In C.S. Lewis’ brilliant, under-appreciated sci-fi novel, That Hideous Strength, the evil Professor Frost informs the hapless anti-hero Mark Studdock about the course of the twentieth century’s wars. Of the Second World War Frost observes it was only the second of ‘sixteen major wars which are scheduled to take place in this century.’ I reproduce a fuller quote below, because I believe its chilling message is important to understand.
Frost (bad guy): ‘A few centuries ago, war did not operate in the way you describe. A large agricultural population was essential; and war destroyed types which were then still useful. But every advance in industry and agriculture reduces the number of work-people who are required. A large, unintelligent population is now becoming a deadweight. The real importance of scientific war is that scientists have to be reserved. It was not the great technocrats of Koenigsberg or Moscow who supplied the casualties in the siege of Stalingrad: it was superstitious Bavarian peasants and low-grade Russian agricultural workers. The effect of modern war is to eliminate retrogressive types, while sparing the technocracy and increasing its hold upon public affairs. In the new age, what has hitherto been merely the intellectual nucleus of the race is to become, by gradual stages, the race itself. You are to conceive the species as an animal which has discovered how to simplify nutrition and locomotion to such a point that the old complex organs and the large body which contained them are no longer necessary. That large body is therefore to disappear. Only a tenth part of it will now be needed to support the brain. The individual is to become all head. The human race is to become all Technocracy.’
“I see,” said Mark. “I had thought rather vaguely — that the intelligent nucleus would be extended by education.”
Frost: “That is pure chimera. The great majority of the human race can be educated only in the sense of being given knowledge: they cannot be trained into the total objectivity of mind which is now necessary. They will always remain animals, looking at the world through the haze of their subjective reactions. Even if they could, the day for a large population has passed. It has served its function by acting as a kind of cocoon for Technocratic and Objective Man. Now, the macrobes, and the selected humans who can co-operate with them, have no further use for it.”
Mark: “The two last wars, then, were not disasters on your view?”
Frost: “On the contrary, they were simply the beginning of the programme — the first two of the sixteen major wars which are scheduled to take place in this century.’’
That Hideous Strength was written in 1943 and published in 1945. Like Orwell and Huxley, Lewis was deeply concerned by the then relatively new phenomenon of successful totalitarian government, in the forms of Hitler, Stalin, and our own wartime response.
After 1991, we Westerners blithely assumed that totalitarianism had failed, because it had proven no match for open, democratic economies in either the Second World War or the ensuing Cold War. In a sense we were right: an open, free-market West will defeat anyone who tries to take us on on our own terms, through material or economic conflict. But have we misunderstood the rules our enemies are playing by?
Imagine you are a well-trained Marxist-Leninist-Maoist, who owes your very survival, let alone rise, to that one fact. You have total ‘objectivity of mind’ and you believe that any sacrifice of humanity, no matter how great, which secures your permanent advantage is worth it. Imagine also, that you and your kind control what is now one of the largest economies on Earth. You have won through a period of weakness by imitating the methods of the West and have now reached a period of relative strength. Those Western methods, however, hold no interest for you in themselves. They were merely a means to an end.
None of what you have experienced has changed your opinion on anything, which was formed during the Cultural Revolution. You have constantly experimented with alternative methods of warfare, such as computer-hacking since the invention of the internet, in an attempt to change the balance of power between your country and the dominant West.
Then, in a moment of inspiration, you realize that the West and your own country can be made to respond in a completely different way to a deadly disease. The liberal West cannot lock down for long, whereas your own country can be locked down indefinitely, resulting in hugely different relative casualties. Even if it doesn’t work this time, the experiment can be repeated.
If this perspective is right, the outbreak of Covid was not even an embarrassing accident, it was deliberate. Look for another outbreak in a small-town wet market in a couple of years of a deadlier disease than Covid. Look also for endless experiments, in multiple fora, of the same type.
We have become accustomed to think of China as just another upstart rival, a rising nation, like Germany and Japan in the late 19th century, one that can be contained by a mixture of accommodation and resolute containment; one that might just—if we are clever—be transformed into a status quo power over time, rather than a revolutionary power. But this is wish fulfilment, not political risk analysis.
We have forgotten that China’s founding, and ruling, ideology is the same as that of Lenin’s and Stalin’s Soviet Union. While almost all Chinese people rightly long for a better life and better material wellbeing, its (hereditary) rulers may well long for something else entirely, in which sacrifice of their own population, so long as it asymmetrically damages us, is entirely to be welcomed. Seen from this point of view, their recent policies make a lot more sense than they otherwise can.
What can we do about it? Stop believing their words! Look only at their actions. Russia, a failed Marxist-Leninist state, has shown by its actions in the Ukraine that it places zero value on human life or dignity. It has revealed itself for what it truly is, a government with the objectivity of mind necessary for Lewis’ macrobes (his allegory for the Devil). Is China the same? I wouldn’t rule it out.