EDITOR’S NOTE: This is an excerpt from the author’s book in Chinese on philosophy and social theories published in 2013. The book partially summarizes the results of the author’s decades-long exploration in the realm of ideology and is rich in ideas both old and new at the same time – new expositions in modern terminology of traditional Chinese thought as applied to social issues and ideologies of the world today. Any comment and criticism and any offer to help improve the English translation of the whole book will be welcome and appreciated. For a list of contents of the book with links to other translated parts, please see:

Where is the Mankind Heading for: Contests and realignments between ideologies in the new century: List of content

THE TEXT

II. Human Society: A dynamically-balanced multi-dimensional whole (continued)

II-2. Multi-dimensional and multi-level structure of human society (continued)

II-2(12). A Multi-Stage Election System

Universal participation is the basic characteristic of democratic politics while any society must depend on a minority of people as core leaders for daily administrative duties. This is because, on the one hand, besides macro administration, a society depends for sustenance also on the majority of people being engaged in the production of material and cultural goods to meet the various needs of the whole population so that it is impossible for everybody to take politics as his/her career and, on the other, people’s representatives and public servants should have higher moral and professional qualifications so that they can resist corruptive temptations, stay honest and public-spirited, and can handle macro-social situations, but not everybody has such qualifications as there are always disparities between people in their moral and intellectual qualities. Thus, how to select the ruling elites and how to relate them to the majority of people being ruled, especially the question of what kind of election and appointment mechanism can guarantee their trustability and reliability, have become a pivotal issue.

The present-day fashionable one-man-one-vote direct popular election campaigns over unlimitedly large areas, during which voters take sides in a tug-of-war style according to the ideology they each believe in and the result is in most cases decided by very little difference between the votes each side obtains, is very much like a farce. Actually in the recent years most, if not all, elections over the world for heads of states cannot win support from any more than half of the eligible voters, not to say majority of the population. Take for instance the U.S., the much touted standard bearer of Western-style democracy. About half of the eligible voters would not bother to cast a vote, or rather they vote, by not voting, against the existing deceptive pattern of democracy, so that every elected president was supported by only about a quarter of all eligible voters, that is, an absolute minority of the whole population. Why is it, then, that such resource-wasting farce cannot get checked and reformed but has on the contrary become more and more fashionable? It is because this mode of operation is the easiest way for big capital interests, who have monopolized all social political and economic resources, to hoodwink a considerable part of the population and, by controlling the situation with such resources, manipulate it towards their goal. One of such resources is the power of money-backed public media opinion preaching their ideology. And, philosophically speaking, atomistic-individualist liberalism together with a flat way of thinking is the core and the expression of the ideology they have been relying on.

One-man-one-vote means that each and every voter, just like the chessmen in Chinese chess, which are totally identical in shape, size and weight, vote “freely” and “equally” for his/her own “maximum self-interests”. The only difference is in the colors of the two competing parties. The survivor from the fight between the two becomes the “king”. The direct election can be made to cover an unlimitedly large area, no matter whether it is a town or a city or a nation-state, small or large, because “the world is flat” like a chessboard, just one flat layer. But once the multi-dimensional and multi-level reality of the society is recognized, the true nature of such kind of elections as a camouflage of big-capital hegemony is evident.

In contrast, a multi-stage election system proposed here would consist of two aspects: a multi-stage system of elector colleges and a multi-stage system of examination and supervision committees. Its theoretical rationale includes: the multi-level nature of the society and of human consciousness structure, equal consideration of geographical communities and organizational ones, interaction and mutual complementarity between the masses of the people and the social elites, plus the guiding principle of balance between multiple interests. This idea can give full play to all average people’s strengths in their familiarity with candidates and affairs at the grassroots level while making up for their weaknesses in their inability to know about the candidates involved in macro-social affairs at higher levels covering wider range of things, as such candidates are physically beyond the average people’s reach and such affairs intellectually beyond their grasp.

Its pivotal point lies in the “relay” style of the whole voting process, which starts from election of people’s representatives doubling as electors or plain electors for the near-grassroots level, followed by the latter’s voting for the People’s Congress at a higher level with its members doubling as electors, again followed by these congressmen/electors’ voting for their counterparts of a still higher level (besides selecting same-level local government heads) till the voting for national government head by the National People’s Congress at the topmost level, while all the elected representatives/electors at each level should be examined and approved by an examination and supervision committee (appointed by a previous People’s Congress) at a higher level.

Grassroots constituencies can be (1) a large business corporation or non-economic institution or residential community, or a combination of several such unit of smaller sizes, and (2) grassroots units of mass organizations such as political parties, labor unions, professional associations, merchants associations, women’s federation, youth league, ethnic organizations, and religious organizations. At the topmost level, the political party or alliance of parties that wins the most votes will be entitled to organize a cabinet for the People’s Congress to review and approve.

Now about the examination and supervision committee. The elected representatives/electors at each level should be social elites from all different fields on different social levels. In general, their numbers on higher levels are smaller while their qualifications in moral and intellectual attainments and ability in public service work should be higher. As average voters and electors, while more or less familiar with candidates from their own communities, organizations or contact networks about the latter’s moral character and competence for serving the public, may not know the whole truth about special controversial cases regarding the candidates’ moral character or about their (if any) special attainments in certain highly academic or professional areas, it is necessary to set up a special committee as a functional agency of the People’s Congress in each region on each level for making investigative studies of, or checking and verifying, whatever is at issue. The committee members should be elected by the People’s Congress on the same level and approved by the Congress of a higher level. If some otherwise outstanding and popular congressmen or potential candidates need to improve their expertise, conditions should be provided for them.

The above-said is only the formal aspect of the election system and what is more important is the spiritual side. The worst aspect of Western democracy is its hemiplegic soul, that is, the elected representatives are supposed to only represent the interests and will of those groups of people who support them from behind, i.e., actually the special interest groups who has the strongest economic power and thus biggest social influence. In contrast, socialist democracy should advocate a comprehensive balance between different individuals’ or individual groups’ self-interests and others’ interests and interests of the whole society, and this should be the political-moral criterion for selecting representatives and officials. Elected representatives should be responsible not only for their constituents and supporters but also for the whole society. Only a balance of multiple interests will bring about greatest benefits for all. Therefore, persistent education of the whole population in the principle of interest balance should go together with the implementation of socialist democratic election system. Actually, this principle should be made to penetrate into all aspects of social life.