VOLUME IV, CHAPTER 13, SECTION 1

VOLUME IV, CHAPTER 13, SECTION 1

Seven Core Claims, Part Two, Expansion, Laws, Structure, the People

The third section of the last chapter compared the first three claims, enfeoffment, the examination, and centralized authority. This section covers the last four, expansion, the laws of failure, the three structures, and one heaviest iron law, that to leave the people is to perish. Of these four, the first three carry on from what came before, and the last is the claim this book carries forward from the ancestors and sets down heaviest.

Claim four, expansion is the ultimate goal of political institutions. The core claim this book set firm in the chapter on expansion, expansion is the ultimate goal of political institutions, every political institution is at bottom expanding, and a group that does not expand is eliminated over the long run. The great thinkers of five hundred years judged the goal of a political institution mostly as inward. Locke, Rousseau, Mill, and the other Enlightenment thinkers held that the goal of a political institution is to secure liberty, secure rights, realize justice. Marx held that the goal of a political institution in the final stage is to end classes and realize distribution by need. Weber held that the goal of a political institution is the building and keeping of legitimacy. And one scholar held that the goal of a political institution is the balance of the state plus the rule of law plus accountability. The realist scholars of international relations took the pursuit of power as the core of state behavior, but as a feature of state behavior, not the root driver of a political institution.

Compared side by side, the great thinkers' judgment is that the goal of a political institution is inward, securing the liberty, rights, justice, and legitimacy of the inner members. This book's judgment is that the goal of a political institution is outward and expansionary, that the underlying running logic of every political institution is to expand. This book honestly points out that the great thinkers' inward goal is reasonable, but that is one side of the running of a political institution, and the expansionary goal this book sets firm is another side, also reasonable, but overlooked by the great thinkers. To set firm expansion as the ultimate goal of political institutions few of the great thinkers of five hundred years did, the realists discussing a state's pursuit of power but as a feature of international relations, not a root law of a political institution. Expansion is the ultimate goal of political institutions, as a claim, is this book's distinctive judgment, setting firm the outward running logic of political institutions.

Claim five, the five common laws of the failure of centralized authority. The core claim this book set firm in the section on failure, the five common laws of the failure of centralized authority, unstable succession, fiscal collapse, factional strife and infighting, ideological hardening, and inner and outer troubles arriving at once, hold across Rome, the Tang, the Ming, the Soviet Union, and present-day failed states. The great thinkers of five hundred years wrote no few works studying state failure or civilizational decline. One scholar studied the concrete causes of Rome's failure, setting firm concrete factors like the rise of Christianity plus the entry of outside peoples plus inner corruption. Marx studied the transition of feudal society to capitalism, setting firm inner contradiction driving the change of institution. One scholar studied the rise and fall of civilizations, setting firm challenge and response as the root mechanism of civilizational evolution. One scholar studied why some states rise and some decline, setting firm mechanisms like the accumulation of interest groups blocking innovation. One scholar studied civilizational collapse, setting firm the four factors of environment, climate, relations with neighbors, and the way of response. One scholar set firm inclusive institutions against extractive institutions as the key to a state's success or failure.

Compared side by side, works studying state failure or civilizational decline are not few, but no one set firm the failure of centralized authority as an independent category, and the five common laws as a summary crossing four thousand years. Some studied only the one case of Rome. Some, challenge and response, are at the civilizational level, not the centralized-authority level. Some, interest groups, are one factor, not five common laws. Some, inclusive against extractive, are a binary opposition, not the five concrete paths of the failure of centralized authority. This book's judgment sets firm the failure of centralized authority as an independent category, sets firm the five common laws as a summary crossing all the failure cases of four thousand years, and extends these five laws to every organized group, not only the state. This book honestly points out that this summary is an integration on the base of the study of those before, not wholly original, but the systematic nature of the summary plus the cross-domain application is this book's integrative contribution and the root of the section on failure.

Claim six, the three root structures. The core claim this book set firm in the section on the three structures, enfeoffment plus the examination plus centralized authority, the three root structures of political institutions, plus coordination and balance, make up a complete political institution. The great thinkers of five hundred years each set firm some one structural frame of the political institution. Montesquieu set firm the separation of powers of legislative plus executive plus judicial. Locke set firm the three-power division of legislative plus executive plus federative power. Marx set firm the two-part structure of economic base plus superstructure, and this line itself tells the relation of the material base and the upper structure, just as Guanzi taught that when the granaries are full people know rite and restraint, the same principle. Weber set firm three kinds of legitimate authority. One scholar set firm the three pillars of democratic centralism plus dictatorship plus the vanguard party. One scholar set firm the three elements of the state plus the rule of law plus accountability. The common feature of these frames is that each sets firm the structure of the political institution from some one particular angle.

Compared side by side, the great thinkers each set firm the structure of the political institution from some one angle, Montesquieu's angle the division of powers, Marx's angle the economic, Weber's angle legitimacy, one scholar's angle institutional evolution. This book's judgment, enfeoffment plus the examination plus centralized authority as the three root structures of political institutions, sets firm respectively the mechanism of a position existing, how the person in the position is selected by merit, and how the decision-center runs, the three present making up the skeleton of the political institution, plus coordination and balance making up a complete political institution. This book honestly points out that Montesquieu's separation of powers is part of the content of this book's coordination and balance, that one scholar's state plus rule of law plus accountability overlaps in part with this book's three structures, but the angle differs. This book's integration takes the enfeoffment plus the examination plus centralized authority of China's twenty-two-hundred-year tradition as the root structure, plus the wisdom of Western coordination and balance, forming a complete framework of understanding of the political institution. Within five hundred years, no one set firm these three structures systematically, this being this book's new integration on the base of those before.

Having covered the first six claims, this book sets firm one heavier iron law, its root already buried earlier, this section formally setting it as an independent claim: whatever way a regime is enfeoffed out, whether, once formed, it truly serves the people it governs is the only root of whether it can go on living, and any regime that leaves the people necessarily perishes. This iron law has two layers. The first layer, the way of enfeoffment does not matter, a regime can be enfeoffed out through election, through heredity, through force, through intra-party raising up. Mainstream Western discourse puts all its attention on which way of enfeoffing out is legitimate, lifting electoral enfeoffment up as the only legitimate one and pushing the other enfeoffments down as illegitimate. But this iron law says the way of enfeoffment decides only how a regime comes to be, not whether it can go on living. The second layer, survival hangs only on the will of the people, whether a regime, once enfeoffed out, can go on living and how long depends only on whether it keeps doing things for the people it governs, and doing things for the people the will of the people holds it up and the position is steady, and turning from the people to profit a small few the will of the people withdraws layer by layer and in the end it collapses. This layer is exactly Part One's enfeoffment-is-lifted-up-from-below and Part Two's will of the people, and this section joins the two layers and pushes them to the extreme, drawing out an iron law, that any regime that leaves the people necessarily perishes. This is a description of a regularity of the same force as enfeoffment not lasting ten thousand generations and a CEO who staffs by kinship will perish, not a moral exhortation but a structural law. A government that came to power by election, if it turns from the people, steps down or even collapses all the same. A regime that came to power without election, if it keeps doing things for the people, can go on all the same. 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 claim and the judgment of the great thinkers of five hundred years have exactly the opposite center of gravity. Locke, Rousseau, Montesquieu, Mill, and the others put the center on the legitimacy of how a regime is produced, Locke teaching the consent of the governed, Rousseau teaching popular sovereignty and the general will, the core all how a regime comes to be legitimately. This book's center is not on how it comes to be, but on whether it is for the people after it comes and whether it can go on. This book honestly points out that the great thinkers valuing the legitimacy of production is reasonable, but looking only at production and not at survival misses a more root law, that however legitimate the way of production, if it turns from the people after coming to power it perishes all the same, and however seemingly illegitimate the way of production, if it truly serves the people after coming to power it can go on all the same. To set firm survival hangs only on the will of the people, to leave the people is to perish, as an iron law crossing every way of enfeoffment, the Western great thinkers of five hundred years did not do, their center on the other end. The root of this iron law is not in the West, it is in the ancestors. Guanzi taught, in the chapter Shepherding the People, that a politics rises when it moves with the will of the people, and falls when it moves against it. Guanzi taught that the rise and fall of a regime hangs on moving with or 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, the ancestors setting this law through more than two thousand years ago. This book's claim carries on from the ancestors, pushing it from the principle of the ruler-people relation into a survival iron law crossing every way of enfeoffment, this being this book's distinctive integration, and once again confirming that this book carries on from the ancestors, not from the West.

So here is the position this section lays down. Put the seven core claims of the last two sections together, claim one the institutions of enfeoffment are the political institution, claim two the examination is a merit-selection law running now, claim three centralized authority is a cross-domain life-level law, claim four expansion is the ultimate goal of political institutions, claim five the five common laws of the failure of centralized authority, claim six enfeoffment plus the examination plus centralized authority the three root structures, claim seven the way of enfeoffment does not matter, survival hangs only on the will of the people, to leave the people is to perish. These seven claims differ at the root from the core judgments of the great thinkers of five hundred years, entering not from the origin or the purpose of politics but from the structure of politics, taking not election as the only mechanism of personnel selection but the examination as a merit-selection law crossing ages, confining centralized authority not to the domain of politics but extending it to every organized group, seeing the goal of a political institution not as inward but as an outward expansionary root driver, resting not at the failure study of one state but making a summary of the laws of failure crossing four thousand years, setting firm the structure of politics not from some one angle but joining the three structures, putting the center not on the legitimacy of a regime's production but on whether it is for the people after producing and whether it can go on, setting firm the iron law of to leave the people is to perish carried forward from the ancestors. This book is honest, not saying it surpassed the great thinkers, but saying it made a new integration on the base of the great thinkers plus China's twenty-two-hundred-year tradition for its root plus present-day experience. If this integration has a real thing, someone will study on from it. If not, later researchers will amend or overturn it, the root way of the progress of human thought. The next section covers an independent claim this book puts forward, output greater than need and no torment, a dream humankind can realize today.

Credit to the ancestors; the mistakes are mine: Tiger Lyon.