“Everything is political.”
I was listening to a university student in China explain to me the Marxist ideology she’d grown up with. Not that everyone in China could articulate Marxism. She was an exception, to be honest. After all, she was already a member of the elite Communist Party at one of the elite schools in the country.
I told her Thomas Mann had said basically the same thing – “Everything is politics” – in the first half of the twentieth century. She’d never heard of Mann. Although accused of being a Communist sympathizer in the McCarthy days, he was not a Communist, and so had not been part of her readings.
I asked her what she meant by all things being political, and she leaned in on some of the Marxist tropes about all of life being a class struggle. I pressed her further. What did that mean for her? She explained that, as an engineering student, she was committed to contributing to a much better society than what she had grown up in. She wanted to use the skills and knowledge she was learning to improve the lives of those around her.
On that point, Chinese society was already on its way, at least as far as economics is concerned. The nation was going through one of the greatest transformations in human history as hundreds of millions of people were being lifted out of abject poverty within little more than a generation.
I applauded her for her vision and pressed further. In English, the word “politics” has to do with the affairs of how we humans organize society and govern ourselves. Is that what she meant when she said everything is political? We were back and forth between Mandarin Chinese and English, her English being better than my Chinese, especially when it came to political vocabulary.
“Yes,” she said. “All of life is how we organize and govern ourselves.”
But where do concepts like beauty, joy, care, and love fit in? I asked.
She talked for a while about how politics helps us achieve an economic level in life where we can actually appreciate such things. I told her that sounded like Maslow’s hierarchy of need, and we talked about Maslow’s idea that some of the most primal of human needs have to be met before one can explore higher concepts, like self-esteem and self-fulfillment.
She came from a family of privilege – otherwise she wouldn’t be in university, especially that one. But her parents had lived through the cultural revolution and her grandparents had lived in the abject poverty so common in China until recently. I agreed that Maslow had some very helpful points, that before a starving person can wrestle with complex issues, they needed to have a satisfied stomach.
But that was my point. Weren’t there values in life that were beyond merely basic human need? I wasn’t arguing for capitalism – I wasn’t arguing for anything really. I just wanted to listen to her and stretch her thinking.
Aren’t there human values that require tools other than political ones, I asked?
What human values cannot be met by social and civic organizing and governance? She was back and forth between Chinese and English, so that was the gist of what she was saying, as she parroted the words I’d used in English.
I could see she was wrestling with some new thoughts. She paused for a couple of minutes, collecting those thoughts.
“Communism can lead us to those higher levels after much struggle.” But, she admitted, she had much to learn about Communist thought. And her worldview, enclosed as it was, was still forming in her mind.
I didn’t want to press her to the point where she became embarrassed, so I shifted the topic a bit. I asked her questions about her engineering courses (I don’t remember which specific field she was in) and what she hoped to do with all that after graduation.
HNK photo: University student, China
She talked about her parents. One was a professor at the university. They’d met and married, seemingly thinking they shared political values and dreams, only to discover that it was not enough to hold them together. They were still married, but her father was living elsewhere, ostensibly on work assignment.
My student was skeptical of marriage but hoped to get married someday – and have a child.
I sensed her pensiveness. All that stuff about politics was definitely not meeting her deepest needs.
So, I asked her, “Is there any human need that politics cannot meet?”
She paused, looked up, and said in Chinese, “Maybe so.”
There was only so far I could carry this conversation, at least at that moment. So, I explained that I’d also been privileged to study at university. She knew I had a doctorate and specifically in ethics. It was something I told all my classes because those were my credentials for being there. Ethics is a term easier to explain to Chinese students than to students in the U.S. The Chinese word for ethics is Confucius’ field of study.
And it was here that there was a bit of an open door to explore things beyond politics. Confucius’ teachings actually pervade traditional Chinese thinking on politics – as well as so much else in life. And Marxism did not eradicate Confucianism in China. Not by a longshot. After all, the catchphrase for Chinese Communism had become “Marxism with Chinese characteristics,” and the core of those Chinese characteristics is Confucian.
I added that I had grown up very poor, compared with a lot of my high school classmates. That said, I had been privileged to attend university, just like she had. And I had chosen the field of ethics because, like her, I wanted to help people.
She understood that ethics, in light of her knowledge of Confucianism, was very valuable to society. It couldn’t feed an empty stomach, but it could form society to be more just and thus ensure that there were no empty stomachs.
But Confucianism hadn’t had all the answers, she admitted. Thus, the need for Marxism.
I didn’t counter her valuing Marxism. I simply affirmed that Marx had asked a lot of good questions. Knowing that I could not criticize Marx – precisely because my words could get back to the powers that be – I did not add that, in my opinion, he just hadn’t come up with complete answers to those questions.
She would know that I was not a Marxist. I was, after all, a foreigner, albeit one that her Communist authorities had approved to teach her. They thought that my team and I would bring expertise these students could not get otherwise – English and international business, in particular, and basic ethical theory as it impacts international business. I was the ethicist on the team.
We were the first teachers outside of her Marxist bubble she’d ever had. And we had been approved by the university. So, obviously, while we could say nothing against Marxism, we did have some things of value to share with her, things that, by the way, lay outside her tightly enclosed worldview.
Before she headed to another appointment, she asked me one more question. As a foreigner, what formed the basis for my ethical teachings? There was a question I was allowed to answer.
So, I said simply, “I’m a Christian.”
That made sense to her. All Americans are Christians, so far as she knew.
“The foundation of my ethical teachings are the teachings of Jesus. And Jesus is why I want to help others.”
I knew that is as far as I could carry that line of thinking, unless she asked me more. She didn’t.
We had a few more conversations later in the school year and then she graduated. I never saw her again. I’ve prayed that whatever stirrings were in her heart would find answers. My belief, which I could not share with her that day, was that only Jesus provides those answers. But as Tom Skinner said back in the 1970s, “If Christ is the answer, what are the questions?”
By definition, answers only work if there are questions. And it is the hungry, seeking human heart that asks questions. So, my prayer always is, Spirit, grow their hunger, grow their questions.
I’ve thought about this conversation with that university student recently. It occurred some 25 years ago. But how it resonates with today – and my own country, the U.S.A.
Everything in our own society is filled with politics – and not just during election season. There is no non-election season anymore. Politics, especially partisan politics, has become the defining and dividing concept of our world.
People are consumed with politics, and not just in social media or broadcast media. But everywhere. It dominates social life, family life – even church life. Especially church life.
It is not that politics is not important. It is. How we humans organize society and govern ourselves is critical. But politics is not the only – or even the most important – tool in the toolkit we human beings have.
What do you think? You are welcome to respond in the comment section below. Or if you prefer to raise a question in a less public setting, go to this page.