VOLUME IV, CHAPTER 2, SECTION 2
Dynastic Enfeoffment and Party Enfeoffment
Last section looked at voter enfeoffment and military enfeoffment. This section looks at the last two kinds. One is the oldest and longest-running that people have known, setting the position inside a bloodline, dynastic enfeoffment. One is the most modern, twisting scattered people into a single strand and lifting a leader up on a platform and a discipline, party enfeoffment. See these two, and the six kinds are complete.
Dynastic enfeoffment is simple in shape. The position passes down a bloodline, father to principal son, principal son to principal grandson. No principal son, and a lesser son or a son of a secondary wife takes it. No son at all, and a brother or a nephew. A whole family holds the right to occupy that position across several generations. This is the oldest, most widespread, longest-running enfeoffment in human history. China from the Xia, Shang, and Zhou to the Ming and Qing, apart from the gaps between dynasties, ran for thousands of years on dynastic enfeoffment. Europe from the late Roman era to the early twentieth century did so for most of its political bodies. Its good is real. First, clear succession, the heir set from the moment of birth, the handover following ready rules, sparing each generation a fight. Second, long stability, one family holding for centuries, so culture, records, rites accumulate across the generations and a civilization slowly ripens. Third, an unhurried grooming, royal children schooled in governing from childhood, a poise a person raised up on the spur of the moment does not have. Fourth, a family's sense of responsibility, the family's fate bound to the state's, the whole house ruined if the state comes to grief, and that responsibility often makes royal members willing to try in earnest for the state. But these are still the surface goods. Three sentences turn over the deepest face of dynastic enfeoffment.
The first sentence runs against common sense: even an emperor is a slave. The emperor is the most honored position under heaven, so how is he a slave? Look closely and it is plain. From the moment of his birth the emperor is sealed in. Sealed by the ancestors' house-rules, and to break them is to be unfilial. Sealed by the father's dying decree, and at the start of a reign he must walk the father's arrangement. Sealed by the empress dowager, whose word cannot go unheeded. Sealed by his tutors, the classics and histories he must study and think along. Sealed by his ministers, who ring his decisions with memorials, remonstrances, collective opposition. Sealed by the ancestral tablets, facing the eyes of dozens of generations at every rite. Sealed by the historians, every act of his to be judged by histories centuries on. Sealed by the rules of lineage, whom to marry, whom to name heir, all bound by rule. An emperor's whole life, from infant to death, is ringed by dozens of layers of sealing. He wishes to slip out of the palace tonight for a bowl of street noodles, can he? He cannot. Everyone around him would strain to stop him, on the reason of the imperial safety, in truth because the moment the emperor steps outside the rule, the whole system falls into disorder. The emperor looks freest, and is in truth least free. He looks to be at the top of the pyramid, and is in truth a slave sealed in by every tier of it together, slave to the ancestral teaching, to the rules, to the position itself. The few emperors in history who truly tried to break these seals often ended badly. Emperor Xian of Han tried to take power back and was hollowed out his whole life. The Chongzhen emperor tried to turn the tide and hanged himself on Coal Hill in the end. The Guangxu emperor tried to push reform and was confined to his death. The price of breaking the seal is often the loss of the position, or of life. This is the first deep problem of dynastic enfeoffment.
The second sentence: a great family has its dead leaves. Once a family's position has passed to the fifth generation, the tenth, its people have grown from one or two to hundreds, thousands. Princes and dukes of every rank, breeding on down the generations, and so large a family must have its dead leaves. There will always be an unworthy heir sunk in pleasure, a brother coveting the seat and stirring turmoil, a boy enthroned young and worked by consort kin or eunuchs, a kinsman drunk on intrigue and knotting a faction. The infighting of dynastic enfeoffment is past counting. The rebellion of the seven kingdoms early in the Han, the war of the eight princes in the Jin, the gate incident of the Tang, the campaign of dethronement in the Ming, the nine sons contending for the seat in the Qing. Each round drained the whole dynasty's vitality. And if an outside shock came at the same time, the dynasty could collapse under the pincer, as the Jin did, the war of the eight princes draining it, and then the northern peoples throwing the land into chaos. The larger the family, the more the dead leaves. The more the dead leaves, the deeper the internal drain. The deeper the drain, the more brittle the dynasty. This is the second deep problem.
The third sentence is the heaviest: when the avalanche comes, no single snowflake is innocent. A dynasty's collapse looks on the surface like the fault of one muddled ruler. The fall of Qin is blamed on the Second Emperor, the fall of Ming on Chongzhen, each collapse nailing a last emperor to the post of shame. But look closely and it is plain. The collapse was not made by one emperor. The whole system collapsed together. Take the Ming. Chongzhen was not incompetent. He worked more than ten hours a day, was frugal to the patch on his dragon robe, more diligent than many before him. But when he took the throne the Ming had already collapsed at the level of the system. In finance the treasury was empty and could not pay the troops. In the military the border defense was rotted, the commanders corrupt. In the bureaucracy factional strife had spent the court's energy. In the people's lives disaster came year on year and refugees swarmed. In thought there was empty talk of the mind and no grasp of real affairs. One diligent emperor could not, alone, stand against the collapse of a whole system. When the avalanche comes, which snowflake is innocent? The emperor who held no court for decades is a snowflake. The emperor lost in carpentry who let a eunuch run the state is a snowflake. The factionalists grabbing power without a thought for the whole are snowflakes. Every bribe-taking official, every commander who fled the field, every merchant who hoarded to drive up prices, every scholar who stood by with folded hands, every kinsman enjoying his stipend with no thought of the country, all are snowflakes. Chongzhen was only the flake pressed at the very bottom when the avalanche came. He was not the cause of the avalanche. He was the one who bore its result. Here is the tragedy of dynastic enfeoffment. The collapse is the whole system collapsing together, but the one who bears the result is often the last emperor alone. Even a harder, more ruthless emperor could at most put the collapse off a few decades, not truly turn it, because a system-level collapse takes generations of reform and the rebuilding of a whole society, beyond any one emperor's power. This is the third deep problem.
Beyond those three, dynastic enfeoffment breeds a few more problems by necessity. Ability cannot pass down a bloodline, the founding emperor able, the son not always, the grandson perhaps more ordinary still, so that by the fifth generation the one on the throne is often wholly unfit. Consort kin and eunuchs, being nearest the emperor, most easily seize the court when he is enthroned young or soft in character, as the consort clans of the Han and the eunuchs of the Tang and Ming. The princes of the blood are each a potential rival for the throne, and enfeoffed to the provinces they may raise troops, kept in the capital they may stage a coup, so that mishandled they turn to infighting. Royal marriage to great families binds two houses' interests, so that when one comes to grief the other follows. Turn the camera to today. Dynastic enfeoffment has shrunk sharply but not vanished, living on in a few changed forms. Some countries keep a symbolic hereditary monarch, Britain, Japan, Spain, Sweden, while others keep a hereditary monarch who truly rules. There are hereditary political families in many electoral countries, father a legislator and son a legislator after him, mother a leader and daughter a leader after her, the core of dynastic enfeoffment still turning under the shell of the vote. There are family businesses whose grip on a country's economic arteries gives them a hidden enfeoffing power in politics. Today's dynastic enfeoffment no longer inherits a throne directly by blood, but sees family members reach different positions through elections, resources, and networks, more hidden in form, one bloodline in essence. This is not to say which country is good and which bad. It is to say that dynastic enfeoffment, as a shape of enfeoffment, has its own inner stability and endurance. Both sides of it, the good and the tragedy, are real. See them both.
Now the second kind, party enfeoffment. Its shape is this. A party, by its organization, platform, discipline, and power to mobilize, occupies a large share of the power positions in a country, and the party's leader, by the party's nomination and support, reaches the front-most position. In form there are one-party, two-party, multi-party systems, but one skeleton beneath, the position decided by the party. Its good is real. First, organizing power, twisting scattered individuals into a single strand to do what one leader cannot, long policy, mass mobilization, coordination across regions. Second, continuity of platform, the platform polished by several generations of members together, so the direction holds steady though the leader changes. Third, the grooming of successors, young members rising from the base over years, the successor not fallen from the sky but trained and tested over years. Fourth, the taking in of society's energy, drawing in the many demands, views, and forces and turning them into the country's power to act.
Party enfeoffment's ills are real too. First, party strife, where under a multi-party system one party opposes another often not because the policy is wrong but because it is the rival's policy, a great waste. Second, factions within a party, where under a one-party system there is no contest between parties but the contest between factions inside, just as draining, often with no transparent process. Third, self-closing, where any party grown old tends to close, members knitting into a firm network, outsiders hard to enter and new ideas hard to seep in, so it loses vitality over time. Fourth, the tangle of party and army, where the party needs the army's support to hold power and the army needs the party's legitimacy to run, the party steady and the army steady, the party split and the army may split with it. Set party enfeoffment against the five laws and not one is missing. A position must exist, the pivot of the leader cannot be spared. A position must be accepted, resting on the party's raising up within and recognition without. Acceptance is dynamic, a shift of line inside or a shift of sentiment outside and the position moves. When acceptance drains to the edge, the leader steps down, the party loses power. A new position necessarily arises, one leader gone, the party raises another. Party enfeoffment is not the exception to enfeoffment. It is one of the most common coats enfeoffment wears today.
So here is the position this section lays down. We set down the last two kinds. Dynastic enfeoffment sets the position inside a bloodline, with real goods, clear succession, long stability, unhurried grooming, a family's responsibility, and deep tragedies, even an emperor is a slave, a great family has its dead leaves, and when the avalanche comes no single snowflake is innocent. Party enfeoffment hands the position to an organization, with real goods, organizing power, continuity, grooming of successors, taking in society's energy, and real ills, party strife, factions, self-closing, the tangle of party and army. Here the six kinds are complete: of land, of office, of the electorate, of the army, of the bloodline, of the party. Six forms, a thousand differences, yet not one escapes those five laws, and not one is absolutely advanced or absolutely backward. Each is a concrete shape of enfeoffment, each with its own stability, each with its own brittleness.
So the last question presses down. Six kinds, different in form, but do they share a single fatal weak spot? Can enfeoffment truly be passed down for ten thousand generations? Why, from the pride to the dynasty, does every enfeoffment fail to escape that cycle? This takes us back to the five laws, to gather them together and hold a full review. The next section sets the six kinds before the five laws, one by one, and closes the half of the book that asks what enfeoffment is.
Credit to the ancestors; the mistakes are mine: Tiger Lyon.