Ch'üan and Nêng.
The contrast between ch'üan and nêng is one of the few aspects of Sun Yat-sen's theory of democracy which persons not interested in China may, conceivably, regard as a contribution to political science. There is an extraordinarily large number of possible translations for each of these words.[131] A version which may prove convenient and not inaccurate, can be obtained by translating each Chinese term according to its context. Thus, a fairly clear idea of ch'üan may be obtained if one says that, applied to the individual, it means “power,” or “right,” and when applied to the exercise of political functions, it means “sovereignty” or “political proprietorship.” Nêng, applied to the individual, may mean “competency” (in the everyday sense of the word), “capacity” or “ability to administer.” Applied to the individual, the contrast is between the ability to have political rights in a democracy, and the ability to administer public affairs. Applied to the nation, the contrast is between sovereignty and administration.[132]
Without this contrast, the doctrine of the tripartite classification of men might destroy all possibilities of a practical democracy. If the Unthinking are the majority, how can democracy be trusted? This contrast, furthermore, serves to illuminate a further problem: the paradoxical necessity of an all-powerful government which the people are able to control.
If this distinction is accepted in the establishment of a democracy, what will the consequences be?[133]
In the first place, the masses who rule will not necessarily govern. Within the framework of a democratic constitution, they will be able to express their wishes, and make those wishes effective; but it will be impossible for them to interfere in the personnel of government, whether merely administrative or in the highest positions. It will be forever impossible that a “swine-representative” should be elected, or that one of those transient epochs of carpet-baggery, which appear from time to time in most Western democracies, should corrupt the government. By means of the popular rights of initiative, referendum, election and recall, the people will be able to control their government in the broad sweep of policy. The government will be beyond their reach insofar as petty political interference, leading to inferiority or corruption, is concerned.
In the second place, the benefits of aristocracy will be obtained without its cost. The government will be made up of men especially fit and trained to govern. There will, hence, be no difficulty in permitting the government to become extraordinarily powerful in contrast with Western governments. Since the masses will be able to choose between a wide selection of able leaders, the democracy will be safeguarded.
Sun Yat-sen regarded this as one of the cardinal points in his doctrines. In retaining the old Chinese idea of a scholar class and simultaneously admitting Western elective and other democratic techniques, he believed that he [pg 109] had found a scheme which surpassed all others. He saw the people as stockholders in a company, and the administrators as directors; he saw the people as the owner of an automobile, and the administrators as the chauffeur.
A further consequence of this difference between the right of voting and the right of being voted for, but one to which Sun Yat-sen did not refer, necessarily arises from his postulation of a class of geniuses leading their followers, who control the unthinking masses. That is the continuity which such a group of ideological controllers would impart to a democracy. Sun Yat-sen, addressing Chinese, took the Chinese world for granted. A Westerner, unmindful of the background, might well overlook some comparatively simple points. The old system, under which the Empire was a sort of educational system, was a familiar feature in the politics which Sun Yat-sen criticized. In arguing for the political acceptance of inequality and the guarantee of government by a select group, Sun was continuing the old idea of leadership, modifying it only so far as to make it consistent with democracy. Under the system he proposed, the two great defects of democracy, untrustworthiness and lack of continuity of policy, would be largely eliminated.
The Democratic Machine State.
Throughout pre-modern Chinese thought there runs the idea of personal behavior and personal controls. The Chinese could not hypostatize in the manner of the West. Looking at men they saw men and nothing more. Considering the problems and difficulties which men encountered, they sought solutions in terms of men and the conditioning intimacies of each individual's life. The Confucian Prince was not so much an administrator as a moral leader; his influence, extending itself through imitation on the part of others, was personal and social rather than [pg 110] political.[134] In succeeding ages, the scholars thought of themselves as the leaven of virtue in society. They stressed deportment and sought, only too frequently by means of petty formalities, to impress their own excellence and pre-eminence upon the people. Rarely, if ever, did the scholar-official appeal to formal political law. He was more likely to invoke propriety and proceed to exercise his authority theoretically in accordance with it.
Sun Yat-sen did not feel that further appeal to the intellectual leaders was necessary. In an environment still dominated by the past, an exhortation for the traditional personal aspect of leadership would probably have appeared as a centuries-old triteness. The far-seeing men, the geniuses that Sun saw in all society, owed their superiority not to artificial inequality but to natural inequality;[135] by their ability they were outstanding. Laws and customs could outrage this natural inequality, or conceal it behind a legal facade of artificial inequality or equally artificial equality. Laws and customs do not change the facts. The superior man was innately the superior man.
Nevertheless, the geniuses of the Chinese revolution could not rely upon the loose and personal system of influence hitherto trusted. To organize Chinese nationalism, to give it direction as well as force, the power of the people must be run through a machine—the State.
A distinction must be made here. The term “machine,” applied to government, was itself a neologism introduced from the Japanese.[136] Not only was the word but the thing itself was alien to the Chinese, since the same term (ch'i) meant machinery, tool, or instrument. The introduction of the view of the state as a machine does not imply that [pg 111] Sun Yat-sen wished to introduce a specific form of Western state-machine into China—as will be later explained (in the pages which concern themselves with the applied political science of Sun Yat-sen).
Sun was careful, moreover, to explain that his analogy between industrial machinery and political machinery was merely an analogy. He said, “The machinery of the government is entirely composed of human beings. All its motions are brought about by men and not by material objects. Therefore, there is a very great difference between the machinery of the government and the manufacturing machine ... the machinery of the government is moved by human agency whereas the manufacturing machine is set in motion by material forces.”[137]
Even after allowance has been made for the fact that Sun Yat-sen did not desire to import Western governmental machinery, nor even to stress the machine and state analogy too far, it still remains extraordinarily significant that he should have impressed upon his followers the necessity of what may be called a mechanical rather than an organic type of government. The administrative machine of the Ch'ing dynasty, insofar as it was a machine at all, was a chaotic mass of political authorities melting vaguely into the social system. Sun's desire to have a clear-cut machine of government, while not of supreme [pg 112] importance in his ideological projects, was of great significance in his practical proposal. In his theory the state machine bears the same resemblance to the old government that the Chinese race-nation bears to the now somewhat ambiguous civilized humanity of the Confucians. In both instances he was seeking sharper and more distinct lines of demarcation.
In putting forth his proposals for the reconstitution of the Chinese government he was thinking, in speaking of a state-machine, of the more or less clearly understood juristic states of the West.[138] His concrete proposals dealing with the minutiae of administrative organization, his emphasis on constitution and law, and his interest in the exact allocation of control all testify to his complete acceptance of a sharply delimited state. On the other hand, he was extraordinary for his time in demanding an unusual extent, both qualitative and quantitative, of power for the state which he wished to hammer out on the forges of the nationalist social and political revolution.
In summarizing this description of the instrument with which Sun Yat-sen hoped to organize the intellectual leaders of China so as to implement the force of the revolution, it may be said that it was to be a state-machine, as opposed to a totalitarian state, based upon Western juristic theory in general but organized out of the materials of old Chinese political philosophy and the Imperial experience in government.[139] The state machine was to be [pg 113] built along lines which Sun Yat-sen laid out in some detail. Yet, even with his elaborate plans already prepared, and in the midst of a revolution, he pointed out the difficulty of political experimentation, in the following words:
... the progress of human machinery, as government organizations and the like, has been very slow. What is the reason? It is that once a manufacturing machine has been constructed, it can easily be tested, and after it has been tried out, it can easily be put aside if it is not good, and if it is not perfect, it can easily be perfected. But it is very difficult to try out a human machine and more difficult still to perfect it after it has been tried out. It is impossible to perfect it without bringing about a revolution. The only other way would be to regard it as a useless material machine which can easily be turned into scrap iron. But this is not workable.[140]
Democratic-Political Versus Ideological Control.
Sun Yat-sen accepted an organization of society based upon intellectual differences, despite his belief in the justifiability and necessity of formal democracy, and his reconciliation of the two at first contradictory theses in a plan for a machine state to be based upon a distinction between ch'üan and nêng. It may now be asked, why did Sun Yat-sen, familiar with the old method of ideological control, and himself proposing a new ideology which would not only restore internal harmony but also put China into harmony with the actual political condition of the world, desire to add formal popular control to ideological control?
The answer is not difficult, although it must be based for the most part on inference rather than on direct citation of Sun Yat-sen's own words. In the consideration of the system of ideological control fostered by the Confucians, [pg 114] ideological control presented two distinct aspects: the formation of the ideology by men, and control of men by the ideology. The ideology controlled men; some men sought to control the ideology; the whole ideological control system was based upon the continuous interaction of cause and effect, wherein tradition influenced the men who sought to use the system as a means of mastery, while the same men succeeded in a greater or less degree in directing the development of the ideology.
In the old Chinese world-society the control of the ideology was normally vested in the literati who were either government officials or hoped to become such. The populace, however, acting in conformity with the ideology, could overthrow the government, and, to that extent, consciously control the content and the development of the ideology. Moreover, as the efficacy of an ideology depends upon its greater acceptance, the populace had the last word in control of the ideology both consciously and unconsciously. Politics, however, rarely comes to the last word. In the normal and ordinary conduct of social affairs, the populace was willing to let the literati uphold the classics and modify their teachings in accordance with the development of the ideology—in the name of chêng ming. The old ideology was so skilfully put together out of traditional elements that are indissociable from the main traits of Chinese culture, together with the revisions made by Confucius and his successors, that it was well-nigh unchallengeable. The whole Confucian method of government was based, as previously stated, on the control of men through the control of their ideas by men—and these latter men, the ideologues, were the scholar administrators of successive dynasties. The identification of the literati and officials, the respect in which learning was held, the general distribution of a leaven of scholars through all the families of the Empire, and the completeness—almost [pg 115] incredible to a Westerner—of traditional orthodoxy, permitted the interpreters of the tradition also to mould and transform it to a considerable degree. As a means of adjusting the mores through the course of centuries, interpretation succeeded in gradually changing popular ideas, where open and revolutionary heterodoxy would have failed.
Now, in modern times, even though men might still remain largely under the control of the ideology (learn to behave rightly instead of being governed), the ideology was necessarily weakened in two ways: by the appearance of men who were recalcitrant to the ideology, and by the emergence of conceptions and ideas which could not find a place in the ideology, and which consequently opened up extra-ideological fields of individual behavior. In other words, li was no longer all-inclusive, either as to men or as to realms of thought. Its control had never, of course, been complete, for in that case all institutions of government would have become superfluous in China and would have vanished; but its deficiencies in past ages had never been so great; either with reference to insubordinate individuals or in regard to unassimilable ideas, as they were in modern times.
Hence the province of government had to be greatly extended. The control of men by the ideology was incomplete wherever the foreign culture had really struck the Chinese—as, for instance, in the case of the newly-developed Chinese proletariat, which could not follow the Confucian precepts in the slums of twentieth-century industry. The family system, the village, and the guild were to the Chinese proletarians mere shadows of a past; they were faced individually with the problems of a foreign social life suddenly interjected into that of the Chinese. True instances of the interpenetration of opposites, they were Chinese from the still existing old society of China [pg 116] suddenly transposed into an industrial world in which the old ideology was of little relevance. If they were to remain Chinese they had to be brought again into the fold of the Chinese ideology; and, meanwhile, instead of being controlled ideologically, they must be controlled by the sharp, clear action of government possessing a monopoly of the power of coercion. The proletarians were not, indeed, the only group of Chinese over whom the old ideology had lost control. There were the overseas Chinese, the new Chinese finance-capitalists, and others who had adjusted their personal lives to the Western world. These had done so incompletely, and needed the action of government to shield them not only from themselves and from one another, but from their precarious position in their relations with the Westerners.
Other groups had not completely fallen away from the ideology, but had found major sections of it to be unsuitable to the regulation of their own lives. Virtue could not be found in a family system which was slowly losing its polygynous character and also slowly giving place to a sort of social atomism; the intervention of the machine state was required to serve as a substitute for ideological regulation until such a time as the new ideology should have developed sufficiently to restore relevance to traditions.
Indeed, throughout all China, there were few people who were not touched to a greater or less degree by the consequences of the collision of the two intellectual worlds, the nationalistic West and the old Chinese world-society. However much Chinese might desire to continue in their traditional modes of behavior, it was impossible for them to live happy and progressive lives by virtue of having memorized the classics and paid respect to the precepts of tradition, as had their forefathers. In all cases where the old ideas failed, state and law suddenly acquired [pg 117] a new importance—almost overwhelming to some Chinese—as the establishers of the new order of life. Even etiquette was established by decree, in the days of the parliamentary Republic at Peking; the age-old assurance of Chinese dress and manners was suddenly swept away, and the government found itself forced to decree frock-coats.
Successive governments in the new China had fallen, not because they did too much, but because they did too little. The sphere of state activity had become enormous in contrast to what it had been under more than a score of dynasties, and the state had perforce to intervene in almost every walk of life, and every detail of behavior. Yet this intervention, although imperative, was met by the age-old Chinese contempt for government, by the determined adherence to traditional methods of control in the face of situations to which now they were no longer relevant. It was this paradox, the ever-broadening necessity of state activity in the face of traditional and unrealistic opposition to state activity, which caused a great part of the turmoil in the new China. Officials made concessions to the necessity for state action by drafting elaborate codes on almost every subject, and then, turning about, also made concessions to the traditional non-political habits of their countrymen by failing to enforce the codes which they had just promulgated. The leaders of the Republic, and their followers in the provinces, found themselves with laws which could not possibly be introduced in a nation unaccustomed to law and especially unaccustomed to law dealing with life in a Western way; thus baffled, but perhaps not disappointed, the pseudo-republican government officials were content with developing a shadow state, a shadow body of law, and then ignoring it except as a tool in the vast pandemonium of the tuchunates—where state and law were valued only in [pg 118] so far as they served to aggrandize or enrich military rulers and their hangers-on.
This tragic dilemma led Sun Yat-sen to call for a new kind of state, a state which was to be democratic and yet to lead back to ideological control. The emergency of imperialism and internal impotence made it imperative that the state limit its activities to those provinces of human behavior in which it could actually effectuate its decrees, and that, after having so limited the field of its action, it be well-nigh authoritarian within that field. Yet throughout the whole scheme, Sun Yat-sen's deep faith in the common people required him to demand that the state be democratic in principle and practice.
It may begin to be apparent that, at least for Sun Yat-sen, the control of the race-nation by the ideology was not inconsistent with the political control of the race-nation by itself. In the interval between the old certainty and the new, political authority had to prevail. This authority was to be directed by the people but actually wielded by the geniuses of the revolution. The new ideology was to emerge from the progress of knowledge not, as before, among a special class of literary persons, but through all the people. It was to be an ideology based on practical experience and on the experimental method, and consequently, perhaps, less certain then the old Confucian ideology, which was in its foundations religious. To fill in the gaps where uniformity of thought and behavior, on the basis of truth, had not been established, the state was to act, and the state had to be responsible to the people.
At this point it may be remembered that Sun Yat-sen was among the very few Chinese leaders of his day who could give the historians of the future any valid reasons for supposing that they believed in republican principles. Too many of the militarists and scholar-politicians of the [pg 119] North and South paid a half-contemptuous lip-service to the republic, primarily because they could not agree as to which one of them should have the Dragon Throne, or, at the least, the honor of restoring the Manchu Emperor—who stayed on in the Forbidden City until 1924.[141] Sun Yat-sen had a deep faith in the judgment and trustworthiness of the uncounted swarms of coolies and farmers whom most Chinese leaders ignored. He was perhaps the only man of his day really loved by the illiterate classes that knew of him, and was always faithful to their love. Other leaders, both Chinese and Western, have praised the masses but refused to trust them for their own good. Sun's implicit belief in the political abilities of the common people in all matters which their knowledge equipped them to judge, was little short of ludicrous to many of his contemporaries, and positively irritating to some persons who wished him well personally but did not—at least privately—follow all of his ideas.
To return to the consideration of the parts played by ideology and popular government in social control: there was another point of great difference between the old ideology and the new. The old was the creation, largely, of a special class of scholars, who for that purpose ranked highest in the social hierarchy of old China. Now even though the three natural classes might continue to be recognized in China, the higher standard of living and the increased literacy of the populace was to enlarge the number of persons participating in the life of ideas. The people were to form the ideology in part, and in part control the government under whose control the revolutionary geniuses were to form the rest of the ideology, [pg 120] and propagate it through a national educational program. In all respects the eventual control was to rest with the people of the Chinese race-nation, united, self-ruling, and determined to survive.
How, then, does the pattern of min ch'üan fit into the larger scheme of the continuation of Confucian civilization and ideological control? First, the old was to continue undisturbed where it might. Second, those persons completely lost to the discipline of the old ideology must be controlled by the state. Third, those areas of behavior which were disturbed by the Western impact required state guidance. Fourth, the machine state was to control both these fields, of men, and of ideas, and within this limited field was to be authoritarian (“an all-powerful state”) and yet democratic (“nevertheless subject to the control of the people”). Fifth, the ideology was to arise in part from the general body of the people. Sixth, the other parts of it were to be developed by the intellectuals, assisted by the government, which was to be also under the control of the people. Seventh, since the world was generally in an unstable condition, and since many wrongs remained to be righted, it was not immediately probable that the Chinese would settle down to ideological serenity and certainty, and consequently State policy would still remain as a governmental question, to be decided by the will of the whole race-nation.
To recapitulate, then the people was to rule itself until the reappearance of perfect tranquility—ta t'ung—or its nearest mundane equivalent. The government was to serve as a canalization of the power of the Chinese race-nation in fighting against the oppressor-nations of the world for survival.
The last principle of the nationalist ideology remains to be studied. Min tsu, nationalism, was to provide an instrumentality for self-control and for external defense [pg 121] in a world of armed states. But these two would remain ineffectual in a starved and backward country, if they were not supplemented by a third principle designed to relieve the physical impotence of the nation, to promote the material happiness of its individual members and to guarantee the continued survival of the Chinese society as a whole. Union and self-rule could be frustrated by starvation. China needed not only to become united and free as a nation; it had also to become physically healthy and wealthy. This was to be effected through min shêng, the third of the three principles.
Chapter IV. The Theory of Min Shêng.
Min Shêng in the Ideology.
The principle of min shêng has been the one most disputed. Sun Yat-sen made his greatest break with the old ideology in promulgating this last element in his triune doctrine; the original Chinese term carried little meaning that could be used in an approach to the new meaning that Sun Yat-sen gave it. He himself stated that the two words had become rather meaningless in their old usage, and that he intended to use them with reference to special conditions in the modern world.[142] He then went on to state the principle in terms so broad, so seemingly contradictory, that at times it appears possible for each man to read in it what he will, as he may in the Bible. The Communists and the Catholics each approve of the third principle, but translate it differently; the liberals render it by a term which is not only innocuous but colorless.[143] Had [pg 123] Sun Yat-sen lived to finish the lectures on min shêng, he might have succeeded in rounding off his discussion of the principle.
There are two methods by means of which the principle of min shêng may be examined. It might be described on the basis of the various definitions which Sun Yat-sen gave it in his four lectures and in other speeches and papers, and outlined, point by point, by means of the various functions and limits that he set for it. This would also permit some consideration of the relation of min shêng to various other theories of political economy. The other approach may be a less academic one, but perhaps not altogether unprofitable. By means of a reconsideration of the first two principles, and of the structure and meaning of the three principles as a whole, it is possible to surmise, if not to establish, the meaning of min shêng, that is, to discover it through a sort of political triangulation: the first two principles being given, to what third principle do they lead?
This latter method may be taken first, since it will afford a general view of the three principles which will permit the orientation of min shêng with reference to the nationalist ideology as a whole, and prepare the student for a solution of some of the apparent contradictions which are to be found in the various specific definitions of min shêng.
Accepting the elementary thesis of the necessary awakening of the race-nation, and its equally necessary self-rule, both as a nation vis-à-vis other nations, and as a world by itself, one may see that these are each social problems of organization which do not necessarily involve [pg 124] the physical conditions of the country, although, as a matter of application, they would be ineffectual in a country which did not have the adequate means of self-support. Sun Yat-sen was interested in seeing the Chinese people and Chinese civilization survive, and by survival he meant not only the continuation of social organization and moral and intellectual excellence, but, more than these, the actual continued existence of the great bulk of the population. The most vital problem was that of the continued existence of the Chinese as a people, which was threatened by the constant expansion of the West and might conceivably share the fate of the American Indians—a remnant of a once great race living on the charity of their conquerors. Sun Yat-sen expressly recognized this problem as the supreme one, requiring immediate attention.[144] Nationalism and democracy would have no effect if the race did not survive to practise them.
The old Chinese society may be conceived as a vast system of living men, who survived by eating and breeding, and who were connected with one another in time by the proper attention to the ancestral cults, and in space by a common consciousness of themselves as the standard-bearers of the civilization of the world. Sun Yat-sen, although a Christian, was not unmindful of this outlook; he too was sensible of the meaning of the living race through the centuries. He dutifully informed the Emperor T'ai Tsung of Ming that the Manchus had been driven from the throne, and some years later he expressed the deepest reverence for the ancestral cult.[145] But in facing the emergency with which his race was confronted, Sun Yat-sen could not overlook the practical question of physical survival.
He was, therefore, materialistic in so far as his recognition of the importance of the material well-being of the race-nation made him so. At this point he may be found sympathetic with the Marxians, though his ideology as a whole is profoundly Chinese. The destitution, the economic weakness, the slow progress of his native land were a torture to his conscience. In a world of the most grinding poverty, where war, pestilence, and famine made even mere existence uncertain, he could not possibly overlook the problem of the adequate material care of the vast populace that constituted the race-nation.
Min shêng, accordingly, meant primarily the survival of the race-nation, as nationalism was its awakening, and democracy its self-control. No one of these could be effective without the two others. In the fundamentals of Sun Yat-sen's ideology, the necessity for survival and prosperity is superlative and self-evident. All other features of the doctrine are, as it were, optional. The first two principles definitely required a third that would give them a body of persons upon which to operate; they did not necessarily require that the third principle advance any specific doctrine. If this be the case, it is evident that the question of the content of min shêng, while important, is secondary to the first premises of the San Min Chu I. The need for a third principle—one of popular subsistence—in the ideology is vital; the San Min Chu I would be crippled without it.
The Economic Background of Min Shêng.
What was the nature of the background which decided Sun Yat-sen to draw an economic program into the total of his nationalist ideology for the regeneration of China through a nationalist revolution? Was Sun Yat-sen dissatisfied [pg 126] with the economic order of the old society? Was he interested in a reconstitution of the economic system for the sake of defense against Western powers?
He was unquestionably dissatisfied with the economic order of things in the old society, but it was a dissatisfaction with what the old order had failed to achieve rather than a feeling of the injustice of the Chinese distributive system. He was bitter against a taxation system which worked out unevenly,[146] and against the extortions of the internal-transit revenue officials under the Empire.[147] He was deeply impressed by his first encounter with Western mechanical achievement—the S. S. Grannoch, which took him from Kwangtung to Honolulu.[148] But he had served in the shop of his brother as a young boy,[149] and knew the small farm life of South China intimately. On the basis of this first-hand knowledge, and his many years of association with the working people of China, he was not likely to attack the old economic system for its injustice so much as for its inadequacy.[150]
That there were injustices in the old system of Chinese economy, no one can deny, but these injustices were scarcely sufficient to provoke, of themselves alone, the complete alteration of economic outlook that Sun Yat-sen proposed. Chinese capitalism had not reached the state of industrial capitalism until after its contact with the West; at the most it was a primitive sort of usury-capitalism practised by the three economically dominant groups of old China—landholders, officials, and merchant-usurers.[151] The disturbances which hurt the economic condition [pg 127] of the country, and thereby led to greater disturbances, had involved China in a vicious cycle of decline which could scarcely be blamed on any one feature or any one group in the old economy. The essential fault lay with the condition of the country as a whole, directly affected by the economic consequences of Western trade and partial industrialization.[152]
Sun Yat-sen's positive dissatisfaction with the economy of his time arose from the position which he felt China had in the modern business world. He believed that, by virtue of the economic oppression of the Chinese by the Western powers, China had been degraded to the position of the lowest nation on earth—that the Chinese were even more unfortunate than “slaves without a country,” such as the Koreans and the Annamites.[153] The particular forms of this oppression, and Sun Yat-sen's plans for meeting it, may be more aptly described in the consideration of his program of economic national regeneration.[154] The Chinese nation occupied the ignominious position of a sub-colony or—as Sun himself termed it—“a hypo-colony”; “Our people are realizing that to be a semi-colony is a national disgrace; but our case is worse than that; our country is in the position of a sub-colony (since it is the colony of all the Great Powers and not merely subject to one of them), a position which is inferior to an ordinary colony such as Korea and Annam.”[155]
What, then, were the positive implications of the principle of min shêng in the nationalist ideology?
The Three Meanings of Min Shêng.
First, min shêng is the doctrine leading the nationalist democracy on its road to a high position among the nations of the earth; only through the material strength to be found in min shêng can the Chinese attain a position by which they can exert the full force of their new-formed state against the invaders and oppressors, and be able to lift up the populace so that democracy will possess some actual operative meaning. Min shêng is “... the center of politics, of economics, of all kinds of historical movements; it is similar to the center of gravity in space.”[156] It provides the implementation of nationalism and democracy.
Secondly, min shêng means national enrichment. The problem of China is primarily one of poverty. Sun wanted consideration of the problem of the livelihood of the people to begin with the supreme economic reality in China. What was this reality? “It is the poverty from which we all suffer. The Chinese in general are poor; among them there is no privileged wealthy class, but only a generality of ordinary poor people.”[157] However this enrichment was to be brought about, it was imperative.
Thirdly, min shêng, as the doctrine of enrichment, was also the doctrine of economic justice. If the nation was to become economically healthy, it could only do so on the basis of the proper distribution of property among its citizens. Its wealth would not bring about well-being unless it were properly distributed.
More briefly, min shêng may be said to be the thesis of the indispensability of: 1) a national economic revolution against imperialism and for democracy; 2) an industrial revolution for the enrichment of China; and 3) a prophylactic against social revolution.
The significance of min shêng as the economic implementation of nationalism and democracy is clear enough to require no further discussion. Its significance as a doctrine for the promotion of the industrial revolution is considerable, and worth attention.
Western science was to sow the seed. Min shêng economy was to reap the harvest. By means of the details in Sun Yat-sen's programs which he believed sufficient for the purposes, the modernization of China, which was to be a consequence of Western science in the ideology, was to lead at the same time to the actual physical enrichment of the economic goods and services of the country. The advocacy of industrial development is, of course, a commonplace in the Western world, but in China it was strikingly novel. Sun Yat-sen did not regard industrialism as a necessary evil; he considered it a positive blessing, as the means of increasing the material welfare of the Chinese people.
Time and time again, Sun Yat-sen emphasized the necessity of modernization. His theory of nationalism led him to urge the introduction of Western physical science into the ideology. His theory of democracy was justified in part by the fact that democracy was to be regarded as a modernizing force. Now his principle of min shêng was also to lead to that great end—the modernization of China to a degree to permit the race-nation to regain in the modern world, which encompassed the whole planet, the position it had once had in the smaller world of Eastern Asia.
The wealth of old China had been one of the factors enabling it to resist destruction at the spear-points of its [pg 130] barbarian conquerors. Sun Yat-sen knew this, and knew also that the position of the United States—which had probably the greatest concentration of social and physical wealth and power under one political system that the world had ever known—made that nation impregnable in the modern world. Seeing that wealth was not only a blessing to individuals, but to nations as well, he was anxious that his beloved China should be guarded and assisted by the strength that the ideology of min shêng, once accepted and effectuated, could give it.
Min shêng is more than a vague aspiration for national welfare. The general theory of nationalism and democracy required an additional point to make them effective in the realities of international politics, and min shêng was to supply the hygienic and economic strength that the Chinese race-nation needed for competition and survival; but it was to do more.
Min shêng is at the same time the last step of Chinese resistance and the first of Chinese submission to Western culture. In seeking an economic policy and an ideology which would lead to increased wealth of the nation, the Chinese were preparing to resist the West with its own weapons. Min shêng is a submission in that it is a deliberate declaration of industrial revolution.
It is beside the point to consider the ideological bases of the Western industrial revolution. It was perhaps neither a voluntary nor a deliberate process at all; no man in the first few decades of the nineteenth century could have foretold what the end of a process of mechanization would bring, or was likely to advocate the intentional following of a policy which would transform the orientation and organization of man more thoroughly than had any previous religious, political, and economic transition. The industrial revolution of Euramerica, when viewed from the outside, presents the appearance of a colossal accident, whether for good or for bad, which was but half-perceived [pg 131] by the participants in it. Even today, when the ideology and the institutional outline of the agrarian-handicraft past is fading swiftly away in the new brilliance of Western machine-culture, the new certainty, the new order have not yet appeared. The great transition works its way beyond the knowledge or the intervention of individual men.
This was decidedly not the case in China. Industrialism was something which could be studied from the outside, which could be appraised, and then acclaimed or resisted. Emperor Meiji and his Genro, with a flash of intuition or an intellectual penetration almost unparalleled in the political history of the world, guided Japan into the swift current of mechanical progress; the island empire swept ahead of Asia, abreast of the most powerful states of the world. The Chinese court, under the resolute, but blind, guidance of the Empress Dowager, made a few feeble gestures in favor of modernization, but vigorously opposed any change which might seriously modify the order of Chinese society or the position of the Manchus. In the shadow of the foreign guns, industrialism crept into China, along the coasts and up the banks of the navigable rivers. One might suppose that the Chinese were in a position to choose, deliberately, for or against industrialism. They were not; in China, as in the West, the machine age first appeared largely as an accident.
It is here that the significance of Sun Yat-sen's min shêng becomes apparent. Above all other subsidiary meanings, it is a deliberate declaration of the industrial revolution. Modernism had been an accident; Sun Yat-sen wished to transform it into a program. What would be the ideological consequences of such an attitude?
In the first place, a plan was indicated for almost every type of human behavior. Sun Yat-sen himself drafted a [pg 132] preliminary scheme for a modern manufacturing and communications system.[158] The road that China was to take would not be the miserable, halting progress of industrialism, complicated by delays and wars, which the West had known in the painful centuries of readjustment from the medieval to modern civilization; China would not stumble forward, but would deliberately select the swiftest and easiest way to a sound industrialism, and then take it.
Min shêng thus not only provides the Chinese with a way to make their nationalism, their democracy, and their stateification felt in the hour of their ultimate triumph; it gives them something to do to bring about that triumph.
On the basis of the outlines of the ideology and the social system that Sun Yat-sen proposed, viewed from the perspective of the old Confucian world-society, the reader will realize that this declaration of the industrial revolution is the boldest of Sun Yat-sen's acts, and that the meaning of min shêng as a program of complete modernization and reconstruction is superior to other possible meanings it may have, in regard to theoretical national or social revolution. There is nothing remote or philosophical about the significance of min shêng when so viewed; it is a plan to which a Lenin or a Henry Ford might subscribe with equal fervor—although a Tagore would deplore [pg 133] it. It is here that Sun Yat-sen appears as the champion of the West against the traditional technological stagnation of China. Yet just there, at the supreme point of his Westernism, we must remember what he was fighting for: the life of a race-nation and a civilization that was contradictory to the West. The stability of Confucianism could not serve as a cloak for reaction and stagnant thought. For its own good, nay, its own life, Chinese civilization had to modernize (i. e., Westernize economically) in order to compete in a West-ruled world. But what, more specifically, was the socio-economic position of Sun Yat-sen? Was he a Marxian? Was he a liberal? Was he neither?
Western Influences: Henry George, Marxism and Maurice William.
As previously stated there are three parts which may be distinguished in the ideology of the principle of min shêng. Min shêng is, first, the economic aspect of the national revolution—the creation of an active race-nation of China implementing its power by, second, technological revolution. Third, it connotes also the necessity of a social revolution of some kind. Western commentators have been prone to ignore the significance of min shêng in the first two of these meanings, and have concentrated on disputation concerning the third part. The question of the right system of distribution has become so prominent in much Western revolutionary thought that, to many, it sums up the whole moral issue concerning what is good and bad in society.[159] They are uninterested in or ignorant [pg 134] of the great importance that the first two aspects of min shêng possess for the Chinese mind. The third part, the application of min shêng to the problems that are in the West the cause of social revolution, and to the possible application of social revolution to China, is important, but is by no means the complete picture.
In attempting to state the definitive position of Sun Yat-sen on this question several points must be kept in mind. The first is that Sun Yat-sen, born a Chinese of the nineteenth century, had the intellectual orientation of a member of the world-society, and an accepter of the Confucian ideology. Enough has been shown of the background of his theories to demonstrate their harmony with and relevance to society which had endured in China for centuries before the coming of the West. The second point to be remembered is that Westerners are prone to overlook this background and see only the Western influences which they are in such a good position to detect. Sun Yat-sen's mind grew and changed. His preferences in [pg 135] Western beliefs changed frequently. A few Westerners, seeing only this, are apt to call Sun unstable and devoid of reason.[160]
It would, indeed, be strange to find any Western political or ideological leader who thought in precisely the same terms after the world war and the Russian revolution as before. Sun Yat-sen was, like many other receptive-minded leaders, sensitive to the new doctrines of Wilson and Lenin as they were shouted through the world. He was, perhaps, less affected by them than Western leaders, because his ideology was so largely rooted in the ideology of old China.
Apart from the winds of doctrine that blew through the world during Sun's life-period, and the generally known Western influences to which he was exposed,[161] there were three writers whose influence has been supposed to have been critical in the development of his thinking. These three were Henry George, Karl Marx, and Maurice William of New York. A much greater amount of material is needed for a detailed study of the influences of various individual theories on Sun Yat-sen than for a general exposition of his political doctrines as a whole. At the present [pg 136] time scarcely enough has been written to permit any really authoritative description of the relations between the ideology of Sun Yat-sen and the thought of these three men. It is possible, nevertheless, to trace certain general outlines which may serve to clarify the possible influence that was exercised on Sun, and to correct some current misapprehensions as to the nature and extent of that influence.
Sun Yat-sen's opposition to the “unearned increment” shows the influence of the thought of Henry George. Sun proposed an ingenious scheme for the government confiscation of unearned increment in an economy which would nevertheless permit private ownership of land. (Incidentally, he terms this, in his second lecture on min shêng, “communism,” which indicates a use of the word different, in this respect at least, from the conventional Western use.)[162] The land problem was of course a very old one in China, although accentuated in the disorders resulting from the impact of the West. There can be little question that Sun's particular method of solving the problem was influenced by the idea of unearned increment.
He knew of Henry George in 1897, the year the latter died,[163] and advocated redistribution of the land in the party oath, the platform, and the slogans of the Tung Meng Hui of 1905.[164] Since, even at the time of the Canton-Moscow Entente, his land policy never approached the Marxist-Leninist program of nationalization or collectivization of land, but remained one of redistribution [pg 137] and confiscation of unearned increment, it is safe to say that Sun kept the theory of George in mind, although he by no means followed George to the latter's ultimate conclusions.[165] It may thus be inferred that the influence of Henry George upon the nationalist ideology of Sun Yat-sen was slight, but permanent. An idea was borrowed; the scheme of things was not.
Sun Yat-sen encountered Marxism for the first recorded time in London in 1897, when he met a group of Russian revolutionaries and also read in the subject. The fact that Sun was exposed to Marxism proves little except that he had had the opportunity of taking up Marxism and did not do so.[166] Again, the Tung Meng Hui manifesto of 1905 may have been influenced by Marxism. It was not, however, until the development of his Three Principles that the question of Marxian influence was raised. Sun Yat-sen made his first speech on the Principles in Brussels in the spring of 1905.[167] By 1907 the three principles had taken on a clear form: nationalism, democracy, and min shêng, which the Chinese of that time seem to have translated socialism when referring to it in Western languages.[168]
The most careful Marxian critic of Sun Yat-sen, writing of the principle of min shêng and its two main planks, land reform and state capitalism, says: “This very vague program, which does not refer to class interests nor to the class struggle as the means of breaking privileged class interests, was objectively not socialism at all, but something [pg 138] else altogether: Lenin coined the formula, ‘subjective socialism,’ for it.”[169] He adds, later: “Hence Sun's socialism meant, on the lips of the Chinese bourgeoisie, nothing but a sort of declaration for a ‘social’ economic policy, that is, a policy friendly to the masses.”[170] T'ang Liang-li declares that the third principle at this time adopted “a frankly socialistic attitude,”[171] but implies elsewhere that its inadequacy was seen by a Chinese Marxist, Chu Chih-hsin.[172] This evidence, as far as it goes, shows that Sun Yat-sen had had the opportunity to become acquainted with Marxism, and that even on the occasion of the first formulation of the principle of min shêng he used none of its tenets. The revolutionary critic, T'ang Liang-li, who, a devoted and brilliant Nationalist in action, writes with a sort of European left-liberal orientation, suggests that the Third Principle grew with the growth of capitalist industrialism in China.[173] This is true: economic maladjustment would emphasize the need for ideological reconstruction with reference to the economy. There is no need to resort to Marxian analysis.
That the third principle meant something to Sun Yat-sen is shown by the fact that when Sung Chiao-jen, who a few years later was to become one of the most celebrated martyrs of the revolution, suggested in the period of the first provisional Republic at Nanking that the Third Principle had better be omitted altogether, Sun was enraged, [pg 139] and declared that if min shêng were to be given up, the whole revolution might as well be abandoned.[174]
Since min shêng, in its third significance, that of the development of a socially just distributive system, was not Marxian nor yet unimportant, it may be contrasted once again with the communist doctrines, and then studied for its actual content. In contrasting it with Marxism, it might be of value to observe, first, the criticism that the Marxians levy against it, and second, the distinctions that nationalist and European critics make between min shêng and communism.
Dr. Karl Wittfogel, the German Marxist whose work on Sun Yat-sen is the most satisfactory of its kind, points out the apparent contradictions in the San Min Chu I: on the one hand, statements which are not only objectively but subjectively friendly to capitalism (on the excellence of the Ford plant; on the necessity for the coöperation of capital and labor)—on the other, the unmerciful condemnation of capitalism; on the one hand, the declaration that there is no capitalism in China—on the other, that capitalism must be destroyed as it appears; on the right, the statement that communism and min shêng are opposed—on the left, that the communist doctrines are a subsidiary part of the ideology of min shêng.[175] How, asks Wittfogel, does this all fit together? He answers by pointing out the significance of Sun's theses when considered in relation to the dialectical-materialist interpretation of recent Far Eastern history:
His three principles incorporate
in their development the objective change in the socio-economic situation of China,
in their contradictions the real contradictions of the Chinese revolution,
in their latest tendencies the transposition of the social center of gravity of the revolution, which sets the classes in action, [pg 140]and whose aim is no longer a bourgeois capitalist one, but proletarian-socialist and peasant agrarian-revolutionary.
Sun Yat-sen is according to this not only the hitherto most powerful representative of the bourgeois-national, anti-imperialist revolutions of awakening Asia; he points at the same time outwards over the bourgeois class limitations of the first step of the Asiatic movement for liberation. To deny this were portentuous, even for the proletarian communist movement of Eastern Asia.[176]
The modifications which the Marxians have introduced into their programs with respect to the class struggle in colonial countries do not imply a corresponding modification of their ideology. The determinism adopted from Hegel, the economic interpretation of history—these and other dogmas are held by the Marxians to be universally valid despite their Western origin.
We have seen what Sun's chief Marxian exegete thinks of him. Now it may be worth while to consider the actual relations of Sun's doctrines with some of those in Marxism. In the first place, Sun Yat-sen, during his stay in Shanghai, 1919-1922 (with interruptions), was very much interested in Communism and friendly to the Russian people, but not at all inclined to adopt its ideology.[177]
In reference to specific points of the Communist ideology, Sun Yat-sen was indebted to the Communists for the application of the principle of nationalism, as a means of propaganda, as anti-imperialism, although, as we have seen, it was fundamentally a thesis for the readjustment of the Chinese society from the ideological basis of a world-society over to a national state among national states.[178] Second, his habit of taking Western doctrines and applying them to the Chinese nation instead of to Chinese individuals, led him to apply nationalism to the class war of the oppressed nations against the oppressing nations. There was no justification of intra-national class war in the nationalist ideology of Sun Yat-sen.[179] In his doctrine of democracy, his application of a class-system based on intellect was a flat denial of the superior significance of the Marxian economic-class ideology, as was his favoring of the development of a five-power liberal government through ch'üan and nêng in place of a dictatorship of the proletariat operating through soviets. Finally, in relation to min shêng, his use of the Confucian philosophy—the interpretation of history through jên—was a contradiction of the materialist interpretation of history by the Marxians. It also contradicted the class struggle; the loyalty of the Chinese to the race-nation was to be the supreme loyalty; it was to develop from the ta chia, the great family of all Chinese; and class lines within it could not transcend its significance. Furthermore, purely as a matter of economic development, Sun Yat-sen regarded [pg 142] the class struggle as pathological in society. He said, “Out of his studies of the social question, Marx gained no other advantage than a knowledge of the diseases of social evolution; he failed to see the principle of social evolution. Hence we can say that Marx was a pathologist rather than a physiologist of society.”[180] Finally, he did not accept the Marxian theory of surplus value or of the inevitable collapse of capitalism. He even spoke of capitalism and socialism as “two economic forces of human civilization” which might “work side by side in future civilization.”[181]
All in all, it may safely be said that Sun Yat-sen's ideology, as an adjustment of the old Chinese ideology to the modern world, was not inspired by the Marxist; that through the greater part of his life, he was acquainted with Marxism, and did not avail himself of the opportunities he had for adopting it, but consistently rejected it; and that while the Communists were of great use to him in the formulation and implementation of his program, they affected his ideology, either generally or with reference to min shêng, imperceptibly if at all.
This conclusion is of significance in the estimation of the influence of Maurice William upon the thought of Sun Yat-sen. It is, briefly, the thesis of Dr. William that it was his own book which saved China from Bolshevism by making an anti-Marxian out of Sun after he had fallen prey to the Bolshevist philosophy. Dr. William writes of the lectures on Nationalism and Democracy; “In these lectures Dr. Sun makes clear that his position is strongly pro-Russian and pro-Marxian, that he endorses the class struggle, repudiates Western democracy, and advocates China's coöperation with Bolshevist Russia against capitalist [pg 143] nations.”[182] Dr. William then goes on to show, quite convincingly, that Sun Yat-sen, with very slight acknowledgments, quoted William's The Social Interpretation of History almost verbatim for paragraph after paragraph in the lectures on min shêng.
It would be unjust and untruthful to deny the great value that William's book had for Sun Yat-sen, who did quote it and use its arguments.[183] On the other hand, it is a manifest absurdity to assume that Sun Yat-sen, having once been a communist, suddenly reversed his position after reading one book by an American of whom he knew nothing. Even Dr. William writes with a tone of mild surprise when he speaks of the terrific volte-face which he thinks Sun Yat-sen performed.
There are two necessary comments to be made on the question of the influence of Maurice William. In the first place, Sun Yat-sen had never swerved from the interpretation of history by jên, which may be interpreted as the humane or social interpretation of history. Enough of the old Chinese ideology has been outlined above to make clear what this outlook was.[184] Sun Yat-sen, in short, never having been a Marxian, was not converted to the social interpretation of history as put forth by Dr. William. He found in the latter's book, perhaps more clearly than in any other Western work an analysis of society that coincided with his own, which he had developed from the old Chinese philosophy and morality as rendered by Confucius. Consequently he said of William's rejection of the materialistic interpretation of history, “That sounds perfectly reasonable ... the greatest discovery of the American scholar fits in perfectly with the (third) [pg 144] principle of our Party.”[185] The accomplishment of Maurice William, therefore, was a great one, but one which has been misunderstood. He formulated a doctrine of social evolution which tallied perfectly with Chinese ideology, and did this without being informed on Chinese thought. He did not change the main currents of Sun's thought, which were consistent through the years. He did present Sun with several telling supplementary arguments in Western economic terms, by means of which he could reconcile his interpretation of social history not only with Confucian jên but also with modern Western economics.
The other point to be considered in relation to Maurice William is a matter of dates. The thesis of Maurice William, that Sun Yat-sen, after having turned Marxian or near-Marxian, was returned to democratic liberal thought by William's book, is based on contrast of the first twelve lectures in the San Min Chu I and the last four on min shêng. Dr. William believes that Sun read his book in the meantime and changed his mind. A Chinese commentator points out that Sun Yat-sen referred to The Social Interpretation of History in a speech on January 21, 1924; his first lecture on the San Min Chu I was given January 24, 1924.[186] Hence, in the twelve lectures that Dr. William interprets as Marxian, Sun Yat-sen was speaking from a background which included not only Marxism, but The Social Interpretation of History, as well.
Only on the third part does the influence of the Western thinkers appear unmistakably. Henry George gave Sun Yat-sen the idea of the unearned increment, but Sun Yat-sen, instead of accepting the whole body of doctrine that George put forth, simply kept this one idea, and built a novel land-policy of his own on it. Marxism may have influenced the verbal tone of Sun Yat-sen's lectures, but it did not affect his ideology, although it shows a definite [pg 145] imprint upon his programs. Maurice William gave Sun Yat-sen a set of arguments in modern economic terms which he attached to his ideological thesis of the jên interpretation of history, which he based upon Confucianism. There is no evidence to show that at any time in his life Sun Yat-sen abandoned his Chinese ideological orientation and fell under the sway of any Western thinker. The strong consistency in the ideology of Sun Yat-sen is a consistency rooted in the old Chinese ideology. On minor points of doctrine he showed the influence of the West; this influence cannot be considered solely by itself. The present discussion of Western influences may, by its length, imply a disproportionate emphasis of Western thought in the political doctrines of Sun Yat-sen, but in a work written primarily for Westerners, this may be found excusable.
Min Shêng as a Socio-Economic Doctrine.
If one were to attempt to define the relations of the min shêng ideology to the various types of Western economic doctrines at present current, certain misapprehensions may be eliminated at the outset. First: Capitalism in its Western form was opposed by Sun Yat-sen; min shêng was to put through the national economic revolution of enrichment through a deliberately-planned industrialization, but in doing so was to prevent China from going through all the painful stages which attended the growth of capitalism in the West. “We want,” said Sun Yat-sen, “a preventive remedy; a remedy which will thwart the accumulation of large private capitals and so preserve future society from the great inconvenience of the inequality between rich and poor.”[187] And yet he looked forward to a society which would ultimately be communistic, although never in its strict Marxian sense. [pg 146] “We may say that communism is the ideal of livelihood, and that the doctrine of livelihood is the practical application of communism; such is the difference between the doctrine of Marx and the doctrine of the Kuomintang. In the last analysis, there is no real difference in the principles of the two; where they differ is in method.”[188] This is sufficient to show that Sun Yat-sen was not an orthodox Western apologist for capitalism; as a Chinese, it would have been hard for him to be one, for the logically consistent capitalist ideology is one which minimizes all human relationships excepting those individual-contractual ones based on money bargains. The marketing of goods and services in such a way as to disturb the traditional forms of Chinese society would have been repugnant to Sun Yat-sen.
Second: if Sun Yat-sen's min shêng ideology cannot be associated with capitalism, it can as little be affiliated with Marxism or the single-tax. What, then, in relation to Western socio-economic thought, is it? We have seen that the state it proposed was liberal-protective, and that the society from which it was derived and to which it was to lead back was one of extreme laissez-faire, bordering almost on anarchism. These political features are enough to distinguish it from the Western varieties of socialism, anarchism and syndicalism, since the ingredients of these ideologies of the West and that of Sun Yat-sen, while coincident on some points, cannot be fitted together.
Superficially, there is a certain resemblance between the ideology of the San Min Chu I and that of Fascism. The resemblances may be found in the emphasis on the nation, the rejection of the class war and of Marxism, the upholding of tradition, and the inclusion of a doctrine of intellectual inequality. But Sun Yat-sen seeks to reconcile [pg 147] all this with democracy in a form even more republican than that of the United States. The scheme of min ch'üan, with its election, recall, initiative and referendum, and with its definite demands of intellectual freedom, is in contradiction to the teachings of Fascism. His condemnation of Caesarism is unequivocal: “Therefore, if the Chinese Revolution has not until now been crowned with success, it is because the ambitions for the throne have not been completely rooted out nor suppressed altogether.”[189] With these fundamental and irreconcilable distinctions, it is hard to find any possibility of agreement between the San Min Chu I and the Fascist ideologies, although the transitional program of the San Min Chu I—in its advocacy of provisional party dictatorship, etc.—has something in common with Fascism as well as with Communism as applied in the Soviet Union.
A recent well-received work on modern political thought describes a category of Western thinkers whose ideas are much in accord with those contained in the min shêng ideology.[190] Professor Francis W. Coker of Yale, after reviewing the leading types of socialist and liberal thought, describes a group who might be called “empirical collectivists.” The men to whom he applies this term reject socialist doctrines of economic determinism, labor-created value, and class war. They oppose, on the other hand, the making of a fetish of private ownership, and recognize that the vast mass of ordinary men in modern society do not always receive their just share of the produce of industry. They offer no single panacea for all economic troubles, and lay down no absolute and unchallengeable dogma concerning the rightness or wrongness of public or private ownership.[191] Professor Coker [pg 148] outlines their general point of view by examining their ideas with reference to several conspicuous economic problems of the present day: public ownership; labor legislation; regulation of prices; taxation; and land policies.[192]
According to Coker, the empirical collectivist is not willing to forgo the profit motive except where necessary. He is anxious to see a great part of the ruthlessness of private competition eliminated, and capital generally subjected to a regulation which will prevent its use as an instrument of harm to the community as a whole. While not committed to public ownership of large enterprises as a matter of theory, he has little objection to the governmental operation of those which could, as a matter of practical expediency, be managed by the state on a nonprofit basis.
Sun Yat-sen's position greatly resembles this, with respect to his more immediate objectives. Speaking of public utilities, he said to Judge Linebarger: “There are so many public utilities needed in China at the present time, that the government can't monopolize all of them for the advantage of the masses. Moreover, public utilities involve risks which a government cannot afford to take. Although the risks are comparatively small in single cases, the entire aggregate of such risks, if assumed by the government, would be of crushing proportions. Private initiative and capital can best perform the public utility development of China. We should, however, be very careful to limit the control of these public utilities enterprises, while at the same time encouraging private development as much as possible.”[193] Sun had, however, already spoken of nationalization: “I think that when I hold power [pg 149] again, we should institute a nationalization program through a cautious and experimental evolution of (1) public utilities; (2) public domains; (3) industrial combines, syndicates, and cartels; (4) coöperative department stores and other merchandising agencies.”[194] It must be remembered that there were two considerations back of anything that Sun Yat-sen said concerning national ownership: first, China had already ventured into broad national ownership of communications and transport, even though these were in bad condition and heavily indebted; second, there was no question of expropriation of capital, but rather the free alternative of public and private industry. An incidental problem that arises in connection with the joint development of the country by public and by private capital is the use of foreign capital. Sun Yat-sen was opposed to imperialism, but he did not believe that the use of foreign capital at fair rates of interest constituted submission to imperialism. He said, in Canton, “ ... we shall certainly have to borrow foreign capital in order to develop means of communication and transportation, and we cannot do otherwise than have recourse to those foreigners who are men of knowledge and of experience to manage these industries.”[195] It may thus be said that Sun Yat-sen had no fixed prejudice against private capital or against foreign capital, when properly and justly regulated, although in general he favored the ownership of large enterprises by the state.
Second—to follow again Professor Coker—the Western empirical collectivists favor labor legislation, and government intervention for the protection of the living standards of the working classes. This, while it did not figure [pg 150] conspicuously in the theories of Sun Yat-sen,[196] was a striking feature of all his practical programs.[197] In his address to Chinese labor, on the international Labor Day, 1924, he urged that Chinese labor organize in order to fight for its own cause and that of national liberation. It had nothing to fear from Chinese capitalism, but everything from foreign imperialistic capitalism.[198] Sun did not make a special hero class out of the workers; he did, however, advocate their organization for the purpose of getting their just share of the national wealth, and for resistance to the West and Japan.
Third, the empirical collectivist tends to advocate price-control by the state, if not over the whole range of commodities, at least in certain designated fields. Sun was, has been stated, in favor of the regulation of capital at all points, and of public ownership in some. This naturally implies an approval of price-control. He more specifically objected to undue profits by middlemen, when, in discussing salesmen, he said: “Under ideal conditions, society does not need salesmen or any inducement to buy. If a thing is good, and the price reasonable, it should sell itself on its own merits without any salesmanship. This vast army of middlemen should hence be made to remember that they should expect no more from the nonproductive calling in which they are engaged than any other citizen obtains through harder labor.”[199] In this, too, [pg 151] min shêng coincides with empirical collectivism; the coincidence is made easy by the relative vagueness of the latter.
Fourth, in the words of Mr. Coker, “many collectivists look upon taxation as a rational and practical means for reducing extreme differences in wealth and for achieving other desired economic changes.”[200] Sun Yat-sen agrees with this definitely; his land policy is one based upon taxation and confiscation of the amount of the unearned increment (which, not involving the confiscation of the land itself, is perhaps also taxation), and proposes to apply taxes extensively. Quite apart from the question of distributive justice, a heavy tax burden would be necessary in a country which was being rigorously developed.
Fifth, empirical collectivists believe in land control, not only in the cities, but in the open country as well, as a matter of agrarian reform. We have seen that the land figured extensively in the ideology of min shêng, and shall observe that Sun Yat-sen, in his plans for min shêng, stressed the importance of proper control of land.
In summing up the theory of distributive justice which forms a third part of the principle of min shêng, one may say that, as far as any comparison between a Chinese and a Western idea is valid, the positive social-revolutionary content of min shêng coincides with the doctrines of that group of Western politico-economic writers whom Coker calls empirical collectivists. The correspondence between the two may not be a mere coincidence of names, for in considering Sun Yat-sen's min shêng, one is struck by the empirical, almost opportunistic, nature of the [pg 152] theory. A great part of the activity of the Chinese, whether material or intellectual, has been characterized by a sort of opportunism; not necessarily an opportunism of insincerity, it may be more aptly described as a tendency to seek the golden mean, the reasonable in any situation. It is this habit of compromise with circumstance, this bland and happy disregard of absolutes in theory, which has preserved—with rare exceptions—the Chinese social mind from the torment of any really bitter and profound religious conflict, and which may, in these troubled times, keep even the most irreconcilable enemies from becoming insane with intolerance. This fashion of muddling through, of adhering to certain traditional general rules of reasonableness, while rendering lip-service to the doctrines of the moment, has been the despair of many Western students of China, who, embittered at the end, accuse the Chinese of complete insincerity. They do not realize that it is the moderateness of the Confucian ideology, the humane and conciliatory outlook that centuries of cramped civilized life have given the Chinese, that is the basis of this, and that this indisposition to adopt hard and fast systems has been one of the ameliorating influences in the present period of serious intellectual antagonisms. Generalizations concerning China are rarely worth much. It may be, however, that the doctrine of min shêng, with respect to its positive socio-economic content, may appear vague to the Western student, and that he may surmise it to be a mere cloak for demagogues. It could easily do that in the West, or in the hands of insincere and unscrupulous leaders. In China, however, it need not necessarily have been formulated more positively than it was, because, as we have seen, the intellectual temper of the Chinese makes any strict adherence to a schedule or a plan impossible. It is easy, always, to render the courtesies; it is hard to follow the specific content. Sun Yat-sen apparently [pg 153] realized this, and wished to leave a general body of doctrine which could be followed and which would not be likely to be violated. In any case, the theses of min shêng, both ideologically and programmatically, can scarcely be contrasted with the detailed schedules of social revolution to be found in the West.
Sun Yat-sen's frequent expressions of sympathy with communism and socialism, and his occasional identification of the large principles of min shêng with them, are an indication of his desire for ultimate collectivism. (It may be remarked, in passing, that Sun Yat-sen used the word collectivist in a much more rigid sense than that employed by Coker.) His concessions to the economic situation of his time, the pragmatic, practical method in which he conceived and advocated his plans, are a manifestation of the empirical element in his collectivism.
Ming shêng cannot, however, be thought of as another Western doctrine for national economic strength, national economic reconstitution, and national distributive justice; it is also a program for the improvement of the morale of the people.
How is the min shêng doctrine to fit in with the essentially conservative spirit of the nationalist ideology? If, as Sun proposed, the new ideology is to be compounded of the old morality, the old knowledge, and modern physical science, how is min shêng, referring to social as well as material programs, to be developed in harmony with the old knowledge? In the terminology of ultramodern Western political science, the ethical, the moral, and the emotional are likely to appear as words of derision. In a milieu characterized by the curiously warmblooded social outlook of the Confucians, such terms are still relevant to reality, still significant in the lives of men. The sentimental is intangible in politics; for that reason it is hard to fit into contemporary thought, but [pg 154] though it cannot be measured and fully understood, its potency cannot be disregarded; and for Sun Yat-sen it was of the utmost importance.
Min Shêng as an Ethical Doctrine.
Reference has been made to the Confucian doctrine of jên, the fellow-feeling of all mankind—each man's consciousness of membership in society. This doctrine was formulated in a society unacquainted with Greek logic, nor did it have the strange European emphasis upon sheer intellectuality which has played its way through Western thought. Not, of course, as profoundly introspective as Christianity, nor appealing so distinctly to the mystical in man's nature, it was nevertheless concerned with man's inner life, as well as with the ethics of his outward behavior. The Confucian was suffused throughout with the idea of virtue; the moral and the physical were inextricably intertwined. Its non-logical content scarcely approached the form of a religion; commentators on the old ideology have not called it religious, despite the prominence of beliefs in the supernatural.[201] The religion of the Chinese has been this-worldly,[202] but it has not on that account been indifferent to the subjective aspects of the moral life.[203]
The nationalist ideology was designed as the inheritor of and successor to, the old ideology of China. The doctrine [pg 155] of nationalism narrowed the field of the application of Confucianism from the whole civilized world to the state-ized society of the Chinese race-nation. The doctrine of democracy implemented the old teachings of popular power and intellectual leadership with a political mechanism designed to bring forth the full strength of both. And the doctrine of min shêng was the economic application of the old social ethos.
It is in this last significance, rather than in any of its practical meanings of recovery, development, and reform, that Sun Yat-sen spoke most of it to one of his followers.[204] He was concerned with it as a moral force. His work was, among other things, a work of moral transformation of individual motives.[205] Min shêng must, in addition to its other meanings be regarded as an attempt to extend the Chinese ideology to economic matters, to lead the Chinese to follow their old ethics. Sun Yat-sen had ample time in his visits to the West to observe the ravages that modern civilization had inflicted upon the older Western [pg 156] moral life, and did not desire that China should also follow the same course. The humanity of the old tradition must be kept by the Chinese in their venture into the elaborate and dangerous economy of modern life; the machine civilization was needed, and was itself desirable,[206] but it could not overthrow the humane civilization that preceded it and was to continue on beneath and throughout it.
In this manner a follower of Sun Yat-sen seeks to recall his words: “I should say that min shêng focuses our ethical tradition even more than the other two principles; after a Chinese has become nationalistic and democratic, he will become socialized through the idea of his own personality as an instrument of good for human welfare. In this proud feeling of importance to and for the world, egotism gives way to altruism.... So, I say again that min shêng is an ethical endeavor ... this, the final principle (and yet, the first principle which I discovered, in the bitterness and poverty of my boyhood days), will come imperceptibly into our lives.”[207]
In a philosophy for intellectuals such attitudes need not, perhaps, be reckoned with; in an ideology for revolution and reconstitution, perhaps they should. Sun Yat-sen conceived of his own work and his ideology not only as political acts but as moral forces; min shêng was at once to invigorate the national economy, to industrialize the material civilization, and to institute distributive justice, and in addition to this, it was to open a new, humane epoch in economic relations. That is why the term, instead of being translated, is left in the Chinese: min shêng.