Who Has “Politicized” Google?

13,433 characters2010.03.25

Google ultimately still withdrew from the Chinese market. Whether this is good or bad, right or wrong, I do not want to comment at length; nor do I want to enshrine Google as a heroic fighter, much less regard it as a symbol of freedom and democracy. But in any case, Google’s withdrawal is bound to become a landmark event. At the very least, we can expect that some years from now, when we discuss issues such as politics, economics, morality, media, diplomacy, human rights, and so on in the Internet age, this case will always be cited.

Here I only want to mention one interesting little problem that I have noticed:

Among the various criticisms of Google offered by the mainstream media, the one I have seen most often is the accusation of “politicizing a business issue.” The claim is that Google’s withdrawal was merely a company’s own commercial act, and that people with ulterior motives politicized it, thereby dragging in political issues such as freedom and democracy, Sino-American relations, and so on.

There are many such denunciations; they can be seen everywhere. I will cite here only one fairly typical example: “Yu Wanli, a scholar at Peking University’s Center for International and Strategic Studies, said that the starting point of a business should be profit-making. If a company insists on promoting American democracy and values, that is a serious misplacement, and from any angle it is illegitimate.” http://news.qq.com/a/20100222/000743.htm

But isn’t this way of speaking strange? Are these “experts” really out of their minds, or are they carrying out a clever satire on our official main melody?

From the various “experts” all the way to the Foreign Ministry spokesperson, the official line has uniformly condemned the politicization of business, arguing that commercial companies should not bear political missions, and that the behavior of commercial companies should not be endowed with political meaning. It seems these people did not study political class well, and failed to pass the test in Marxist theory. Why do I say this? Because in our so-called Marxist ideological and political education, one thing taught is philosophy, and the other is political economy. What is “political economy”? It is, to state the point from the outset and as the name implies, the insistence that politics and economics absolutely cannot be separated; politics cannot do without the economic base, and economics also cannot do without political questions. Political questions permeate every economic activity. Neither enterprises nor individual business operators can be regarded as purely economic units; they must also be viewed as a political existence. Economic issues cannot be singled out and abstracted away.

Naturally, all commercial activity will carry political implications, and all commercial issues will have their political dimension. This can be said to be a basic insight of Marxist “political economy.” I personally believe this is a profound insight. If we say that we can discuss business purely without introducing politics, then first of all we are violating the theoretical foundation of political economy.

In short, in theory, commercial activity is definitely laden with politics; that is perfectly normal. American companies carry American politics with them—what is so astonishing about that? To set politics aside and talk about business as business can only be blind nonsense; it may fool people for a while, but it cannot fool them forever. This should originally have been the most familiar truth to Chinese experts who have long cultivated themselves in Marxist political economy. So why, when faced with the Google incident, do they become so resistant to the term “politicization”?

On the other hand, in actual practice, in reality, China’s commercial activities are indeed highly politicized. Why does “a company” also need so many Party branches? Why so many propaganda and organization departments? Why must it also do politics and study politics? Especially media and Internet companies—why do they need so much political screening? Chinese Internet companies, like Google, are nothing but companies, so why must they all conform to China’s political line? Why must companies all promote values that accord with the main melody? Why, after all, must values be advanced through companies? According to the “experts,” would not all this be a “serious misplacement”? If Chinese companies can, indeed must, support the promotion of Chinese values, then what is wrong with American companies promoting American values? Wouldn’t that be perfectly normal? Even if these things are “illegitimate from any angle,” how is it that those experts can be so righteous and self-assured, laughing at the fifty steps from a hundred paces away?

March 25, 2010

Additional two paragraphs:
First, I take a kind of cultural holism. That is to say, neither political systems nor ideologies float in the air. Political structures are built upon general modes of interaction. If all citizens’ ways of life and modes of interaction remain the old style, and you say that we are going to implement a new political system, that is just nonsense. The implementation of a new political system must begin with actual modes of interaction; otherwise it is merely an empty slogan. So of course, commercial activity is an important, and in modern society extremely crucial, mode of interaction. Not to mention that Internet companies simultaneously represent the Internet as a new mode of interaction. The spread of these modes of interaction will of course bring about changes at the political level. When Marx said that the economic base determines the superstructure, he actually meant this too. When he said that the productive forces determine the relations of production, and the relations of production determine the political system, and then further extended this to general social life and social relations, he was identifying the basis that determines politics. The emergence of a new economic base necessarily calls forth a new political structure; this is what is meant by keeping pace with the times. Even according to orthodox textbooks, these truths are obvious.

According to Marx and Engels, “politics is the concentrated expression of economics.” In a certain sense, politics is part of economic relations. Some may say that economics is only about production, commerce is only about making money, and politics is only about power, but in fact what so-called “money” is precisely the embodiment of a kind of power relation. Behind “money” stand authority and the state apparatus ensuring it. Without politics, money is just waste paper. On the other hand, where does the value of money guaranteed by the state apparatus lie? If money is not spent and is merely piled up at home, it is still a pile of waste paper. The value of money is embodied in use, and the use of money is embodied in social interaction. In fact, human beings do not need money as such; what people need is all kinds of social interactions and exchanges. So they need money, or something else to support them—for example, other things that are attached to power. If I can, by virtue of some other kind of power, obtain the corresponding social relations without spending money, then I do not need to make money. So money is in fact only a carrier of a special kind of power relation. Even if commercial activity only concerns money, it must inevitably involve questions of power relations. In fact, changing the direction of money flow is also changing the structure of power, not to mention the political charge brought by providing new products. Any technological product has its politics. For example, I sell large agricultural sowing and harvesting machines, sell high-yield corn seeds, and increase agricultural output—this is only doing business, right? But this sort of commercial activity precisely promotes the globalization of capitalism. Although mechanized large-scale equipment can greatly increase efficiency, it changes the social relations among farmers, because large agricultural machines are only suitable for use in large-scale intensive farms, whereas small plots of farmland cannot easily enjoy the improvement in efficiency. Thus disadvantages deepen, and in the end they tend toward being swallowed up by intensive large farms. Some small farmers are forced to attach themselves to large farm owners, forming a wage-labor relation. And because of the increase in efficiency, more landless farmers have nothing to do and must pour into the cities, creating new social problems. In addition, the maintenance of large machinery and the annually renewed seeds all require repurchase from suppliers, thus forcing them to be drawn into global trade relations, and so on. The logic of commerce contains a political tendency.

We know that Google was promoting certain services, and these service products were by no means “politically neutral” as some say; they naturally carried political implications, and even the politics contained in them may not necessarily have matched the political views of Google’s own president, but they were certainly rich in political meaning. Even if we drive Google away, if our domestic companies draw on its technology in various ways, the corresponding political changes still cannot be escaped. Our politicians often take politics too simply, treating it as merely something embodied in slogans (this is the result of political study and propaganda in our country: people feel that only the loud and glaring words shouted out are politics). It is only when they see people using the Google issue to discuss slogans such as democracy and freedom that they think those people have politicized a business issue. If those people do not shout out those keywords, then our politicians do not realize that the political connotations of democracy, freedom, and so on were already embedded in the services Google provides.