Accordingly, Han relates the motivation of someone who worked for free on Jimo's irrigation project during the CR: "She said that she, like others, volunteered to work at these projects at the time because it was an honorable thing to do."
The major problem in Western capitalism is that their people are not lacking in honor that would be untrue, as well as insulting: the problem is they do not believe their governments should promote selflessness and honor, as morality is a strictly personal issue. In China, Cuba, Iran and other socialist democratic-based systems, maybe everybody ignores the government's morality campaigns, LOL, but such campaigns exist, at least, and thus surely have an impact (and a positive one).
A lesson of the CR is that if the government does not promote a "collective mentality", then there is no "free-market magic" which can reliably conjure up the same necessary feeling, action and outcome.
But promotion is not leadership leadership is done by doing! Perhaps the Chinese had a leg up in understanding this concept, as Confucianism stresses leadership by example.
"After the failure of the Great Leap Forward , many farmers in Jimo were so bitter about the food shortages that they declared they would not do any more work for the commune. Why, then, were Jimo farmers willing to work hard for the collective during the Cultural Revolution? What was behind this change of attitude? Some workers and farmers testified that the practice of cadres' participation in production during the Cultural Revolution made an important difference. They said that when leaders worked hard, common villagers would work hard with them. " More importantly, village youth, politically emboldened through the Cultural Revolution conflicts and educated in the new schools, were ready to challenge party leaders if they did not work with ordinary people. " Common villagers would not tolerate lazy leaders. If leaders did not work, villagers refused to work as well, which would lead to a decline in production and living standards. If the leaders did not work hard, villagers would elect someone else to replace them in the year-end election, someone who was ready to work hard." (emphasis mine)
Now Macron constantly says that he works hard, but he does not work hard with ordinary people therein lies a world of difference.
It is impossible for an unempathetic leader (as Macron clearly is), who has never worked a regular, dreary, timeclock-punching job in his life (as Macron never has) to make policies which benefit the average worker when he has no idea what an average worker goes through.
I include that passage because it is a fascinating phenomenon, seemingly unique to Chinese socialism it is a dagger in the heart of Western technocratism. I wonder: how it can be replicated? Did Mao or Fidel spend time working in the fields at 55 years old? LOL, an elder-worshipping Iranian would probably commit suicide before being forced to watch Khamenei, 80, do hard labor in front of them (the guy already lost use of his right arm due to a bomb from the MKO, so how much more effort should he give?).
But what if Macron spent just one week working at a farm? I think his approval rating would rise 10 points immediately!
Macron is 41 is he just lazy? Is he so effete that he doesn't like hard & sweaty work? Or is it that he is trying to cultivate an image of someone who is "above" or "smarter than" everybody else in France, and thus only deigns to spend his time on a "superior" type of work? It's clearly the latter Macron is trying to cultivate the image that his mind and soul are too valuable, too finely-tuned, to waste on lower-class work.
(But it's really surprising that a young Western leader doesn't do these types of propaganda ops. If anybody in the Iranian government is reading this: I will GLADLY work a pistachio farm for months, even years at a time sheesh, that sounds like heaven, as I write this from the most-population dense city in the Western world. (Y'all would have to pay to store my stuff, though. I guess I'd lose my apartment in Paris. Not that I own it, of course, but it is SO HARD just to find a long-term apartment to rent here I moved 10 times in my first 3.5 years in France.) Anyway, I predict that in the future, with viral videos and the omnipresence of screens, there will be some leader who takes advantage of every country's love of hard work and this will be denounced as "populism" by general population-hating capitalists.)
Crucially, Han writes, "They participated in manual labor more conscientiously than their predecessors had. In some localities it was stipulated that members of the county revolution committee had to participate in manual labor for about two hundred days a year, and members of the commune revolutionary committees had to work in the fields for more than two hundred days a year."
How can these ideas be applied elsewhere? Could we possibly imagine President Macron working manual labor for 8 hours a day for 10 days, much less 200? What about Theresa May working at an elder care center? These ideas are delicious but ludicrous certainly, their defense would be that they have "more important things to do". They are "above" such work; such work would degrade their incredible abilities.
These unstated, but universally perceived, beliefs, is a real problem the CR solved this problem; thus this series.
This is a huge, flaming, primary message of the CR rural toil (but also factory toil, service sector toil, or other toiling lower and middle class jobs) is indispensable in creating good governors. There is only one clear solution joining the masses at work and yet it would take a CR in the West for such things to occur.
I have relayed Han's data which show the economic, industrial educational explosion for rural areas seeing the cultural changes the CR wrought on their local political leaders: How fortunate (and superior) is the Chinese system that they had the CR?
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