VOLUME IV, CHAPTER 12, SECTION 1
The Abundance and the Limits of Five Hundred Years of Political Thought
In the first three Parts this book set firm a series of claims of political institutions, enfeoffment, the examination, centralized authority, expansion. Reading this far you will have a fair question: how do these claims differ from what the famous political thinkers of the past five hundred years said? Are they new, or old? This Part answers that question. This section first lays out the abundance of five hundred years of political thought, and sees its limits too.
The first three Parts have already set firm that the institutions of enfeoffment are the root starting point of political institutions, that the examination is a merit-selection mechanism running from the moment a child is educated, that centralized authority is a life-level law crossing every organized group, that expansion is the ultimate goal of political institutions, along with the failure of centralized authority and its five laws, and the three root structures. Reading this far, you will have a fair question, how do these claims differ from the core claims of the great political thinkers within the past five hundred years? If the great thinkers said all these already, then this book is only copying, better left unwritten. If they differ, where? Are these claims new or old, a carrying-forward of the ancestors or a continuation of Western thought? The reader has a right to an answer, and this Part is that answer.
Since the sixteenth century, Western political thought produced a body of deep thinkers, whose works shaped the global political order of today, and this book must give them their due respect. Machiavelli separated politics from moral theology and founded a realist political science. Hobbes set firm the theory of the social contract, holding for a strong monarchy to avoid the chaos of the state of nature. Locke set firm natural rights, limited government, and parliamentary sovereignty, influencing American independence and the French Revolution. Montesquieu set firm the theoretical frame of the separation of powers and their balance, directly influencing the design of the American constitution. Rousseau set firm popular sovereignty, influencing the French Revolution and modern democratic theory. The American constitutional founders turned the theory of Montesquieu and Locke into a workable constitution. Marx set firm class struggle, historical materialism, and the vision of communism, influencing the global political order of the twentieth century. Mill set firm liberalism, representative government, and individual rights. Weber set firm the analytical frame of bureaucracy and rationalization. Lenin set firm the theory of democratic centralism and the one-party system. Some scholars later began to study China's twenty-two-hundred-year political tradition as a sample of human political history, some proposed an analytical frame of the clash of civilizations, and some did cross-domain study of centralized authority, this being the recent same-direction research this book must honestly acknowledge.
These great thinkers make up a monument of human political thought within five hundred years, a resource any political study today must face squarely. This book, in a posture of humility, takes the work of these great thinkers as the starting point and reference of its own study. But across five hundred years, the reader can see that the confident predictions, visions, and ultimate judgments of these great thinkers in their day have not been fully realized. Locke's limited government, holding that government power should be strictly limited, and yet today the scale of the government of developed countries has grown ever larger instead, the share of fiscal spending rising continuously, far from Locke's vision. Rousseau's general will, holding that true democracy is realized through the general will of the whole people, and yet the general will has never been truly realized in any country in the two hundred fifty years and more, the democracy in actual operation all representative plus majority rule. Marx's vision of communism, after practice in many countries, the actual form of communism as the ultimate human vision undergoing major change, China and Vietnam walking another road.
Lenin's theory of the one-party system, after decades of practice in the Soviet Union it dissolved, and China walked a wholly different modern centralized-authority form of democratic centralism plus collective leadership plus multiparty cooperation plus commoner officials, markedly distant from the original claim. One scholar once proposed the claim of the end of history, setting firm liberal democracy as the ultimate institutional form of humankind, and yet decades later, deep crises appeared inside the democratic countries and non-democratic countries rose strongly, and the scholar himself made major adjustments to his early claim in later works. One scholar proposed that the clash of civilizations is the root source of world conflict after the Cold War, and yet the actual conflicts of the world today, economic interest, geopolitics, technical competition, the contest for resources, are far more complex than a clash of civilizations, many conflicts happening within the same civilization, and much cooperation existing between different civilizations too. This book passes no verdict on the right or wrong of these great thinkers, only states objectively one fact, that across five hundred years the core predictions and visions of these great thinkers have mostly not been fully realized, and the reader can see this fact and think through the reasons behind it for themselves.
Why do the predictions of the great thinkers within five hundred years have limits? This book honestly points out several structural causes. Limit one, a range of sight centered on Europe and America. Most thinkers took mainly European history plus the ancient Greek and Roman tradition as reference, their understanding of China's twenty-two-hundred-year centralized-authority tradition limited, some referring to China in part, but more using a Western frame to explain China, treating China as an abnormal sample rather than studying China as a political sample equal to Europe. Limit two, a standard set by their own age. Limited government was the product of the seventeenth-century opposition to royal despotism, the general will the product of the eighteenth-century opposition to monarchical dictatorship, communism the product of the nineteenth-century opposition to industrial exploitation, each great thinker taking the particular problem of his own age as the ultimate problem of humankind, a limit hard for a researcher of any age to avoid. Limit three, carrying a standpoint and a leaning. Some defended a rising class, some defended change, some defended a certain institution, these standpoints all reasonable, but all standpoints, not neutral study. Limit four, confined to the domain of politics, basically all confined to the state, the government, the political institution, the family, the enterprise, the army, and the like rarely systematically taken in. These four limits are not to say the great thinkers were wrong, they are to say any thinker unavoidably has limits of their own, and later researchers can make a new integration on the base of those before, amending the limits of those before, this being the root way of the progress of human thought, not the later overturning the earlier.
By here this book honestly sets its own position firm. This book is not a continuation of the Western Enlightenment, not a carrying-forward from Locke, Montesquieu, and Rousseau, but a carrying-forward from Han Feizi, Li Si, and the First Emperor of twenty-two hundred years ago, plus the thirteen-century tradition of the examination, plus the present-day experience of today. This book does not directly comment on the right or wrong of other systems of thought and does not try to amend anything, but from a wholly different root, China's twenty-two-hundred-year centralized-authority tradition, independently puts forward a series of claims, and if these claims differ from other systems of thought, that too is the natural result of a different root. This book's root is in China's twenty-two-hundred-year political wisdom, Han Feizi's theoretical founding of centralized authority, Li Si's court debate, the First Emperor's five foundations, the thirteen centuries of the examination making merit selection institutional, and today's modern centralized-authority form of China. Its present-day experience is the two samples of China and America, the different forms of countries the world over, the counter-lessons of failed states, and the actual experience of the running of various organizations. Its fresh angles are the three root structures of enfeoffment plus the examination plus centralized authority, the five angles of cross-domain centralized authority, expansion as the ultimate goal, and laying out both sides as the posture of study. The one who compiled this book is a compiler, not the founder of a new thought, taking the wisdom of the ancestors plus the actual experience of today and compiling it into a textbook that can be handed to those who come after.
So here is the position this section lays down. We set firm this layer, the opening of this Part. The sections of this Part that follow will compare this book's core claims one by one with the main great thinkers within five hundred years, letting the reader see for themselves whether this book's claims are new or old, whether it is copying or has a real thing. This Part is not to contest with the great thinkers, and not to embarrass them, it is to set this book's core claims honestly inside the history of five hundred years of human political thought, letting the reader see for themselves where this book stands. Having read this Part, the reader can judge for themselves whether this book's claims truly have something distinctive, whether the compiler honestly acknowledged the work of those before, whether this book is worth reading on and worth handing to the next generation. This book leaves these judgments to the reader, its duty being to do the study well, present the content, and not reach a verdict for the reader. The next section covers a most root difference, the span of the range of sight, the four thousand years of human political history against the five hundred years of the Western Enlightenment.
Credit to the ancestors; the mistakes are mine: Tiger Lyon.