VOLUME IV, CHAPTER 11
Centralized Authority Beyond Politics
The centralized authority of the last few chapters has stayed at the level of the state. Last chapter finished the two present-day samples, China and the United States, and the five common laws of failure too, so the coming, the mechanisms, the ultimate goal, the present-day samples, and the laws of failure of centralized authority are all covered. This is the last chapter of Part Three, and here enfeoffment, the examination, and centralized authority are to be looked at together once. This chapter pushes centralized authority beyond politics, to see how, as a life-level law, it runs through every organized group, and then brings the three root structures of political institutions together to close. Three sections.
Section One covers the first two angles on cross-domain centralized authority. The enterprise type against the enfeoffment type, a distinction that decides what form an organization should take: the enterprise type run as an enfeoffment type is bound to fail, the enfeoffment type run as an enterprise type must fall into disorder. Then the wholly different shapes the central position takes in different groups. The enterprise-type organization exists to complete some venture, the enterprise, the research team, the ball team, the orchestra, its leader chosen by who can best advance that venture. The enfeoffment-type organization exists to keep its own continuation. The state must protect citizenship and welfare eligibility, and the family cannot reallocate the positions of father, mother, and child by who can best fill them. An enterprise controlled by a family, the CEO position passed to a son, a daughter, a relative, is an enterprise type run as an enfeoffment type. The shape of the center differs enormously too. For the ball team it is the coach plus the captain, for the orchestra the conductor plus the concertmaster, and the family may have no clear form at all, yet it still has a substantial center.
Section Two completes the remaining three angles: the power in centralized authority is really five powers, decision, appointment, finance, information, and arbitration; different organizations each have their own irreplaceable functions, and crossing the line brings trouble; and the five laws of failure appear in every organization in different forms. These two sections together are a set of thinking tools a reader can take to analyze their own company, family, or association. Of the five powers, the power of decision is the most visible, but not the whole. The power of appointment is the deepest, because the power of decision can be delegated, but once the power of appointment fails, the whole running of the organization drifts from its original direction. The power of information is the most easily overlooked, and Chongzhen is the type sample of a center that cannot hear the real situation. You can take five questions to the organization you are in: to whom does each of the five powers belong? A sample of crossing the line is the state trying to bear the family's function fully, and instead damaging the core function of the family. Brought into the family, the laws of failure look like this: unstable succession is the family division after the parents' death, and factional strife plus infighting is siblings fighting over property plus friction between mother-in-law and daughter-in-law.
Section Three brings the three structures, enfeoffment, the examination, and centralized authority, together, and makes clear that a skeleton alone is not enough: coordination and balance must be added, so that factions are absorbed, errors corrected, and power restrained, and only then can a political institution run steadily. Enfeoffment sets firm where the position is, the examination sets firm who fills these positions, centralized authority sets firm how these positions coordinate, none to be missing. But something more must be added on top of the skeleton, for three reasons: centralized authority plus inner factional contest is bound to fail; centralized authority plus the inability to correct error must harden; centralized authority plus the center abusing power must fall into disorder. Coordination and balance are not a kind of political institution, they are a running mechanism embedded inside all political institutions, and the three lords and nine ministers of the Han holding each other in check and the separation of powers of America both contain its elements. Its full opening is what the later volumes of this book will do.
This chapter gives you one real thing: centralized authority is not only a tool for studying the state, it is a tool for seeing clearly into every group you yourself stand inside. By here, the three root structures of political institutions are all covered, and Part Three closes. The next Part walks into the history of thought, to answer a fair question: where in the history of human political thought do the things this book covers actually stand, are they new or old? What is their relation to thinkers like Machiavelli, Hobbes, Locke, Montesquieu, and Rousseau? Chapter Twelve begins from the difference in range of sight.
Chapter contents
Section One. Five angles, part one, the enterprise type against the enfeoffment type
Section Two. Five angles, part two, the five powers and the irreplaceable
Section Three. How the three structures fit together, a preview of balance
Credit to the ancestors; the mistakes are mine: Tiger Lyon.
Section One. Five angles, part one, the enterprise type against the enfeoffment type