“There is no worse nostalgia than longing for what never happened.”
Joaquin Sabina.
In the first part of this series, I discussed the case of Russia, where terror and authoritarianism have prevailed for centuries, despite some unsuccessful attempts to break with the past. In the second part, I commented on the case of France, which after a period of 10 years of revolutionary chaos, repeatedly returned to its monarchical past. I also reviewed the case of Mexico in the 19th century, where various characters such as Agustín de Iturbide, Antonio López de Santa Anna and Porfirio Diaz, clung to the autocratic past of the times before the Conquest and almost three centuries of the Viceroyalty. This behavior, where the past is idealized, has been extremely frequent in history.
Another example is the case of China. In 1911, after 260 years of reign of the Manchu Dynasty and more than a millennium of governments of different royal dynasties, the Chinese Empire came to an end. Sun Yat Sen founder of the “Revolutionary Alliance” that a few years later would become the Nationalist Party (Kuomintang) was appointed president of the new republic, initiating for the first time a democratic regime in China. His government, however, faced a series of internal struggles that prevented it from consolidating.
In 1920, a group of Chinese intellectuals including Tchen Douxiu, Li Lisan and Chou En-Lai, decided to found the Chinese Communist Party in the city of Shanghai. This group of young people, who had studied in Paris, discouraged by the bad experience of the newly formed ROC, were convinced so much by the offer of the Soviet Union to return to China the territories occupied during the time of the tsars (a promise that will never be materialized), as well as the expectation of improvements that Communism seemed to offer the workers. Meanwhile, another young man named Mao Tse Tung was in charge of organizing the party in Hunan province.
The relationship between the Kuomintang and the Communist Party, promoted by the Soviet Union, was always fragile. When Sun Yat Sen died in 1925, his controversial lieutenant, Chiang Kai Shek, seized power backed by the Soviets. In 1927 the new leader betrayed his allies, massacring workers in Shanghai who had started an uprising, naively thinking they had their support. From that moment, a civil war between the “nationalists” and the “communists” began, which lasted for dozens of years and was only interrupted by the Japanese invasion of China between 1937 and 1945.
Since taking power in 1925, Chiang Kai Shek forgot the democratic vision of his predecessor, Sun Yat Sen, to become a dictator. Trotsky referred to him as “the Chinese Bonaparte”, but this character had the support of Stalin. For its part, the Chinese Communist Party was divided and several of its founders were displaced. In 1927 the General Secretary of the party, Tchen Douxiu, was removed from office, accused of being a “Trotskyist”, while in 1930, his successor Li Lisan was branded a left “deviationist”. Stalin, little by little, was in charge of beheading the Chinese Communist Party, while Mao Tse Tung was strengthened, before the weakening of his colleagues and rivals. His guerrilla warfare strategy allowed him to defeat the nationalist armies of Chiang Kai Shek, while shooting supporters of his former comrades. As Patrick Lescot comments in his book The Red Empire: “The red warriors devoured each other.”
During the “Long March” Mao, supported by the peasants, gathered an army of 120 thousand men, becoming the leader of the revolutionary movement. At the end of the Second War in 1945 and the end of the Japanese invasion, the Civil War continued. Mao expelled Chiang Kai Shek in 1949 (who formed present-day Taiwan on the island of Formosa) and established himself in power.
The Mao government was terribly authoritarian and its decisions came at a high cost to the country. After the economic and humanitarian failure of the “Great Leap Forward” in 1958, Mao started the “Cultural Revolution” in 1966, which ended in the tearing of multiple families and severe economic backwardness. Both Mao Tse Tung in Mainland China and Chiang Kai Shek in Taiwan replicated the authoritarian customs of the ancient Chinese Emperors. Nostalgia for the autocratic past has dominated Chinese history to this day.
In some cases there is a tendency to idealize historical events that were successful in circumstances very different from the current ones. In the case of the United Kingdom, nostalgia for the imperial past and longing for the way in which the British Empire dictated the rules of the world, is what perhaps explains a decision as irrational as Brexit; the recent departure of the United Kingdom from the European Union. As Anne Applebaum points out in her book The Twilight of Democracy: “For many it was unacceptable that England, a country that was never invaded or conquered, had to accept that its laws and regulations had to be negotiated with other European countries.” The campaign in favor of Brexit, in addition to having been surrounded by half-truths in which the costs of the transition were minimized and the benefits of this decision were exaggerated, appealed to nostalgia for the power of the British Empire. It is important to remember, however, that this great empire began its decline at the end of the First War and practically disappeared as an economic power after the Second War. The impact of Brexit is still difficult to quantify, but it has surely taken a toll on both the UK and the rest of Europe.
It is now worth analyzing the nationalization of the oil industry that occurred in our country on March 18, 1938, when General Lázaro Cárdenas signed the Expropriation Decree that removed the exploration, exploitation and distribution rights of foreign oil companies. The measure provoked the anger of these companies, whose attitude of hostile confrontation could not be accepted by President Cárdenas, who calculated their risks very well. As Daniel Yergin points out in his book The Prize: “Roosevelt was not going to risk losing his neighbor’s cooperation in the face of the threat of an upcoming war.” It must be remembered that although the Second World War began until September 1939, Germany had annexed Austria on March 11, 1938. On the other hand, unlike the current situation, the importance of oil was on the rise in the world and Mexico it was the first country to advocate for the sovereignty of natural resources and for the distribution of oil revenues. In fact, the measures taken by President Cárdenas were considered as an example in several countries, mainly in the Middle East. However, in the following decades Mexico ceased to be a world benchmark in oil matters due to the lack of investment in Pemex, which was seriously undermining the productivity of the company.
The nationalization of the Electrical Industry, carried out by President Adolfo López Mateos in 1960, is another interesting example. For 55 years, the electricity service was dominated mainly by two foreign companies that could not meet local demand (only 44% of the population had access to electricity), which maintained very high and arbitrarily administered prices. Without a doubt, the measures taken by López Mateos made sense at that historical moment. In fact, the coordination between Pemex and CFE worked quite well for around 30 years. Pemex produced fuel oil and the CFE used it as an input. However, to face the international competition that Mexico has grappled with since the 1990s as a result of globalization, energy is required at better costs than what CFE can offer on its own. On the other hand, the deterioration of the environment requires substituting dirty energies, such as the use of coal and fuel oil, with clean energies such as wind and solar. It also requires enough energy to meet the growing demand of our population and companies. To achieve this, it is essential that private investment flows, both local and foreign, and for this clear rules are needed. Our country needs pragmatism and complementarity between the different sectors of society, turn to see the future and stop idealizing the past.
Reference-www.eleconomista.com.mx