Chapter 22 A Reading Method of the General History of China in Postscript

1. Empire is a product of violent competition When the interests of predatory activities are higher than those of productive activities and can remain stable for a long time, there will be groups specialized in violence and plundering in human society, and the social manifestation of this division of labor - "violence-fiscal entity" .Violence - There are violent extortion groups and welfare production groups within the fiscal entity.Violence-various formal relationships within financial entities are always regulated or approved by the owner of the most harmful ability; while the owner of productive capacity can only indirectly determine the power of each relationship through the influence or control of the gains and losses of the violent subject. political economy and social relations.Various rights arrangements in human society, from political power to property rights to various personal rights, including the beautification and deification of this rights system, are all titles for certain arrangements under the protection of violence.

The violent taxation group is a social group with a deeper root than the class division in the production relationship. They are the direct selectors and defenders of the production relationship itself.This group controls violent resources and possesses a powerful capacity for harm.In order to maximize their own interests, they can take possession of the means of production and the laborer's body, or they can replace this possession with a more favorable or less troublesome method of collection. In the early days of the history of Chinese civilization that can be documented, the common people in the well field system were lazy in the public fields.Grass shortage is serious in the public fields. "Lu's Spring and Autumn Annals" says that when everyone cultivates a piece of land together, the collective farming speed will be slow, because there are ways to hide laziness.After the land is divided, the work will be faster, because there is no way to be lazy.The large-scale lazy behavior that is difficult to supervise and punish by the main material producers in society has caused losses to both the nobles and the common people, weakened the financial foundation of the feudal nobles, and thus weakened the overall strength of the country, making it a place where violent-fiscal entities are everywhere. He was in an unsafe position in the competition among princes.This predicament forced the first division of land and the free sale of land in Chinese history, and labor on public land was also transformed into a real object in the "first tax mu".Farmers got more rights, the public got more grain, and the two sides found a new form of cooperation.This is a profound change.

With the gradual disintegration of the well field system and the increase of private land transactions, owner farmers appeared, and landlords, tenant farmers, and hired farmers also differentiated and formed.The nobles at all levels, as the owners of violent-fiscal entities, were gradually replaced by bureaucrats as agents of violent taxation groups. era.On the basis of common people, owner farmers, landlords, tenants and hired farmers, relying on the surplus products they provided and relying on this kind of human resources, the Five Hegemons of the Spring and Autumn Period and the Seven Heroes of the Warring States Period began to annex small countries and compete for hegemony. It's a brutal competition for safety, profit and reputation.

The centralized monarchy system developed by the Qin State to the extreme has a self-cultivating peasant system that can "exert the power of the people" and "land power" at the lower level, a bureaucratic agency system driven by orders and rewards and punishments at the middle level, and a dictator at the upper level who controls all resources.Relying on this system and the policy of rewarding farming and war, Qin State stimulated the production potential of farmers as the main material producers, stimulated the physical strength, intelligence and courage of various human resources, and gathered the powerful forces stimulated by the autocratic monarch. In the hands, a huge advantage of centralized use is formed.Relying on this advantage, Qin eliminated the big powers in violent competition and created the first unified empire in Chinese history. Ritual and music conquests came from the emperor, and legislative power and legal violence were concentrated in the hands of the emperor.

The imperial system is the product of the evolution of the enfeoffment system.As a violent-fiscal entity, the enfeoffment system presents a megalithic pyramid structure, and the territories of princes and officials that constitute each monolith are a relatively independent violent-financial entity. The "king" is the largest boulder at the top, controlling the lower boulders whose rights gradually decrease.Not so with the imperial system.It is a single violent-fiscal entity in complex form, with resources concentrated at the top, a scaffold of bureaucratic agents in the middle that replaces the boulders of aristocratic domains, and a loose sand of small peasants at the bottom.This structure can be compared to a derrick constructed of metal pipes. The power is at the top and the resources are at the base.Due to the abolition of the hereditary hierarchical aristocracy, the selection of administrative officials at all levels has expanded from nobles to commoners, and the selection criteria have also shifted from blood to competence.

For Chinese society during the Spring and Autumn and Warring States Periods, the establishment of the Qin Empire ended hundreds of years of war and semi-anarchy, established social order, and demonstrated the hope of ending endless wars, so it was very popular.However, when the imperial system solved the old problem, it created a new problem in which the bureaucracy pursued the interests of the agents under cover.At the same time, the unrivaled strength of the empire led to the unrestrained self-expansion of the ruling group, which led to excessive infringement on the ruled. The yeoman system was largely replaced by the heavy labor and penal system, and the foundation of the empire was destroyed. , the Qin Empire II died.The imbalance of basic social relations that led to the demise of the First Empire, that is, the excessive encroachment of violent taxpayers on welfare production groups, was also the main reason for the demise of most empires thereafter.

The imperial system is an organizational form gradually established and perfected in an environment where multiple violent-financial entities coexist and the survival of the fittest.The ability of this system to mobilize resources, war capability and stability is close to the maximum allowed by the production and technical conditions at that time.This is a high-efficiency system formed through the intermittent accumulation and exploration of more than 20 generations in hundreds of countries, and the combination and matching of systems in different fields and at different levels.This system is highly adapted to the geographical environment in which the nomads in the grasslands are constantly invading, and is highly in line with the historical evolution path of many violent-fiscal entities competing for hegemony in the Central Plains. At the same time, it closely corresponds to the small-scale peasant economy that is its foundation.This high-efficiency comprehensive adaptive system, relying on the strong vitality of the survival of the fittest, has become the main body of historical activities with independent life that has ruled the world for more than two thousand years, occupied the center of the historical stage, and written the glory of the history of human civilization chapter.

2. The Balance and Imbalance of the Empire The Western Han Dynasty summed up the lessons of the Qin Empire, established a balanced relationship between violent taxation groups and welfare production groups within the empire, and adjusted the ruling strategy and control form. Confucianism perfectly describes and demonstrates this equilibrium relationship.In the ideal design of Confucianism, thousands of households rely on manpower and animal power, and use iron farm tools to plow and harvest, and pay 10% of the tax to the empire every year; Taxes, recruiting soldiers, protecting the safety of the empire and its subjects, maintaining the hierarchical order of the monarch, ministers, fathers, sons, and sons, safeguarding the relative rights bestowed by the monarch on subjects at all levels, and providing welfare to the society.Confucianism, transformed by Dong Zhongshu, described this order as the embodiment of the way of heaven, established by the emperor as the exclusive official ideology, and became the basic view of fairness and justice generally accepted in Chinese society.

The balanced relationship depicted by Confucianism is a summary of the experience and lessons learned from the long-term interaction between the ruling group and the ruled group. The ruling group, composed of the royal family, nobles and their bureaucratic proxies, possessed a powerful deterrent of violence and ideological persuasion capabilities, and thus dominated the relationship between the two parties.However, their options are not unlimited.Agricultural producers use countermeasures such as sabotage, tax avoidance, escape, and rebellion when they are desperate, which determine the risks and benefits of the ruling group when they choose different land systems, personal rights, tax forms and tax ratios, and determine the costs of different governance methods. and earnings.Facing the behavioral characteristics of small farmers, Guan Zhong expressed the ruling principle in the chapter "The Herdsmen": "If you don't do it, you can't achieve it, if you don't ask for it, you can't get it, if you don't stay there for a long time, if you don't do it, you can't recover." The relationship between the shepherds is similar to the relationship between the shepherd and the flock, and the requirements of the flock for growth conditions, the likes and dislikes of the flock, and the ability to bear have a major impact on the behavior of the shepherd.In order to maximize the long-term benefits, the shepherd must restrain himself and make efforts to provide and maintain the growth conditions of the flock.This kind of government function is called by Confucianism God's Grace or Virtuous Government, and modern Western political and economic theory calls it "public goods", which are purchased by citizens in the form of taxes.Whatever the name, in the imperial system, it is ultimately what a violent-fiscal entity must provide for its stable existence.

Therefore, establishing Confucianism as the official ideology does not mean changing the violent-exclusive nature of the ruling group.Strengthen the elements of persuasion and people's control in the ruling strategy, reduce the elements of naked violence deterrence, and at the same time restrict their own behavior and respect the wishes of material producers. This is the need for the ruling group to reduce the risk of ruling, and it is A logical progression of violent dominance.Sun Tzu, the authoritative military strategist, said: "Soldiers who subdue others without fighting are good." matters.” Emphasis on ideology and people’s control is nothing but a low-cost ruling method chosen by violent extortionist groups in peacetime.When the kingly way is easy to use and sufficient, it is natural to use the kingly way; when you feel that the kingly way hinders your own interests, you may wish to be overbearing in public or privately.After all, the right to choose is in the hands of the ruling group.What's more, the dominance of official ideology is also maintained by violence, because the interest relationship maintained by this ideology is in line with the long-term and fundamental interests of the violent extortion group.

In real life, in terms of the basic relationship between the ruling group and the ruled group, the actual relationship always stubbornly deviates from the ideals and regulations of Confucianism, deviates from the so-called kingly way and the way of heaven, presents a general trend of degeneration, and forms people's expectations. The dynastic cycle that cannot be escaped.This tendency to deviate from the equilibrium point originates from the relentless pursuit of the agent's self-interest by the bureaucratic agency group.The supreme ruler is unable to restrain this huge private pursuit, and the weak and scattered small peasant class is unable to resist the plundering and plundering of power groups at all levels as a whole or individually, so there is a hidden rule system that replaces the balanced system preached by Confucianism, and there is a dynasty Cycle of replacement and chaos.Dynastic succession is the imperial system's self-correcting mechanism for excessive imbalances. As the supreme ruler of the empire, the emperor hopes to maintain the stability and balance of the relations between various groups and ensure the long-term stability of the empire.But this desire is limited by both self-interest and objective ability. The emperor has supreme power and bears the main responsibility for maintaining the order of the world, and at the same time occupies a large share of interests in this order system.However, the maximization of the emperor's personal interests is not completely consistent with the maximization of the empire's interests.The emperor is in power for life, he can pursue all kinds of strange personal preferences, he can be licentious and tyrannical, and he can ignore the government, but at the same time he doesn't have to pay the price for all these.He can pass on the cost and risk of misconduct to the entire empire, to the entire ruling group, and to his descendants.On the contrary, a considerable proportion of the benefits brought about by the careful maintenance of the imperial order belonged to the beneficiaries of all aspects of the imperial order, and belonged to the descendants who may not have met each other, while the hard work belonged entirely to themselves.This interest relationship also reflects a principal-agent relationship—just as the emperor claimed, he himself is also an agent entrusted by "Heaven", and the degree of restraint by Heaven on the emperor depends entirely on the degree the emperor himself is willing to accept. There are no immediate punishments or rewards that can neither be replaced nor promoted.Inspired by this cost-benefit asymmetric interest mechanism, tyrants, foolish and mediocre kings abound in history, but sages who conform to the Confucian ideal are few and far between. As the major shareholder and supreme agent of Tiandao, the emperor must manage the empire and maintain the order of the empire through bureaucratic agents at all levels in various departments and regions, and these departments and local government offices have special interests that are different from or even opposed to the overall interests of the empire. .The personal interests of bureaucratic agents were also far from aligned with those of the empire and departments.The form in which they expand their own special interests is reflected in a system of unspoken rules that add taxes, fees, and fees, a system that empties the formal commitment of the ruling group to the ruled group through its own expansion, and a system that It is an unspoken rule system that is squeezed out by various stakeholders in the conflicts of real life and outlines the boundaries of real interpersonal and group relationships. The deviation of the unspoken rule system from the formal moral law system stems from the deviation from the formal role regulation of the real behavior from the emperor to the officials.Agents at all levels pursue the agent's self-interest and damage the public order entrusted to maintain. This tendency constitutes a striking public-private contradiction that runs through the history of the empire for more than two thousand years.The formal rules of empire are true only under the exacting conditions that bureaucratic agents behave in exact conformity with the demands of the public interest.The degree to which officials' selfishness replaces benevolence and morality determines the degree to which the hidden rule system replaces the formal rule system. Compared with the emperor and a limited number of clean supervisory officials, those yamen and officials who used power for personal gain had a formidable information advantage.The benefit they seek for personal gain by deception is very high, and the benefits they get help them weave a network of relationships and protection networks in official competition, and hunt for higher positions.Therefore, every active subject in the imperial bureaucracy is in the temptation and incentive pattern of the law of favoritism.Restraining this kind of incentive that is harmful to the overall interests of the empire is technically difficult and cannot be afforded by the empire's finances; it is difficult to expect from the perspective of stakes, because the beneficiaries of the law of favoritism are supervisors at all levels , the victimized civilians not only have no right to supervise, but are also blocked from official information channels. The empire had to bear the ills of the above-mentioned bureaucratic agency system.When the bureaucratic agency system appeared on the stage of history on a large scale in the form of the county system, China was bleeding in the wars of the princes and officials cultivated by the enfeoffment system.The ability of the official agent to dominate and control the various resources under his rule is much weaker and shorter than that of the enfeoffed princes and officials, and his ability to confront the central government is much weaker.For the monarch, this is an efficient and stable system that is relatively easy to control.But new problems also emerged: the relationship between officials and the people under their rule was more transient and fragile, just like a shepherd hired to herd other people’s flocks, and the official agency group cared less about the life and death of the people than the feudal aristocratic group. Peasant households under the imperial system existed in a state of disunity.The rich and powerful families and various civil organizations are restricted by the vigilance of the empire.Peasants live under the strict control of the Lijia system. They are weak, and their income from resisting the government's oppression is very meager, but they face a huge risk of killing chickens and scaring monkeys.Under this pattern of interests in which the risk of individual resistance far outweighs the benefits, as long as they can survive, shrinking and forbearing is usually the best survival strategy for farmers.In addition, the self-sufficiency level of the small-scale peasant economy is high, and the number of transactions with the outside world is small and the quantity is small, so it is not very important to bear it.Therefore, small farmers do not have strict requirements for a just and stable social order, nor are they willing to pay a high price for it. The small peasant economy has a strong tolerance to corrupt officials and a high adaptability to the imperial bureaucracy, and the direct result is to support the imperial style of rule—just as the rough-feeding livestock breed supports the extensive pastoralism Similarly, the small peasant economy also supported the extensive and slow management of the empire, and indirectly inhibited the development of business groups that were less tolerant to the imperial style of rule.In addition, the small peasant economy's ability to withstand corrupt officials gave birth to hidden dangers that led to the collapse of the empire.Because corrupt officials are more likely to succeed in extortion and extortion, the income level of this group is higher, which encourages a higher proportion of the population to join the ranks of corrupt officials, and encourages the level of oppression to gradually escalate, until the survival crisis of ten sheep and nine shepherds appears, triggering Massive violent resistance. The decentralized and self-sufficient nature of the small-scale peasant economy determines that the peasant class exists alternately in two forms: a state of disunity in the period of peaceful production and a state of grouping in the period of rebellion.The impact of these two states on the interests and interests of the ruling group is very different in terms of ability and direction. Therefore, in the same composition pattern of several major social groups, two very different social orders have been produced.The reverence for the state of the rebel group determines the respect for the formal order prescribed by Confucianism by the ruling group, and the contempt for the state of disunity leads to the prevalence of unspoken rules for the common people.In the early days of the dynasty, the remnants of peasant rebel groups still existed, and the formal order of Confucianism was relatively high.With the passage of time, unspoken rules have grown and developed on the soil of weak and deceitful scattered small farmers, and the basic balance of the Confucian order has been gradually destroyed. Obviously, the above imbalance process is an inevitable trend, and the longer the history of the empire, the more obvious this trend will be.At the end of this process, there is a cycle of imperial collapse and subsequent anarchy, and warlords' melee in the Central Plains.And in the chaotic battle for the world, the system that finally gains a competitive advantage must belong to the imperial system that is familiar and does not require risky experiments.This is the system with the highest war efficiency and the widest social recognition.Thus, the imperial system appeared again at the beginning of a new dynastic cycle. In the history of more than two thousand years, the imperial system has never stopped repairing its own weaknesses.In the Han Dynasty, feudal vassals were reduced and Confucianism was respected; the Sui and Tang Dynasties invented the imperial examination system for selecting talents; the Song Dynasty perfected the system of acting officers to suppress warlords; ; The principle of passing on talents to the throne in the Qing Dynasty established a new mechanism to encourage princes to compete for quality.In addition, there are eunuch control systems, descendant control systems, etc. that have been continuously improved but are not effective.Although the imperial system has been perfected and developed in all aspects, in the most fundamental relationship, the relationship between agricultural producers and violent taxation groups, there has been no effective check and balance of power.Because the victims who have the most desire to check and balance are always the ordinary people who have no power. The agricultural technology and small-scale peasant economy that are the basis of the imperial system are production methods that can make full use of natural resources than gathering and hunting.In the history of more than 2,000 years, the production methods of imperial agriculture have also undergone many advancements, with new crop varieties, new cultivation techniques, new production tools, new forms of land rent, more sophisticated land property rights systems, etc. .However, this production method has its own limit to the efficiency of natural resource utilization. When the empire was at peace and the population increased, the land resources that agriculture relied on became increasingly tense, and the competition for land resources among the various classes of the empire became increasingly fierce.The competition for resources has led to serious polarization. On the one hand, the bureaucratic and civilian landlords who win the competition acquire a large amount of land; Raiders, bandits, or thieves had little opportunity cost of rebellion and thus increased the risk of empire collapse. The fierce competition for the means of production, on the one hand, destroyed the small-scale peasant economic system on which the empire relied for survival; original trend.This in turn created more refugees and rebels like fuel on the fire, forcing the empire to repress by gathering forces through more excessive raids, and thus deviated further from the Confucian rules of basic order, until each raid provoked The violence of the Rebellion outstripped the newly assembled imperial repressive capacity.As a result, the order collapsed, the world was in chaos, productive activities stopped on a large scale, people died in large numbers in wars and famines, the land was barren, the population dropped sharply, and natural resources were relatively abundant.At this time, the interests of looting were lower than the interests of maintaining order and engaging in production. Production began to resume, and a small-scale separatist situation of various violent groups formed. The violent groups attacked and annexed each other, and finally established a new empire. The empire, unable to absorb the excess population it created itself, solved the overpopulation problem in this way.The empire seemed helpless in handling the rapidly expanding population of the royal family.This is a problem beyond the vision of Confucianism, and it is a deeper crisis that the Confucian cognitive framework is unable to analyze and has never taken seriously.The simultaneous intertwining of the disruption of imperial order and the increase in population pressure does tend to confound the analysis of this question.However, the periodic deviation and restoration of the Confucian order by the empire is, after all, different from the destruction and reconstruction of the balanced relationship between population and land on the basis of agricultural civilization. mechanism. The imperial system has been reincarnated more than ten times without changing the basic structure. The fundamental reason is that it cannot form the power to break out of agricultural civilization.Therefore, neither can it solve the long-term problem of the relationship between population and resources, nor can it form a social force to construct a new political balance, thereby solving the periodic problem of the degeneration of the ruling group.If the foundation of the small-scale peasant economy remains unchanged, the pattern of interests that induces or coerces fundamental changes in the imperial system cannot be formed, and the dynastic cycle will not end. 3. Government-run industry and commerce and private industry and commerce Europe formed the force to break out of agricultural civilization.The industry and commerce there absorbed a large number of people, and the development of industry provided agriculture with new input factors of production such as fertilizers and pesticides, thereby increasing the level of agricultural output; developed commerce also ensured the supply of food from outside, supporting the deepening of industrial and commercial division of labor and prosperity.Such division of labor and specialization promote and support each other, gradually changing the economic structure and labor force structure.This new civilization system and its strong market-based incentive mechanism have transformed people's lifestyles and willingness to give birth, and finally reached a basic balance between population growth rate and the bearing capacity of production methods. The above-mentioned process failed to unfold in the reincarnation of the empire for more than two thousand years. In Chinese history, the formation and development of industry and commerce were closely related to the government.In the early stage, the relatively large-scale industrial and commercial division of labor itself arose out of the demands and instructions of the violent expropriation groups and the administrative power they dominated. Ponds and mineral resources directly occupy and control human and material resources, engage in industrial production and internal and external trading activities, and meet the needs of the ruling group for weapons, sacrificial supplies, transportation, and daily necessities such as food, clothing, and housing. The empire's official industries have made brilliant achievements, producing exquisite sacrificial supplies, chariots, weapons, ships, magnificent buildings, exquisite handicrafts, and a corresponding complex division of labor and cooperation system.The acting officials of the empire are the direct managers of this production system.However, no matter how well-developed the government-run industry and commerce was, it was still a vassal of the empire and of the political and military organizations supported by the surplus products of the small peasant economy.It has no life and development momentum of its own. The government-run industrial production system also faces a boundary that is difficult to break through: in the development of its own division of labor and specialization, the finer the division of labor, the more complex the system, the longer the agency chain, the higher the management cost, and the greater the benefits brought by the division of labor. lower.When the management cost is higher than the benefits brought by the division of labor, the process of division of labor development will be terminated. Different from government-run industries, the division of labor and development of private-run industries in the market system is a process of continuous generation of stakeholders.The government-run industry and commerce has only one administrative mind, and the division of labor is like the division and extension of the limbs. There are risks of information barriers, command failures, and tails.However, when the limbs of the private industry are too long, they will naturally break down and generate new stakeholders.As long as the benefits brought by the division of labor are greater than the transaction costs, the process of division of labor and development will continue endlessly, and there will never be a limit boundary of management efficiency and administrative needs.There is no end to the accumulation of professional knowledge and the improvement of productivity caused by the specialization of labor. This improvement further improves the ability to pay transaction costs. If this spontaneous evolution process continues, it is possible to create a more efficient use of resources. , a more powerful new civilization. Private industry and commerce under the imperial system also developed slowly, and the views and attitudes of the ruling group towards private industrial and commercial groups gradually eased.But the survival and development of private industry and commerce are always subject to many external restrictions.The power of the empire is too great, and profitable areas will definitely be occupied and monopolized by it, but the efficiency of administrative management is gradually decreasing, and it is doomed to be poorly managed.The consequences of poor management have to be passed on to private industrial and commercial groups, large and small artisans, businessmen and business owners in the form of cost apportionment and free expropriation.Therefore, through the two methods of monopoly and apportionment, government-run industry and commerce not only encroached on the development space of private industry and commerce, but also weakened their development ability. For the sake of development and self-defense, private industrial and commercial groups have been buying and currying favor with imperial officials and even the emperor himself. They are forced to invest huge funds and energy in the political field. Fight for social status and political protection with future generations.In the early days of the empire, the death penalty was used to curb the attempts of industrialists and businessmen to enter the officialdom. In the later period, the policy was relaxed under financial pressure, but the formal protection of the empire for private industry and commerce did not go beyond the shepherds to the flocks—the second-class flocks that were lower than the farmers— protection, the purpose is still to obtain as much mutton and sheepskin as possible.As for the successful co-optation of individual officials of the empire by private businessmen, just like the co-optation of officials by civilian landlords, the effect and influence are temporary and partial, and are not enough to shake the dominance and overall decision-making of the violent extortionist group. Private industry and commerce that survived in this environment could not develop into the main bearers of taxes, and their ups and downs were not so important to the empire.Not only that.The profit-making motives of private industrialists and their behavior of buying officials are still destructive forces to benevolence, morality and imperial order in the eyes of official ideology.In a peaceful environment, it is difficult to obtain the support and cooperation of imperial officials for the development and expansion conditions they demand; in times of crisis in the empire, the few survivors of private industry and commerce are usually the objects of persuasion, persuasion, and even free deprivation. Pulled into the quagmire as a straw to ease the financial crisis of the empire. As the dominant violent-fiscal entity, the unified empire can make its own decisions, adjust its relationship with other social groups according to its own interests and preferences, and thus determine the conditions for the survival and development of these social groups.Many rulers in Europe also want to have the final say, but lack the strength to do so.In times of crisis, China's unified empire only raises taxes without giving up any of its own power, while European monarchs who fight against each other have to take out monopoly rights and even taxation rights to make deals with taxpayers and cede their power to An assembly elected by taxpayers in exchange for their support for tax increases. Europe has a competitive environment similar to the violence in the Warring States period-financial entities. Although this has led to the fragmentation of the market and the loss of wars, it has led to a backwardness relative to the prosperity of Chinese civilization and its empire, but it has also reduced the ability of violent extortion groups to do whatever they want. capacity, while also providing a place for capital flight.The additional demands of European rulers cannot exceed the cost of capital flight, and the excess must be exchanged for power, otherwise it will destroy its own financial foundation and political stability.Taking a step back, even if it is difficult to withdraw the stock of capital, the incremental part of capital will be prohibitive, which means that its own financial base is gradually surpassed by competitors, and there is a danger of being eliminated and annexed in the long run.In contrast, China's unified empire is not afraid of capital flying away. There is no king in the world. Private capital has no room to withdraw when bargaining fails, and can only be shrunk in a corner by the empire.If things go on like this, when China's agricultural financial base is overtaken by distant industrial and commercial financial bases, the unified empire, which has an overall backward production capacity and damage capability, will sooner or later be replaced by a new type of competition with a much smaller territory and a much higher level of violence and productivity. defeated. In the European feudal separatist environment, private industrial and commercial groups can purchase urban autonomy from relatively weak violent taxation groups, and can also rely on their own financial resources to organize armed forces or hire mercenaries to maintain autonomy.In relatively independent political entities such as England or the northern Netherlands known as the Dutch province, local powerful capital forces even had the opportunity to acquire the status of "ism".However, the king and the feudal lords had to look forward and backward in the conflict, worrying that the snipe and the clam would fight and the fisherman would benefit.In such a complex structure, capital has the opportunity to promote its own ideology, and also has the opportunity to make partial breakthroughs and establish a system for capital to control violence, thereby providing more suitable political conditions for the operation and accumulation of capital: a stable and fair judiciary, Moderate taxes, protection of trade and property, relatively clean government.In short, the lowest possible transaction fees.This system also promotes the evolution of a more professional and efficient division of labor system, forms a powerful industrial civilization, and opens up room for development in the world. The so-called capitalist system is such a system in which capital controls violence and persuasion.This kind of system may be produced in Europe, but it is difficult to produce in China.Compared with China, Europe in the period of agricultural civilization lacked a unified violent organization and bureaucratic agency system. Those small violent-fiscal entities were dotted in the feudal system, and the whole Europe was divided and wars were frequent.Even the most powerful country can hardly mobilize millions of troops to defend the order of the empire like China.At the same time, Europe's violent fiscal-entities lacked successful integration with ideological organizations, and independent churches weakened the authority of the king, which in turn weakened the power of the church.Finally, Europe still lacks a relatively isolated geographical region of a single civilization and a single nation, and it is difficult to establish and maintain a unified imperial system with excellent comprehensive adaptability like China.Yet it is precisely because of these flaws, because of the weak links in the system of control of violence and persuasion, that Europe's loss in troubled times has brought it unexpected gains. China's capital does not lack the desire to control the government to formulate laws, but it lacks the strength to realize the desire.Under the unified imperial system, although there are highly developed industrial and commercial cities like Suzhou and Jingdezhen, the interests of capital are still a partial group interest under the rule of the empire. .The interests of such a local group that has limited contribution to the empire's finances, specializes in "dead technology" in an agriculture-based society, and is unable to influence the rise and fall of the world but is dragged down by the rise and fall of the world are too far away from the status of "ism" .As for local riots like the "civil uprising" in Suzhou, local force is sufficient to suppress them, and there is no possibility of shaking the order of the empire.From this point of view, the well-developed, well-controlled, well-integrated, and powerful imperial system has brought unexpected losses to China. The so-called accidental gains and losses refer to the fact that behind such a profit-seeking group with "dead technology" that is despised by Confucianism and Catholicism, there is actually a brand-new powerful force that can change the face of the world, a civilization that spontaneously develops through division of labor in competition system.In the mid-nineteenth century, the victors who stood out from the competition environment of thousands of sovereign states in Europe, after dozens of generations of trial and error in an environment more colorful than the Spring and Autumn and Warring States periods, eliminated the capitalism system that stood out, and opened up their own development. During the journey of space, he broke into the house of the Qing Empire, and fought against the imperial system of more than two thousand years in order to legally sell drugs.The Qing Empire was at the end of the traditional dynasty cycle at this time, with population expansion, refugees everywhere, financial crisis, bloated officialdom, corrupt army, and low management efficiency. The defeat of the empire marked a historic turning point: the violence under the direct control of the violence-extracting groups was no match for the violence under the control of the welfare-producing groups.The social form in which violent extortionist groups dominate everything has lost its best advantage in the struggle for survival. 1. Ideological ruling group The scholar class outside the enfeoffment system was formed in the Spring and Autumn Period, flourished in the Warring States Period, and was finalized in the Han and Tang Dynasties.Just as the managerial class is attached to the bourgeoisie, the scholar class is attached to the monarch. After the imperial system unified the world, the scholar class faced the demand for talents monopolized by the royal family, and their bargaining position was greatly reduced.Among many competing theoretical systems, Dong Zhongshu persuaded Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty to respect Confucianism exclusively, and to use the order described by Confucianism as the blueprint for establishing a country. Confucianism bestowed the most sacred and noble status in this order on the imperial power, and offered the loyalty of its subjects and the effectiveness of Confucian scholars. . The Confucian group is an ideological ruling party group. According to the degree of mastery of Confucius and Mencius, this group is divided into different grades by different levels of selection and examination, and corresponding official teaching positions and privileged positions are awarded.As an ideological governing group, the Confucian group has a dual nature: it is both the inheritor of the Confucian orthodoxy and the employee of the royal legal system. As employees of the legal system, officials of Confucian origin may sincerely believe in Confucian orthodoxy, and are more likely to use it as a means of promotion and wealth.As the inheritors of orthodox tradition, the Confucian group strived to control the imperial power and strive for the status of the emperor's mentor and friend, and even concealed the illusion of the system of Yao and Shun's abdication system.However, in the actual competition to control the imperial power, the Confucian scholar group was no more successful than the eunuch group, military group or descendant group.The Confucian group lacked the strict organization like the European Catholic Church, and its political opponents were not as fragmented as Europe. Therefore, it was difficult for the Confucian group to get rid of the state of attachment to the imperial power. 2. Efforts to explain the changing situation After the Opium War, the Western powers broke the isolation of the empire, and China was drawn into a vast and unfamiliar political, economic and cultural competition environment.This is equivalent to a catastrophic environmental mutation, and the adaptation of the imperial system to the new environment is in crisis.Facing this new situation, Confucian ideology must come up with convincing explanations and countermeasures. Wei Yuan put forward the countermeasure of "learn from the barbarians to improve their skills to control the barbarians". The empire continued the tradition of government-run industries and established dozens of enterprises centered on the arms industry in the past 30 to 40 years. The defeat of the war highlighted the shortcomings of the imperial political system and ideology.Kang Youwei used the Confucian concept system to reinterpret the history and situation of the empire, trying to catch up with Europe and the United States through the fundamental reform of constitutional monarchy.However, the failure of the Reform Movement of 1898 showed that Kang Youwei's views on major domestic interest groups were too simple and broad. In the field of Chinese ideology, all the heroes competed, and the scholar-bureaucrat group organized hundreds of societies in various places, looking for a guide in an unfamiliar environment that had lost traditional guidance.Theories from the West, such as the Three People's Principles, liberalism, and Marxism, have appeared one after another, giving their own interpretations of history and reality, and winning their own believers.The Three People's Principles formulated the nationalist and democratic prescription of "expel the Tartars and establish the Republic of China", which concentrated the dissatisfaction of all strata of the Han people on the upper ruling group of the Manchu Qing Empire, disintegrating its deterrent and cohesive power, This caused the trend of "Wang Gang unraveling the knot". The Manchu Qing Empire soon fell, and the banner of the Republic of China was easily put up. However, the small peasant base of the imperial autocratic system, the bureaucratic agency system, and various old and new problems of the empire remained almost intact under the banner of the Republic of China.China has entered the traditional situation of warlords fighting for success in the Central Plains after the collapse of an autocratic empire. China needs a deeper understanding of itself and the world around it, a thorough explanation of history and the present.At this time, the Russian October Revolution aroused people's attention to Marxism-Leninism, which has a huge system and rigorous logic. 3. Selected Marxism-Leninism The core part of Marxism is the analytical presentation of the history and logic of European capitalism represented by Das Kapital.That is the logical development of the commodity economy, and it is the picture of the generation and development of surplus value and the resulting crisis and revolution. China's weak and small capitals are squeezed to the margins of society by warlords, bureaucrats, landlords and farmers, which is far from the core picture painted by Marx.In the European capitalist society that Marx focused on, the organizers of commodity production choose and hire night watchmen for themselves, and the bourgeoisie controls legal violence and makes them docilely serve the order they choose.But in the imperial order, the supreme representative of the violent expropriation group claimed to own the world, and became the nominal ultimate owner of various factors of production.Violent groups have established economic relations and political systems that are most beneficial to themselves, and have screened and transformed the ideology that justifies this system.Orthodox Marxism’s emphasis on the decisive role of productivity, its assertion that the economic base determines the superstructure, and even the conceptual division between the economic base and the superstructure are quite reluctant to explain the cycle of stagnation and chaos in the empire for more than two thousand years. However, despite the huge differences between China and Europe, the grand and sharp vision of Marxism, especially the theory of historical materialism, class struggle and the dictatorship of the proletariat, still helped the founders of the Chinese Communist Party to find a set of logical and rigorous principles for their own mission. statement.Chinese society is full of contradictions and wars, and the theory of class struggle must be more explanatory than peaceful and tolerant liberalism.More importantly, the world historical picture depicted by Marxism-Leninism contains a major benefit distribution plan, and this method of benefit distribution can especially meet the various expectations of Chinese society. China has always been the center and pinnacle of the known civilized environment. This rapid loss of historical status has caused a huge tension in the national psychology - a strong desire to restore the traditional status and national glory.According to Leninist theory, in the weak link of the capitalist world system, the proletariat of a backward country can seize power first and enter the socialist society first.This theory hides a distributional relationship that rearranges national seats: backwardness can be transformed into an advantage, and China can gain an extremely important position in world history.This is exactly the position expected by the tension of the national psyche. According to the theory of Marxism-Leninism, the proletariat will seize power under the leadership of the Communist Party, establish a socialist country under the dictatorship of the proletariat, and finally realize communism.This theory hides a more tempting plan for the distribution of interests: first, a special ideological group has acquired the most lofty central position in the theory about itself, they will hold state power, dominate everything, and finally go down in history.Second, the proletariat and other working classes will get rid of the exploited and oppressed status, and what they get is the whole world.In the end, all human beings will eventually benefit from the cause of the Communists, and human beings will enter an ideal world where material abundance is great and everyone can develop freely. The above profit distribution plan is hidden under the objective and scientific expression of the law of historical development.Chinese scholars are very familiar with this method.In the Confucian way of heaven, there is a major benefit distribution plan hidden: the imperial power is supreme, the bureaucratic group replaces the emperor's herdsmen, and the laborers pay the emperor's grain for labor.Marxism-Leninism redistributes interests while reinterpreting the world and history, and the fate of Marxism-Leninism in China depends to a large extent on the proper distribution of interests.