Chapter 28 Perspective on the Myth of Democratic Constitutionalism from the Perspective of Unspoken Rules

Thank you Mr. Wu Si for your reply and "response".First of all, I apologize for my unclear expression. When I accused Mr. Wu Si of "sharply criticizing only China, not the West", what I meant exactly was that Mr. Wu only seriously criticized China's traditional system; For example, the "proper accountability system and contribution reward system" mentioned in the article "The Retribution of Creation", as well as the democratic system and "nationalism" of "popular voting rights" mentioned this time, Mr. Wu seems to be relatively indifferent. If you analyze it, you will accept it in its entirety and praise it as the fundamental way to solve China's problems and "avoid a collapse".

Mr. Wu humbly said: "I don't know much about Western society and history", and "feeling lack of confidence" when criticizing, there is a reason for this.But if a doctor only understands Chinese medicine, and he tries to prescribe western medicine, then he should have a comprehensive understanding of the efficacy, side effects and adaptability of the medicine in advance. As a thinker, Mr. Wu certainly has an understanding of Western society.He uniquely pointed out: In the contemporary West, the capitalist system has withdrawn from the stage of history. "Nationalism" has entered the stage of history; the level of social meta-rules has changed.I can understand and agree with Mr. Wu's judgment.My disagreement with Mr. Wu lies in: What changes have taken place in the West at the level of meta-rules?How did this change happen?

Mr. Wu believes that the changes in Western society are mainly from the "capitalist" system to the "nationalist" system; I have no objection to this; what needs to be added is that all the people have the final say on the basis of one person, one vote, and in fact the majority of the people have the final say. This is the essence of a democratic system.This supplement has its significance in the subsequent analysis. The real question is: Where is the "strongest man with violence" who originally ruled the country at the level of meta-rules?Did it disappear automatically, or did the distribution pattern of violence change, or did the "most violent" suddenly realize his conscience and automatically give up his power to be the master?

To clarify this point, it is necessary to first understand how changes at the meta-rule level occur.According to Mr. Wu's analysis, although Western developed countries have always advertised themselves as "constitutional democracies", Mr. Wu divided their history into two different stages, namely modern capitalist society and modern nationalism.The difference between the two is the difference between "whether the right to vote is universal" and "whether this right is widely used". It can be seen that Mr. Wu believes that the changes at the meta-rule level are the result of the popularization of voting rights, that is, the popularization of democratic rights.However, why can voting rights and democratic rights be popularized in the contemporary West, but did not happen before that?Why did the bourgeoisie, which had always held and monopolized political power, give up this hold and monopoly in modern times?this is the key of the problem.

Mr. Wu's answer is general and vague: "After the establishment of the Western democratic system, it has also gone through a process of development and improvement. The right to vote has also undergone a process of expansion, and various social organizations for sharing costs have also undergone a development process." Mr. Wu especially emphasized: " The seedling must be allowed to grow", that is, the government must allow the process of self-organization of civil society to develop, believing that this is the key to the universal realization of democratic rights. Mr. Wu's statement has some basis in the phenomenon, but what he said is only the appearance and details; compared with his discussion of unspoken rules, he lacks a few "hard words" here, giving people the impression that he did not mention the key points, There is no sense of "speaking through".In other words, when Mr. Wu turned his gaze from China to the West, the microscope became myopia, and the scalpel became a barber. This is exactly what I am disappointed with Mr. Wu.

To decipher the mystery of the popularization of suffrage rights in Western society, that is, democratic rights, requires neither advanced theories nor sophisticated analysis, but common-sense rationality that is not suffocated by advanced theories and sophisticated analysis, and similar to what Mr. Wu did when he discovered the unspoken rules. Demonstrated sensitivity and insight into factual phenomena. Just think: In a pyramid-shaped society with disparity between rich and poor, if the poor, who account for the majority of the population, have no clothes and no food to eat, but they have to watch a few rich people stink of wine and meat, and the strong pick their bones, wouldn't they feel aggrieved ?At this time, if they have enough political power (in a democratic system, a majority of the population means "sufficient political power"), don't talk about liquidation, don't they want to change the status quo and implement "equalization of the rich and the poor" policy or socialist system?Don't they just make a request: can the gentlemen exploit us less so that we can barely survive?Is this possible?

Therefore, in a pyramid-shaped society with great disparity between rich and poor, a democratic system always faces an almost unsolvable problem, that is, how to protect the interests of a small number of vested interests?Constitutionalists replied: constitutionalism can be protected, because the constitution stipulates that "private property is sacred and inviolable"-at least for developing countries, this statement is a complete lie, either to deceive others or to deceive themselves.Isn't the Constitution approved by a vote?Shouldn't there be amendments to the Constitution?In a democratic system, if the poor want to amend the constitution and deprive the rich of their vested interests, what can the rich do to stop it?

This leads to a "historical question": How did Western countries protect the vested interests of the bourgeoisie under the democratic system in history? The answer is actually very simple: in the early stage of capitalism, that is, when the poor were in the majority, what Western countries actually pursued was not "constitutional democracy" in the modern sense at all, but the so-called "hierarchical democracy"; The name of "constitutional government" directly excludes the majority of people from political rights. This is what Mr. Wu vaguely expressed, "After the establishment of the Western democratic system, it has also undergone a process of development and improvement, and the right to vote has also expanded."

Only with the development of the economy, more and more people own relatively considerable private property, and the society enters the middle class (I define the middle class as: owning considerable private property, enough to ensure a "decent" life, but different from property The bourgeoisie will generally open up democratic rights to the society only after the social group of the wealthy class) is the main structural form; because at this time, "democracy" no longer poses a threat to "private property". Two conclusions can be drawn from this: first, whether in modern or contemporary times, the priority goal of the constitutional democracy system is to protect private property; A necessary prerequisite for the "expansion" of the whole people.Without this premise, no matter how well-developed the democratic system is, it will not develop in the direction of "extended voting rights"; no matter how well-developed various cost-sharing social organizations, no matter how much the self-organization process of civil society develops, no one-person-one-vote equality for the whole people will develop. Contemporary democracy, which is qualified to "have the final say", will at best be transformed into a Mao Zedong-style "dictatorship of the whole people"—a utopia is just a utopia after all.

Going back to the previous question, it is not difficult for us to see what changes have taken place at the level of meta-rules in contemporary Western society.Yes, the "pattern of violence distribution" has changed.Due to economic development, the number of the middle class has increased, and the social structure has changed. The "most violent" has changed from a minority of the bourgeoisie to a middle class that accounts for the relative majority of the population; the meta-rule of "the most violent has the final say" does not The only change is that the "masters" who embody this rule have changed from a minority to a majority, so democratic rights are forced to "extend" to the majority.In other words, the democratic system is just a rule of the game, and its degree of realization is also determined by meta-rules; as far as the level of meta-rules is concerned, the expansion of democratic rights in modern Western societies is only the result of changes at the level of meta-rules, rather than leading to such changes. s reason.Without the basic premise that the middle class, which accounts for the relative majority of the population, has mastered most of the economic resources of the society and the lifeline of the country's economy, it is impossible for the minority to "have the final say" at the level of meta-rules. Variety.

In the known forms of human society, as the two main forces that influence social life, economic resources and political power are both convertible; as far as social groups are concerned, the two tend to be isomorphic.Either the person with the greatest political power controls the most economic resources (autocratic society), or the person with the most economic resources controls the greatest political power (democratic society). One of the two processes must occur. The law of remuneration and the essence of meta-rules.The emergence of the democratic system itself is the result of the deduction of the above-mentioned process, which marks the beginning of the second process above; the popularization of democratic rights represents that most economic resources have been transferred from the control of the few to the hands of the majority, and its basic realization The way is modern shareholding system and capital market.Therefore, the democratic system cannot change the essence of the above-mentioned rules, but only changes its realization form.This change depends on changes in the "pattern of violence distribution," that is, changes in the balance of social forces; fundamentally, it depends on economic development and the evolution of economic forms.As long as the vital interests of the powerful group with the most economic resources in society conflict objectively with the basic interests of the majority, the former's "infringement" on the latter's "right boundaries" is inevitable and difficult to contain; The rules will take its place. As an intuitive proof of the above conclusions, the myth of constitutional democracy has encountered new troubles in modern times: due to the "progress of ideas" of the times, the "hierarchical democracy" that was generally pursued in the West in history and relied on to protect the interests of vested interests in a pyramid society , today has no place to stand.This makes the majority of developing countries face a kind of "democratic paradox": Although they themselves have not achieved the prerequisites for the middle-class social structure necessary for the popularization of democracy, as long as they start to adopt "constitutional democratic systems", they can only copy the middle-class social structure. The modern Western system based on class society, that is, the universal democratic system; it is not difficult for the bourgeoisie in these countries to find that, logically speaking, once this system is actually implemented, the direct consequence is that they can no longer effectively protect their vested interests. Benefit. what to do?No one wants to sit still, let alone the elite who control most of society's resources?Since the "clear rules" doom them to great losses, they can only use "hidden rules" to distort the "clear rules" so that the rules are ultimately subordinated to the interests of the economically privileged class, and the majority of people are actually excluded from political decision-making.Therefore, the practice of constitutional democracy in all developing countries today is either short-lived or distorted.In many developing countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America, although there is a form of "suffrage popularized to all people", there is no reality that "one person, one vote equal qualifications have the final say". I believe that Mr. Wu would not call it a "universalist" society. In the above-mentioned developing countries that practice constitutional democracy, in order to achieve the fundamental goal of "distorting explicit rules with unspoken rules", the bourgeoisie can do whatever it takes. This is the main reason for the instability of political systems and frequent military coups in democratic countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America. Therefore, the few countries that have realized a recognized and effective "universal democracy" in modern times all started their political transformation after entering a middle-class society, such as South Korea and Taiwan.For other countries that have turned to the West in terms of their systems, what awaits them is the fate of their political systems being distorted and manipulated by unspoken rules.It can be seen that the key to the implementation of democracy is not whether the government allows seedlings to grow, but whether the objective environment is suitable for the growth of towering trees; that is, the key lies in whether economic development can promote the country into a middle-class society. Now, China is still far away from that goal; given China's large population and limited resources, it is not certain whether such a day will come, at least not when it will arrive.Before that, life still needs to go on, and the road still needs to be walked.As long as China is not willing to take the risk of unpredictable political transformation and move towards a Latin American or Southeast Asian society where the democratic system is distorted and unspoken rules prevail, China must give up imitating the Western way (because "hierarchical democracy" is a historical relic , there is no solution to the "democratic paradox"), find and create a path that suits you. Finally, let me explain why I think Mr. Wu "favors Western capitalism".Reading Mr. Wu's writings, apart from admiration, I often feel a judgment standard based on the West.I think Mr. Wu should not ignore the huge background differences between the East and the West with his keen insight and originality, nor should he rashly compare China with Western standards.I privately speculate that Mr. Wu's thinking here may have moved towards a fixed direction, that is, the successful practice of the West determines that the Western road is correct, and then looks for this "correct" human effort factor, and presupposes it as an "advanced model that can be generally imitated." ”, thus ignoring the corresponding objective necessary conditions. The above is the words of belly test, if wrong, I would like to express my humility to Mr. Wu.Engels once said that Marx had only two major discoveries in his life, which are enough to be famous through the ages.In any case, Mr. Wu is one of the two contemporary thinkers I admire most. --Finish--