From Hong Kong to Ferguson, it's all really about the same thing

There's a great scene in "Seinfeld" -- OK, there's a lot of those, but I'm talking about the one where Jerry reserves a mid-sized car at the airport rental agency, only to be told that they're out of cars. Jerry notes that having a car ready is the entire point of the reservation.

Agent: "I know why we have reservations."

Jerry: "I don't think you do..."

In the same vein, I have to wonder if the Chinese Communist Party understands "why we have Communism."  The folks that are currently running protest-wracked Hong Kong on behalf of China's corrupt totalitarian regime have casually admitted that while the workers may control the means of production, etc., etc. when it comes to power of the rich oligarchs in modern Chinese society, the masses won't be losing their chains anytime in the near future:

[Hong Kong leader] Leung [Chun-ying], as Simon wrote, was elected to his post "two years ago not by the people, but by an exclusive 1,200-member committee stacked with tycoons and pro-Beijing figures." He is desperate to preserve the status quo, and made that very clear on Monday.

"If it's entirely a numbers game and numeric representation, then obviously you would be talking to half of the people in Hong Kong who earn less than $1,800 a month," Leung told reporters. "Then you would end up with that kind of politics and policies."

Those comments, dripping with an incredible degree of snobbery, underscore the other major factor fueling the protests: the vast social and economic inequities in Hong Kong, a global financial center dominated by billionaire tycoons, many of whom are are closely linked to the Beijing establishment. This de facto plutocracy is reinforced by a legislative assembly where deputies representing business interests -- ranging from bankers to lawyers to sports coaches -- are guaranteed a direct bloc of seats.

The protesters see these political elites who hold sway as living on a different plane from much of the rest of the city's population, which is struggling with soaring prices, a huge shortage of affordable housing and, as a result, a lack of social mobility, as Simon explained here.

Workers of the world, u...wait, WHAT?!!!

Look, the underlying sentiment of what Leung said shouldn't be any surprise. It's been obvious since the 1990s that China and its still-ruling Communist Party has adopted a form of state-repression-controlled capitalism that has nothing to do with the actual philosophy of Communism. And it's no secret why they did that.

It was clear by the end of the 1980s that Communism -- both as an economic system and a form of government -- was an abject failure. What made China so unusual that not that Communism or the ideals of a working-class revolution persisted -- they didn't -- but that the party was able to shift gears and retain power, even as similar corrupt regimes toppled across Eastern Europe and elsewhere. Of course, critical to the "success" of the Chinese Communists in making this transition was brutal repression, punctuated by the massacres on the road to Tiananmen Square in 1989.

But what is significant here is the greater truth that Leung revealed by speaking so candidly. People here in the West like to give ourselves a big pat on the back, telling ourselves a bedtime story that these kids in Hong Kong are fighting to have a wonderful democracy...just like ours. But that plot-line is full of baloney. The actual struggle on the streets of Hong Kong is really that same fight that's taking place in Madrid, and Istanbul, and right here in the U.S. in Ferguson, Missouri. "Democracy" is a stalking horse for who has power and who has a voice in modern society, in a world where the richest 1 Percent have rigged the game and will do anything to hang on to control as the 99 Percent figures it all out.

In mainland China including Hong Kong, corruption and one-party rule has steered too much of the country's wealth into a handful of outrageously rich and outrageously powerful tycoons, whose influence is actually codified by law. In other words, their method is a lot less sophisticated than the way we do it in the United States and in other so-called "liberal democracies" of the most technologically advanced nations....yet the outcome is exactly the same, isn't it?

Here in America, we have the appearance of two-party rule -- but both parties are controlled by the same class of billionaire donors, and bushels of money, slick political advertising and a fear-mongering national news media achieve exactly what China attains through more overt repression and slightly more archaic laws: A system that benefits a handful of the richest people.

In Hong Kong, students are protesting because the government wants to pick the candidates who'll run for office in 2017. In America, I'm not sure who the hell picked the candidates running in 2014 -- the anti-science, know-nothing fear-mongering Republicans or the whimpering, fearful let's-not-dare-defend-expanded-health-care-or-try-to-close-Gitmo Democrats -- but I can't believe it was the masses of working people struggling to pay their mortgage or college tuition or wondering who made off with their pension.

The real takeaway from the battle of  Hong Kong this autumn is that the buzzwords of the 20th Century -- Communism, but also capitalism and democracy -- don't mean the same things in the 21st, and in some cases simply no long apply. There is just one system that has taken root from Beijing to Washington and most capitals in between, and it can best be described as "kleptocracy" -- the very rich buying politicians and re-writing laws to accumulate as much wealth and influence as possible without causing the whole damn money machine to blow up (and they may now be failing at that.)

Throughout human history, the masses of people have been trying to bend the moral arc of the universe in one direction -- toward a world where all women and men can enjoy equal rights. But that's not easily happening, not on a planet where the elites have made a mockery out of one-person-one-vote by ruling that money equals free speech and that multinational corporations have the same rights as human beings -- in a society where they can't buy enough riot gear and armored personnel carriers quickly enough to keep it together.

This fight -- for the common person simply to have a voice -- is the struggle of the 21st Century, and it's the same from Hong Kong to Ferguson. It doesn't have a name yet -- but maybe it doesn't need one. It's simply humanity.