Chapter 9 Chapter II Economy and Society

If you ask what is the most popular doctrine in the world today, it is not socialism, and I am afraid it is not capitalism, but a compromise between the two, which is "social capitalism." Looking back on China's development since the reform and opening up, a significant change is that the process of socialization and capitalization has started, and small achievements have been made.In the past, whether it was advocating socialism or opposing capitalism, in the end it was doctrine that took command. It was manifested not only as "ism overwhelms society" but also as "ism overwhelms capital".As a result, the real society is far from both capitalism and socialism.

Classical socialist theories focus on criticizing the capitalization of capitalism, which puts capital interests first, and advocates that socialism should put public interests first.However, today, when the obsession with ideology is blown away by time, people suddenly find that among the three major elements of power, society and capital, the most disturbing thing is neither the greed of capital nor the freedom of society , but the unrestraint of organized power, socialization and capitalization give way to empowerment, and lead to power swallowing everything. Since the 1990s, with the deepening of China's economic reform and socialization, the Chinese economy has entered a process of comprehensive capitalization, that is, the process of transforming "wealth" into "capital".As Professor Chen Zhiwu of Yale University pointed out, like the industrial revolution that started in Britain, the financial revolution is also the greatest pioneering work in human history. Many modern developed countries have benefited from this financial revolution for more than 150 years. Rapidly developed and strengthened.The prosperity of the United States in the past 100 years has been driven by three pillars: the industrial revolution, technological innovation, and the financial revolution or "capitalization" of the economy.

The financial development that China has experienced in the past 30 years of reform and opening up is also a microcosm of the financial development of the United States in the past 150 years.In comparison, China before the reform and opening up was a "society with wealth but no capital".Land and natural resources are state-owned and the right to use cannot be transferred, and have no capital value; enterprises are state-owned and collectively owned, and their property and future income streams cannot be traded or bought and sold, not to mention that these property rights have not been clearly defined; and Citizens are the "screws" in the big socialist machine, and their individual labor and wisdom are also state-owned property. Therefore, citizens' future labor income cannot be converted into financial instruments.Over the past 30 years, China has continued to gradually capitalize the above three resources and has provided society with a large amount of capital.The first stage was from 1978 to the mid-1990s, and its core was to give ordinary people the freedom to choose and buy and sell, including the freedom in the labor market and the entrepreneurial market, that is, the “marketization” from planning to the market.Since then, especially after 1998, it has entered the stage of "capitalization", which is to allow corporate assets (including tangible assets and future income streams), land and various natural resources, and future income streams of laborers to be sold through property rights, securitization or Financial instruments are transformed into circulating capital, turning dead assets and future income streams into money that can be realized at any time and can be spent.

In an interview with Southern Weekly, Chen Zhiwu talked about how the market and capital have changed traditional Chinese society: In the past when the market was underdeveloped and agricultural production capacity was extremely limited, food and clothing were always the main challenge. Therefore, Confucianism advocates It may be a relatively optimal arrangement in the past two thousand years to realize the resource sharing and risk sharing between people based on the consanguineous family, and to match it with the "three cardinal principles and five constant principles" cultural value and social order of status and hierarchy. enable the Chinese nation to prosper.Under that kind of social order, the rigidity of the "three cardinal principles and five constant principles" and the hierarchical order of titles certainly castrated people's individuality, but it could greatly reduce the risk of interpersonal transactions and save transaction costs. Therefore, sacrificing some personal freedom and rights seemed to be the production A forced choice under the condition of low ability.Coupled with the fact that there was little population movement at that time, and generations were neighbors, this also made the moral constraints that Confucianism relied on more or less feasible.

But the situation is quite different today. The extensive flow of population and the expansion of the market have greatly weakened the binding force of morality.In addition, today's financial market has replaced family insurance and other economic transaction functions in many ways. There is no need to mix family affection with the exchange of economic benefits, and there is no need to accept the constraints of "three cardinal principles and five constant principles" on personal freedom.In other words, today the price to be paid for these constraints is far greater than the benefits that can be obtained, so the constraints advocated by Confucianism are no longer worthwhile, and the value of self-reliance and individual freedom is higher.

According to Chen Zhiwu’s understanding, the situation that China has experienced in the past 30 years may be like this. From the 1980s, the development of marketization first, the integration of markets in different regions, including the labor market and commodity market, labor began to flow across regions, where to work, Life is gradually detached from where you were born and grew up, and Chinese people and products have also begun to go abroad in large numbers.At the same time, their private wealth is also increasing.By the 1990s, people began to come into contact with modern financial products, first various types of insurance, and then pension investment, fund types, and mortgage loan types. Gradually, people became more and more aware of the benefits of financial products, the most important of which was financial products. The product allows you to arrange your various future economic needs, insurance and pension, so that no matter what happens in the future, you don’t need to rely on other people’s charity to live, ensuring that you always have independent personality and dignity.Economic self-sufficiency has always been the foundation of independent personality, and finance is a tool to ensure future economic self-sufficiency.

In addition, another significant change that Chen Zhiwu has seen is that market development and financial development in the past two to three decades have changed many cultural values ​​​​of the Chinese people. "When you look at the way parents communicate with their children in big cities like Shanghai and Beijing, it's becoming more and more like what is observed in the typical American family, that is, the father usually doesn't Trying to appear majestic, unapproachable, and unapproachable in front of children is no longer a top-down, one-way, commanding posture. Instead, you will see that more parents use A very egalitarian way of communicating with their children, trying to have a heart-to-heart dialogue."

When parents no longer regard their children as their pension security and their investment vehicles, they don't need to worry about "Oh my God, if my child is disobedient now, how will he be filial in the future? How will my investment in him be?" pay off"?Therefore, there is no need for them to beat and scold the child everywhere, suppress and castrate the child's personality, and force the child to always obey.These parents buy insurance products, retirement products, pension funds and so on for themselves.After that, financially, they have no need to depend on their children.Of course, this "capitalist" way of life is only seen in cities with relatively developed economies. In the wider west and rural areas of China, "raising children for old age" is still popular.

In addition to the change mentioned by Chen Zhiwu, there is another major change: in the past, talented scholars and beautiful ladies who were expelled by the system often had to face a difficult fate, but now they can still find a well-paid job in society. errands, or live a life of dignity and freedom through the wealth and capital in your hands. As Milton Friedman said in the preface to the Chinese edition of "Capitalism and Freedom" (2002): "China is still far from a free society, but there is no doubt that Chinese residents are more free than ever and richer—freer in every way except politics. There are even some tentative, small signs of growth in political freedom, manifested in the election of more and more rural cadres. China has a long way to go It's a ways to go, but it's headed in the right direction."

Gorbachev once said: "Our common home is the world itself, and our destiny is the same. If a certain region only thinks of its own prosperity and prosperity, but the whole world around it is famine, its prosperity It is impossible." History has proved time and time again that no matter the Cold War in the past or the "clash of civilizations" that seems to exist now, those unnecessary confrontations cannot solve the urgent tasks of mankind, and what is really beneficial is to return to the human condition Think about human civilization by itself. The two camps no longer exist.Correspondingly, in terms of value theory, this country has gradually faded away from the ideal body of communism and turned to the anonymous exploration of symbiosis.From "win-win" to "peaceful rise", from Deng Xiaoping's adoption of a market economy to Jiang Zemin's open recognition of the coexistence of capital and society, from Hu Jintao's "peace benefits both, and confrontation hurts both" to the 17th National Congress of the Communist Party of China calling for an end to cross-strait hostility. Actively integrating into the world, the general context from communism to symbiosis has gradually become clear.

Both communism and symbiosis value publicity.The difference is that communism puts more emphasis on the distribution of the past and results, but does not effectively solve the problem of growth; while symbiosis puts more emphasis on the continued growth of the present and the future, and more emphasis on the recognition and care of spontaneous order and self-expansion.If communism is oriented to a world that is disappearing and power is distributed, then symbiosis is oriented to the future because it is oriented to life.It is a world distributed by life, and the equality of life determines that the subsequent equality of distribution is more genuine. Capitalist countries also face choices.Obviously, especially after the integration in the 1990s, the real difference between the old socialist countries and capitalist countries lies in democratic politics rather than doctrine.For example, despite being "capitalist", many countries in Europe have not given up their socialist ideals from the perspective of civil rights. Didn't Mitterrand also privately stated that his ruling ideal is to eliminate the French bourgeoisie?In the 1960s, when the Western world accused socialist countries of totalitarianism, Marcuse also described advanced industrial society as a new totalitarian society under technological progress.Today, more American intellectuals are advocating the upgrading of capitalism, that is, after experiencing the "capitalism" of "shortage and scarcity" and today's "capitalism" of "surplus and extravagance", capitalism must enter the "stage of recovering public rights and interests". era of capitalism. In today's world, capitalism and socialism have moved from antagonism to integration, which is manifested in "capitalist socialization" and "socialist capitalization".On the one hand, a socialist country like China, which once pursued absolute public ownership, is on the verge of collapse due to its economy and politics, and is finally reborn under the banner of reform and opening up.The development of the market economy and the private economy, the inclusion of private property in the constitution and the enactment of the property law, etc., have injected elements of capitalism that it had strongly opposed in the past into Chinese socialism, enabling it to reap the vitality of reality and the rewards of history.On the other hand, in capitalist countries, welfare capitalism, democratic capitalism and stock capitalism have also made great progress.When the joint stock system became an important way of social distribution of wealth, modern capitalism has actually transitioned from the past private capitalism to "social capitalism".When China talks about "ownership by the whole people," it often gets caught up in debates about "why state-owned enterprises don't pay dividends to the society" and "who is the whole people?"In some capitalist countries, due to the well-developed capital market, most citizens hold stocks in large companies, so that these companies are more in the nature of ownership by the whole people. As early as 1988, Gao Fang, a famous scholar and socialist expert, mentioned the concept of "social capitalism" in his article "From Traditional Socialism to Modern Socialism".Gao Fang summarized the development of world capitalism into four stages: feudal capitalism from the beginning of the 16th century to the end of the 18th century (at this time capitalism was conceived and grown within the European feudal society); liberal capitalism from the end of the 18th century to the end of the 19th century; From the end of the century to the monopoly capitalism of the 1970s; since the 1980s, it can be called social capitalism, that is, capitalism with a higher degree of socialization and gradually increasing socialist factors. In 2001, Gao Fang wrote an article on the "Jianghan Forum" and pointed out six main characteristics of the stage of social capitalism: first, the degree of socialization of social productivity is higher; second, the degree of socialization of capitalist production relations is higher Third, the structure of capitalist society has undergone major changes, the middle class has expanded, and the working class has become white-collarized, multi-collared, educated, and Industrialization trend; fourth, the social functions of the national government have been greatly enhanced; fifth, the competition and cooperation among countries in the world has been greatly enhanced; sixth, the socialist factors have gradually increased, and more and more workers and peasants have invested Self-run enterprises and cooperatives, employees participate in enterprise management, the government implements social security and welfare policies, and so on.In general, contemporary capitalism has become more and more socialized and its scope has become more and more socialized from productivity to production relations, from economic base to superstructure, from social structure to social life, and from internal relations to international relations. There are more and more levels, and socialist elements are gradually increasing, so it can be called social capitalism, or capitalism with socialist elements.In Gao Fang's view, the highest stage of capitalism is not the imperial capitalism criticized by Lenin in 1916, but social capitalism; capitalism is not necessarily decayed, but has been rejuvenated by society. Why did imperial capitalism decline and social capitalism thrive?Regardless of whether China is currently pursuing market socialism or social capitalism; regardless of whether there will be other higher forms of capitalism in the future, it is undeniable that social capitalism can become "the highest stage of capitalism" so far. It is inseparable from the interpenetration and combination of capital.The replacement of private capitalism and barbaric capitalism by social capitalism is the result of the continuous promotion of social democracy, the result of the continuous socialization of capital, and the result of the development of modern communication technology and the transformation of governance models.It is also for this reason that more and more scholars try to understand this crucial transformation of contemporary capitalism from the perspectives of capital socialization, management socialization, and distribution socialization: the socialization of capital is manifested in the Decentralization and popularization, employee stock ownership and the development of human capital have alleviated the antagonism between labor and capital to a certain extent; the socialization of management has made corporate decision-making more democratic, and employees can influence the decision-making process of the company; and the socialization of distribution has made capitalism social distribution It tends to be fair and reasonable, and the government and trade unions are increasingly intervening in income distribution. Wages are changed from unilateral determination by the employer to negotiation between the two parties. In addition to wage income, employees may also hold certain equity. And this wave of socialization did not come suddenly.It was only in the past that the socialist elements of capitalism were obscured and ignored.Some people even believe that since the first stock market appeared in the Netherlands in the early 17th century, and the separation of enterprise ownership and management rights, the socialization of capital has quietly begun.Today, after hundreds of years of development, many backbone enterprises of capitalism have completed large-scale social transformation, and the socialized capital market is becoming more and more mature. Markets provide new sources of funding.This part of the funds entered the stock market in the form of pensions, funds, and personal direct investment, and became an important source of funds for the stock market. Of course, the socialization of capital does not only have the benefits of sharing benefits. It bids farewell to the confrontation between capital and society in the past. It also means that this society begins to share risks. The continuous upgrading of the system is the law of civilization progress.When the concept of global governance gradually becomes popular, and when the government no longer relies on finding internal and external "enemies" to manipulate people's hearts, this upgrading process must be a process in which different civilizations learn from each other's strengths and grow together. Is there a common reference for this process?Looking at the general trend of the world, the author once wrote articles in "Southern Weekend" and "Asia Weekly", pointing out that the "Three Lives Principles" should become the political guide for the world in the 21st century.Moreover, no matter what kind of doctrines and differences there are now, all positive efforts will eventually return to this value scale. The so-called "Three Lives Principles" is essentially a kind of values ​​related to life, life and ecology, a kind of spiritual height.Buddhism talks about "the past life", "this life" and "the next life", while the "Three Lives Principle" focuses on the individual, society and the world, and pays attention to life, life and ecology.If we can achieve "three lives with good luck" and "three lives with all things" in these three aspects, there will be a beautiful and rich world. To put it simply, the three-life doctrine is proposed to sort out three kinds of relationships or complete three kinds of dialogues: First is life.This is at the individual level, it is a dialogue between people and themselves, it is about people's reverence for life and the pursuit of meaning, it is about the reconstruction of life beliefs, and it reflects the reflection of human beings on their own destiny.Life is the basis of all rights and values. Without respect for life, there will be no universal human rights; without respect for life, the strongest will become pariahs. The so-called "civilization" is only determined by steel and concrete. There will be no temperature for life. Second is life.This is at the social level, a dialogue between people and society.As George Bernard Shaw said, "There are two tragedies in life: one is despair, and the other is complacency." The same is true for politics and economics.In the past, politics overwhelmed life, and now it is economy that overwhelms life. As for the Chinese people's worship of GDP, it is both. It should be admitted that the shift from "Long live the country" to "Long live the nation" and from "Long live the leader" to "Long live life" is a great lesson learned by mankind after experiencing many disasters in the 20th century.To return to life is to return to the source of worldly happiness, because only life can allow human beings to regain the simple meaning, return from collective self-importance to the heart and nature of human beings, return from extreme revolutionary fanaticism to daily transformation, and let the political services that fit the shoes be renewed daily life. The last is ecology.This is a dialogue between man and nature.Human beings are creatures, and the earth is the homeland on which human beings depend for survival.Regardless of political man, economic man or social man, they are all ecological men after all, which also determines that ecological problems are the real problems that human beings must solve.Only in reconciliation with nature can human beings enjoy the blessings of the earth for a long time, sow seeds and reap civilizations. To put it simply, only by respecting life can there be equality and cultural diversity; only by respecting life can all political and social reforms be prevented from flying into the void and exiling life because of doctrine; only by respecting ecology can human civilization have sustainable development. Don't kill yourself by drinking poison to quench your thirst. Most importantly, Sanshengism is a philosophy about life, life and ecology, as well as a philosophy about spirit, flesh and the world.It transcends the traditional three major organizations of economy, society and politics, jumps away from the traditional capitalism (economic extremes), ideal socialism (social extremes) and nationalism (political extremes) method disputes, and makes human beings The ideal returns to the human condition and meaning itself.Even the three-life doctrine I advocate here is not imposed on people like pastism, emptying the heart and mind, but serving the value of people and benefiting human life.