A Global History: From Prehistory to the 21st Century
Douban link: A Global History: From Prehistory to the 21st Century
I strongly recommend every Chinese person read this book. It may be a bit of a tome, and some places are also relatively brief. After all, it is a global history and cannot cover everything. But after finishing it, the gains are enormous. Especially for someone like me, “born under the red flag and raised in New China,” the history I learned from childhood was all from People’s Education Press history textbooks. Even when reading extracurricular books, they were based on Chinese perspectives and experiences, with similar education and cultural backgrounds. This book was written by an American born in Canada and later teaching in the United States. It can be considered a completely Western perspective. From this angle, it can de-romanticize our previous history education, reduce ideological influence, and move closer to modern history.
The most important realization is why China must achieve modernization, including economic modernization, political modernization, intellectual modernization, and technological modernization. Science and technology are the primary productive forces. Liberalism is the safeguard for the development of science and technology. Democracy is the safeguard for freedom. History and the present fully prove this point.
I also quote a sentence from the People’s Education Press high-school physics textbook when I was in school, which is said to have been deleted now: “Without academic democracy and freedom of thought, science cannot flourish.“
According to Marxist political economy, productive forces determine relations of production; the economic base determines the superstructure. It is obvious that the Soviet Union’s autocracy and planned economy had already seriously hindered the development of productive forces. As in the previously popular “accelerationist theory,” the Soviet Union was like a huge truck whose driver stepped hard on the accelerator with one foot and on the brake with the other. In the 21st century’s global competition, especially US-China competition, without changing the superstructure it is impossible to catch up with the United States. The only outcome is to fall back into being a second-rate regional power.
March 1970, Sakharov, An Appeal from Soviet Scientists to the Party and Government Leaders of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
Why have we not only failed to become pioneers of the second industrial revolution, but, as people know, been unable to keep up with developed capitalist countries in this revolution? Does the socialist system not provide the same opportunities for the development of productive forces as capitalism does? Will capitalism win in this economic competition between capitalism and socialism?
Of course not. The root of our predicament is not the socialist system at all, but exactly the opposite: it lies in those characteristics and circumstances in our life that contradict socialism and are incompatible with socialism. This root lies in anti-democratic traditions and in the norms of public behavior formulated during the Stalinist period and still not abolished… In the socio-political sphere, there are many obstacles hindering our economic development. Measures that cannot remove these obstacles are doomed to be ineffective…
From our foreign friends, we sometimes hear people compare the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics to a huge truck whose driver presses hard on the accelerator with one foot and on the brake with the other. The moment has come to use this brake more wisely!…
If our country does not adopt a democratizing approach, what can it expect? It can only expect to lag behind capitalist countries in the second industrial revolution and gradually return to the status of a second-rate regional power.
It is precisely technological development that broke the dynastic historical cycle of human development. This has nothing to do with ideologies such as socialism or capitalism. One can only say that, so far, the free market economy pursued by capitalism has had a much greater promoting effect on productive forces and technology. Science and technology are the primary productive forces. Liberalism safeguards technological development, and democracy safeguards freedom.
History clearly shows that only by developing technology and providing the necessary economic foundation for the imperial edifice can this vicious cycle be broken. But technology stagnated. The fundamental reason was that ruling groups everywhere only knew how to exploit existing wealth and did not know how to create more new wealth.
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good people to remain silent and do nothing.
– Edmund Burke
This reminds me of the 2006 CCTV documentary The Rise of the Great Powers, which I watched in earlier years. Although it was already fairly subtle and did not touch any topic of political reform.
The Rise of the Great Powers cannot even be commented on Douban now. It is truly funny. Big Brother is afraid to this extent. Recently I have been reading Stavrianos’s A Global History. The middle sections introduce why Western Europe became powerful and dominated the world. It is truly exciting.