[PDF Download] Xi jinping s anti corruption campaign the politics of revenge 1 edition steven p fel
XI Jinping s Anti Corruption Campaign
The Politics of Revenge 1 Edition Steven P Feldman
Visit to download the full and correct content document: https://textbookfull.com/product/xi-jinping-s-anti-corruption-campaign-the-politics-of-re venge-1-edition-steven-p-feldman/
More products digital (pdf, epub, mobi) instant download maybe you interests ...
Xi Jinping China s Third New Era 1 Edition Jayadeva Ranade
“The anticorruption campaign under Xi Jinping has been one of the most ambitious and striking aspects of China’s domestic politics in the last decade. In this lucidly argued and written study, based on extensive in-country field research, Steven Feldman gets under the skin of a complex and sometimes confusing phenomenon. He shows that by dexterous use of feelings of resentment and anger, the Chinese public has been invited to turn against Communist Party officials, but made the most senior of these, Xi himself, paradoxically even more powerful.”
Kerry Brown, Professor, Kings College London, UK
“Dictatorships such as China face a dilemma that has not been resolved either theoretically or practically: their built-in mechanism encourages corruption, yet the dictator must maintain legitimacy. Steven Feldman’s book addresses this issue from a novel perspective. He argues that Xi’s anticorruption campaign is a status reversal ritual that takes advantage of fantasies of revenge in everyday people, who suffer under widespread corruption. Feldman reveals that Xi’s anticorruption campaign helped make him the ‘good emperor’ by attacking corruption, but by replacing corruption with ideology, Xi further represses Party and society.”
Shaomin Li, Professor, Old Dominion University, USA
“In this carefully-researched work, Steven Feldman puts Xi Jinping’s Anticorruption Campaign into the historical context of Chinese Communist Party leaders’ use of anti-crime and anticorruption campaigns both as weapons against their rivals within the Party and as tools for building popular support for the Party. In doing so, Feldman contributes both to our understanding of Xi Jinping’s success as Communist Party leader and to the ongoing debate about the Communist Party regime’s sources of legitimacy.”
Harold M. Tanner, Professor, University of North Texas, USA
“Steven Feldman’s book makes an important contribution to understanding Xi Jinping’s anticorruption campaign, utilizing Max Scheler’s work on ressentiment. Beyond attacking corruption, the anticorruption campaign serves to establish unity between the leader and the people in a particular way. Mitigating the population’s ressentiment by attacking the humiliating corruption, Xi appears to raise the status of the population. His gain in power, however, leaves the population even more repressed. The book is a ‘must read’ for anyone interested in the functioning of the Chinese political system or the ongoing anticorruption campaign.”
Thomas
Heberer
, Professor, University of Duisburg-Essen, Germany
Xi Jinping’s Anticorruption Campaign
Through empirical analysis and conceptual development, this book analyzes the political psychology of Xi Jinping’s Anticorruption Campaign and its role in the Chinese political system.
Using Nietzsche’s concept of ressentiment and data collected from direct fieldwork, the book analyzes the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) dictatorship, revealing that it is prone to extremes, through ideology or corruption, and highlights how the Party’s attempts to address one extreme only leads to the rise of another. In turn, it examines the Anticorruption Campaign in multiple ways including its use to increase the role of ideology in Chinese society, how it functions to concentrate Xi’s power, its cultural form as a status reversal ritual, and its continuity with previous communist campaigns and ancient Chinese political traditions. Through each of these analyses, the book identifies crucial mechanisms through which the CCP maintains power through interrelated policies, actions, and their emotional effects.
Providing a vital understanding of the CCP, this book will be an invaluable resource to students and scholars of Chinese politics, as well as diplomats and policymakers on China.
Steven P. Feldman is Professor Emeritus of Business Ethics, Case Western Reserve University, USA. His previous books on China are Dictatorship by Degrees: Xi Jinping in China (2021) and Trouble in the Middle: AmericanChinese Business Relations Conflict, Culture, and Ethics (2013).
Routledge Research on the Politics and Sociology of China
Series Editor: Reza Hasmath, University
of Oxford, UK
The modern Chinese state has traditionally affected every major aspect of the domestic society. With the growing liberalization of the economy, coupled with an increasing complexity of social issues, there is a belief that the state is retreating from an array of social problems from health to the environment. Yet, as we survey China’s social and political landscape today we see not only is the central state playing an active role in managing social problems, but state actors at the local level are emerging in partnerships with relatively new actors such as social organizations and private enterprises.
The Routledge Research on the Politics and Sociology of China series is interested in examining the sociology and politics of this ‘new’ China. The series will engage with contemporary research that explores the intricacies of institutional interactions, and analysis of micro-level actors such as migrant workers, ethnic minorities, and women, who are shaping China’s future. The book series seeks to promote a discourse and analysis that views state and society as contested spaces for power, authority, and legitimacy. As a guiding principle, the series is notably interested in books that use China as a laboratory for confirming, modifying or rejecting existing mainstream theories in sociology and politics.
The Politics of Protestant Churches and the Party-State in China
God Above Party?
Carsten T. Vala
Ethnicity and Inequality in China
Björn Gustafsson, Sai Ding and Reza Hasmath
Xi Jinping’s Anticorruption Campaign
The Politics of Revenge
Steven P. Feldman
For a full list of titles: https://www.routledge.com/Routledge-Research-onthe-Politics-and-Sociology-of-China/book-series/RRPSC
Xi Jinping’s Anticorruption Campaign
The Politics of Revenge
Steven P. Feldman
First published 2023 by Routledge
4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge
605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
The right of Steven P. Feldman to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN: 978-1-032-36269-4 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-032-36271-7 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-003-33106-3 (ebk)
DOI: 10.4324/9781003331063
Typeset in Times New Roman by SPi Technologies India Pvt Ltd (Straive)
Dedicated to the Chinese people.
Preface
With the decline of Mao Zedong’s ideology-driven politics and its replacement with Deng Xiaoping’s pragmatism with market characteristics, corruption became widespread in the Chinese political economy. Over decades, despite numerous attempts to contain it, including ones by Deng, by the end of the Hu Jintao regime, it had become a threat to the Communist Party’s survival. Upon taking leadership of the Communist Party in the fall of 2012, Xi Jinping made his massive Anticorruption Campaign the centerpiece of his domestic agenda.
Xi’s Campaign has many interrelated goals. By fighting corruption, he seeks to win personally the population’s support and improve the legitimacy of the Communist Party. By arresting corrupt figures, he is creating openings in the Party and government that he can fill with loyal personnel. With his own people in charge and competitors and competing factions in decline, he greatly concentrates power in himself.
Importantly, the Campaign never stopped. As of 2022, ten years after it started, it is still active. In fact, its original organizational home, the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection merged in 2018 with other anticorruption organizations to become one of the most powerful political organizations in the country. The name of the new commission is the National Supervision Commission. Fighting “corruption” is the central way Xi moved to take control of the Chinese Community Party (CCP) and concentrate power in himself.
The Campaign is very popular with the population. When I arrived in China in 2015, executives I spoke with were reading the newspapers every day to see what “tigers” were under arrest. They were astonished, almost in awe, to see Xi exercise power on this scale, arresting elite members of the Communist Party, even generals in the military.1 Xi gained respect. Many see him as courageous and righteous. China’s new moral leader.
I argue in The Politics of Revenge, the Communist Party dictatorship, which leaves the population powerless and often mistreated, has created in the population, what Friedrich Nietzsche calls ressentiment, a complex condition where humiliated subjects must repress their anger (self-censor), out of fear of punishment, while pursuing equality and fairness to overthrow those on top.2 In communist China, as if to beat them to the punch, the Party says they already have equality or soon will.
Right in this dark moment of corrosive corruption (and a slowing economy), Xi Jinping has arrived to treat them as comrades. As he knocks the elite cadre low, he releases the terrible pain of repressed ressentiment, providing the population with a vicarious release of aggression toward the hated corrupt cadre. In fact, he even encourages them to get involved, snapping photos of the fat cats drinking expensive wines or driving expensive cars and sending them to the discipline authorities.
I argue in this book, the Anticorruption Campaign is a status reversal ritual, bringing high-level cadre low and raising, symbolically, the ressentiment-filled population. In the process, General Secretary Xi uses his popularity to concentrate power and expand his control. Ironically, Xi’s attack on the hierarchy has strengthened the hierarchy, with himself the main beneficiary.
Ressentiment in China is a complicated phenomenon because it originates from more than just the repressive CCP. It includes the period, roughly between 1850 and 1950, the Chinese suffered under the colonization of multiple countries in their western port cities and a brutal invasion by the Japanese. During this period, the imperial system was in decline, leading to societal disintegration and civil war. The Chinese, refer to this period as the “century of humiliation.”
The Chinese attitude toward their present success and toward foreigners is not understandable independent of this history. It is with bitterness that the Chinese feel their competitors want to hold them down, arrest their return to one of the world’s great nations.
It is in this context that one should understand the Anticorruption Campaign and Xi Jinping as a moral leader. Xi is concentrating power inside China and telling the Chinese people he will lead China’s rejuvenation, back to the greatness it once enjoyed and deserves. The intensifying dictatorship, Anticorruption Campaign, and history of colonization are all sources of ressentiment, which influences how different groups differently understand the current political situation. Unpacking the dynamic relations between these groups is the goal of The Politics of Revenge.
Internally, in addition to arresting corrupt cadre, Xi is intensifying control of society by increasing censorship, increasing propaganda, increasing intolerance, increasing surveillance, expanding Party cells in organizations, tightening controls on nongovernmental organizations, tightening controls on education, tightening controls on the Internet, using big data to monitor citizens down to jaywalking, and so on. Crucial in this effort is the Anticorruption Campaign, which he uses to remove resistance to his agenda, concentrate power, and pursue his vision of a rejuvenated China under the leadership of the Communist Party, with himself at the top.
In this book, I will examine the Anticorruption Campaign in multiple ways. I will analyze its basis in ressentiment, its use to increase the role of ideology in Chinese society, how it functions to concentrate Xi’s power, its cultural form as a status reversal ritual, and its continuity with previous communist campaigns and ancient Chinese political traditions, especially the state as a family and the leader as a father.
I will also examine the legal system, which is a developing instrument of CCP power.3 The legal system must remain secondary to campaigns because its full development is a threat to the dictatorship. The campaign model, however, is the child of communist ideology, created for top-down control. My focus will be the Anticorruption Campaign’s use of ressentiment to create a status reversal ritual that creates “unity” in society and power for Xi Jinping.
The data for this book comes from a year of full-time fieldwork in Beijing, with important side trips to Hong Kong and Singapore, from July 2015 to July 2016. Seventy-five percent of the data comes from 145 semi-structured interviews with business executives, professors (business, law, and social science), lawyers, accountants, and nonprofit executives. A handful of Communist Party officials participated. Twenty-five percent of the data comes from observation and participant observation. I was teaching at Peking University during the year. I was also active in local associations and events.
Description of the Chapters
In Chapter 1, I review the literature on ressentiment, my core conceptual framework, starting with an extensive review of Max Scheler’s classic work on the subject. Among other things, I learn from Scheler that ressentiment originates in violations to self-esteem arising from subordination. Ressentiment creates a terrible split in the personality, where the wish for power undergoes repression and the modern drive for equality replaces it.4 Next, I review the current literature in philosophy, sociology, and literary criticism, where I explore ressentiment’s inner dynamic through the concepts of envy, impotence, revenge, and delusion.
Chapter 2 examines the literature on “anticorruption” campaigns to prepare the analysis of Xi Jinping’s Anticorruption Campaign, to understand its similarities and differences from previous campaigns. It is seen that CCP political campaigns generally involve an “anticorruption” component. All political campaigns are driven by a combination of power and ideological interests, in different forms and relations. Xi Jinping’s Anticorruption Campaign is one of the largest in CCP history, unusual in both its duration and its prosecution of high-level leaders. The former advances Xi’s power by the continuous removal of those who resist him and the latter by transforming the ressentiment of a repressed population into Xi’s own popularity.
Chapter 3 begins the empirical analysis of the data on the Anticorruption Campaign. I apply the concept of ressentiment to the data on corruption. I argue that China’s small group culture leads to factions and inside connections in the political system, leaving many people excluded, creating a reservoir of ressentiment in the population at large. Corruption motivates intense competition between factions, forcing the Party leader to concentrate power or lose control. An Anticorruption Campaign is a natural way to remove opposing factions, concentrate power, and gain the ressentiment-ridden population’s support. I show that the Communist Party dictatorship creates ressentiment, but by attacking the Party, the leader can use ressentiment to win the population’s support, thus increasing his power.
Chapter 4 investigates the Party leadership’s use of ideology as an alternative to the dictatorship-corruption dynamic and a means to disrupt it. With the intensification of ideology, corruption comes under pressure. However, like the dictatorship-corruption pairing, dictatorship-ideology leads to extreme overreach, though the consequences are different. In fact, they are worse because extreme ideology dehumanizes people, making them easier to mistreat or even kill, as is seen repeatedly in CCP ideology-motivated purges. The dictatorship-ideology excess leads to a return of the dictatorship-corruption dynamic, as ideology is relaxed with “reform and opening.” Currently, General Secretary Xi is moving back to ideology to get extreme corruption under control. This cycle is dictatorship with Chinese characteristics.
Chapter 5 examines General Secretary Xi’s populism as a form of power, arresting “tigers” to mobilize the population’s ressentiment to generate his popularity. By enjoying the fall of high-level cadres, the population symbolically satisfies their repressed feelings of envy, hatred, and desire for revenge. In reality, however, Xi’s attack on hierarchy strengthens the hierarchy by adding to his own power. Xi uses this power to control the population. Hence, the purity motive in the Anticorruption Campaign leads to tragedy not only for the cadres but for the population as a whole.
Chapter 6 shows how the Anticorruption Campaign functions as a status reversal ritual. As the powerful “tigers” fall, the lowly population rises, if only symbolically. This creates “unity” because the population’s repressed desire for revenge is satisfied, leading them to support General Secretary Xi. The ritual is “successful” because the ressentiment-motivated search for equality finds a home in Xi’s purity campaign and proclamations of the “China Dream.” The “success” is temporary, however, as “corruption” is not removed and hierarchical controls only increase.
Chapter 7 focuses on the Chinese penchant to believe in the Good Emperor, the leader who is moral and righteous and cares for his people. This theme runs through the book, as it stems from deep roots in Chinese culture, the Confucian emphasis on hierarchical relations, especially in family and state. The Good Emperor is key to the success of the Anticorruption Campaign as a status reversal ritual because at the center of it is the population’s belief that General Secretary Xi is morally motivated to stamp out corruption. The belief’s ancient and idealized portrayal of the leader, anoints Xi’s expanding dictatorship as justified and good.
Chapter 8 investigates why Xi Jinping primarily uses an anticorruption campaign instead of the rule of law to attack systematic corruption in the Communist Party. The influence of historical context on how different parts of the population view the legal system and from which current legal reforms unfold is examined. This leads to the discovery of four general social classes in the field data: the central government, local governments, the rising middle class, and the poor. The Communist Party’s monopoly of power is found to be the decisive fact in structuring relations between the four classes. All four social classes seek to access or exploit the monopoly of power for their own economic benefits. In the process, interest in the rule of law is marginalized.
Finally, in the conclusion, I discuss the book’s main insights. The CCP’s monopoly of power is unstable, tending to extremes. The two main extremes are ideological radicalism and systemic corruption. One leads to the other. The Anticorruption Campaign is a product of this political culture. The CCP generates ressentiment by its unchecked power. In the current cycle, Xi Jinping attacks corruption and intensifies ideology to gain control over the CCP and win the population’s support. He does so by using the Anticorruption Campaign as a status reversal ritual. By punishing the “tigers,” Xi wins the population’s support. This rise in his personal legitimacy helps him expand his power. The political system, however, rests on a delusion: The population does not gain power. In fact, Xi’s increase in power leads to increasing control over the population. The repression of ressentiment leads to the idealization of Xi as a Good Emperor. The resulting split in consciousness between idealizing Xi and suffering his increasing control is the unstable psychology of ideological dictatorship.
Notes
1 As of 2019, McGregor’s best guess is that 300–400 “tigers” have been arrested (McGregor, Richard. Xi Jinping: The Backlash (Melbourne: Penguin Books, 2019)).
2 This observation of the Chinese population is at odds with much of the literature that holds, in the words of Andrew Nathan, there is “a high level of public support for China’s authoritarian regime” (Andrew Nathan, “The Puzzle of Authoritarian Legitimacy,” Journal of Democracy 31, no. 1 (January 2020): 158). Much of this literature is based on survey methodology that asks a relatively small number of questions and offers the participant a smaller number of responses. In contrast, the ethnographic methods used in my research speaks to participants for hours, going much deeper into their thoughts and feelings and their perceptions of the thoughts and feelings of others, as well as observations of how people act in their daily lives. I show the Chinese have multiple, sometimes contradictory, thoughts about their government. My research makes an original contribution by exploring the unconscious feelings of ressentiment in Chinese political attitudes.
3 Under Xi, law is used to fortify and legitimate the CCP’s control of society (Trevaskes, Susan. “A Law Unto Itself: Chinese Communist Party Leadership and yifa zhiquo in the Xi Era,” Modern China 44 no. 4 (2018)).
4 The modern drive to equality driven by ressentiment irrupts in the French Revolution (Scheler, Max. Ressentiment (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 2007 (1915)). It becomes part of a political ideology in the Chinese Communist Revolution through the works of Karl Marx.
Bibliography
McGregor, Richard. Xi Jinping: The Backlash. London: Penguin Books, 2019. Nathan, Andrew J. “The Puzzle of Authoritarian Legitimacy.” Journal of Democracy 31, no. 1 (January 2020): 158–68.
Scheler, Max. Ressentiment. Milwaukie: Marquette University Press, 2017 (1915).
Trevaskes, Susan. “A Law Unto Itself: Chinese Communist Party Leadership yifa zhiquo in the Xi Era.” Modern China 44, no. 4 (2018): 347–73.
1 The Theory of Ressentiment*
In modern life, there is an uneasy relationship between vertical and horizontal social relations. At times, it grows extreme. The desire for equality between people can become so strong that nothing less than the death of hierarchy would satisfy it, but hierarchy is not removable from the human world. The very fact of meaning, of living in a meaningful world, requires making distinctions between what is important and what is not. Culture is a vertical mechanism.1 It makes distinctions between what is high and low, good and bad, included and excluded. Values require valuing, and valuing requires hierarchy.
The culture war between hierarchy and equality, valuing and leveling, results in what Friedrich Nietzsche calls ressentiment. 2 Ressentiment refers to the powerlessness of an underclass that, not willing to give up its desire for power, seeks revenge on the dominant elite by undermining the cultural hierarchy through which the elite claims superiority. Ressentiment Man does this by introducing the value of equality. Equality discredits hierarchy, thus reversing Ressentiment Man’s feelings of failure and humiliation.
In what follows, I will review the literature on ressentiment starting with Max Scheler’s foundational study of Nietzsche’s concept and proceeding from there to contemporary work on the concept in the fields of philosophy, sociology, and literacy criticism. My purpose is to gain an understanding of ressentiment to explore what Fidor Dostoyevsky calls the “underground,”3 repressed feelings of envy and revenge behind the great drive to equality in modern life. In this book, I will apply ressentiment to the struggle for equality in communist China, particularly its role in the current Anticorruption Campaign.
Chinese Communism, originating in the Western Marxist tradition, found its way to China with the help of communism in the Soviet Union. Despite the fact that communism in the Soviet Union collapsed three decades ago, it still plays a central role in China. Indeed, communism’s demise in the Soviet Union is an issue of grave concern to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP),
* The modern drive to equality driven by ressentiment irrupts in the French Revolution (Scheler, Max. Ressentiment (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 2007 (1915)). It becomes part of a political ideology in the Chinese Communist Revolution through the works of Karl Marx.
DOI: 10.4324/9781003331063-1
The Theory of Ressentiment
because of what it implies for their own longevity.4 One threat to their survival is their own corruption. Hence, the current leader, Xi Jinping, has initiated the largest anticorruption campaign in CCP history.5 During my year of fieldwork in Beijing in 2015–16, I concluded it was the most important political and cultural institution in Chinese society at the time. One of its main goals is to regain the population’s trust and support.
Given the level of CCP corruption, the Anticorruption Campaign is very popular. In fact, the population is encouraged to participate in the Campaign by reporting offenders, which they were doing in large numbers. My interest is to explore the role of ressentiment in the Party’s use of and the population’s response to the Anticorruption Campaign.
On the surface, it appears obvious that since the population greatly suffers under government corruption, they would greatly appreciate a campaign that punishes corrupt cadres, even at the top levels of the Party, but it is exactly the Party’s monopoly on power that makes such severe corruption possible. Why would the population not realize or not care that General Secretary Xi is a product of the same system that produces so much corruption? Why would they consider General Secretary Xi a great hero for leading the Party attack on corruption that the Party in fact created? In other words, I will use the concept of ressentiment to explore the sharp mismatch between the CCP’s central value of equality and their abuse of power. I will focus on the politically impotent middle class, for they pay much of the bribes yet express little ambivalence about the complex implications of General Secretary Xi’s punishing Anticorruption Campaign.
Scheler’s Theory of Ressentiment
Sociology of Ressentiment
Ressentiment is a social feeling and social movement that develops as a protest against oppressive elites, in situations where the ressentiment group is in moral and political decline. Ressentiment is not a positive value, not an alternative to elite values. It is a protest against elite values, a counter-impulse. It is not action in the sense of attacking or overthrowing the elite. It simply rejects elite values and hierarchy through criticism. In this sense, it is nihilistic. The criticism is dependent on what it criticizes. It exists as an abstraction. It creates an emotional state of negativity and apathy. If the power relations do not change, ressentiment can endure, forming a tradition and incorporating other facets of social life.
Ressentiment Man denies the objectivity of the value hierarchy. In this sense, he is completely modern, even postmodern. Binding forms of judgment, essential for thought, trust, and organization require an objective value hierarchy. Ressentiment Man rejects social ideals because he does not look good in comparison to them. He seeks social values that put him in a positive light. He claims, as do some modern moral theories, all values are merely subjective. Ressentiment motivates the doctrine of equality, according to
Nietzsche.6 It questions the legitimacy of all political and cultural hierarchies. The doctrine of equality acknowledges the need for authority, but its basis is strictly delimited and its legitimacy subjected to continuous questioning.
The central example of ressentiment in modern Western history is the period leading up to the French Revolution, where, in De Tocqueville’s view, the French peasant is unfairly treated.7 The nobility over tax him and accumulate abundant privileges but no longer provide any services, thus no longer deserving the right to govern. The French Revolution strikes down this power system, sending shock waves across feudal Europe, laying the foundations for the modern state. Its momentous results, establishing political equality and the citizen’s right to choose rulers, inevitably has other consequences as well. It leads to a decline in communal life, where “race, class, craft guilds or family” assimilates the individual into social wholes based on shared ties.8 Not that communal life was perfect, but the individual accepts reality, not escaping into the fantasy world of ressentiment. Instead, the individual receives sustenance from communal values and communal goals, not focusing predominantly on his own desires. Even death is a lighter burden when attachment to the community is strong.
After the Revolution, in place of community develops “society,” organized by contractual relations between individuals. Societies based on contracts and self-interest proved unstable. When they break down in the 20th century what is left is an unorganized mass, liable to contagious and rapidly changing ideals, which, in some cases, become vulnerable to totalitarian ideology. This can be seen in the Cultural Revolution, where after years of attacks on social traditions and individual spontaneity, Mao is able to spur millions of people to violence with vague and continuously changing ideas and accusations.
Psychology of Ressentiment
The key condition that leads to ressentiment is impotence in the face of desired but unattainable values. Impotence leads to depression, fear, anxiety, and intimidation. If the situation cannot be changed or overcome in the political sphere, it moves into the psychological sphere. The unattainable values will be de-valued or denied. The individual replaces them with other values that put her in a favorable light. Instead of feelings of inferiority and intimidation, the individual feels superior or equal to his superiors. Such was one reason Chinese peasants supported communism during the Chinese civil war. Communism condemned the hierarchy in which peasants were on the bottom and proclaimed they were the true creators of society.
Scheler refers to ressentiment as “psychical dynamite” because the rejection and reversal of communal values destroy the individual’s integrity and relation to the social reality of which he is a part.9 If he acts against the unattainable values and the elite that maintains them, he would avoid the psychological damage, but he is too weak to strike out directly. He in effect falsifies reality or his view of it to replace his self-loathing with self-satisfaction. Instead of rising to master the values or attacking them, he slanders them
and demeans the elite to which they belong. In so doing, he reduces his discomfort but becomes delusional in the process, because his new values only exist in his fantasies.
Ressentiment Man’s disconnection from reality involves more than his social relations; it involves his own feelings. His new feelings of superiority and the new values that justify them are only possible because he represses his feelings of revenge, hatred, malice, envy, and spite, which motivate him to create the new values in the first place. Ressentiment, the internal process of transvaluation, only comes about by repressing awareness of both the offending values and his feelings about them. Ressentiment Man has gone from feelings of failure to delusion.
The more Ressentiment Man is offended by the intimidating values, the stronger his discomfort and feelings of hatred. The stronger his feelings of hatred the more he will repress them; otherwise, they will increase his discomfort or force him to action. The more intense the repressions, the more they will infiltrate other repressed feelings. Thus, the ressentiment process can become a dominating psychological complex within the individual, influencing his perceptions, expectations, and memories. Nietzsche and Scheler argue that this complex accounts for the modern drive toward equality. It is a denial of superiority, hierarchy, and achievement. In this sense, the drive to equality has weakened modern cultural systems.
Collective Form
As first seen in the French Revolution, fired by a gigantic ressentiment, Western civilization turned away from individual and communal relationships toward humanity as a whole, but, according to Scheler, humanity only exists in personal attachments.10 General welfare, human rights, and equality, for example, create moral costs when policies and programs weaken individual responsibilities. Collective organization can weaken personal moral commitments. The all-too-human struggles we have meeting our own ideals diminish when ideals exist only as abstractions that apply to everyone. Moral leveling, De Tocqueville writes in Democracy in America, would spread moral values in society, but the moral quality of the values would decline.11
In terms of ressentiment, the hatred of hierarchy motivates a focus on general welfare, a hatred of what is best because many cannot reach it. In their universality, human rights exist outside the specificity of particular cultures. The identity-making nature of culture, with its core commitments and thus responsibilities, is missing. Modern man, equal to all others, focuses on his own rights and interests; this weakens community, the area between society and the individual. He demands his rights and pursues his interests, but having little attachment to others outside his family and circle of friends, his capacity for sacrifice is limited. He has neither the communal attachments nor the internalized values by which to stabilize his identity and inform his life interests.
This individual/mass man proved defenseless in the face of 20th-century totalitarianism. It filled his empty and lost soul with ideology. The
millennium-defining French Revolution delivers freedom unseen in human history, but moral leveling unleashes levels of bestiality also unseen in history. Ressentiment proves to be no foundation upon which to raise a civilization.
The vague and abstract outcomes of ressentiment processes—human rights and equality, for example—are built upon a foundation of repression: repression of envy, malice, and vindictiveness. In the unconscious, these feelings expand beyond their original object. For example, under the communists, the image of the “landlord” in rural China is tied to the abstraction “class conflict,” which then leads to mass murder. The process of abstraction generalizes hatred. Like a snowball going downhill, the original complaint leads beyond criticism, beyond denial, beyond basking in the light of leveled values. It builds into a “venomous mass,” motivating mass movements and revolutions.12 Ressentiment is extremely contagious. Ressentiment men and women, having no strong commitments to values separate from their own disappointments, easily attach to mass movements based on complaint or protest.
Contemporary Ressentiment Studies
Origin
Nietzsche argues that Christianity originates in feelings of ressentiment. Its first great success is among slaves in the Roman Empire.13 Slaves lack the education for intellectual integrity. Since their only experience is with tyranny, they naturally accept the unconditional demands of an absolute God. They use Christian values to undermine the values of their oppressors. Universal love challenges elite supremacy.14 This is the origin of what Nietzsche calls “slave morality,” the replacement of aristocracy with universal values.15
Nietzsche concludes from the fact that Western morality originates in “slave morality”; ressentiment is the driving force behind Western morality.16 This means that Western morality is not what it appears to be, the definition of the just and the good. Hidden behind values of the just and the good are motivations to dominate, to turn the tables on those on top. For 2,000 years, philosophers have uncovered hypocrisy behind our highest ideals.17
Similar to the enormous role of ressentiment in the French Revolution, De Tocqueville observes that as conditions became equal after the American Revolution, slight inequalities could provoke envy and hostility.18 The value of equality has two sides. It can lead to human dignity and social accomplishment as freedom and justice underwrite higher levels of competition and cooperation, or it can lead to barbarism as excessive individualism leads to a loss of community and identity and its replacement with ideology in the hands of a demagogue. Virtuous civility or dangerous mass.
The ideology of equality with the reality of inequality leads to ressentiment. Hence, ressentiment is a fundamental feature of modernity. The caste system of India was free of ressentiment because status positions were
unchangeable.19 In feudal society too, ressentiment did not emerge because identity was fundamentally social, not individual. Or, in a situation of true equality, there would be no ressentiment because there would be nothing to envy.
In modern life, however, ressentiment permeates social relationships. Sombart argues that ressentiment drove the bourgeoise, the social class that overthrew the feudal lords and introduced capitalism.20 Similarly, Dostoevsky saw the great socialist revolts of the 19th century as attempts by the lower classes to steal what the bourgeois had accumulated.21 More generally, the modern ideas of progress, where the present is never good enough, and upward mobility, which evaluates everything by comparison with others, carry the hallmarks of ressentiment 22
Political Psychology
The key ingredient in ressentiment is the feeling of impotence.23 The feeling of injury without any hope of relief or repair.24 It is a long-term feeling of injury, hopeless injury. One has no choice but acceptance and submission. Scheler argues that authority, hierarchical relationships, seeds this feeling in and of itself.25 Political oppression only deepens it. Oppression creates a desire for revenge. The desire for revenge drives ressentiment. 26 At some point, the desire for revenge, if shared across enough people, can lead to revolt. Feelings of impotence and revenge can be passed down over generations, nurtured, kept alive, potentially explosive.27
There is, however, another source of ressentiment and it is not external, it is internal. For Nietzsche, the will to power is the “fundamental drive in life.”28 Ressentiment results when the will to power is blocked. This frustrates and humiliates the individual. He or she will seek revenge.29 Others will become his or her victims. This includes situations where a person is on top one day, but on the bottom the next. Reversals in status sting sharply. In all these cases, ressentiment can rise up—that is, “value delusion,” falsification of values, conceal the lack of accomplishment.30
Ressentiment involves what Alina Wyman calls a “pathological duality of vision.”31 For one thing, Ressentiment Man is a loser under society’s current value regime. These values put his status and accomplishments in the poorest light. He experiences unbearable feelings of humiliation and failure. Since he cannot change the people who enforce these values or how they evaluate him, he seeks to change the values themselves. As we will see in more detail in this chapter, however, he does not give up the original values. He creates a value reversal to confront the status quo, to undermine their values, but he does not reject them. He hides, even from himself, the old values behind the new.
The problem is Ressentiment Man does all this in the battle for power. In other words, he is involved in a contradiction. The values he rejects motivate him. He does not believe in the values he promotes. This is the pathological duality of vision. It is pathological because it creates a deep-rooted identity crisis. He is fighting the dominant values with a reversal that might be
The Theory of Ressentiment 7
effective in destroying them, but on a deep level, he embraces the values he is destroying. He uses his new moral beliefs as a weapon to destroy domination as he seeks to dominate.
The situation involves Ressentiment Man in a particular set of emotions: frustration, self-loathing, envy, and hatred. He is in a bad situation. He is failing in the face of his community’s values. He starts out with shame and self-contempt.32 To remove himself from this painful situation, he “psychologically manipulates himself.”33 He does so by negating the values of those who dominate him. Importantly, he does not create his own values. He merely reverses the values of the dominant. In doing so, he realizes his moral depravity. This is a second cause of self-loathing.
Closely related to self-loathing is envy. Ressentiment Man is both dissatisfied with himself and envious of those whose lights shine in the established culture. Since he cannot rise up, he turns to ressentiment Ressentiment channels his painful feelings of self-hatred and envy into vengeance. Ressentiment is a “creative expression of hatred and vengeance.”34 He hates his own impotence and those who have what he wants. Hatred is creative and destructive: It destroys a humiliating culture and creates a (reactionary) one in its place.
As Bernard Reginster points out, Ressentiment Man is involved in a twofold refusal: He refuses to give up his desire for power, and he refuses to accept his inability to gain it.35 This leads Ressentiment Man to the third path, the creative path, the path of cultural reevaluation, which involves contradiction, self-manipulation, and no small amount of denial.
Reevaluation
Ressentiment Man is at the bottom of society. He lost out in the competition to lead, to dominate, but, according to Nietzsche, despite all his suffering and hopelessness, he never gives up his secret wish to get back on top. He may be a slave, but he wants to be a tyrant.36 Tyranny is a synonym for ressentiment. Ressentiment Man, however, takes an unusual approach to regain dominance. He revalues the values of his oppressors, and he does so in a very particular way. He seeks revenge by making his very subordination the highest value. It is a great irony and paradox: Ressentiment Man seeks dominance by rejecting dominance and replacing it with its opposite, equality or humility or something of the sort. Nietzsche claims Ressentiment Man is the most ferocious of enemies because he is the most powerless.37
Ressentiment Man’s method is purely reactionary. His creative act is negation. He creates nothing. He simply reacts to the established powers. This is the inner mechanism of ressentiment: Negation is primary. This leads to what Wyman calls the “pathology of reactive behavior.”38 Ressentiment turns the very thing it seeks, domination, into its opposite and pursues it exactly through this opposition. Ressentiment is not only contradictory it is dependent on what it contradicts. It is thus inherently dishonest.
Inevitably, the contradiction and dishonesty at the heart of ressentiment make it endlessly defensive and critical. Pursuing power, while rejecting it,
The Theory of
leads Ressentiment Man to imagine all those around him scheming for power whether they are or not. Furthermore, once he achieves power, criticism is enthroned. Ressentiment Man exercises power negatively through criticism. Despite his lifelong commitment to Marxism, Mao Zedong always claimed secret enemies were out to undermine him. Mao’s pursuit of socialism was inseparable from his endless attacks on capitalism.39
The process of revaluation has two stages of development characterized by progressive loss of self-awareness.40 The first stage is a partial reevaluation of values. This stage is seen in Fidor Dostoyevsky’s Notes From Underground. 41 The main character, Underground Man, is hypercritical and hyperconscious. His enormous vanity has led him to conclude that all his suffering is the result of an unjust society. He expresses great rage, going through a litany of society’s failures. He sees everyone he meets as looking down on him. He tries to get the upper hand and in his fantasies occasionally achieves some temporary success. Underground Man cannot extricate himself from this hypercritical condition between imagining endless insults and fantasizing about retaliation. Even though he rejects the dominant value system, he never really revalues it, leaving him neurotically stuck between acceptance and rejection.
In the second and final stage, the reevaluation and reversal are complete. Reversal characterizes the entire value system.42 Ressentiment consumes the dominant values in a new value system the opposite of the first. Now equality reigns. It destroys the established culture of authority. It removes the unbearable tension between the secret wish to dominate and impotence by new abstractions with little correspondence to reality. The intimidating demands of hierarchy lead to its rejection. Ressentiment Man is completely unreflective. No longer suspended between the dominant value system and his criticism of it, as is Underground Man, Ressentiment Man is unaware of anything other than his leveling reversal, values denying hierarchy.
Repression
Now I want to look at how Ressentiment Man pulls it off, using anti-hierarchy to get on top. I will begin by summarizing the situation. Not only does ressentiment create a conflict between newly acquired values and real motivations, but the creation of the new values stimulates the exact desires they condemn.43 Indeed, the new values are an unconscious effort to gratify the desires they condemn. Ressentiment Man is thus in conflict with his conscious desires and the values they pursue, the result of reevaluation, and his real desires and the values they pursue that are repressed. The repressed desires along with conscious feelings of impotence are driving the reevaluation process. The new values come about from the failure to achieve the old values, but the old values are motivating the new values.
Why does Ressentiment Man repress his original desires? He is suffering from his failure in society and is looking for someone to blame, but he cannot strike out because he is powerless. His hostility must go somewhere. He
internalizes it—that is, represses it along with the original desires and the values they pursue. Ressentiment and the reevaluation process offer a way out of this unbearable situation of failure, weakness, and self-loathing. Ressentiment creates a new life track.
What exactly is repressed? Most of all Ressentiment Man wants power, but to avoid attack, he represses these impulses. In the process of reevaluation, the urge for power is repressed. Consciously he concludes power is evil. It is exactly through this deception and self-deception that Ressentiment Man makes one last desperate (unconscious) attempt to gain power. His secret weapon is brotherhood: By hiding his repressed urge for power in kindness and expressions of equality, he hopes to discredit the powerholders and destroy their dominance.
Ressentiment Man also represses his hatred and wish for revenge. He hates the power holders who have humiliated him and wishes to revenge his humiliation. He deeply represses his hatred and wish for revenge because they are the most dangerous. They could get him killed. His impotence causes him all this trouble, but his impotence is not repressed. In fact, he turns it into an ideal.
Ressentiment Man represses too the hope that the new game plan will bring him to power. He hopes that by denying he wants power, he will gain power. He represses this hope along with his will to power, hatred, and wish for revenge. They form a repressed complex.
Importantly, this complex is not static. Scheler notes once an impulse is repressed and detached from its original object, it “radiates” in all directions and gloms onto other repressed affects and ideas.44 Hatred in particular can grow to “monstrous levels.”45 Repressed impulses and ideas can influence personality traits or affect social processes. Repression of Mao’s historical record can lead through reversal to a longing for Red campaigns.
Ressentiment Man’s internal contradictions and repressions create moral problems. He seeks to “poison the conscience of the happy,”46 the winners in society whom he resents and seeks revenge against for his own failures. Through this poisoning, he wants to replace them as the powerful in society under his newly introduced value system. The process he goes through to get there permanently marks him morally.47 It involves him in all sorts of self-deception and denial. He must lie to himself. He denies all his aggressive traits. He denies his will to power, hatred, and wish for revenge.
All this self-deception divides Ressentiment Man into pieces. He has no integrity, the core Aristotelian virtue. He is not a whole person. His lack of truthfulness undermines political community.
Ressentiment Man is morally nowhere. He satisfied his true desires by denying them. If he openly pursued his will to power, he would immediately confront its impossibility because of his impotence. If he doubles down on his new values of brotherhood and equality, he cannot enjoy them because at bottom they are the result of his pursuit of power. His divided state leaves him trapped between two conflicting value systems. Speaking morally, he is trapped between good and evil, trying to do good for evil reasons.
Ressentiment Politics
Given the psychological nature of ressentiment, it is usually invisible, yet Ressentiment Man is utterly dependent on others. His identity is a mess. His “fundamental duality of vision,”48 between his true repressed desires and their fake replacements, makes his opinio of himself highly unstable and thus dependent on others. Given his divided internal world, he seeks stability in the social world. He is a slave to the opinion of others.
Ressentiment Man’s divided self, between his repressed desires and reactionary reevaluations, leads to confusions between internal and external aggression, self-hatred and social humiliation, and what is under his control in the external world and what is not. These confusions have political implications. They can lead to increased social conflict and irrational responses to social change, whether attempting the impossible or ignoring the possible. The rise in suicides among Communist Party cadres convicted of corruption shows this type of confusion. They steal as if they are invincible, but when caught, they give up everything.
A key way to identify Ressentiment Man in the political world is to show he desires the very values he condemns.49 Ressentiment Man is never honest with himself and is always looking for what Nietzsche calls “backdoors,” that is, to escape the painful contradictions that he has created for himself.50 Since his unconscious drive to power is in conflict with his dependency on others, Ressentiment Man is highly unreliable. He changes his opinion depending on who he is talking to and his precarious inner balance. Memory, the backbone of character, becomes, in Ressentiment Man, liable to distortion.51
Given the intense pressure from the repression of Ressentiment Man’s core drive, his will to power, and his corresponding dependence on the perceptions of others, he develops an “extraordinary sensitivity to insult.”52 His divided self makes all his commitments shallow. He is never sure of himself. His own self-doubt and self-hatred easily exaggerate slight criticism from others. Given his repressions and revaluations, however, his response is necessarily passive-aggressive. In the political world, this results in backstabbing, manipulation, and lies.
As James R. Abbott points out, ressentiment-impinged motivations always begin by comparison with others.53 Ressentiment Man is always criticizing others to compensate for his own “spiritual bankruptcy.”54 He tends to criticize the person, not the idea, because he is trying to protect his own self. Ironically, Ressentiment Man’s repressed will to power has made him a conflict-generating machine.
Notes
1 Rieff, Philip. The Triumph of the Therapeutic (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987).
2 Nietzsche chose the French word ressentiment because he believed there is not an equivalent word in German. Nietzsche, Freidrich. On the Genealogy of Morals (New York: Penguin, 2014 (1887)). Fassin adds there is also not an equivalent
The Theory of Ressentiment 11
word in English. Fassin, Didier. “On Resentment and Ressentiment,” Current Anthropology 54, no. 3 (2013). Importantly, Confucius and the traditions that followed him in Chinese philosophy were very concerned with resentment undermining ethics (Eric S. Nelson, “The Question of Resentment in Nietzsche and Confucian Ethics,” Taiwan Journal of East Asian Studies 10, no. 1 (June 2018).
4 Zhao, Suisheng. “The Ideological Campaign of Xi’s China,” Asia Survey 56, no. 6 (2016).
5 Guo, Xuezhi. “Controlling Corruption in the Party: China’s Central Discipline Inspection Commission,” The China Quarterly 219 (2014).
6 Nietzsche, On the Geneology of Morals.
7 De Tocqueville, Alex. The Ancient Regime and the Revolution (London: Penguin Books, 2008 (1856)).
8 De Tocqueville, The Ancient Regime and the Revolution, 13.
9 Scheler, Max. Ressentiment (Milwaukie: Marquette University Press, 2017 (1915)).
10 Scheler, Ressentiment
11 De Tocqueville, Alexis. Democracy in America (New York: Anchor Books, 1969 (1836)).
12 Scheler, Ressentiment.
13 Kaufmann, Walter. Nietzsche (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1974).
14 “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth” (Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 5:5).
15 Nietzsche, On The Geneology of Morals.
16 Reginster, Bernard. “Nietzsche on Ressentiment and Valuation,” Philosophy and Phenomentological Research 57, no. 2 (1997).
17 Kaufman, Nietzsche
18 De Tocqueville, Democracy in America
19 Abbott, James R. “Critical Sociologies and Ressentiment: The Examples of C. Wright Mills and Howard Becker,” The American Sociologist 37, no. 3 (2006).
20 Sombart, Werner. The Quintessence of Capitalism (London: Andesite Publishing, 2015).
21 Kabat, Geoffrey C. Ideology and Imagination (New York: Columbia University Press, 1978).
22 Abbott, “Critical Sociologies and Ressentiment.”
23 Reginster, “Nietzsche on Ressentiment and Valuation.”
24 Fassin, “On Resentment and Ressentiment.”
25 Scheler, Ressentiment.
26 Bernstein, Michael Andre’. Bitter Carnival (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992).
27 Fassin, “On Resentment and Ressentiment.”
28 Nehamas, Alexander. Nietzsche: Life as Literature (Cambridge: Harvard University University Press, 1987), 233.
29 “Everyone, as it were, wishes to revenge himself upon someone for his (own) nullity,” Fyodor Dostoevsky (quoted in Bernstein, Michael Andre’, Bitter Carnival, 87).
30 Scheler, Ressentiment.
31 Wyman, Alina. “The specter of freedom: ressentiment and Dostoeyskij’s notes from Underground,” Studies in East European Thought, 59 (2007): 133.
32 Reginster, “Nietzsche on Ressentiment and Valuation.”
33 Wyman, “The specter of freedom,” 131.
34 Morrison, Iain. “Aescetic Slaves: Rereading Nietzsche’s On the Genealogy of Morals,” Journal of Nietzsche Studies 45, no. 3 (2014): 26.
35 Reginster, “Nietzsche on Ressentiment and Valuation.”
36 Kaufman, Nietzsche
The Theory of Ressentiment
37 Morrison, “Aescetic Slaves.”
38 Wyman, “The specter of freedom,” 136.
39 Ideological politics are always dualistic and alienative—that is, they are dependent on what they criticize (Edward Shils, “Ideology and Civility,” Sewanee Review 66 (July–September 1958)).
40 Wyman, “The specter of freedom.”
41 Dostoyevsky, Notes From Underground.
42 Wyman, “The specter of freedom.”
43 Reginster, “Notes on Ressentiment and Valuation.”
44 Scheler, Ressentiment, 43.
45 Reginster, “Notes on Ressentiment and Valuation,” 286.
46 Anderson, R. Lanier. “On the nobility of Nietzsche’s priests,” in Nietzsche’s On the Genealogy of Morals, ed. Simon May (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 51.
47 Rorty, Amelie, “Comments on Didier Fassin,” Current Anthropology 54, no. 3 (2013).
48 Wyman, “The specter of freedom,” 133.
49 Reginster, “Notes on Ressentiment and Valuation.”
50 Nietzsche, On the Geneology of Morals
51 For Nietzsche, time presents a big problem for man/woman. So much so that it is the defining feature of human nature. Time is fundamentally a passing away, as “it was,” but the human mind is centered by the will, and the will is always a willing forward. Hence, man/woman lives frustrated and enraged by its inability to change the past, the largest part of reality. This offense against the will, against the mind, makes the mind revengeful. Revenge is thus the fundamental force in human thinking (Heidegger, Martin What Is Called Thinking? (New York: Harper, 2004 (1954)). Ressentiment, then is not an abnormality for Nietzsche, but the essence of human character.
52 Wyman, “The specter of freedom,” 121.
53 Abbott, “Critical Sociologies and Ressentiment.”
54 Wyman, “The specter of freedom, 133.
Bibliography
Abbott, James R. “Critical Sociologies and Ressentiment: The Examples of C. Wright Mills and Howard Becker.” The American Sociologist 37, no. 3 (2006): 15–30.
Anderson, R. Lanier. “On the Nobility of Nietzsche’s Priests.” In Nietzsche’s On the Genealogy of Morals, edited by Simon May. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011.
Bernstein, Michael Andre. Bitter Carnival. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992.
De Tocqueville, Alexis. Democracy in America. New York: Anchor Books, 1969 (1836).
De Tocqueville, Alexis. The Ancient Regime and the Revolution. London: Penguin Books, 2008 (1856).
Dostoyevsky, Fidor. Notes From Underground. London: Signet Classic, 1980 (1864).
Fassin, Didier. “On Resentment and Ressentiment.” Current Anthropology 54, no. 3 (2013): 249–67.
Guo, Xuezhi. “Controlling Corruption in the Party: China’s Central Discipline Inspection Commission.” The China Quarterly 219 (2014): 597–624.
Heidegger, Martin. What Is Called Thinking? New York: Harper, 2004 (1954).
Kabat, Geoffrey C. Ideology and Imagination. New York: Columbia University Press, 1978.
Kaufmann, Walter. Nietzsche. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1974.
McGregor, Richard. Xi Jinping: The Backlash. London: Penguin Books, 2019.
Morrison, Iain. “Ascetic Slaves: Rereading Nietzsche’s On the Genealogy of Morals.” Journal of Nietzsche Studies 45, no. 3 (2014): 230–57.
Nathan, Andrew J. “The Puzzle of Authoritarian Legitimacy.” Journal of Democracy 31, no. 1 (January 2020): 158–68.
Nehamas, Alexander. Nietzsche: Life as Literature. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1987.
Nelson, Eric S. “The Question of Resentment in Nietzsche and Confucian Ethics.” Taiwan Journal of East Asian Studies 10, no. 1 (June 2013): 17–51.
Reginster, Bernard. “Nietzsche on Ressentiment and Valuation.” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 57, no. 2 (1997): 281–305.
Rieff, Philip. The Triumph of the Therapeutic. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987.
Rorty, Amelie. “Comments on Didier Fassin.” Current Anthropology 54, no. 3 (2013): 262–3.
Scheler, Max. Ressentiment. Milwaukie: Marquette University Press, 2017 (1915).
Sombart, Werner. The Quintessence of Capitalism. London: Andesite Publishing, 2015 (1915).
Trevaskes, Susan. “A Law Unto Itself: Chinese Communist Party Leadership yifa zhiquo in the Xi Era.” Modern China 44 no. 4 (2018): 347–73.
Wyman, Alina. “The Specter of Freedom: Ressentiment and Dostoeyskij’s Notes from Underground.” Studies in East European Thought, 59 (2007): 119–40.
Zhao, Suisheng. “The Ideological Campaign in Xi’s China.” Asian Survey 56, no. 6 (2016): 1168–93.
2 Literature Review on “Anticorruption” Campaigns
The Anti-Rightest Movement, the Great Leap Forward, the Cultural Revolution, and the Tiananmen Square massacre, for example, argues Richard McGregor, have foundational similarities with Xi Jinping’s Anticorruption Campaign: They are all the result of top-level power struggles that led leadership to launch a campaign to get control of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).1 These campaigns were great political events that not only changed the distribution of power; they impacted the development and nature of the political system.
Andrew Wedeman goes further, connecting all CCP political campaigns to anticorruption.2 He argues the Three Antis Campaign, Five Antis Campaign, and the Four Cleanups Campaign all included anticorruption aspects. The Anti-Rightest Campaign developed into an attack on “systematic corruption of power.”3 The Cultural Revolution targeted revisionist capitalists, so it too involved anticorruption.
In this review of “anticorruption” campaigns, I will follow this line of thinking, that all CCP political campaigns involve some level of anticorruption. I will take a broad view of “anticorruption” and will examine campaigns in historical context to determine their various elements. This will allow me to create a description and explanation of the campaign model in practice.
Campaigns are tools of political power. In addition to anticorruption, all campaigns in this review include the use of ideology. Power and ideology are the two central elements in CCP campaigns. I will begin the review with short discussions of the campaign model, the origin of CCP political culture and its use of campaigns, and Mao’s use of campaigns. The latter two sections will note the origin of central campaign patterns that will continually reappear in later campaigns. I will then take a closer look at three specific campaigns—the Campaign to Suppress Counterrevolutionaries (1950–3), the Cultural Revolution (1966–8), and the Strike Hard Campaign (1983–5)—to explore their purposes and effects. The first campaign covers the early Mao period, the second the late Mao period, and the third Deng Xiaoping’s assumption of the top position. All three had a significant impact on CCP political culture and practice. Other campaigns could have been chosen, but for reasons of space, choices had to be made.
DOI: 10.4324/9781003331063-2
Another random document with no related content on Scribd:
to receive gifts or testimonials because of any special work of relief in which they have taken part. Therefore, should the plan of his majesty’s government to present to me some testimonial be as yet not so advanced as to cause any embarrassment if not carried out, I would be glad to have it held in abeyance until the question is decided.
But as there exists no regulation of this nature at present, if this plan has been so advanced that my not receiving this testimonial would cause any embarrassment to his majesty’s government, or to the Minister of Foreign Affairs, please take no action in the matter.
Permit me to again express to your excellency my sincere appreciation, and to say whatever should be decided I shall always value the intention of such kindly recognition of the American Red Cross and its work on the part of the Italian government.
Please accept, Mr. Ambassador, the expression of my highest esteem and my heartiest good wishes for the return of prosperity to Sicily and Calabria.
Yours, sincerely,
MABEL T. BOARDMAN.
To this letter the Ambassador replied that the testimonial had already been completed, and he begged that no action against its acceptance be taken.
THE ELIZABETH GRISCOM HOSPITAL AT VILLAGIO DE REGINA ELENA IN PROCESS OF CONSTRUCTION
A beautiful reproduction in yellow gold of the ancient civic crown of Rome, sent in a most artistic leather jewel case, was later presented to Miss Boardman, in the name of the Italian government, by the Marquis Montagliari, the Italian Charge d’Affairs, in the absence of the Ambassador. On a plate in the case is engraved:
To Miss Mabel Boardman
Of the American Red Cross Society. The Italian Government as a Token of Gratitude. 1908-1909.
A translation of the graceful letter of the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Signor Tittoni, which accompanied the gift, is given below:
R , June 16, 1909.
I L : The royal Ambassador has already expressed, and will reiterate, to you the sentiments of our gratitude for the highly generous work inspired by you, and accomplished with such intelligent love, during the terrible
disaster which overwhelmed our country at the end of the last year.
Now I desire to address you personally, offering to you, in the name of the government and the Italian people, an object which is inspired by our artistic traditions, and which will serve to recall to you the benefactions rendered and the memory which we preserve thereof.
We have wished to see in the action, so prompt, so efficacious, so vast, and so enduring of the American Red Cross, something more than a simple evidence of human fraternity. We love to consider it a fresh proof of the spiritual ties by which the United States feel themselves bound to the Mother Italy; therefore this action has been doubly dear to us. To you belongs so large a share of the merit, allow us to see personified in yourself all the feminine grace of the institution which has known how to give expression to these ties in the form most acceptable to the grateful beneficiaries.
With the most cordial regards, yours, most devotedly, TITTONI.
Y E : Permit me to express, through you, to the Italian government and to the people of Italy my most profound appreciation of the honor conferred upon me by the presentation of the beautiful reproduction of the civic crown of Rome, as a token of gratitude for the sympathy and assistance of the American Red Cross after the terrible disaster in Sicily and Calabria.
It was with a sense of the greatest sorrow and the sincerest sympathy that the people of the United States, through their Red Cross Society, found means to express in tangible form these heartfelt emotions. To many of our people Italy is the motherland, and to many others she has given so rich a treasury of art and literature that we must remain forever in her debt. Stricken by one of the great and mysterious forces of nature, thousands of her people were destroyed and
thousands were left homeless, suffering, and in dire distress. Our people, overwhelmed by her misfortune, were glad, in the spirit of brotherly love, to take some share in her assistance.
That the Italian government selected as a token of gratitude an object around which clusters the great traditions of ancient Rome moves us deeply, and will be an inspiration for our Red Cross to continue constant in its efforts to conquer suffering and be worthy of such recognition.
Permit me to express my own gratitude, and to say that what little I have been able to do personally has been done with sincere affection for Italy and her people, and because of the sympathetic and hearty support of our people and Red Cross officers.
With earnest wishes for the prosperity of your country, and for the speedy rehabilitation of the stricken communities, and with cordial regards and many thanks for your excellency’s most kind communication, I am
Yours, sincerely,
MABEL T. BOARDMAN.
Senator T , Minister of Foreign Affairs, Rome, Italy
.
On June 10, 1909, the Executive Committee adopted the following resolution:
W , It has sometimes occurred that members of the American Red Cross, engaged in some special work, have been presented with gifts because of appreciation of this work; and,
W , The Executive Committee of the American Red Cross considers that this is an unwise custom to permit to continue; and,
W , The American Red Cross itself provides a medal of merit for recognition of especially meritorious relief work;
Be it resolved, That hereafter no member of the American Red Cross shall be permitted to receive any valuable gift in recognition of special relief work in which he or she has taken part, and that no testimonial or medal shall be accepted without authority of the Executive Committee.
PORTUGUESE EARTHQUAKE RELIEF
L , P , August 5, 1909.
The American National Red Cross, Washington, D. C.
G : Through His Excellency, Colonel Page Bryan, American Minister at Lisbon, we have just received your new contribution of $300 for our Earthquake Relief Fund, your credit on that account having thus risen to $1,300.
We beg to present to you our earnest thanks for this generous manifestation of your sympathy and take the liberty of enclosing a photo showing the design of the houses you kindly have aided us to build for 160 families of the poorest classes in the four villages destroyed by the earthquake.
Very faithfully, yours,
PELA SOCIEDADE PORTUGUEZA DA CRUZ VERMELHA,
G. L. S F , Secretary
CANAL ZONE RED CROSS
By Major C. A. D , U. S. Army.
Of the three great classes of Red Cross work, war relief, international relief and emergency relief, the last is the field in which the Canal Zone Branch is making itself peculiarly useful.
PRESIDENT TAFT ADDRESSING AUDIENCE OF RED CROSS MEMBERS AT THE Y. M. C. A., CULEBRA.
On the Canal Zone there is less need of such an organization in some ways than there would be in a community of 50,000 people in the United States, because here the government, through the Isthmian Canal Commission, maintains a good system of hospitals and district physicians, and also because there are few people here who cannot work, and almost none who cannot get work if they want it. But there is a limit beyond which the Commission may not go in the expenditure of government funds, and, broadly, that limit is that it may not aid people who are not employed on the Canal work. To the cases that lie outside this limit the Red Cross addresses itself.
VIEW OF HOSPITAL GROUNDS FROM ENTRANCE, ANCON.
WRECK
OF STEAM SHOVEL NO 261 BAS OBISPO, DECEMBER 12, 1908
An instance arose recently in Colon, where a family was destitute because it had been deserted by the husband and father. The mother and three children were kept alive by private subscription until the Red Cross was organized. The Red Cross then sent the family to New York, where the members of the Masonic order came to their relief and sent them to the mother’s home in England. The Commission could not help in such a case, but the Red Cross could, and did.
A citizen of France, living near Tabernilla, and not employed on the Canal work, was bitten by a mad dog a few weeks ago. He had no money to pay his way to a Pasteur Institute; attempts to inoculate for hydrophobia on the Isthmus have been of uncertain value, and the Commission could not send a non-employee to the United States. The Red Cross appropriated $50 for his steamship fare to New York and he was successfully treated in the Pasteur Institute in that city.
CULEBRA CUT LOOKING SOUTH FEBRUARY, 1905
A Spanish laborer who had lost both his legs on the Isthmus was sent to New York by the Commission, where he was fitted with two cork legs and then sent back to his home in Spain. The Red Cross gave him $50 to help him on his way, for the Commission could not advance more than his actual transportation and medical fees.
Not long ago a Boer, who had become naturalized as an American, was declared so far gone with tuberculosis that he could not work on the Isthmus nor remain here with safety. He had been in Mexico a few years before, and felt sure that if he could return to the plateau region his health would be restored. The Red Cross advanced him $150 to defray his expenses—in other words, gave him another chance for his life.
A number of cases have been relieved where the necessity was just as pressing but where a smaller amount was sufficient.
It is not improbable that there may be a call for immediate relief on a larger scale before the Canal is completed and the Americans in this big construction camp pass on to other work. If an accident
occurs, it will find a thorough organization with funds in hand and ready to begin work without any preliminaries.
Lectures on first aid are delivered by the district physicians along the line of the Canal to members of the police and fire departments. To what extent this instruction will aid in time of emergency is conjectural, but it should have the effect of adding instructed men to the corps of nurses and doctors in case of a big accident. It is probable, however, that there is no place on earth where the hospital corps is so well equipped to give prompt aid as on the Canal Zone. On this account, the instruction of the police and firemen is not likely to prove such a benefit as it would in a less thoroughly organized community.
GATUN DAM SITE. LOOKING EAST FROM SPILLWAY. AUGUST, 1908.
The Canal Zone Branch has already spent about $500 in its relief work, and its balance on July 1, 1909, was $1,577.17.
The suggestion that a branch of the American National Red Cross be organized on the Canal Zone was made by Miss Mabel T. Boardman, member of the Executive Committee, to Major C. A. Devol, U. S. A., Chief Quartermaster of the Isthmian Canal
Commission, in a letter dated October 26, 1908. At the request of Major Devol, Major Lynch, of the Medical Department, U. S. A., author of the text-book, “How to Prevent Accidents and What to Do for Injuries and Emergencies,” came to the Isthmus in January, 1909, and addressed Red Cross meetings at Ancon, Culebra, Gorgona and Cristobal. Major Devol accompanied Major Lynch, and invited all persons interested to help organize a Canal Zone Branch. On January 17, at a meeting held in the Hotel Tivoli, at Ancon, a permanent organization was effected, with Major C. A. Devol as president; Mr H. D. Reed, treasurer; Miss J. Macklin Beattie, secretary. The Canal Zone was divided into fourteen districts, and the work of perfecting district organizations was begun. At a meeting held in the Hotel Tivoli, February 28, twelve district organizations were represented. The central organization was perfected by electing Mrs. Lorin C. Collins, Lieutenant-Colonel John L. Phillips, Major Chester Harding, and Mr. A. Bruce Minear an executive committee; and Mr. W. W. Warwick, auditor. A Committee on First Aid Lectures was appointed, consisting of Lieutenant-Colonel Phillips and Mr. H. D. Reed.
A noteworthy event in the early history of the Canal Zone Branch was the visit of President-elect Taft, National President of the Red Cross, to the Canal Zone in February, 1909. On the night of February 3 he made an address at the Commission Club house in Culebra, in which he outlined the work of the Red Cross. The meeting was attended by over 1,200 members of the Red Cross, and had a marked effect in arousing popular interest in this most important work.
The Canal Zone has now a membership of 1,300, divided among fourteen districts. The following are the officers of the district organizations:
Ancon—Dr. John L. Phillips, chairman. Corozal—Alfred P. James, chairman. Pedro Miguel—Ernest Bitely, chairman. Paraiso—Harry Dundas, chairman.
Culebra—Mrs. C. A. Devol, chairman.
Gatun—Major William L. Sibert, chairman.
Cristobal—Dr. M. E. Connor, chairman.
Empire—W. M. Wood, acting chairman.
Las Cascadas—Mrs. Frank I. McAllister, acting chairman.
Bas Obispo—X. D. Holt, acting chairman.
Camp Elliott—Mrs. B. F. Fuller, acting chairman.
Gorgona—Mrs. Frank M. Morrison, acting chairman.
San Pablo—V. L. Kearney, acting chairman.
Tabernilla—C. D. Thaxton, acting chairman.
THE USE AND ABUSE OF THE RED CROSS BRASSARD
By G. H. R , M. D.,
Late First Lieutenant Medical Reserve Corps, U. S. A.
In a War Department order issued on February 10, 1909, the importance of regulating the issue of brassards to those entitled to neutrality by virtue of the first paragraph of article 9, and articles 10 and 11 of the Geneva Convention, was recognized. At the same time, and by the same order, the Medical Department was authorized to provide and deliver the “necessary certificates of identity to those persons attached to the sanitary service who do not have a military uniform.”
It is generally understood that this order shall not be applicable in time of peace; yet it would seem that, to make it effective and to anticipate the confusion incident to a declaration of war, some plan or system should be developed in the American Red Cross (which is the sanitary service recognized by the War Department) whereby the individual members could be definitely classified, and, when the occasion demanded, the necessary brassards and cards of identity could be expeditiously given them.
That this question should engage the attention of the American Red Cross is apparent to those of us who were in San Francisco during the weeks immediately following the disaster of April 18, 1906. On almost every other man was seen the Red Cross emblem in some form, it being generally known that those engaged in duties pertaining to this organization were permitted to pass and re-pass the sentries on duty in different parts of the city; for while we were not technically “under martial law,” yet the streets were everywhere
patrolled by armed men, some of whom were directly under military control and others only partially so. It was in passing one of these patrols that a personal friend of mine was shot and killed for refusing, when challenged, to stop his automobile, on which was flying a Red Cross flag. It is needless to say that not one-quarter of those using the emblem were legally entitled to do so, and much harm was done the organization by those who wore the brassard for personal gain and benefit.
Only by the study of past experience can we judge what the future will produce; and if we expect the general public ever to recognize and respect the brassard we should begin at once a campaign of instruction which will explain its legitimate use and the reasons for regulating its issue.
It would be of incalculable benefit in time of war, or when martial law was declared, to have brassards and cards of identification already issued and recorded, for they could readily be re-stamped or copied by the Medical Department, as provided for in the order quoted, with the result that much time would be saved and much confusion avoided.
REPRESSION OF THE ABUSE OF THE RED CROSS INSIGNIA
At the time of the Eighth International Red Cross Conference held in London, June, 1907, Professor Louis Renault presented in the name of the Central Committee of the French Red Cross a report upon the “Repression of the Abuse of the Red Cross Insignia.” In this report Professor Renault showed that for twenty years this question had not ceased to be considered. This abuse continues in certain countries—ours among the number—because of insufficient legislation. Still, important steps have been taken, and if to-day the work has not been completed it is on the right road. At the International Convention of 1906, at Geneva, when the revised treaty was accepted it contained special paragraphs referring to the protection of the insignia and name which all the countries of the world have agreed upon to designate the hospital formations and their personnel protected by this treaty. The countries signing this treaty obligated themselves, in case their present laws do not provide sufficient protection to the Red Cross name and insignia, to apply to their respective legislative bodies for the further necessary legislation. The report of Professor Renault had for its object to call attention to these promises that had been made. The honor and the interest of each country demand that they be kept. The Swiss Federal Council has lately prepared a law which it will present to the Chambers to preserve to this emblem of humanitarian neutrality, which the Cross of Geneva represents, all its moral value and its noble signification.
Action of American Medical Association.
Major W. M. Ireland, Medical Corps, U. S. Army, presented to the House of Delegates of the American Medical Association the
resolution adopted by the Executive Committee of the American National Red Cross, October 18, 1907, and then offered the following resolution:
W , By the terms of the Treaty of Geneva, 1864, and the Revised Treaty of Geneva, 1906, the emblem of the Greek Red Cross on a white ground, and the words “Red Cross,” or “Geneva Cross,” were adopted to designate the personnel and materiel of the medical departments of the military and naval forces and of the recognized volunteer aid societies in time of war for the humane purpose of rendering them immune from attack or capture; and
W , The United States, as well as all other civilized powers, is a signatory to said treaties; and
W , The use of the Red Cross by medical associations and individuals of the medical profession must seriously impair the usefulness of the emblem for the purpose for which it was created and adopted; be it therefore
Resolved, That it is the sense of the American Medical Association that the use of the Geneva Red Cross by associations or individuals, other than those of the army, navy and Red Cross Society, should be discontinued, and, if desirable, some other insignia adopted, and be it further
Resolved, That the adoption of this resolution be given as wide publicity as possible in the medical journals of the country
Dr. Samuel Wolfe, of Pennsylvania, supplemented the resolutions presented by Major Ireland by introducing the following preambles and resolution, which were also referred to the Reference Committee on Legislation and Political Action:
W , It is held that the Red Cross, which now constitutes the main character in the official badge of the American Medical Association, is eminently distinctive of
certain broader fields of philanthropy, rather than of medicine in particular, and
W , The traditions of medicine would be fully satisfied by the adoption of a design as herewith submitted and described as follows:
A shield on which is emblazoned the American eagle holding in its talons a laurel wreath within which is the knotty rod and entwined serpent and the letters A. M. A.; therefore, be it
Resolved, That the American Medical Association adopt as its official insignia or badge this design.
Protect the Red Cross.
Issued by the New York State Branch.
When the Red Cross insignia was first adopted at the Geneva Convention, as a sign of a hospital in war, and for many years after that, no one dreamed of using it as a mark on goods sold in trade. Gradually, however, such use became more common, and a badge of humanity, which men in the midst of warfare respected, became more and more, in trade, a meaningless label, applied to all kinds of medicinal boxes, bottles and jars, and every other conceivable package and bundle.
The badge of the Red Cross in America would have become a mere commercial mark but for the efforts of the American Red Cross and its branches.
We have worked hard to stop this wrongful use of the red cross, and we appeal to you to help us in this work, and to respect the law, for the unauthorized use of the red cross is in violation of a Federal statute. Help us to make the red cross what it should be, the badge which stands for humanity, and help to those who suffer in war and in calamities of all kinds. Help us to do this by stopping the use of the red cross or using the words red cross on your own articles of commerce and by urging others to do the same.
Even if it helps you to sell a few articles by using this mark on them, is it worth while bringing the red cross into the domain of commercialism, when so many thousand Americans, men and women, in private and in public life—President Taft as well as the smallest worker in the smallest branch—are trying to make the red cross the emblem of the great Red Cross work all over this country, and of that work only?
We forget only too readily what is done in such cases as the San Francisco and the Messina earthquakes, and few recall now the Red Cross work in the Spanish War—fewer still the similar work of the Sanitary Commissions during the Civil War. We pour out money to the associations organized to help those in distress, and we give the Red Cross millions of dollars to distribute. Nobody questions its work; nobody doubts its efficiency; all trust it. Why not then help it as we ask you to do? City officials in New York, and hundreds of individuals have stopped the use of the red cross on ambulances, automobiles, wagons, boxes, packages and all kinds of other articles. They have chosen other emblems suggesting medicine and purity of the articles sold. We urge you to do the same.
Help us, therefore, to make its badge honored and respected, so that it shall stand for nothing but the presence of the ever-ready American Red Cross.
Resolution adopted by the National Association of Retail Druggists in convention at Louisville, September 6-10, 1909.
W , By the terms of the Treaty of Geneva, 1864, and the revised Treaty of Geneva, 1906, the emblem of the Greek Red Cross on a white background and the words “Red Cross” or “Geneva Cross” were adopted to designate the personnel and materiel of the medical departments of the military and naval forces and the recognized volunteer aid societies in time of war, for the humane purpose of rendering them immune from attack or capture, and
W , The United States, as well as all other civilized powers, is a signatory to said treaties,
