Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy and Google.cn

My father writes:

[W]hat is a Chinese leader dedicated to the welfare of the people to do, given this incredible uncertainty, and the lack of convincing models? The wisest course seems to be: Focus on perestroika above glasnost. Move cautiously. Avoid any threat of losing control to demagoguery and mob rule, which inevitably ends in re-authoritarianism. Develop the rule of law before an extended franchise. And keep maneuvering in the fantastically complicated situation involving the modernists, the PLA, the old Mao-ists, the modern equivalent of regional warlords, the rising demands of the new economic classes, and the restlessness of the people who see that a better life is possible.

And given this Chinese view, what should Google do? Google should do what Google does, which is search engines... search engines, even truncated [i.e., censored] ones, will contribute to the economic and political development of China.... The working out of this story will be one of the great tales of human history, for tragedy or triumph, depending on how it goes."

And gets flamed by Jacob Sullum and many others for making an argument about Google.cn that is, I think, fundamentally derived from Barrington Moore's old Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy.

One of Moore's major points was that mass politics--ideology-based political parties, popular mobilization via media, universal suffrage, et cetera--appeared, in the history of nineteenth and twentieth century Europe at least, to be a poisonous recipe for fascism or worse unless a strong, confident, independent, articulate, powerful middle class had already established itself.