For today's Chinese society, starting from the rule of law, it is not only in line with the needs of the ruling party, but also the objective laws of social development.(AFP)
Today, Chinese society is facing a severe crisis of social trust.The dislikes exist between different units, between the government and the people, between different social groups, and between different individuals. They also exist within a unit, within the government, inside the organization, and even family members.It can be said that there is no perforation and no entry, everywhere.
Of course, the crisis of trust is comparison. It can be compared with other society or compared with the past Chinese society.As far as Chinese itself is concerned, people don't want to fantasize how much social trust was in the past.When it comes to the crisis of trust, some people point to reform and opening up, and believe that the development since the reform and opening up has caused today's crisis of trust.In fact, since the early modern Westerners have been in contact with Chinese society, they have discovered the different degrees and different mechanisms of social trust in the East and West.
Since Montesquien has descended, western scholars mostly emphasize social order when discussing western social trust and its formation mechanism, because this natural order is based on the mutual trust of members of society; society is not just one of the oneThe community of interests is also a community of trust.Western laws are based on natural order, and they also exist to maintain this order.In comparison, in traditional China, both the ritual and the law, the goal of the two lies in social control, is a top -down control.Because of the top -down control, the lack of natural order from the bottom up, the crisis of social trust can occur at any time.
Of course, the association between natural order and social trust can be controversial.Even in the West, the formation of the legal system was not as natural as these theorists said, but the reflection of the interests of the ruling class at that time, to a large extent, and it was also applied from top to bottom.However, the association between social trust and social interests is obvious.One thing is worthy of emphasis here, that is, all the control of one party's control of the other will inevitably occur.
So, how does social trust happen and develop?This can only be discussed from comparison, and people can be discussed at least from the following three levels.
First, Kant's inner moral rhythm.This is the foundation or source of the deepest social trust.Moral laws come from religion, philosophy or national spirit. It is a product of a long -term accumulation of a country or nation.
Second, social community.The community of society itself is changing. From the face -to -face groups of primitive society, to different forms of local communities before modern times, it has developed to large communities in modern times as a unit.No matter what kind of community, it is composed of a whole set of rules and specifications, whether it is formal or not formal.Without this set of rules and specifications, it is not a community.
Third, law.The law can be divided into positive and inductive, that is, the rules that must be complied with a community must be complied with.It is natural. Different civilizations and society have different behavioral norms, and the interaction between them will also have conflicts.Therefore, a society with a nation as the main body like Japan and South Korea is high; while the diverse ethnic society or immigrant society, the trust will be relatively low. Globalization will lead to more and more social conflicts.Because the flow of population often causes low trust between different groups.
Fourth, punishment of punitive law, that is, punish the behavior that does not comply with the standards of behavior, so that it pays the price, thereby forcing it to comply with the norms.This can be said to be a social trust.Even if people do not accept it, as long as their behavior meets these specifications, its behavior can be expected, so it will have a certain credibility.
Traditional Chinese ceremony has evolved into the party discipline
Example to return to China.Traditionally, neither etiquette and law are universal, and they are specifically targeted at different social groups.As Fei Xiaotong said, the ritual itself has a differential pattern.The emperors and scholars, farmers, workers, and business have their own gifts.Although there is social liquidity between the four classes, that is, the individual identity is connected between these classes, the rituals are not connected.The individual shifts from one class to the other class, and the rituals they follow also need to make corresponding conversions.The law is even more so.The law is mainly criminal law in Chinese culture, and the criminal law is only targeted at ordinary people, that is, the so -called punishment cannot be a doctor.
In this consciousness, China cannot produce laws in the West.The Western law is based on God and natural law.Because God and naturally are naturally metaphysical (or imagined), it is universal.For the West, it is not difficult to convert equality from people in front of God to equality in front of the law.Of course, this does not mean that Western society is also equal at the actual level, because the significance of the law is completely different from different social classes.
Chinese culture emphasizes the particularity. In today's terms, this particularity is a downright realism, because reality is inequality.Based on this reality, different groups in Chinese society have developed a gift that belongs to each group.(Traditional family law is a typical example. Every family can develop monks according to your own ideas and needs.) To a large extent, this tradition is still continuing to this day.
Although in modern times, China has accepted legal concepts similar to Western sense, at least theoretically emphasizing the equality of everyone in theory.But at the same time, it is difficult for China to give up the positive aspects of traditional culture, that is.The class of Chinese scholars (that is, the ruling class) for thousands of years, it cannot be said that it is useless.It is hard to imagine what kind of unrelated taxis are.Today, traditional rituals have evolved into the party discipline.In Chinese culture, no one will deny the rationality of the party discipline, and no one will imagine a ruling party without party discipline.But in fact, the party discipline is the law of the ruling party.Therefore, in China, there is the concept of laws and regulations within the party.
Westerners are difficult to understand this form of law.Whether it is the party discipline or the party's laws and regulations for the construction of the ruling party.But at the same time, if party discipline and party laws and regulations cannot be matched with general national laws, it will affect the establishment of social trust.Obviously, party discipline and party laws and regulations are punished and are the category of control, and it is difficult to become a conscious behavior of party members.Even in the party, some people talk about tiger color changes in party discipline and party laws and regulations.And this emotion can easily extend from the party to the entire society.To this day, most of the problems in Chinese society are still asking for relationships rather than law, which is a deep reason.
By the contemporary, the highly secularization of society also had a negative impact on social trust.Excessive secularization has made Chinese society, which originally lacked Kant's moral law, tend to speak only benefits, not to speak of spirit.With the changes in the social and economic structure, Chinese society has been fixed to flow.Once the society flows, the ritual in the traditional sense has lost its effect, let alone the traditional ritual itself has been destroyed.
The political and social movements since the May 4th Movement have constituted a fatal blow to the so -called feudal rituals of the traditional feudal ritual.Class concepts are introduced to deal with the relationship between social classes, and this concept itself is intended to destroy social trust in the interior or between the class to achieve social conflicts.
Experienced, artificially creating social groups, such as landlords and farmers, between migrant and proletarian, and between the government and the people, which is the most popular method in all revolutionary process in modern times.To this day, the concept of class has become a political culture. It is presented in different ways at different stages, and even manifested in the pursuit of democracyIn the middle.
There is no trust in the society.
Different society has different social trust, but if there is no degree of trust, a society will be unsustainable.As far as China is concerned, many contemporary development is actually providing a social and economic foundation for the emergence and development of new social trust, but unfortunately, these new trust factors are blocked by artificial factors.
The most significant is the development of civic society.Although the concept of civic society is born in the West, at the practical level, civic society is not an exclusive thing in the West.It is the product of capital flow, industrialization, urbanization, etc., or is an inevitable product of social development. Therefore, it is not so strong in itself.It's very simple. If the traditional community disintegrates, a new community will appear.The rapid development since China's reform and opening up has also led to the emergence of civic society, especially in regions with relatively developed economies.
The new community appeared, but it was regarded as a political threat by over -political interpretation, so it was artificially blocked.Under such circumstances, where is the moral law of capital, the moral law of workers, the moral law of farmers, and the moral law of the knowledge group?All these groups are composed of decentralized individuals, or consisting of atomic individuals that philosopher Hannah Arendt, then where does morality come from?Individual individuals cannot produce morality, because morality is collective.
Looking back at the traditional ceremony, if these social groups are not allowed to have certain autonomy and become a civic society, it will be difficult for them to develop their own gifts.Without gifts, they have no self -restraint mechanism and rules.
For China, to build social trust, it is more important to return to the concept of people.This is also the starting point of modern western society.People -oriented, people are the ontology of society.Although humans are inequality in reality, humans have an equal humanity.How to pursue equality on the basis of inequality?This is also a long process in the West, and it will also be an endless process.To put it bluntly, it is to realize the balance between the actual hierarchical society and the equal society in principle.It is impossible to be completely consistent between the two, but the tension between the two is exactly the motivation for social progress.Artificial control of this tension can only lead to more unequal society, which is a lower social trust.
If we realize that one party's control of the other party cannot have social trust, people must discover the natural factors in social development, and due to the situation, prompt society to develop a natural social trust mechanism.Although any society needs to control the mechanism, the setting of the control mechanism does not have to be artificially set according to political needs, and it can be set according to the laws of natural development.Social control costs designed according to the natural laws of society are lower and more effective.
In an increasingly secular society, people do not expect a social group with high moral self -discipline (such as early European aristocratic or Japanese samurai), but people can look forward to the emergence of a society -based society.The traditional Chinese passage of the imperial examinations, the implementation of virtuous politics, effectively hindered the emergence of European -style nobles, but also continued and strengthened the class of scholars.Li is the rules and norms of the class of scholars. It is not only the basis of the internal social trust of this class, but also the institutional foundation of other social classes.
If all social groups have a certain autonomy, the ceremony of modern versions is not completely impossible.For example, since the ruling party has party discipline or internal party laws and regulations, is it also allowed enterprises, farmers, and intellectuals to have their own laws and regulations?
What's more important is the construction of the rule of law.The rules and specifications (or rituals) of the internal social groups may not be contradictory and conflict with the law, just as there are no contradictions and conflicts between party discipline and national law.At present, some aspects are still not universal, because the docking between the two, such as the party discipline and national laws do not have effective docking.
Contemporary Chinese society, regardless of the specifications of the social group or the laws that have universal significance, have objective conditions. The development of industrialization, urbanization, commercialization, and mobile society requires universal laws.The behavioral norms, but at the same time, these development also requires that the social groups have their own rules and specifications.These two should be carried out at the same time.The rule of law in the broad sense includes these two levels, not just the text laws and regulations.
In a word, the importance of the rule of law is that it is the institutional foundation of establishing social trust, and it is also the final line of defense to prevent social trust.Without this line of defense, any social trust will become impossible.If the rule of law cannot be resolved, the crisis of social trust is inevitable.For today's Chinese society, starting from the rule of law, it is not only in line with the needs of the ruling party, but also the objective laws of social development.
(The author is a professor at the East Asia Research Institute of the National University of Singapore)
The article only represents personal point of view
