VOLUME IV, CHAPTER 13
Against Five Hundred Years, Claims and the Vision
Last chapter entered through the difference in range of sight and compared the three claims of enfeoffment, the examination, and centralized authority. The three comparisons share one feature: this book enters not from the great thinkers' angle, but from the root structure of politics. But of the seven core claims, only three have been compared. This chapter finishes comparing the remaining four, then opens out the book's highest vision, and a fresh understanding of democracy. Three sections. The first gathers all seven claims in, the second takes one step further, and the third turns back and puts a word that stirs wide dispute in the world today back in its proper place.
Section One covers the last four core claims: expansion is the ultimate goal of political institutions; the five common laws of the failure of centralized authority; enfeoffment plus the examination plus centralized authority, the three root structures; and one heaviest iron law, the way of enfeoffment does not matter, survival hangs only on the will of the people, to leave the people is to perish. The first three carry on from what came before. The great thinkers saw the goal of a political institution as inward. This book sees the outward side: every political institution is at bottom expanding. The last one is the hardest. A regime can be enfeoffed out through election, through heredity, through force, through intra-party raising up. The way of enfeoffment decides only how a regime comes to be, not whether it can go on living. What decides life and death is not how one comes to power, it is whether one is for the people after coming to power. This iron law carries on from Guanzi, Mencius, and Xunzi; it carries the ancestors forward. Guan Zhong said: "A politics rises when it moves with the will of the people; a politics falls when it moves against the will of the people." Mencius taught that the people are the most valued, the altars of the state next, the ruler the lightest. Xunzi taught that the water can carry the boat and the water can overturn it.
Section Two covers the highest vision this book puts forward on its own: output greater than need, and no torment. It starts from a deeper question. Can humankind as a whole find a state in which it can coexist in peace over the long run and keep developing? Output greater than need does not mean having whatever one wants. It means having a margin. Global grain output today is already enough to meet the basic food need of the global population. The root problem is uneven distribution, plus the artificial shortage that torment makes. No torment is a deeper layer: no torment between country and country, between person and person, from the strong toward the weak, or inside an organization. Communism needs an extreme abundance of productive force, the ending of classes, the ending of the state, a thorough change of human nature, and a unified global coordination. This claim needs only a margin, only not actively doing evil, only no torment between states. So its threshold is lower than any ultimate human goal before it. It is a reachable dream you can begin from yourself and widen outward bit by bit. This is not to say communism is wrong, and it is not meant to replace it.
Section Three 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. Democracy has become a highly politicized word in the world today, and this section passes no verdict on whether it is good or bad. There is land enfeoffment, office enfeoffment, military enfeoffment, party enfeoffment, dynastic enfeoffment, voter enfeoffment. Democracy is the voters, through the ballot, enfeoffing some position onto some candidate, and when the term is up, enfeoffing it anew. See its strengths and its limits clearly. The strengths: the source of legitimacy is relatively clear, there is the pressure of a term, and power changes hands in peace. The limits: the voters' time and energy are limited, a campaign needs much money, and the majority is not the same as the correct; Mill spoke of the tyranny of the majority. See clearly too that democracy and centralized authority are not opposed but compatible. Democracy decides who fills the position, centralized authority decides how the position runs. An elected president comes to power by voter enfeoffment, and after taking office exercises great power.
In this chapter you will see clearly that 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. The seven claims are gathered in, a vision is set up, and democracy is returned from a label to one form of enfeoffment. The next chapter is the close of the Part and of the whole volume. It starts from an objective account of China's institutions, then gathers in cross-domain centralized authority and laying out both sides, and last makes clear whom this book carries forward from, and who wrote it.
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.
Section One. Seven core claims, part two, expansion, laws, structure, the people