A fundamental economic reform has been carried out throughout China as step by step the state-owned economy has been replaced by a market economy. Will the Chinese political system also change along with this economic reformations; what kind of country will China become in the future? In order to answer these questions we must examine profoundly the relation between Marxism and traditional Chinese philosophy. In this chapter I will first criticize one-sided opinion about the relation between Marxism and traditional Chinese philosophy. Then I shall try to expound the relation between Marxist socialism and the Confucian social and political doctrine, especially, the doctrine about a society of great harmony (da tong). In the end I will point out that the Confucian society of small tranquility (xiao kang), namely, a social market economy with the Confucian ideal of great harmony is the future of China.

The prevalent opinion about the relation between Marxism and Chinese traditional philosophy is that:

The arguments for this conclusion seem very strong. It is evident that the spread of Marxism in China is associated with two historical events: the October Socialist Revolution of 1917 in Russia and the May 4th, 1919 new culture movement in China. If the October Revolution had not happened, the Chinese revo-lutionary intellectuals would have not seen the practical signi-ficance of Marxism. If the May 4th movement had not happened, traditional Chinese culture would not so rapidly have disintegrated and Marxism would not so quickly have spread in China. The magazine New Youth was the mouthpiece of the May 4th move-ment. It was in New Youth that the slogan "Down with the Con-fucian shop" was proclaimed and that Marxism was propagated. The chief editor of New Youth was Chen Duxiu (1879-1942), who became the founder of the Chinese Communist party in 1921.

Quite a few of experts on the Chinese problem assert that in the past 2000 years of history, China never really accepted any outside culture. No outside culture had a long life span in China, for sooner or later they were dispelled and replaced by Confucian culture. For example, Buddhism, which came from India and dominated China for centuries, was eventually dispelled and re-placed by Chinese Confucian culture. Therefore they conclude that the destiny of Marxism will be like that of Buddhism.

There are two circumstances pointing to this conclusion. Both the Chinese Communist party and the Chinese national party seem to hold that traditional Chinese culture is in conflict with Marxism. Jiang Jieshi ( ), the leader of the Chinese national party, held that Marxism is an outside culture. Marxism was accepted by many Chinese people because the May 4th movement overthrew the Chinese Confucian culture, with the result that a vacuum had formed in the mind of the Chinese people of which Marxism took advantage. Jiang Jieshi stated:

In the May 4th movement the watchwords ‘science’ and ‘democracy’ were put forward, but the crucial question of how to save the nation was not put forward. Therefore a lot of corrupt practices occurred in the May 4th movement. The watch-words ‘science’ and ‘democracy’ had been invoked for more than thirty years. Now we must ask our-selves: can we with the two watchwords extricate ourselves from the national crisis? How much efficacy have the two watchwords for our nation? I think that the two watchwords are somewhat useful in constructing our country. But if we do not lay the national culture as the foundation for science and democracy, the two watchwords will not save our nation; on the contrary, they will make matters worse and increase the crises.

 

Although Mao Zedong and Jiang Jieshi were political enemies, they agreed on the assumption that Marxism is an outside culture and is in conflict with traditional Chinese culture. Ac-cordingly, it is no wonder that they had the same tactics for different purposes. Mao Zedong set off the Cultural Revolution to criticize Confucianism for the purpose of "propagating Marxism, consolidating the dictatorship of the proletariat and preventing capitalist restoration". Jiang Jieshi advocated respect for Con-fucius and the reading of the Confucian classics in order to defeat Marxism and realize in China "the three people’s principles": nationalism, democracy and the people’s livelihood.

The above argument is eloquent but not correct, because it ignores some important historic figures and events before the May 4th movement. These include the Taiping Revolution (1851-1864) which was the largest peasant uprising in China’s history, the Reform movement of 1898 and the Revolution of 1911 which overthrew the Qing Dynasty, as well as the important historic figures: Hong Xiuquan (1812-1864) leader of the Taiping Revo-lution, Kang Youwei (1858-1927) leader of the reform movement of 1898, and Sun Yat-sen (1866-1925) leader of the Revolution of 1911.

We cannot exactly explain how Marxism spread so quickly and why the socialist revolution happened just in China if we ignore these historic figures and events. They introduced Western political thought and philosophy (including some socialist the-ories) into China. They did not think that Confucianism was in con-flict with these Western cultures; on the contrary, they often tended to discern compatibilities between Confucianism and Western culture. They often applied Confucian utterances to explain West-ern political thought and philosophy, indeed they formed their own political thought by combining Western and Eastern elements. Their activities created favorable conditions in which Marxism could flourish, though they were not conscious of this result of their activities.

Why did the Chinese reformers and revolutionaries before the May 4th movement seek to combine traditional Chinese culture with Western culture, but then, in the May 4th movement, want to reject their own culture?

The occurrence of the May 4th movement was tied up with a very special psychological factor, namely, the pessimism among Chinese people at the time. Usually the Chinese are proud of their own civilization. At the beginning of contact with the modern West the Chinese scholar-official class had too high an opinion of their own culture to learn from the Western. The failure of the Opium War (1840-1842) and the other wars with Britain and other European great powers made the Chinese realize that the West had an advantage over China in technology, so the government of Qing dynasty was forced to mount a Westernization Movement (the measures included sending Chinese students to Western countries) in order to introduce Western technology to China. Failure in the Sino-Japanese war of 1894-1895 made the Chinese realize that advanced technology could not be popularized and brought into full play without the support of a good political systems, hence the reform movement of 1898 and the revolution of 1911. But the reform movement of 1898 lasted only 100 days. The revolution of 1911 made hardly any real social progress, although it won the victory in form (overthrowing the autocratic monarchy and establishing the Republic). The defeatist sentiments among the Chinese intellectuals led to their attitude of negating everything concerning Chinese culture, whence the May 4th movement. During that time numbers of the professors and students of Peking university and the others advocated "total Westernization" and a "break with traditional Chinese culture". They had a specious argument: technology, politics and culture are an organic whole; therefore Western technology needs the guarantee of the Western political system, and a Western political system needs the support of Western culture. No political system without its appropriate culture can be stable and function properly; traditional Chinese culture is not compatible with Western technology and politics; hence it must be rejected in order to practice the politics and technology of the West.

Such a totally negative attitude to traditional Chinese culture is, of course, not correct. This attitude seems to have changed since the Chinese people have achieved some success in economic development. We need more comprehensively to analyze and appraise the Chinese culture and its relation to the Western.

In order correctly to analyze the relation between Marxism and traditional Chinese culture we need some basic knowledge of Marxism. V.I. Lenin said that Marxism has three sources and the three component parts: utopian socialism in France, the classical philosophy of Germany, and the political economics of England. Marx critically transformed the three doctrines and established his own, namely, "scientific socialism", "dialectical and historical materialism" and "revolutionary political economics". This sum-mary has been widely accepted in the Communist movement.

Utopian socialism is the socialist doctrine advocated by Saint-Simon and Ch. Fourier. According to Marx their main mis-take lies in only describing the ideal society, but not in explain its scientific reasonableness. Marx devoted himself to demonstrating the historical necessity of the Communist society and to re-searching the way to realize it.

Marx’s early work "1844 Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts" shows that Marx first demonstrated the necessity of a Communist society through philosophy. He assimilated Hegel’s theory of alienation according to which the human cannot control what he or she has created, but is controlled thereby, so that the humans lose freedom and the ability fully to develop themselves. In other words, man and woman should be the master of all they have created, but in fact they become the slaves of those things, for example, of wares, machines, moneys, etc. According to Marx, alienation is a historical process; private ownership and the di-vision of labor have created human alienation. The future Com-munist society will provide reliable conditions in which humans can overcome alienation and fully develop themselves.

Later Marx recognized that it is not sufficient to prove the necessity of a Communist society only through philosophy. The philosophical speculation is always conducive to creative thinking, but cannot replace scientific proof. Inspired by Charles Darwin, Marx sought to find the laws of human society just as Darwin did regarding the evolution of organisms. Marx regarded political economics as a useful science for proving the necessity of a Com-munist society, and therefore wrote "Capital", and dedicated it to Charles Darwin.

Nowadays numbers of scholars of Marxism believe that there are two different Marxes: one is the young Marx who stood on the humanistic tradition in Europe and put human value, human esteem and human fulfillment in the first place; the other is the older Marx who was an anti-humanist, saw only material things and forgot the human spirit. Some scholars go so far as to assert that the young Marx is real, the old Marx is a forgery developed by Soviet Com-munism. These scholars divided the one Marx into two, because they see inhuman phenomena existing in practical Communist movements and want to overcome them. As for Marx himself, he may not have thought of all these things, but only of demonstrating the need and reasonableness of a Communist society from many different angles. It was impossible for him to foresee those inhu-man phenomena which happened in the Soviet Union and China after his death.

F. Engels pointed out that Marx’s great contribution lies in his discovery of the materialistic conception of history. The ge-neral idea of historical materialism is as follows: The productive force is the determinative motive force for the development of society. Hence, with change in the means of production, the way of life of human beings will change. The emergence of classes, the change of the relations between the various classes in society and the formation of the dominant ideology in society are, in the final analysis, conditioned by the development of forced production. As long as the productive means are kept in the hands of a small number of people, class conflict throughout society cannot be avoided; hence the whole of recorded history until now is a history of class struggle. Now in capitalist times socialized production is so great that it is possible for society to control all means of pro-duction and take charge of the whole process of production and distribution. But as a result of the unwillingness of the bourgeoisie to give up their property, social position and privileges a pro-letarian revolution is unavoidable. Violent revolution is the mid-wife by which the new society is to be born from the old.

Chinese traditional social-political thought, developed in special Chinese social conditions, differs from European social-political thought as a whole. Nevertheless, some things are similar, for example, Confucian thought regarding the great harmony (the doctrine about an ideal or perfect society) astonishingly resembles European utopian thought. The Confucian thought of a great harmony is epitomized in the section entitled "The Evolutions of Li" (liyu) in the "Book of Rites" (liji):

The society of great harmony represents the orthodox Con-fucian conception about an ideal or perfect society which had great influence on the Chinese people. According to this quotation, the Confucian ideal society is a society of public ownership in which all people enjoy the social wealth. Everyone does his best for the society; there is no plunder, no deceit and no war; widowers, orphans, everyone who has no kin and cannot support themselves, receives special care from society; men and women can get married and start their careers when they come of age; people love and help each other, and elect able and virtuous persons to the leading post.

According to this quotation, the Confucians believed that such an ideal society existed in the past. Now that society has passed away, because the great Tao has fallen into obscurity. In the future the ideal society may again come into being. This depends on the evolution of Tao and the efforts of humans. Tao is a decisive, superior force in relation to which the efforts of humans are supple-mentary. Even Confucius could not bring this ideal society into being during his lifetime, though he had a mind to do so. A realistic alternative is the society of Small Tranquility. However, even this society is not easy to maintains for to do so the governor must pay great attention to Li (law and rite). Yu, Tang, Wen, King Chen and the Duke of Zhou have been praised highly, because they built up a state of Small Tranquility.

Some scholars now consider the thought expressed in "the Evolution of Li" as a mixture of Confucianism with . Surely the Confucianism of the Qin and Han dynasties was under the in-fluence of , and the conception of social evolution may have come from this. On the other hand, we must realize that the thought of great harmony is not in contradiction with the original Confucian thought, for in the Confucian Analects (Lunyu) we can read of some similar ideas.

Confucius exhorted his disciples:

After the death of Confucius, Confucianism divided into many different schools. Among them the teaching of Mencius is usually regarded as the orthodox school. The political and eco-nomic project of Mencius is idealistic:

The above is the economics of Mencius. With regard to politics Mencius insisted that the interest of the people is above all others:

In short, the Confucian ideal society is the society of great harmony. The society of Small Tranquility is relatively realistic. Confucian politicians usually strive first for the society of Small Tranquility, and then for the society of great harmony when conditions are ripe.

In the modern history of China there have been four large-scale revolutionary movements: (1) the Taiping Revolution (1851-1864), led by Hong XiuquaN was the largest peasant uprising in Chinese history; (2) the Reform movement of 1898 led by Kang Youwei, was an attempt to establish a constitutional monarchy under the support of emperor Guanxu, but soon was defeated by conservative officers and the empress Dowager Cixi; (3) the Revolution of 1911, led by Sun Yat-sen, overthrew the Qing mo-narchy and established the republic of China; and (4) the Communist revolution led by Mao Zedong.

The documents of those four movements, show that they all have something to do with the Confucian thought regarding the great harmony. Hong Xiuquan (1812-1864), born in Guangdong province of southern China, read Confucian books and was engrossed in scholarly honors and official rank in his early years. Accidentally, he bought some Christian books on the way to take part in the imperial examinations, and was at once fascinated by them. Later he was baptized by a foreign priest and became a Christian. Hong Xiuquan’s thought is characterized as the com-bination of the Christian idea of equality with the Chinese thought of the great harmony. The Instruction of the Primary Principle to Awaken the People in the World, one of the programmatic docu-ments of the Taiping Revolution written by Hong Xiuquan, states:

In the another programmatic document of the Taiping Re-volution, namely "The Land System of the Kingdom of Heaven", Hong Xiuquan wrote:

The two programmatic documents contain an obvious socialist idea of equality. This idea represented the peasants’ quests in politics and economics at that time, so some Chinese historians and philosophers name it the peasants’ socialist Utopia. On the other hand, this idea is expressed in the name of God and relies on the authority of God, so some scholars call also it Christian socialism.

Kong Youwei (1858-1927), born in Guangdong province, was the initiator of the reform movement of 1898. This is a move-ment from above to below. Its goal is to replace absolute monarchy by constitutional monarchy. In order to achieve this goal, it was necessary to persuade the emperor and some upper officers. At that time Confucius was the Chinese sage and Confucianism was the official Chinese ideology. So Confucian thought was reinter-preted in favor of the reform.

In the Commentary on the Evolution of Rites, Kang Youwei combined the Western theory of social evolution with the Chinese Confucian theory of Three Ages, namely, "the age of universal peace", "the age of approaching peace" and "the age of disorder". Kong Youwei maintained that the period of great harmony and the period of Small Tranquility described in the Evolution of Rites are respectively the age of universal peace and the age of approaching peace mentioned in Confucian Spring and Autumn Annals. The evolution of history is a trilogy of the age of disorder, the age of approaching to peace and the age of universal peace. Western countries have been developing into the age of approaching peace, but China is still in an age of disorder. In the future all countries will develop into the age of universal peace. Kong Youwei held that the socialist society which Western people cherish is the period of great harmony which Confucius pointed out long ago.

Kong Youwei maintained that the Analects of Confucius already contain the idea of social evolution:

The leader of the revolution for constitutional democracy was Dr. Sun yat-sen (1866-1925), born in Guangdong provinces, educated in Hawaii and Hong Kong, as well as in his native village near Macao. He was trained in Western medicine, and hence knew more about Western culture than did Hong Xiuquan and Kang You-wei. His program for the revolution was called the "three people’s principles", namely, nationalism, democracy and people’s liveli-hood. The socialist thoughts in Europe had an effect on him. According to his own account, it was during his two year sojourn in Europe (1896-1898) that the general outline of his "three people’s principles" was formed. He discovered that with all their techno-logy and nationalism, the Western nations were still beset by dis-turbing economic and social problems. The socialist thought which was prevalent in Europe at that time finally led to his principle of the people’s livelihood. In Manifesto of the Tong-meng-hui Dr Sun expressed his thought of people’s livelihood which links up with the equalization of land ownership:

As for Sovietism, Dr. Sun regarded it as the Confucian thought of great harmony:

The above leads to some conclusions:

(1) The Confucian ideal society is the society of great harmony. This social ideal is similar to the European socialist or Communist utopias. Many leading persons in the modern history of China considered European socialism to be the society of great harmony that Confucius cherished. For example, Kong Youwei and Sun Yat-sen combined this Confucian thought of great har-mony with European socialism or Communism and formed their own reformist or revolutionary theory. Under their influence the Chinese people understood what socialism or Communism means. This became the basis upon which Marx’s Communist theory spread in China. Therefore we cannot simply say that Marxism is an outside culture and in conflict with traditional Chinese culture. We should review this problem from all aspects. In my opinion they have differences as well as similarities. The co-existence of the traditional Chinese culture and Marxism is more probable than that one will replace the other in the future.

(2) The society of Small Tranquility is relatively realistic. Confucian politicians usually strive first for the society of Small Tranquility, then for the society of great harmony when the conditions are ripe. But there is an exception. When the society is polarized, and peasants and workers live in poverty, radical revo-lutionary action tends to equalize social resources for livelihood and realize the society of the great harmony immediately. Ac-cordingly, we can make some prognoses: If Chinese society remains stable and the economy develops, the Chinese leadership is more likely to pursue a realistic course, in other words, they want to build a relatively good and attainable society. But if the society is polarized the radical Communist ideology will revive and become a dominating force.

(3) Obviously there are differences between the Confucian thought of a great harmony and Marx’s socialism. The emphasis in Confucian thought of the great harmony is social security, that is, the aged are supported till their death, the young are shown loving care in their growth, the able-bodied have employment, etc. The focal point of Marx’s socialism is that society control all pro-ductive means and takes charge of the whole process of production and distribution. Practice has proved that overall state control in production and distribution dampens the enthusiasm of the masses and harms the development of the economy. But state regulation of supply and demand is necessary for the stability of economic development; social security is humane and can keep the society stable. Therefore a market economy with state regulation and social security is comparatively good and realistic. According to the Chinese tradition we can call it "the society of Small Tran-quility". According to the socialist theory in China it is called "so-cialism in a primary stage". Perhaps the correct name should be a "social market economy", which is easily understood by Western theoreticians.

(4) Both individual enthusiasm and collective spirit are needed to construct the country. In a market economy the masses have a spontaneous tendency towards individualism. Therefore the collective spirit should be energetically encouraged. The ideal of the great harmony is the fountainhead of the collective spirit. Perhaps the society of great harmony (the Communist society) is always a utopia, but without this utopia as a moral force we cannot successfully and peacefully construct the realistic society of Small Tranquility.

1. Cf. Wang Zhangling, Communism and Chinese Culture (Taipei, 1970), pp.4-5.

2. Ibid, pp. 423-424.

3. Mao Zedong, On People’s Democratic Dictatorship.

4. Cf. The leading article of the People’s Daily, May 4th 1969.

5. Confucius, "The Evolutions of Li" (liyu) in the Book of Rites (liji).

6. Confucius, The Analects, 3, 25.

7. Ibid., 8, 41.

8. Mencius, Mencius 3a, 3.

9. Ibid., 7b, 14.

10. Hong Xiuquan, The Instruction of Primary Principle to Awaken the People in the World.

11. Hong Xiuquan, The Land System of the Kingdom of Heaven.

12. Kang Youwei, Commentary on Confucius’s Analects, 2, 10.

13. Sun Yat-sen, The Manifesto of the Tong-meng-hui.

14. Sun Yat-sen, On Three People’s Principles.

15. Sun Yat-sen, The Letter to Mr. Quan Yangyi.

16. Mao Zedong, On People’s Democratic Dictatorship.

educating their children and giving their children the natural love of a mother so that the children can grow soundly. In the meantime, they engage in further studies to give play to their potentialities or to develop their interests, so that they will be more competitive when they take up a career after their children have grown up. Such exploration is praiseworthy under the conditions of a modernized economy; it advances the civilization of the whole society.

Third, the high educational level of society, the high degree of democracy and the modernization and socialization of house work due to the modernization of the economy will enable women to elevate their quality as human beings, to demonstrate their personality, to strengthen their competitive power in social life, and to realize a sound personality. There will be a day when we need no longer emphasize that the male and the female differ and recognize that there is something common to both sexes. Then the peculiar and varied beauty of the character and personality of the female will demonstrate itself naturally in the world.

Of course, molding the female personality depends not merely on the progress of economy and is not merely a matter for women alone. It depends on the consistent efforts of the whole society; this requires theoretical work by scholars to find the incompatibilities and in time eliminate them.