Quest for Modernity and the Tides of History } 759
(1871–1918) is a useful heuristic exercise.^1 Among the similarities between
Wilhelmine Germany and post-Mao China, the one most directly relevant
to this study is the resort to both aggressive and aggrieved nationalism to
mobilize domestic support for the regime. But it is useful to review the other
similarities first.
At the top of the list of other similarities is the fact that the politically
dominant elites in both countries are noncapitalist or even anticapitalist,
yet both elites preside over extremely rapid processes of capitalist economic
development. In Wilhelmine Germany, a landed aristocracy called Junkers
dominated the highest levels of state power. In China, the CCP dominates the
state. Both elites were noncapitalist in terms of historic origins, social com-
position, and ideology. Regarding The Junkers, they emerged as holders of
agricultural manors enfeoffed to them for hereditary military service tracing
back to the Germanic conquest of Slavic lands east of the Elbe River under
Charlemagne in the ninth century.^2 As towns based on maritime trade—the
germ seeds of modern capitalism—emerged around the Baltic in the late me-
dieval period, the Junker estates became suppliers of grain for those towns.
A centuries-long struggle between the Junker aristocracy and the trade towns
ensued. In this region of Europe, the landed aristocracy won, unlike German
towns further west on the Baltic, where leagues of trade towns were able to
defy sovereign monarchs and their noble supporters for several more centu-
ries.^3 The Crusading Order of Teutonic Knights gave rise in 1525 to a central-
izing state centered on the Hohenzollern dynasty, and the Junkers transferred
their loyalty to that dynasty, becoming the major social base of the emerging
Prussian state. Since estates went to the eldest son via primogeniture, many
younger sons, all well-educated and with a sense of noble ancestry, went into
military or government service, where they came to dominate the Prussian
state. When Germany was unified under Prussian hegemony in 1871, the new
state structure was carefully designed to ensure continuing Prussian dom-
inance within Germany and Junker dominance within Prussia. The capi-
talist industrial and financial elite of united Germany was given a role in the
new Germany, leading to the famous duopoly of “iron and rye.” But within
that partnership, the Hohenzollern dynasty and the Junkers dominated.
Germany’s capitalists played second fiddle. Regarding the CCP, its historic
origin was, of course, the global Marxist-Leninist communist movement
of the twentieth century. The CCP arose and waxed as part of a worldwide
movement to destroy capitalism and replace it with a postcapitalist, socialist
society. The CCP still prides itself on its destruction of capitalism and China’s
capitalist class in the 1950s. Twentieth-century communism ranks with much
of Europe’s feudal aristocratic class as a historic enemy of capitalism.
In terms of social composition (family origins and career paths), the
top leaders of both Wilhelmine Germany and post-Deng China were/are
noncapitalist. The Junkers were a legally privileged aristocracy based on