Moscow tour diary: the Iron Man mask gets all Tsarist.

西方的左派，也開始紛紛猜疑：在東方的威權主義式資本主義，比起原本在自由民主架構下的資本主義，顯得更有效率、更具活力、更富「競爭力」的時候，關於「現代性危機」的診斷，恐怕也必須調整切入點和批判策略了。
人們開始察覺，這才是我們所身處的歷史局勢中「現代性」的真正危機：如果任由當下的世界格局按照目前的趨勢繼續發展下去，剝離民主的資本主義，就會成了現代性的唯一歸宿。
——《我們這個時代的平庸之惡》
http://blog.roodo.com/poiesis/archives/20052324.html
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Faced with today's explosion of capitalism in China, analysts often ask when political democracy as the "natural" political accompaniment of capitalism will enforce itself. But what if the promised democratization never arrives? What if China's authoritarian capitalism is not a stop on the road to further democratization, but the end state toward which the rest of the world is headed?
Leon Trotsky once characterized tsarist Russia as "the vicious combination of the Asian knout [whip] and the European stock market," but the description applies even better to today's China. In the Chinese iteration, the combination may prove to be a more stable one than the democratic capitalist model we have come to see as natural.