What's it all for?

"Our political system is not designed to take the United States in a specific direction. If anything, it was designed to prevent political whims of the moment from leading to tyranny. For Beijing, by contrast, the purpose of politics is to serve the nationalist project of comprehensively modernizing and developing China. It is about time we paid attention to the ideas and institutional processes that drive this effort."

From the testimony before the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, the hearing on “A ‘China Model?’ Beijing’s Promotion of Alternative Global Norms and Standards” March 13, 2020. “How Xi Jinping’s ‘New Era’ Should Have Ended U.S. Debate on Beijing’s Ambitions” by Daniel Tobin (14 pages, PDF).

Cited by The Scholar's Stage.
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I still remember my teenage epiphany: the moment I realised that the UK as a nation wasn't "for" anything. The government had no over-arching goal, no overall mission. We were not hell-bent on reaching the stars at any cost.

It was a while before I realised that this was generally true of the advanced capitalist countries (except in periods of existential war).

Joining together in groups (we are a social animal) is not spontaneous. It requires common cause. Historically causes were not in short supply: the sheer necessities of survival, defence and the rituals to placate an unpredictable world all build communities.

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The Chinese have a long agrarian history - thousands of years of communalism - which deeply informs their culture and ideologies. They also have a national, shared grievance against the foreign barbarians who destroyed their final dynasty and subjugated them more than a century ago. They have been badly treated and want to get back to where they think they belong. On top.

The Chinese mission, currently dressed up in Marxist language, is not a universalist one.

A rich, peaceful capitalist country has no national mission. Its economy thrives on mass atomisation: a flexibility which lubricates the endless churn of the economy. For some people, loyalty to their company or to its underlying mission provides a cause worth adhering to.

In many cases, not so much.

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Hence we have movements: particularly of the young and idealistic. The movements select those whose inclinations align and are shaped in turn by the social needs of their adherents: meaningful activities; a strong ethical narrative thread; social status.

For these elective movements of choice rather than necessity, it hardly matters what the movement's programme is or whether it's even coherent, because in the end it's not about that.

Not at all.
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