My Take | Hong Kong reactionaries are blocking democratic progress

Pundits usually take sides. I opt for equal-opportunity criticism. Since I have been rounding on the pan-democrats and self-styled autonomy activists, let me give it this time to the pro-establishment camp - the advocates of the status quo, the elitist change-as-little-as-possible crowd. The occasion for reflection was my having to relocate a bookshelf to another room, an arduous job involving replacing many unread books that I imagined were staring accusingly at me. One was The Rhetoric of Reaction: Perversity, Futility, Jeopardy, by the late Albert Hirschman, which had been gathering dust for more than two decades. It turned out to be a mind-blowing read. In short, this great economist and social theorist was anticipating and mocking objections Hong Kong reactionaries have raised against full democracy and universal suffrage - long before they made them. Here are my words, but Hirschman's categories.

Perversity: democratic reform will only make Hong Kong's existing problems worse.

Futility: democratic reform will not solve any of our problems.

Jeopardy: democratic reform will even endanger hard-won gains we have achieved.

Our ruling elite have made all these arguments at one time or another. They are in good company. Reactionaries like Metternich, Jacob Burkhardt and Edmund Burke have all made the same arguments. That's Hirschman's point: reactionaries are all alike, whether they are from 19th century Europe or 21st century Hong Kong.

For Burkhardt as for many of our tycoons, democracy means "the despotism and tyranny of the masses". A friend's Chinese University PhD thesis actually quoted a local tycoon for sounding exactly that warning.