askchapo

Material conditions do not mean quality of life. It means a set of conditions that relates to how labor and capital are tied to productive (material) forces that must be fulfilled first. It is impossible to enact socialism under a feudal system.

At the risk of extreme simplification, I will give you a very important example from Chinese history.

Wang Mang the Usurper was the only democratically elected leader throughout the thousands of years of Chinese history, and that occurred 2000 years ago (reign AD 9-23). Brought to the throne through popular support from the peasantry, who were touched by his selflessness, thriftiness, humility and perhaps most important during his time, his exemplary Confucian image against the backdrop of the decaying Western Han monarchy (Emperor Ai*, the famous gay emperor).

(*Note: to be fair, the young Emperor Ai aka Liu Xin, did attempt to reform the system, but found himself powerless against the entrenched feudal lords in the imperial court, and eventually chose to indulge in hedonism with his lover and accelerated the downfall of the dynasty)

It is often memed on the Chinese internet that Wang Mang was a time traveler, who wanted to reform the system with ideas far too ahead of its time:

1. Banned slavery and freed the slaves under the feudal landlords (豪族, haozu)
2. Enacted land redistribution
3. Nationalized the natural resources that had been monopolized by the local landlords
4. Pursued currency reforms

Guess what is the outcome?

In less than a decade, 20 million people (half of the entire population) would die from his newly enacted policies, a catastrophe of such disastrous proportion that is only matched by An Lushan’s rebellion some 600 years later.

This is often used as an example of why Great Man Theory is bunk and why successful reforms can only happen when the historical and material conditions exist.

First, you cannot free the slaves when the slaves don’t want to be freed. Why? Because going back to a peasantry life would mean subject to heavy levy from the imperial government, getting bullied and exploited by corrupt local officials, and are often defenseless against banditry. The feudal lords have their own private economy, private army that offer protection to the defenseless peasantry, and in exchange for them to enter into slavery. Being a slave at the time meant having a better life than being left fending for yourself as a “free man”.

Second, you’re touching the vested interests of the feudal lords who command a significant portion of the economy. As emperor (head of state), you are given a lot of autonomy but only within the boundaries that do not threaten the interests of the establishment. It would take until the appearance of Imperial Court Examination from 5th-8th century AD for the emperors to eventually form their own cliques (power base) promoted from the population at large (寒门, hanmen, aka the lower classes) against the entrenched feudal lords (豪族 -> 门阀). Such conditions simply did not exist during the 1st century AD.

Vibes are essentially the underlying assumption of the Great Man Theory, the idea that you simply need to have the right ideas to change the system, rather than to understand that the basic historical and material conditions need to be emerge first.

What made the proletariat a revolutionary class was the transition from feudal serfdom into industrial labor that began in European countries during the French Revolution and the Industrial Revolution. This meant that labor was no longer tied to the land, but directly to the productive force of the industrial capitalist economy. This gave the working class a huge leverage that did not exist in prior slavery or serfdom eras, hence Marx’s “the capitalists created the conditions for their own demise.”

Funnily enough, Wang Mang named his dynasty Xin (新, new), as in “New China”. It’s often joked that this dude time travelled from the future.