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January 08, 2005
The Moral Centre Doesn't Count
(On the occasion of being unfortunate enough to see "Churchill - The Hollywood Years")
An American who lived in China tells a story of how he asked a friend to find him a maid. Taking the request, in keeping with the principles of guanxi, as both an opportunity and a request of the greatest earnestness, he began a three-month quest to find the perfect maid, by which time the American had already found one and did not hesitate to say so. On this occasion, because of his understanding of the cultural differences involved the Chinese friend was able to explain how such a faux pas would usually spell the end, or at least the severe cooling, of a friendship, and the American saved face eventually by finding another job for the woman.
Guanxi is unequivocally a currency, a system in which transactions are well-defined, memorised, and not to be reneged upon. By doing others favours, one builds up a store of endebtedness, an insurance policy for the future. Asking for favours, and giving them, is a transaction to be taken seriously by both parties.
I recount this story only to contrast it with our own confused outlook. Of course, in fact things work similarly in western countries, but lamentably it's often considered vulgar to explicitly refer to personal favours as anything resembling a financial transaction. As a consequence, although favours do change hands much as currency, between close family and friends a fatal supplementary dimension is added.
One is certainly expected to repay, but what is expected above all is a mystification of the exchange - you must act as if you were doing the favour out of inner generosity and kindliness, and would do so regardless of any precedent exchanges.
This level of dissimulation, particularly among family, can lead to simmering unspoken resentments lasting whole lifetimes. Moreover, by substituting an unknowable relation for a relatively straightforward one it is ensured that debts can never be truly resolved; once you become involved in this vague market where everything happens under the counter and all prices are obscured, you submit yourself to an indefinite voluntary servitude.
As Nietzsche so clearly saw, "kindness" is one of the grappling hooks of resentment. Instead of being able freely to enter and leave relationships of power, the weak can get their hooks into you forever, slowly leeching your energies in amounts that never quite suffice for manumission but serve to exhaust and enervate, and generate resentment. This is perhaps why family relationships in the West (and one might say particularly in England with its proud tradition of repression) are so fraught, English literature is full of examples of simmering, angst-ridden family relationships whose obscure and damaging bonds can never be broken.
We might even say that the quintessentially Western practice of commercial psychoanalysis is the only mechanism yet discovered to liquify these bonds and plug the embargoed emotional trader back into the exchange economy (with a good cut going to the analyst, of course).
As in this emotional market, so in the actual market. In England money is often considered to be vulgar (especially by those who have it) and as something to be cunningly hinted at rather than celebrated. Why else do middle-class westerners find other cultures' - and their own underclasses' - taste for the bright and showy so vulgar or - to use the inverted form of the insult - so "charming" and "colourful"? Even the hiphop culture of "Bling" can only be imported into the middle England as an ironic statement, a patronising pastiche of those who can't afford the gold and diamonds they aspire to, by those who can and who therefore consider them amusingly gauche.
This is our problem. We are unable to submit ourselves to currency, believing it to be an empty and vacuous form of exchange (rather than the endlessly convoluting and fascinating numerical game that it obviously is). Rather than submitting to its magical power to elevate and ruin people and to create and dissolve bonds by purely arithmetical means, we invent this ironical dimension of interiority to save our souls.
Is this why English capitalism, now in its dotage, turns increasingly to the cultural production of decadence, backward-looking reruns of the glorious past, and xenophobia, accompanied by jeremiads against the corrupt forces of the global market? Whilst on the other hand, for Western businessmen guanxi often has negative connotations of bribery and corruption, a muddying of the pure waters of "relationships" with cynical exchange?
Whilst the cult of "moribundia" has a positive role to play in generating interest in neglected and peculiarly local forms of culture, and in encouraging appreciation of richly historical mongrelised artefacts veneered over by visions of globalised blandness, dwelling on those things that "money can't buy", feeding off corrupted empire-ROM, and maintaining a suspicion of all things new to the point of sickening self-satisfaction and hypocritical disavowal is the very opposite of culture.
How pathetic must the English look to the outside observer when a sneering parody of the perceived American lack of or disregard for culture and history, a film fabricated by adolescent-rebellious port-quaffing cantabrigians, is passed off as a celebration of our famous sense of humour? Whilst patently unable to take on board any of the craft skills of filmmaking of the last half-century (they are, of course, of foreign origin) the filmmakers presume still to vaunt some ineffable superiority. It is a sight that would be comical if it weren't so terribly unfunny.
The want of, or dissimulation of, any cognate principle to guanxi is a part of the same obstinate and misguided chauvinism, a desperate clinging to pretentions we can no longer afford, even if it means our sole remaining activity is self-abasement.
For a member of the English middle-class, whose every professional move depends on family and other connections, to demand a favour as recompense for one previously done remains a last resort, something that comes, if ever, at the desperate climax of an whining, insinuating argument where every type of emotional blackmail has been exhausted. It represents an unacceptable level of obscenity because it exposes the human social being as mere decentred counter of an external nomos, an arithmetical rule to which, it seems, the average Englishman prefers the oppressive, inescapable, nerve-fraying uncertainty of subjection to the constitutively unknowable (read uncountable) vicissitudes of an internal oracle. A "self" whose incessant demands for attention stem from sublimated aggression and egoic self-centeredness.
The English culturally valorize (more or less ironically) this repressed character. We love stories of closed little villages where everything is under the surface (even if inevitably it erupts into murder ). In the field of music Britain can still claim vitality andd global influence, but its stars are invariably those open to the vulgar outside influences ignored or sneered at by the substandard film products we churn out. Hugh Grant and his fellow simpering screen clowns may well turn out to be the last "truly British" export in history, a fittingly sorry monument to wilful decline.
Considering again the context of the family, one thinks of the Lovecraftian malevolence of Agatha Christie's Mrs Boynton in Appointment with Death, a puritan New England mother from whose "black, smouldering eyes" comes forth "a power, a definite force, a wave of evil malignancy", a woman who by cynical, sly use of her invalidity controls her adult children who cringe around her like tamed and servile animals.
Let's hope that Britannia, a similarly dissimulating matriarch, will find soon that her children have at last built up the strength to escape from the clutches of their mysteriously-enforced servitude. And it is difficult to think of a more succinct description of what it means to be English than 'servitude', whether to the Empire or its absence, whether empowered or embittered.
"Mrs Boynton might be old, infirm, a prey to disease but she was not powerless. She was a woman who knew the meaning of power, who had exercised a lifetime of power, and who had never once doubted her own force...[H]e understood now what that undercurrent to the harmless family talk had been. It was hatred, a dark eddying stream of hatred."
(Mrs Boynton is of course murdered – but not by her "dumbly enduring" children who, although they constantly plotted her death, remained too terrified to carry it out.)
All of this renders even more darkly comic the fact that the mutually-hallucinated realm of ego-fugged altruism is hailed as the moral command centre that makes us so special, so that even the unleashing of markets cannot corrupt our liberal democracies' supposed tendency to betterment and fellow-feeling.
What if it was the other way round, and it was the market, as locus of generalised unbinding, that had unleashed us from shadowy, irresolvable obligations; and, to our shame, we had failed to live up to the task, preferring to scoff, wallow and decay?
Posted by undercurrent at January 8, 2005 01:06 PM
Comments
This is SO absolutely right, (but Prince Charles wouldn't agree).
Posted by: nick at January 8, 2005 02:01 PM
LOL, I wasn't expecting much of a struggle to convert you, nick...
"...but these events take a long time to reach us"
Posted by: u/c at January 8, 2005 02:03 PM
Unpredictability is overrated.
Posted by: nick at January 9, 2005 03:58 PM
you're pretty good for someone who pretends not to be very good. make up something especially for me next time.
Posted by: luke at January 9, 2005 04:28 PM
it's just a matter of waiting until you know what you want to say isn't it? Which blogging makes particularly difficult, of course. I'm on a new restrained regime here...
Posted by: u/c at January 9, 2005 04:56 PM
nick you'll love this : there's an editorial in the Spectator this week where they "argue" that the prospect of China's becoming a new superpower is vastly overstated. Superpowerdom, they say, depends on more than economics, it depends on cultural influence, and "how many people do you know who enjoy listening to Chinese Opera?". "Don't mistake a quick buck for global importance.". Can feel the heat of your synapses fusing from here ;)
Posted by: u/c at January 10, 2005 06:28 PM
[smell of smoking synapses] - attitudewise, the Spectator strikes me as a kind of rightwing BBC (and in my book abuse doesn't get much harsher than that)
Posted by: nick at January 13, 2005 05:09 AM
think your image of BBC may be a bit dated: it's all blairite management consultants now, just the sort of demn cads whose influence the Spectator writers resent.
Can I just say to clear up any misunderstanding that I only read it while in the newsagents, I'm not a subscriber ;)
Posted by: u/c at January 13, 2005 12:45 PM
Had you down as a never-miss-an-issue Spectator kind of chap ;)
On the BBC - still get enough indirectly to know they're worth loathing
Posted by: nick at January 13, 2005 01:37 PM
u/c - Interesting post, thanks. I like your analysis of UK culture as unable to submit (or should it be admit) to currency, and think you hit the nerve a number of times.
Though I am not sure by leaning on a slightly misconstrued notion of *guanxi* helps you in this regard. I'm afraid I have to differ on your characterization of guanxi as 'a currency, a system in which transactions are well-defined, memorised, and not to be reneged upon' .
In China, guanxi literally means "connection". It is not a system of exchanges. Favors given in the Chinese cultural context, in which *who you know* is the most important factor in securing an opportunity of some kind, do not simply store up guanxi points irrespective of the status of the people in question. The value of a favor, and its repayability, depend on the guanxi (the connections, contacts) the people already have. I can do a great deed for someone but it won't add up to much if that person knowing me will not bring any benefits to them.
So I would say that although there may be a numerical dimension to guanxi, it is not as an exchange mechanism but rather a system of complex connections.
I also have difficulty agreeing with your contrast of Chinese and English (European) cultures with regard to the level of transparency of 'the exchange' as you put it, since in China you must *also* "act as if you were doing the favour out of inner generosity and kindliness, and would do so regardless of any precedent exchanges".
Of course some people are very explicit with why they are helping you, but usually not, since it benefits them to appear to be genuine friends, whilst actually they seek some benefit from *guanxi* with you.
Though the reasons for this lack of transparency is different from in the UK, it is still nevertheless a lack. In the UK this inablity to appreciate emotional or monetary currency for what it is (as opposed to what it is worth) may be related to a Christian heritage, though in China it is all about face - *mianzi*: you can't be seen to reduce a 'friendship' to the importance of the connection for your own benefit.
I feel your analysis does miss this crucial aspect out, since *guanxi* and *mianzi* are totally interconnected.
You describe the west's inability to admit to currency with interesting examples, and I agree that the creation of ironic parodies such as 'bling' testifies to the English distaste for those who aspire to work within Capitalist currency. But "for Western businessmen guanxi often has negative connotations of bribery and corruption" simply because that is what it *is*.
Guanxi fosters corruption - it is corruption - it is exactly a lack of accountability and merit-through-ability. It is not just an irony.
Firstly favors are done for those in the family. This is the Confucian legacy of loving first the family. Simultaneously favors are done to those who can help you further your position, precisely since ability does not have much of a relation with reward, and improve the lot of the family.
The connection between supply and demand is a (mis)managed one in China, since connections between individuals and families matter more. You can't glorify *guanxi* as something westerners cynically deride to support your analysis of English stuck-up culture; its a little more complex.
Posted by: tachi at January 16, 2005 03:14 AM
tachi, thanks for your informative comments. I'm not surprised if my characterisation of guanxi is not correct, I admit it was an opportunistic use of some imcomplete knowledge - perhaps this is rather my own idealised version of guanxi ;)
Thanks for taking the trouble to bring out these complexities (and a more interestingly nuanced story than mine) - I still stand by the general point, of course, I just tried prematurely to use the example of guanxi to contrast it against.
I think it would be interesting to go further into this distinction between face (mianzi) and soul as supplementary dimensions to 'pure' commerce, perhaps you could post something at hyperstition?
Posted by: u/c at January 16, 2005 11:26 AM
u/c - thanks for your positive response; I wasn't meaning to be nitpicky, but happy you don't mind me taking issue with a minor detail of your general thrust, which I agree with.
I think that guanxi is an interesting phenomenon, nevertheless, and am interested in developing a concept of guanxi in terms of a complex system of interactions guided by a set of principles yet to be schematized. Would be happy to develop this here with you, Nick and others ...
Some questions arise here relating to currency per se - does currency depend on exchangability? Can there be a kind of currency which has value but no exchange rate? Can there be a form of currency that is not subject to numerical (eg. monteray) abstraction?
If the answer is 'yes' then guanxi might be construed as a currency with a value that is not determinable by reference to another currency (not overcoded). But if guanxi is a currency at all, then at the minimum an action must be tradeable for another action. What are the conditions for tradeability?
A good deed is done for another in a culture of guanxi sometimes for a specific anticipated result - a payback, a kickback - but more often than not it is done to build one's guanxi, ones connections, and to open up a range of possibilities that exceed even one's anticipations.
An action is not necessarily traded for anything but *mianzi* - face. For it is mianzi which brings results from one's actions. An action has a value depending on the mianzi of a person, and this affects its tradeability for actions from people of like-mianzi.
We might coin the term 'face-action' to understand the currency of guanxi, if we can conceive of guanxi as a currency at all. A face-action might be the unit we are looking for in a guanxi culture, but this obviously needs working through.
I think that your help with bringing in numerization to the scheme would put a valuable slant on things ...
Posted by: tachi at January 16, 2005 03:20 PM
This is to slightly clarify what i think you're primarily talking about above, u/c.
One thing I have noticed about favour transactions in the UK is that people encourage you to do little, worthless favours for them in order to bring you down and under their thumb (and not just in the family, either). Underneath the surface, these favours are tests of your dedication to them, and your pliability, rather than things that person actually wants done. Even on the surface, it's often made quite clear that all that's wanted is a vague, emotional commitment. The favour requester's position is not being actively furthered, because the favours are inevitably unreturnable, and are simply sources of self-destructive bitterness. In this way, it's not like currency, because your hands can't be washed clean by further trade.
Unlike with "guanxi", I would say no one is benefitting, and the exchange is completely irrational. Or would you say that the favour requester is gaining *mianzi* by their actions?
Posted by: eleutheria at January 20, 2005 03:32 PM
On consideration, maybe the UK system works perfectly well generally, but I am insulted by the types of favours people request of me: they show they think I have little mianzi, and little to offer by way of friendship.
Posted by: eleutheria at January 20, 2005 04:04 PM