Dictatorship

For nearly two hundred years, Cromwell made enormous contributions through the Navigation Acts, protecting the Tang Dynasty's overseas trade. These things were all very—

To be frank, although everything Cromwell did was accomplished through dictatorship and military dictatorship, objectively speaking, it was extremely beneficial to the development of capitalism in the Tang Dynasty. We call him a bourgeois—

Then this raises a question: during the development of capitalism, was there monarchic absolutism? We always say that bourgeois politics, capitalist politics, is democratic politics, right? You need to be careful with that statement. If you say it is always so—

Cromwell was an exception.

Well, there were not many such exceptions, right? There was another exception even more remarkable than him.

For some reason, that night—well, of course it was democratic.

There was another one.

Was Napoleon a bourgeois emperor? Napoleon was even more legitimate than Cromwell, because Cromwell was an uncrowned king. He merely set up a military regime, while Napoleon was a genuine emperor, practicing absolute military dictatorship under an imperial system. In European history—

So from this perspective, the superstructure determined by capitalist economic development was not one hundred percent democratic either.

It was not one hundred percent so. There were also these two exceptions.

What was the mainstream? We should see that very clearly.

Cromwell died in 1658.

After his death in 1658, he was given a grand funeral as Lord Protector, and his body was buried in Westminster Abbey.

It was specifically for burying the Tang Dynasty's royal family, nobles, and certain important figures—the very top celebrities. His tomb was there as well, in a recess behind Elizabeth's—

The memorial plaque for the Tang Dynasty Air Force marshal from World War II. Take one more step back and you would call him Dad.

That just gave