Ezra Vogel, Max Read, and Friendship in Late Capitalism
Or, the need for solidarity in uncertain times
In 1965, the late Ezra Vogel published “From Friendship to Comradeship: The Change in Personal Relations in Communist China” in China Quarterly. The opening paragraph is quite something:
In the first fifteen years of Communist rule on the Chinese mainland, personal relationships have undergone an important transformation, a transformation which testifies to the success of the regime in penetrating and influencing the private lives of its citizens. From the view of the individual, the change in personal relationships arises principally from the uncertainty as to whether private conversation will remain private or whether it will in some way be brought to the attention of the authorities. When one no longer confides in a friend for fear that he might pass on the information, either intentionally or unintentionally, an element of trust is lost. When a person no longer invites a friend to his home for fear the friend might see something that he would later be called upon to describe, the nature of the relationship is altered. When a person begins to watch carefully and think about what he might be revealing to his friend and wonders under what circumstances this information might be brought to the attention of the authorities, friendship as a relation of confidence and personal commitment is weakened.
Friendliness, he is clear to point out, is not gone, but he sees a rise of “comradeship” that in some ways is replacing it. Friendship, in Vogel’s mind, became connected to “feudalistic” relations of insiders and outsiders, of the favored and disfavored, of inequality. He saw comradeship seeping into general practice from its use among party cadres and other officials, with a universal flatness and emphasis on “helping” others, where helping could mean offering assistance when needed but including the need to stay in line.
While acknowledging some of its virtues, Vogel is clearly skeptical of this shift, resistant to it. He sees in it what will come to be called totalitarian politics, the omnipresence of the state and Party in all modes and facets of life. By dint of timing, he cannot be aware of the chaos of the Cultural Revolution that will convulse these billion comrades in the years that follow his essay’s publication, but one can read a trepidation in Vogel’s language that the politics that he is observing is messing with fundamental pieces of what makes us people, disturbing the deep magic of humanity.
In the wake of Donald Trump’s electoral victory, the takes have flowed like the spice melange, as they of course would and perhaps even needed to. I added a drop or two to this deluge and do not apologize for doing so. We need to process such moments, and to do so collectively, or at least sharing our private reflections publicly feels important. My contributions focused, perhaps naturally, on my areas of research, namely climate change and Chinese politics.
On climate, doomerism became rampant. It is deeply weird that a person who denies what is quite possibly the greatest threat to face humankind was elected (again) to one of its highest offices. And if one imagines, like so many in DC do, that the United States is at the center of the climate crisis as it is at the center of all things, then his election is a crushing blow at a critical moment. This reaction is reasonable. Carbon Brief’s reading of the modeling suggests that a counter-factual Biden/Harris victory probably keeps 4 billion tons of carbon out of the atmosphere compared with a Trump return. But US emissions are a small and shrinking share of global emissions, about 10% these days, and are likely to decline even under Trump because of the economics of renewables and the continued transition away from coal. Other countries are also seeing these economics and escaping fossil fuel dependence. European states suffered incredible price spikes following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and are slashing regulations that have slowed renewable deployments, resulting in real reductions of natural gas usage. And similar dynamics are playing out in other countries, like Pakistan. The core of a solution to climate change is to stop burning fossil fuels, and that means expanding clean electricity while electrifying everything. With cheap renewables (yes, mostly made in China), the global energy transition continues apace despite the Trumpian moment.
Similarly, China’s economy is a story that is mostly about China and its domestic situation, with the US election perhaps creating new pressures and possibilities to prepare for, but ultimately a small piece of the puzzle. China has definitively broken away from the carbon triangle, a real estate fever that led to the over-building of millions of empty apartments and empty airports and bridges to nowhere. The country’s ability to navigate to new growth models remains an open question, and new stimulus policies suggest a reluctance on the part of the country’s leadership to truly turn the fate of the economy over to the Chinese consumer. Even here though, Trump’s return does sneak in a mention — the Chinese stimulus plans now include an asterisk. If forced to do more stimulus in response to potential American actions (read the massive tariffs that Trump brayed on about throughout his campaign), the Chinese party-state is prepared to do so.
These explainers are not attempts to normalize Trump, to platform him or his politics, to ignore the fascistic language that has become ubiquitous. There were literal Nazis marching with swastikas in my old neighborhood in Columbus, OH last week. But they are a reminder that we live on a planet with eight billion fellow humans, and even the return of Trump, someone who a political thinker I respect described as the most influential and consequential American political figure in decades, does not represent a stopping of all trends, a rupture with all patterns structuring our futures.
But clearly my takes were not about the big questions of what it all means or why this happened. And I’m very glad to be part of a profession that is parsing data — voting data and campaign expenditures and international trends and so on — that is diving into the details of the debacle of 2024. Perhaps no take can do so completely.
Yet Max Read’s November 7th missive hit home with me at a relatively profound fashion, enough to remind me of Vogel’s essay that I encountered two decades ago.
Titled, “The TikTok electorate: Young men, social media, and the TikTok subject,” Read makes clear early on that he’d like to go deeper than a shallow analysis of the effects of these new social media.
I suspect a lot of similar pieces and headlines will be written for this election--this time about TikTok, which has become a particular blame-sink for frustrated Democrats this year. (To some extent it’s being used as a metonym for social media in general, to some extent being singled out as particularly evil.) The particular concerns around TikTok focus on younger--and, especially, male--voters, who, the general argument goes, have been pushed young voters to the right through some combination of misinformation and propaganda. This broad complaint is most familiar in two specific forms: (1) doom-and-gloom TikTok videos have convinced people that the U.S. economy is terrible, even though it’s not, and caused a “vibescession”; and (2) TikTok is radicalizing young men thanks to its endless supply of Andrew Tate, manosphere podcast clips, and street-interview guys asking women what their “body count” is.
Instead, he argues that the technology itself is remaking the way that we think about ourselves and society:
You can’t blame coalitional instability (or large electoral swings) purely on TikTok, of course. But it seems to me that, by intermediating social and cultural life with a capricious quasi-market structure from which participants can sometimes wildly benefit, TikTok and other social platforms cultivate an appetite for volatility and risk, which can easily be seen in the rise of legal or semi-legal gambling (on sports and politics), retail investing, and crypto speculation, as well as outsider and anti-establishment political candidates, various kinds of fringe politics, and the “it’s so over/we’re so back” meme.
Some people are making millions of dollars by pointing their phones at themselves and clicking a few buttons. Others are “merely” getting free stuff or the accolades of their campuses or invitations to exclusive venues. This turbulence a possibility of hitting the jackpot in a casino that we carry around with us constantly is making us extremely susceptible to those who have already won in such worlds as avatars and guides, unreliable though they obviously are.
To connect this back to Vogel, think again about friendship and comradeship. Vogel saw a state omnipresent in the lives of people pushing them to remake what they said and how they behaved to impress upon everyone that they were the right kind of person. The kind of person who understood the way to be in this new right kind of society that was collectively being created by a billion comrades. And in doing so the deep trust and openness of friendship withered.
One can see today in late capitalism a sense in which every interaction and transaction can be mined for content. Food can be glammed up, vacations can be grammed, etc. When every interaction can be posted and instantly liked or shared or subscribed to — and most fail to attract the attention and validation that we seek. Even getting ready to go out (presumably to some actual event where humans come together in meat space to converse and observe and eat and drink) itself is something that people will watch. That every moment you sit with someone they might be thinking about how to mine it for themselves, their audience and brand.
How does friendship not morph into new shapes when we can and do post videos of our classmates watching a movie when a twist is coming, of ourselves or loved ones crying in response to tragedies real and imagined, of our bodies smoothed and sculpted by apps and filters making our real meat sacks unimpressively flabby and imperfect. Can friendship survive such pressures? Can a TikTok generation be friends at all?
I think about the ubiquity of cameras a lot. My children instantly understand what is happening when a phone is being held up at a particular angle and perform for it — usually frowns and stuck out tongues at the moment, occasionally gorgeous smiles and adorable dimples. How often did I look into a camera when I was their age? There must be more photos of them taken in a month than I had in a year, perhaps a decade. But more than just the photo itself, they know that what is happening is a capture of a moment that can be made and shared and viewed into the future with ease, immediately. It could become something that is seared into their memory, or mine, or that of strangers even, in a way that a picture taken on film and after being printed would be consigned to a shoebox or album and only taken out when relatives came to visit on holidays.
In the wake of the election, I found myself ending emails and texts “in solidarity.” I believe that caring about and believing in the realities of our world and of the realities of others as somehow shared and connected is something to push back against the infinitely atomizing world of today’s internet. It is perhaps especially significant in the wake of the return to power of a roiling ball of destruction and cynicism that always invites you in to kick down at those beneath you and treat them with contempt (lest you be tossed in with those at the bottom of the pile) while picking your pockets.
In solidarity,
Jeremy
Fantastic piece, Jeremy!