VOLUME IV, CHAPTER 13
Against Five Hundred Years, Claims and the Vision
Last chapter entered through the difference in range of sight and laid the three claims of enfeoffment, the examination, and centralized authority against the great thinkers. This chapter finishes the remaining four claims, then opens out the book's highest vision, and a fresh understanding of democracy. Three sections. The first covers the last four core claims: that expansion is the ultimate goal of political institutions, that centralized authority fails by five common laws, that enfeoffment plus the examination plus centralized authority are the three root structures, and one heaviest iron law, that the manner of enfeoffment does not matter, that survival hangs only on the will of the people, that leave the people and you perish, an iron law carrying on from Guanzi, Mencius, and Xunzi, carrying the ancestors forward. The second is about the highest vision this book puts forward on its own, output greater than need and no torment, whose threshold is lower than any ultimate human goal before it, a reachable dream you can begin from yourself and expand outward step by step. The third puts democracy back inside the frame of enfeoffment: democracy is, at bottom, voter enfeoffment, returned from a verdict of value to an analysis of structure, so that its strengths and its limits both come clear, and so does the fact that democracy and centralized authority are not opposed but compatible. This chapter shows one thing: what this book says has its own distinctive judgments and also stands honestly on the shoulders of those who came before, coming to rest at last on a dream for all humankind.
Chapter contents
Section One. Seven core claims, part two, expansion, laws, structure, the people
Section Two. One independent claim, output greater than need and no torment
Section Three. Putting democracy back inside the frame of enfeoffment
Credit to the ancestors; the mistakes are mine: Tiger Lyon.