My Take | Does the Chinese Communist Party ever learn from history?
- Actually, it does sometimes, but not others; it’s the life-and-death difference between complete disaster and national renewal
“Governments have never learned anything from history, or acted on principles deducted from it.”
– Allegedly from Hegel
As a lifelong student of Hegel and Chinese communism, it has always intrigued me whether his famous quote could be applied to the Chinese Communist Party.
To cut a long story short, though, you would probably be disappointed with my answer. At crucial junctures, the party learned the wrong lesson or ignored the right one that was staring at it, leading to complete disaster for the country.
But in other instances, it took the right lesson or at least drew the right conclusion, thereby not only avoiding disasters but also leading to growth and national renewal. So, the records are mixed, as they tend to be.
Strictly speaking, then, what Hegel supposedly claimed actually isn’t true; there is at least one government having learned correctly from history in at least one instance. Actually, there are many incidents of governments and peoples learning the right lessons, throughout history; though admittedly, the rate of failure far outnumbers success.