Whenever I read these broad systemic comparisons and evaluations my mind usually runs back to two classic political theorists – Polybius and his Cycle of Constitutions and Baron de Montesquieu’s description of forms of government and their signs of corruption in The Spirit of the Laws. Stiff, incidently is a good indication of a closed society – it is stiff because organizations like the CCP resist information that contradicts their raison d’etre – which is organization for control.
Before I give you the rules, let me spin out this description of vertical and horizontal systems a bit more by offering a series of examples. I will say horizontal systems tend to be replete with elites, meaning they possess multiple types of powerful people: political, business, military, technology, mass media, cultural icons and heroes, and so on. Vertical systems, on the other hand, really only have one elite — the political leadership. You can tell you are in a vertical system when the political leader is also the military leader, is also the richer landowner, is also guiding hand of the economy, and so on. In vertical systems, you have to join the government to have power and wealth, but in horizontal systems, you typically have to leave the government to get wealth.
Vertical systems are by nature despotic or oligarchic which makes them both strong and fragile. Strong because the capabilities of a Vertical system can be marshalled easily in one direction and in that direction have immense strength, like the top of a pillar or the point of a spear. Vertical systems are fragile because they are not designed to receive or respond to blows from unexpected directions. Nor does the Vertical system have as much adaptive flexibility if the guiding hand proves incompetent. The paralysis of the Red Army in the initial days of the Nazi invasion in 1941 come to mind where both Stalin’s dolorous shock and the effects of his maniacal terror on the officer corps resulted in the destruction of whole Soviet armies.
A second difference I have touched upon before: horizontal systems rotate leaderships with routine regularity, while vertical systems tend to have permanent leaderships. As such, horizontal systems tend to feature market-dominated economies, while vertical systems tend to feature state-dominated economies.
Horizontal systems evolve. Vertical systems ossify.
Deng Xiaoping seemed to grasp that Mao’s fanatically vertical state was ill-suited to survive the challenges of the modern world and attempted to resolve the ” succession crisis ” that plagued Communist systems whenever the supreme leader died and left no legitmate, certain or timely way to transfer power. Deng had seen the effects of Mao’s dotage firsthand and navigated power struggles against the Gang of Four and then Hua Guofeng to become Paramount Leader of a liberalizing, modernizing, China. Deng forced mandatory retirement on the cadres to regularly bring up new blood from the ranks ( a policy also employed by the U.S. military to avoid the ancient colonels and venerable majors of the pre-WWII era) while allowing seniors like himself and Chen Yun a graceful exit as elder statesmen and mentors to fifty-something Politburo members who run China day to day. Jiang Zemin recently tried to buck the system and retain his powerful post as military leader and CCP powerbroker but other CCP heavyweights refused to allow Jiang to break Deng’s rule-set and backed Hu Jintao.
Vertical systems were the “natural” structure of the premodern, agricultural world where the emphasis was on subsistence and stability; vertical systems like Pharaonic Egypt could last thousands of years with relatively little cultural evolution. Today they are only well suited to small-scale operations, being too ponderously slow and stupid to react efficiently to all the variables inherent in the modern world on the large-scale of states.
Page 2 of 3 | Previous page | Next page