-- A translation from Chinese of Part II-11 of the book:
Where is the Mankind Heading for:
Contests and realignments between ideologies in the new century

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-11 A Democratic World Order in Three Major Levels: Grassroots Business Units – Nation-States – Global Commonwealth

Is democracy a good thing? To answer the question, one should not, just as we discuss anything else, talk about it in abstract terms but instead place it in an overall multi-dimensional context and see if the democracy that is advocated and actually practiced is good or bad.

(1) Western-Style Democracy vs. 1% Domination over 99%

First of all, in the contemporary world, especially since the globalization of capital, what has been happening in all countries are inseparably related with happenings in other places over the globe and should not be viewed and judged in isolation. While a seemingly high level of democracy is exciting as shown in scenes of general election at specified time intervals, supposedly participated in by all the people and with heated competition between candidates from two parties or two alliances of parties formed through shifting alignments, not so hilarious is the reality behind it: the politically supported and camouflaged oppression and exploitation of labor by capital, especially that of the 99% by the 1%; the violation of citizens’ rights of the person and of expression in the name of fighting terrorism and national security; the political tyranny in disguise; the rocket-propelled outsourcing of capital and the ideology (including its version of democracy) defending it; the imposing of the will and interests of global monopoly capital on the whole world against those of the majority of all humanity, etc., etc. This is the double-sided contemporary Western-style democracy, like one piece of paper with two sides in different colors. But the advocates of this pattern of democracy only boast about its exciting procedural formalities without looking into the actual grim reality behind the boisterous façade, or deliberately cut off the relation between the two sides in their discourse. However, if only placed under the light of a multi-dimensional holistic worldview, the essential nature of such fragmentized patchwork of ideological rhetoric, that is, serving the interests of only a minority of people would be immediately revealed.

Of course, the above is not meant to say that there is nothing worth mentioning at all in Western-style democracy, still less to say that democracy as a principle in the sense of popular sovereignty is wrong. On the contrary, the history of China has proved that it is necessary and possible to learn selectively and discriminatingly from the West in its ideas and practice of democracy.

(2) Chinese Tradition of Dynamic Balance in Social Relations

Traditional China in her social ethics based on family morality emphasized the commonness of interests. That means that those in managing positions from head of a family up through head of the state (“Son of Heaven”) are required to act in the overall interests of the whole family or the whole society, not in the private interests of oneself or a certain group or class. The “Son of Heaven” was supposed to be authorized by the mandate from heaven to manage the state, and “It is the Way of Heaven to remove where there is excess and add where there is lack.” (Laozi: Dao De Jing, Chap. 77, Trans. by Charles Muller.) Hence, the Son of Heaven should not favor one more than another, nor favor oneself more than the people. This tradition of thought is quite different from that of the West, which uses the abstract concepts of equality, liberty and human rights to cover up the unjust practices of serving the interests of certain privileged classes only.

In practice, when viewed in the overall context of long history and in contrast with Western ones, Chinese rulers, especially those emperors and ministers who believed in Daoist-Legalist practices, tended to pay due attention to the general balance of major social relationships through conscientious adoption of adjustive policies and measures, instead of indulging or even deliberately exploiting the jungle law of the strong eating up the weak like in the West, so that Chinese history witnessed longer periods of roughly balanced social relations domestically and externally and man-nature relations than periods of imbalance, much longer periods and greater scale of peace and prosperity than those of violence and war, and much less destruction of life, social wealth and resources than the devastation brought about by the West to all over the world. Therefore, the power possessed by traditional China in her moral appeal to her neighbors has been incomparable to that possessed by the West in their military might. That is why, while traditional West has all along been acting as a military conqueror, Chinese civilization has been able to repeatedly absorb alien conquerors and assimilate their culture.

But on the other side, due to historical limitations, in handling the relationship between the top ruler and the people, which was actually the most critical one of all political relationships, there has never appeared an effective mechanism for achieving a balanced relationship through mutual interaction. This issue has never been satisfactorily resolved. Whether the top ruler was a qualified one or not, which would determine the fate of the people, almost totally hinged on chance.

Meanwhile, even those Legalists who had the best understanding of the importance of maintaining a dynamic balance of all social relationships could not make the law break through the iron-clad ceiling of the authoritative Son of Heaven. As a result, even a “good emperor” who himself could conscientiously work to promote an overall social balance and harmony would not be able to secure through legal procedure a reliable successor of the people’s choice who would surely follow the Way of Heaven. As for the people, then, they could only leave their fate to (the Son of) Heaven. That is to say, it was basically impossible to ensure that every emperor would conscientiously abide by the Daoist mandate for overall social balance. Once anyone of them betrayed the mandate, they would, instead of restraining and regulating himself, use the mandate as a shield for protecting his privileges and selfish pursuits, and in administering the society would invariably side with the advantaged in bullying the disadvantaged, or as Laozi disclosed, “They take away where there is need and add where there is surplus.” (Laozi: Dao De Jing, 77, Trans. by Charles Muller), or as also revealed in the Bible, New Testament, Matthew 25:29: “For unto every one that hath shall be given, and he shall have abundance: but from him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath.” Such rulers would lend a ready ear to those pedantic Confucians’ laissez-faire fallacies and actually side with the rich and powerful but wickedly selfish families of the privileged classes against the broad masses of common people, thus aggravating social imbalance until it reached the end of the majority’s forbearance, when the Heavenly Way of dynamic balance would, by way of people power as embodiment of the Dao, overthrow the established regime.

Then, the change of dynasties would be followed by reestablishment of the rule of law, then the restoration of social balance, then a long or short period of prosperity, but again, once a new emperor should betray the Heavenly mandate, then came back the dominance of Confucianist laissez-faire policy, followed by domestic social disorder and external threats, then again people’s uprising leading to another change of dynasties…Thus, the cycle was repeated again and again and the evolutionary progress of the society was slow and steady at best but never led to an appropriate institutional arrangement that could bring about peaceful and orderly dynamic interactions between the top governing authority, which in theory represented the general interests of the whole population, and the people who were thus represented and governed at the same time by the said authority, or in modern terms, between the people with ultimate sovereign rights and the top administrator entrusted with governing power. Consequentially, the viciously repeated cycle of laissez-fair politics - social disorder - dynasty change - laissez-fair politics again - social disorder again could never have been broken. While the Chinese and its neighbors, as compared with the Western world, have enjoyed higher degrees and longer times of peace and prosperity in the past thousands of years, losses of human lives and social wealth and destruction of social productivity in times of severe imbalances in internal and external social relations with civil strife and external threats culminating in incessant wars, were still horrendously huge.

China has developed a system of thought on dynamic balance and, more conscientiously than not, put it into practice in many aspects with the only exception in that of emperor-people relations, whereas the Western thought system, though lacking in a concept of dynamic balance, has accumulated some experience in the formal procedure of constitutional democracy for the purpose of uniting its core forces in the continuous process of expanding its spheres of influence, some procedure that fit the law of dynamic balance, though in a very limited area and limited degree. As Chinese Daoist teachings have always warned against self-conceit and advocated being receptive and humble as is in line with the Dao and the Chinese in general valued the virtue of modesty in learning from others in a mutually complementary manner, as shown in the saying that “In a group of three people, there is always something I can learn from”, it is both necessary and possible to draw on what is useful, even if limitedly so, in the Western practice of constitutional democracy, not uncritically , of course, by wholesale copying but by screening and trimming some parts of it before grafting them onto native institutions.

First of all, we need to cut off the Western version of democracy from its capitalistic economic soil, and then pick out those parts which, after being remolded, might fit the Chinese thought tradition and socialist orientation, and attach them onto the socialism-oriented economic base and political structure for further adaptation. (In present-day China, it is necessary to first of all reestablish the economic base with socialism-oriented production relations.)

(3) Global-Scale Democracy to be Achieved in Democratic Way

Democracy is supposed to be a good approach for dynamically bringing about a balance between all different social interest groups. Therefore, genuine democracy should start from grassroots up and be expanded upwards from there level by level. If the grassroots level, where labor is dominated by capital, is ignored and skipped, how can a whole palace of democracy be erected on such an undemocratic, hence as shaky as sand pile, foundation? Under the conditions of capitalist democracy, with corporate and state power unchecked by labor democracy, it is inevitable that the most powerful capital forces would impose their undemocratic will on wherever their power can reach on the planet, i.e., on 99% of the world’s population, and try all tyrannical means and behind-the-scene schemes to suppress the 99% people’s democratic expression of opposition to exploitation and oppression by capital, especially by monopoly capital.

Therefore, the palace of democracy should be a comprehensive and systematic complex structure with grassroots business units, nation-states, and the global human community as its three basic levels. While the measures for democratic interaction and the implementation of such measures on each level cannot and need not be identical and uniform, the spirit of democracy should go all the way through from the bottom to the top. The gradual coming into being of such a mechanism on each level including one for the whole world should be a democratically negotiating process, not one achieved through war or any kind of violence. Democracy imposed by exercising military might or underhand schemes must be a sham one. It is none other than the global monopoly capitalist interest groups that are the major social forces trying to pass off their sham democracy serving their selfish interests as a true one demanded by the 99%. Hence, the process for bringing about true democracy in all countries and in international relations would be one of exposing and combating the world hegemonic forces of monopoly capital in their use of both naked violence and deceptive ideology, which are sham-democratic and counter-democratic in nature.

(4) Fundamental Importance of Grassroots Democracy in Labor-Capital Relations

It is especially necessary here to emphasize the importance of democratic management in grassroots business units. When the French political thinker Tocqueville stressed in his book Democracy in America the significance of township autonomy in rural New England to the development of political democracy, one major reason he cited was the involvement of people’s vital interests in township affairs. Today, obviously, the depth of involvement of the working people’s vital interests in the businesses at their workplaces has far surpassed that in the township affairs of that time. This should be able to account for the special importance of democratic management in grassroots business to that in the macro society.

    One other reason mentioned by Tocqueville is that a citizen can, within the limited scope of his eyesight, learn how to run a society… learn to understand the harmony of power and build up clear and practical ideas about the nature of his obligations and the boundary of his rights (Back translation from a Chinese version: 刘军宁etc. ed.：《自由与社群》，三联书店，1998，P. 211). Worth special notice is the words “scope of his eyesight”, as people’s understanding of objective things, including human-related affairs, arrives at truthfulness in steps from minor things to more important ones, from near to far, and from the concrete to the abstract and only truthful understanding can lead to the right choice of action. This is universally applicable common sense. Hence, if the principle of democracy is implemented in business enterprises, that both involve people’s vital interests and are within the scope of their eyesight, such enterprises would become ideal schools where people can learn how to practice democracy. Business units should become such schools.