from this reunion should permeate all their spiritual activities, so that, ideally, culturally is grounded in being-itself, and being-itself shines through all cultural forms. Unambiguous life in the Spiritual Community is theonomous life. The heart of the mystery of Christology is the undistorted appearance of essential manhood in Jesus the Christ under the conditions of existence. By way of contrast, Catholic theology, for example, describes the Christological problem as the union of God and man in Jesus, while the ecclesiological problem is the union of Jesus the Head with the all-too-human collectivity that is his body. The Second Vatican Council proposes this analogy between the mystery of the incarnation and the mystery of the church. It illustrates, first the paradoxical nature of the church which is, on the one hand, a hierarchically organized society and, on the other hand, the Mystical Body, visible and yet spiritual, Earthly and Heavenly, possessing a human factor and a divine factor. Secondly, it emphasized that the social whole which is the church acts as a channel for the Spirit of Christ, just as the human nature of Jesus serves as an instrument of salvation. #RandolphHarris 17 of 18
Theonomy demands reunion with the ground of being, which is achieved by the ecstasy of faith in which one’s total, ultimate concern is directed toward the New Being. Thus is born the Spiritual Community of those who received the New Being in Jesus the Christ, either explicitly in the manifest church or by anticipation in the latent church. There is no mistaking the passionate concern of many to keep the Spiritual Community open to all who will yield themselves to the grasp of the Spirit. Believe me, you who are religious and Christian, it would not be worthwhile to teach Christianity, if it were for the sake of Christianity. And believe me, you who are estranged from religion and far away from Christianity, it not our purpose to make you religious and Christian when we interpret the call of Jesus for our time. We call Jesus the Christ not because He brought a new religion, but because He is the end of religion, above religion and irreligion, above Christianity and non-Christianity. We spread His call because it is the call to every man in every period to receive the New Being, that hidden saving power in our existence, which takes from us labour and burden, and gives rest to our souls. The Spiritual Community is not aimlessly adrift on the tides of history, for it follows where the Spirit blows. Whither does it tend, and when will it arrive? We must now consider the question of history and eschatology. The generous heart shall be enriched, and one that satisfies others shall be satisfied oneself. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. And this the offering you shall take: God, silver, and copper. One who gives when well, one’s gift is gold; one who gives only when ill, one’s gift is silver; one who gives only in one’s will, one’s gift is copper. From Thee, O Lord, comes our wealth, and from Thine own, do we give unto Thee. Please open up your hearts and donate to the Sacramento Fire Depart. They work really hard to keep us safe and are not receiving all of their resources. #RandolphHarris 18 of 18
BEYOND THE BUILD
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Randolph Harris II International 