Chapter 6 Officialism and Blood Remuneration View of History

Interviewer: Liu Youyang, Shenzhen Commercial Daily Time: September 27, 2009 Looking at history, Wu Si is a bit like Lu Xun, not afraid to speculate on the Chinese with the worst malice.But it is precisely this kind of coldness, digging out some living examples from the corners of the vast historical records, and analyzing them in detail, on the contrary, we can see the history more thoroughly and thoroughly. It is this "coldness" that makes Wu Si somewhat mysterious among contemporary historians.And the middle-aged man in black in front of him speaks standard "Beijing movies", speaks fast but not in a high-pitched tone, uses accurate words but still has a modest attitude, without the airs of a "big-name scholar".

Zhang Lixian, who published "Duku", called you a "rhetorician", meaning a rhetorician who created popular terms.Among the vocabulary you created, such as "hidden rules", "officialism", "blood pay", "legal pay", etc., why is "hidden rules" the most widely spread? Because it is close to people's lives, people may encounter unspoken rules every day.Many people say the word "television" every day, because TV is close to people's lives, but the word "philosophy" may not be uttered once a year by most people.Similarly, we often see unspoken rules in our lives, and the discussions are very dramatic, story-like, and mysterious, so we often mention them. The word "blood pay" is often associated with money for hard work. It is not a daily term in peaceful times. "Officialism" is my substitute for feudalism. It is not often mentioned in life, so it is not as good as "" "Unspoken rules" are very popular.

"Officialism" was also invented by you, why did you use this word instead of "feudalism"? After Qin Shihuang "abolished feudalism and established prefectures and counties", can the established system still be called feudalism?He has actually abolished feudalism and established the prefecture and county system. Under this system, the emperor, the yamen, and officials formed a dynamic structure of totalism, collectively called "officialism."Now it is habitual to use "feudalism", but those who are serious about historiography have doubts about using "feudalism" to describe the society after Qin Dynasty.There are also "imperial despotism", "totalitarianism" and "authoritarian landlord" to describe it. The emperor in "imperial despotism" should be very good. In fact, in history, the phenomenon of "government orders not leaving the Forbidden City" often occurs. Local forces and officials' personal forces gather, and their influence on the legislation and law enforcement of Chinese society is no more than that of the emperor. Power is small.This concept is relatively thin, and it ignores the power of officials and yamen legislation.The Tang Dynasty was destroyed by the separatist rule of the feudal towns, which shows that the imperial power is not really effective.The word "official" includes the emperor, officials, and yamen, which is more suitable than "feudalism" and "imperial absolutism".

Your historical works are written with the taste of economics, especially institutional economics.In an interview with "Private Reading History" last year, you mentioned that you have read the theory of institutional economics. Is it deliberate to use the method of institutional economics to study history? At first I was studying violence, which existed in Chinese history.For more than half a month, I have been thinking about the relationship between people's giving and rewards during violent plundering.In my thinking, I feel that I am stuck on one thing, which is how to express the relationship between giving and rewarding. I feel a language gap, a very strong sense of gap.So I wanted to create such a word. After thinking about it for half a month, my mind was full of concepts such as sacrifice, life, reward, blood and sweat, salary, return, and profit, and finally thought of the concept of "blood reward" , and then go through a series of proofs, calculations, verifications, and definitions.At the beginning, I thought about one thing carefully, after I figured it out, I consciously filled in the blank.After doing these two things, I feel that this is the most important thing I have done in my life.

Can you use one sentence to explain the "historical view of blood reward"? The historical view of blood reward is used to analyze the historical view of a society dominated by elements of violence.It is merely a peculiarity of the conception of history.The historical perspective of blood pay is well suited to the analysis of the pre-capitalist era, that is, the era when violent groups ruled.Once the violent group was replaced by the production group, and the bourgeoisie as a production group controlled the violent group, using them as its own night watchman, as its own security guard, capitalism was born.At this time, the explanatory power of historical materialism that "productivity determines the relations of production, and the economic base determines the superstructure" begins to rise, because the bourgeoisie is the organizer of the factors of production, they dominate the economy, and at the same time have the power to influence the superstructure.

What are you researching recently?Will there be new books coming out next? I have been writing articles, the core of which is to look at history from the perspective of violence.I am trying to build a complete framework of historiography, as if I am building a building, and I plan to build six floors.Concepts such as violence and destructive power have been introduced, some historical phenomena have been explained, and viewpoints such as blood rewards and legal rewards have been put forward, and so far they have only covered the fourth floor.The remaining two layers are a little more abstract. The last layer is the history of concepts involving Confucianism, Taoism, and Buddhism. From the perspective of blood rewards and legal rewards, we look at the division of the world, how to demonstrate the due interests of various people, and look at human history along the way. Why this change is a big project.

In addition to this, I am still writing some fragmentary articles, calculating the cost of life of coal miners, comparing coal workers in China and the United States, and calculating the replacement rate of blood and sweat.If people maximize their benefits through production, there will be a lot of spontaneous productivity, but if they can also maximize their benefits through violence, many people will gain their benefits through violence, and finally a violent and destructive force will be formed to control and restrain , Exploitation, extortion, and robbing productivity models, violent groups control production groups.