Chapter 29 Theoretical Creation Born of Despair

Interviewer: Su Ya, China Business News Time: March 3, 2010 The first half of the book focuses on the methods and rules of benefit calculation, and the second half involves things in the spiritual field such as personality and conscience.Someone criticized that the core of your theory is "calculation of interests". Did you deliberately add moral content to deal with this criticism?What do you think of the role of morality in the whole social life? The second half originally included "Our Ideal Personality" and other content, but the revised version also withdrew an article "The Retribution of Creation", and did not add anything new.It is true that many people criticize that the whole book is a calculation of interests, without morality and conscience.For our generation, the first education we receive is in the field of ideology and morality: communist awareness, learning from Lei Feng, destroying private interests and establishing public affairs, and serving the people.Retaining the respect and understanding of the role of the spirit is not an extra thing that needs to be done, it is our foundation, what we need to make up for is the former part - to do the calculation of benefits, not just discuss issues from the perspective of morality and ideology, Instead, discuss issues from the perspective of interests.For me this question is just the opposite, and there is no need to talk about mental issues.

Furthermore, there is no need for these two fields to be completely separated, and values ​​​​are included in interests.For example, sympathy, sympathy can be calculated, how much it is worth, the drink in front of me, whether I give it to him or me, there is a benefit calculation in it.Shows my compassion versus hunger.This benefit calculation is not a formula, but an instinct.Modern neuroscience has proved that everyone has compassion and a sense of justice, which is inherent and does not require additional training.Mencius said that all people have the heart of compassion.When we read martial arts novels, it is very enjoyable to watch heroes fighting against injustices.It rewards us naturally.

It should be said that the statement that "the way of calculation means the exit of morality" itself is a false proposition. Yes, I put morality into practice, into calculation.This is not my invention. The first generation of Russian Marxist Plekhanov said: Morality always contains arithmetic. Whether you read history or you are a reporter, you are creating concepts for the reality you live in.In the more than ten years before you found the concept of "hidden rules", what blocked you and forced you to find a concept?So now another ten years have passed, has there been any new things blocking you in these ten years?What concept would you use to describe the present?

How to accurately describe China with a concept?This is a blocking thing.I am not satisfied with the existing concepts, such as socialism with Chinese characteristics, crony capitalism, etc.I think that Chinese society is governed by official groups, and China is a bureaucratic society.This is a concept creation. So, who do the officials cooperate with, sit in the country together, make money together, and exchange power for higher returns?Hundreds of years ago, we cooperated with landlords and small peasants. There was landlord-officialism and smallholder-officialism. Now the agricultural tax has been abolished. The main wealth creators are the business community, and the leader of the business circle is capital. , so now capital and "officials" are inextricably linked.This is my description of Chinese society since the reform and opening up.In the past ten years, this feature has become more and more obvious. For example, some officials took dry shares from coal bosses. These are all examples.

Workers continue to have no rights, and small and medium-sized capitals have also become targets of exploitation.And the folks are also trying to increase their bargaining power with the government and capital through various methods. This is my overall impression of the past ten years. The concept of "hidden rules" was created and popularized, which contains a strong personal recognition.Now, many people want to follow your path. They may create concepts for the sake of creating concepts, but most of them cannot be passed on because these concepts are not personal enough and lack self-awareness.Behind your creation of the concept of "hidden rules", what is the most intense collision between personal recognition and society, and what is the driving force for this creation?

The biggest problem is that the conceptual system instilled in our minds cannot accurately grasp and describe our society and our life, and at a distance, it cannot grasp the history of China. What is this set of things instilled in us?Historical materialism, political economics, using this conceptual system to understand society, you will find that life is not the same thing, and it is often the opposite. When we went to jump the queue, we memorized Chairman Mao's teachings that we were very familiar with: it is necessary for educated youth to go to the countryside and receive re-education from the poor and lower-middle peasants.Although the peasants have dirty hands and cow dung on their feet, they are spiritually cleaner than the bourgeois and petty bourgeois intellectuals.However, when we went to the countryside to receive re-education from the poor and lower-middle peasants, we found them lazy. When we received proletarian re-education in factories, we found that the workers were also lazy. They only worked for three hours a day and took things from the public house. They are not as clean as our students. If we really want to learn, we should learn to be lazy and take advantage of small things.

We were told again that communism is heaven and the people's communes are golden bridges.But we have seen that the fields in the people's communes are full of weeds, and the crops in the private plots are very strong. How can we believe that a road full of weeds leads to heaven, and a road full of grass seedlings leads to hell? The conflict between our education and what we see is so great that we have to find a theory that can describe and express the reality we see with our own eyes. If there is no such thing, we are forced to rebuild. Of course, I didn’t want to rebuild it at the beginning. When I first went to college, I read those Western theories that I had never seen before, such as sociology, philosophy, psychology, Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, young Marxism, and Western Marxism. There will be a more accurate theory that can describe our reality. I have been looking for it throughout my college years, and I have been looking for it after graduation. After ten or eight years of searching, I couldn't find it, so I had to create it myself.The motivation comes from—despair, the despair caused by being unable to describe and having to describe, and I am not satisfied with other people's descriptions.Desperate for others, I had to create myself.

There is a sentiment common among young and middle-aged people nowadays, and that is a terrible sense of historical nothingness.You laugh at yourself, your research is stupid, and it becomes meaningless to compare many "smart" and many "see through" that appear. Many people are not confused, and it is difficult to not be confused.Anyway, I have a lot of confusion. If you want to ask me why others are not confused, why they can’t see anything in history, I don’t know. In the past ten years, what is your biggest confusion? What has puzzled me in the past ten years is: how to grasp Chinese history and Chinese society as a whole.I describe parts of Chinese society here and there, such as what the basement is like, and what the big pillars are like, but what is the whole building like, can I build a big framework to explain Chinese society, and Not explaining parts piecemeal?In the past ten years, this has been the most confusing thing for me, and this is what I have done the most in the past three years.

What are the benefits of your experience as a reporter for your approach to historical research from a realistic perspective? I can only see the benefits, because I am not familiar with the academic road. I know that they accumulate step by step, review the achievements of their predecessors, and then determine their own position and new ideas. Each school has its own fixed ideas, such as taxation. The model has been researched, how can it go further?It can relax some conditions, modify some conditions, and see what happens to taxes.These studies continue to move forward on the road walked by the predecessors. As far as I am concerned, I do not have similar academic accumulation in every discipline. If there is, it can only be the accumulation of literary theory. I majored in majors, but I think there are problems with literary theory as a whole, and I don’t think it is a good foundation for accumulation and development, especially in explaining history and society, so I completely follow the reporter’s thinking—— What is a valuable issue, or valuable news? Valuable news is similar to a valuable issue. Since it is valuable, we will try to figure it out, and understand it clearly from various fields like journalists , One step further than the reporter is to make it clear theoretically and logically, and this is considered complete.

Our generation is inherently deficient in academics and theory, and there are major problems with the entire theoretical framework learned and mastered during schooling. The economics we learned before is basically useless now, and we are engaged in market economy. We will start to understand Western macroeconomics again. Science, microeconomics, and then go down on this basis.If we move forward according to the academic inertia and study the Chinese economy according to the previous thinking, this academic starting point is no more advantageous than the journalist's starting point.Going forward with such an academic starting point may not go very far, and you may go on the wrong path. It is better for reporters to move forward without a preset theoretical framework.Therefore, I think my reporter-style method can show some advantages under the specific conditions in China—a large number of previous theories have been abandoned and no longer work. Constrained by rules and regulations, grasp the core of the problem to understand and explain, and use whichever theory is easy to use, there is no sectarian opinion.

Let's talk about your approach to reading.It is said that you read a book like drawing a tree. The more confused you are, the more you read, and the branches often exceed the main body. Take Tian Jiyun's "The Great Practice of Reform and Opening Up" you recently read as an example. What do you use? To consider gaining something from a book? I read, and when I first started reading, I felt something, so I wrote it down on the margins of the book. In the end, this book was full of colorful and folded pages, so what kind of feelings did I accumulate?Then I copied it into the electronic file, one by one, and when the quantity was too large, I was forced to classify it. For example, the items of reform and opening up can be divided into: rural, urban, commercial, and financial. There are some points, and this is the official note.For example, when it comes to the "big contract", how did the history come about? I am familiar with the history of rural policies, and I know that Mao Zedong and Deng Zihui had a debate about the four freedoms, but I can't remember the details, so I put "Deng Zihui" and Mao Xuan No. 1 Look for the five volumes. Their debate involves the relationship between freedom and economic development, which has been discussed in Western economics, but what is the specific point of view?So I read Schumpeter's two history of economic analysis, Amartya Sen's "Development from Freedom", and Friedman's, and so on.While arranging the notes, I supplemented the reading. After reading, the sum of the notes totaled 160,000 words. With these accumulations, I felt that I could write something. Finally, I wrote a manuscript of more than 20,000 words, "Basic Laws of Reform and Opening Up", Three laws are summarized: First, freedom is positively correlated with economic prosperity, which is the law of freedom.Two, Governments that obey the laws of liberty prosper and those that violate them decay.Third, whether to expand or narrow freedom depends on the calculation of the interests of the supreme power. The core topic this year is urbanization. Some people think that only the elderly and children are left behind in rural areas, and rural culture is facing decline. How do you view this transformation that Chinese society is facing? The countryside is not withered. (Last century) In the 1980s, when I was in the "Farmers' Daily", the people in the Rural Policy Research Office of the Central Secretariat had a vision. One of the problems was-how large is the scale of agricultural operations, and the income of farmers can be similar to that of workers ?According to the level of agricultural technology and mechanization in China, one household in the south can handle fifteen acres of paddy fields, and the income it brings is about the same as going out to work. If it is not in the north, the amount of labor required is much less. , 40 to 50 mu per household is a relatively reasonable scale of operation, and the income it brings is close to that of migrant workers. In the current rural areas, all the strong laborers have gone out. Some people who have not gone out are either because they are afraid of going out, or because they think that they have advantages in the countryside and can earn money.The people who go out will give him the land. He is a good farmer, or his father is sick and he can't go out. The people who go out will give him the land to plant, and the land will be collected in his hands. When the concentration is about 20 mu , For example, in the Huaihe River Basin, he can handle it, and his income level is similar to that of migrant workers. The year before last, ordinary small workers in the construction industry, such as women driving lifts, earned 1,200 yuan a month, and strong workers 2,000 yuan. After deducting food and drink, they had a surplus of 10,000 yuan a year.Farming at home, the net surplus of 500 yuan per mu of land, and 10,000 yuan for 20 mu of land, just formed a balance.At this equilibrium point, those who farm have no motivation to go out again, and those who go out have no motivation to come back.A man planted 20 mu of land. He planted more carefully, and the unit yield was not low. Of course, he must use some machinery.So the harvesting team came to specialize in harvesting, and the next season came to specialize in mechanical farming. In this way, there was a division of labor, and a group of people specialized in providing mechanized services.This kind of rural area has made progress, because the division of labor has become more detailed and the efficiency has improved. The basic direction of China's rural progress is urbanization, reducing the current rural population and turning a large number of people into non-farm households. This is the only way out for China's rural development.Urbanization can make the allocation of rural resources more reasonable, from one acre of land per person to ten mu of land per person.The extra people, migrant workers, participate in global resource allocation. Their labor products are exported to Europe and the United States, and some grains and soybeans can be imported from the United States, which has relatively abundant arable land. This forms a more reasonable resource allocation. This is globalization. background progress. Chinese farmers' participation in China's urbanization process is also reflected in the process of buying houses in cities and towns.In the past, farmers were asked "how to spend the money they earn", and most of them said to build houses in their villages. Now more and more people consider using the money to buy houses in towns or counties instead of building houses in their villages. To buy a house in the town, first of all, the roads are good and life is more convenient. In addition, there are some opportunities. If he can grasp this economic opportunity, he will also consider buying a house on the street.No matter how strong the ability is, those who can seize the economic opportunities in the county will buy a house in the county, forming an automatic screening process.At this time, we can see that the urbanization of the whole of China presents an echelon structure in front of our eyes. The housing prices in first-tier and second-tier cities are too high, which exceeds the ability of migrant workers to pay, and they will be squeezed to third-tier and fourth-tier cities, and to county towns. Townships and townships have formed a nationwide urbanization process that is mainly supported by farmers building houses and monetary expenditures.This process, on the one hand, is the development of cities, and on the other hand, the allocation of resources in rural areas is more reasonable.There are not so many idlers, and they all come out to work.Urban and rural areas advance side by side.