[Editor's note].
What is modern civilization and what are its elements? What is the meaning of the rule of law, and what is its place and role in modern civilization? How can we build our modern nation? These questions are very important, although there is a set of official explanations, but you may wish to look at other people's opinions, maybe you will be inspired, can cause you to further independent thinking.
Some domestic netizens concluded: There are four signs that a country has entered modern civilization: one is political democratization, the second is the nationalization of the army, the third is the marketization of the economy, and the fourth is the rule of law in society. This is a more macro perspective, and I still agree with the point of view of the following article.
With regard to private property, the article says: In modern society, independent property rights are not only the basis for individual independence and freedom, but also the guarantee of modern democracy. Only when property rights are not infringed upon can social interests tend to be pluralistic and dispersed, and can the forces restraining power obtain the soil on which they depend. Property rights are an extension of the person himself and cannot be separated from the person. The right to property equals, or even values, the right to human life. Therefore, laws, institutions, parliaments, states, etc. are not forms or organizations that give people property rights, they appear to protect property rights. Anyone who questions private property is in contradiction.
Our biggest problem is that there are still many people who regard private ownership as a beast and entrepreneurs as evil capitalists, and they spare no effort to attack and suppress private enterprises, resulting in the gradual decline of the private economy.
Regarding the rule of law, the article says: Ancient Chinese civilization, based on the patriarchal structure, developed a set of centralized power system, allowing the emperor to override everything, control life and death to seize power, and everyone is loyal to the emperor. The advantage of this system is that it has built up ultra-stable social institutions, which has brought several "prosperous times" to China, but it has also paid a heavy price: no one can control their own destiny and achieve real stability and dignity, and the end result is that the entire country and nation have lost their creativity, and the people have not been able to grow a vibrant business system. The Western civilization model, which assumes that everyone is equal, cooperates and communicates with each other through a set of definite rules and contract systems, gradually pulling more and more countries and regions into the same cooperation network. The Western model brought not only commercial prosperity and individual power, but also the power to restrain royal power. On the basis of the material wealth brought about by the prosperity of commerce, individual rights and the power to restrain the royal power went hand in hand, and gradually grew into the rule of law that we are familiar with. The transition from "power" as the core to "rights" as the core is the most important symbol that distinguishes the modern rule of law from ancient law. The modern rule of law also requires that "power" be confined to the cage of the contract. For private power, "nothing prohibited by law can be done"; As for public power, "nothing can be done without the authorization of the law", and the combination of the two is the complete connotation of the modern rule of law.
However, many of us still understand the rule of law as the use of the rule of law to rule the people, and advocate strict punishment and strict law, and even believe that public power "can be done without prohibition by law", and public power "cannot be done without authorization from the law", which is exactly the opposite of the connotation of modern rule of law. It can be seen that we still have a long way to go to build a country ruled by law, and we are still far from modern civilization.
[Text].
Four key words of modern civilization
Text: Nalan Editor: Prophet Bookstore.
We often talk about the concept of modern civilization, what is the difference between it and ancient civilization? The famous British historical jurist Main summarized this in "Ancient Law" as: "From identity to contract". The summary of 6 words seems simple, but it is rich in connotation, and we interpret it from four aspects.
1. Personal freedom
In the modern context, freedom means that individuals are bound only by the law and do not have to worry about the arbitrariness of a person or group of people having their freedom restricted.
The individual freedom of modern man is embodied in the right to freely express his opinion, the right to choose and practise a profession, the right to move without permission or motives, and, above all, the right to dispose freely of property.
There is a proverb in jurisprudence:The end of one's freedom is the beginning of another's freedom. This is a classic expression of the limits of individual freedom, within which individuals have full autonomy over their rights.
But the same word "freedom" was understood very differently by the ancients. The French political thinker Gunsdown, when he examined the freedom of ancient man and the freedom of modern man, found that even in a civilized city-state like Athens, freedom only meant political freedom, at the cost of being deprived of the freedom of the private sphere.
Gunsdown summed it up this way: "As a citizen, he can decide war and peace; As an individual, all his actions are restricted, monitored, and suppressed; As a member of a collective organization, he could interrogate, dismiss, denounce, deprive him of property, exile, or impose the death penalty on his consuls or superiors; As a subject of the collective, he may also be deprived of his status, deprived of his privileges, exiled, and even executed by the arbitrary will of the whole to which he belongs. ”
In other words, in ancient times, man did not have the concept of individual freedom, man was only a machine, and its gears and transmissions were regulated by law. Individuals are engulfed by the state, and citizens are engulfed by the city.
Gunsdown's views echo those of Main. Ancient societies are identity societies, individuals do not enjoy independent rights, those things that seem to be "rights" are actually some kind of extension of the collective, in ancient civilization, the individual is only an instrumental existence.
2. Property rights
In modern society, independent property rights are not only the basis of individual independence and freedom, but also the guarantee of modern democracy. Only when property rights are not infringed upon can social interests tend to be pluralistic and dispersed, and can the forces restraining power obtain the soil on which they depend.
Although ancient societies also had property rights, they often belonged not to the individual but to the collective. This kind of collective is sometimes expressed as a family, sometimes as a clan, sometimes as a village, but the common feature is that the property is common and indivisible.
Professor Main examines the traditions of primitive Indian villages and finds that although property transactions existed in ancient societies, they were not based on individuals, but on the groups to which they belonged. The transfer of collective property often requires the approval of all members, so the transfer of property is often accompanied by a variety of symbolic ceremonies in order to make the entire transaction deeply imprinted in the minds of each collective member.
In fact, in ancient societies, even collective or clan property was at risk of being confiscated at any time. Under the monarch, the personal fate is up and down, and it is between the thought of the monarch. Therefore, everyone except the king faces great uncertainty.
Nowadays, people are aware of the existence of property rights, which is an important advance in modern civilization. However, there are still many misunderstandings and deficiencies in the understanding of property rights.
For example, many people will equate wealth with property rights, thinking that protecting property rights means protecting the interests of the rich and infringing on the interests of the poor. or the right to retain property is equated with "equality of wealth"; There are also people who believe that there is a law before there is a property right; Property rights are the product of a well-functioning ** or a powerful state; Property rights imply.
These perceptions ignore or simply do not know the nature of property rights.
The famous French economist Bastiat said: ".Man is a natural owner of property, because he is born with the necessities to sustain his life, and he is born with the organs and abilities necessary to satisfy these needs. Capabilities are an extension of the person himself, and property rights are an extension of those abilities.
That is to say,Property rights are an extension of the person himself and cannot be separated from the person. The right to property equals, or even values, the right to human life.
Therefore, laws, institutions, parliaments, states, etc. are not forms or organizations that give people property rights, they appear to protect property rights.
Starting from this fundamental level, Hopper, the new generation leader of the Austrian school of economics, raised property rights to the level of ethics. Different from the arguments of economists in the political and economic fields in the past, Hopper's theory puts property rights before all human activities, and becomes the first principle with a dominant position.
"The normative basis on which the knowledge and search for truth rests is the recognition of the right to private property," Hope said. In this sense, anyone who questions private property is in contradiction.
3. Commerce
Ancient civilizations are almost synonymous with agricultural civilizations. In the context of agricultural civilization, the production technology is relatively backward, the production efficiency is relatively low, and the expansion of scale is the most important means to increase production, so the competition for land is very fierce. This inevitably led to the prevalence of martial spirit and belligerent ideas, with each nation endlessly attacking or being attacked by its neighbors. All nations have had to pay the price of war for security, independence and existence itself.
But this situation is gradually broken with the development of technology and the expansion of collaboration, and the progress of means of transportation and means of communication has made transaction fees lower and lower, and one civilization has the opportunity to exchange with another civilization far away. It was gradually discovered that the benefits of business were far greater than those of war. This laid the material foundation for modern civilization.
Commercial development must be based on the private property system, and the driving force of commercial development must be each individual person. Because essentially, the value of business is the satisfaction of personal needsWithout the expansion of individual freedom, there can be no commercial prosperity.
Without authoritative intervention, business satisfies people's desires to the greatest extent and inspires people's love for personal independence.
Authoritative intervention has always been in a dilemma when it comes to meeting individual needs: every time collective power wants to think in place of the individual, it intrudes on the thinker. Every time ** claims to do something for us, it is more incompetent and expensive than doing it ourselves.
In 1776, Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations was published. In the book, Smith advocated "laissez-faire" and emphasized that the country could only develop and prosper fully if there were no restrictions on internal and external commerce. In Smith's view, man's self-interest is the driving force of all economic behavior.
He said".Everyone constantly strives to find the most advantageous use of the capital at their disposal. Of course, he had his own interests in mind. But his concern for his own interests will, or rather, inevitably lead him to favor the most socially beneficial uses. It's like having an 'invisible hand' guiding him to do his best to achieve his goal.
Thus, a civilization that is prosperous enough for commerce to keep authority out of the cracks in the personal sphere is another manifestation of the guarantee of individual freedom by commerce. In turn, the creativity and drive that comes with individual freedom can further promote the development of business civilization.
The Wealth of Nations delineates the most basic principles for modern commercial civilization and sets the tone for the study of economics, so it is called "the bible of Western economics". But The Wealth of Nations is more than that. On the occasion of the 200th anniversary of the publication of The Wealth of Nations, the famous economist Coase lamented that although modern economics is becoming more and more mature and its analysis is becoming more and more complex, there are still few insights that surpass Adam Smith's wisdom in the operation of the economic system.
Fourth, the rule of law
Whether in the East or in the West, large or small, the history of the development of civilization has solved the difficult problem of how to merge a small community linked by blood into a larger, large-scale cooperation of strangers. This is not so much a historical mission as an unstoppable trend. And this trend is not only the cause of business development, but also the result of business development.
In the process of solving the above problems, China was the first ancient civilization to come up with a complete solution. The method is to develop a set of centralized power system based on the patriarchal structure, so that the emperor is above everything, controlling the power of life and death, and everyone is loyal to the emperor.
The advantage of this system is that it has established ultra-stable social institutions, which has brought several "prosperous times" to China, but it has also paid a heavy price: no one can control their own destiny and achieve a truly stable and dignified life, and even the emperor himself is sometimes unable to protect himself, and the end result is that the entire country and nation have lost their creativity, and the people have not been able to grow a dynamic commercial system.
Westerners are much more "late-sighted" than we are, and while China dominated the East, the West groped for thousands of years in chaos. However, in the thirty years of Hedong and thirty years of Hexi, although the West failed to develop a highly developed centralized system, it inadvertently touched another civilization model.
This new civilization was gradually established in the process of disintegration of identity relations, which assumed that everyone was equal, and cooperated and interacted with each other through a set of definite rule systems and contract systems, gradually pulling more and more countries and regions into the same collaborative network.
The Western model brought not only commercial prosperity and individual power, but also the power to restrain royal power. On the basis of the material wealth brought about by the prosperity of commerce, individual rights and the power to restrain the royal power went hand in hand, and gradually grew into the rule of law that we are familiar with.
The word "rule of law" seems commonplace, but it is an important symbol of modern civilization. In ancient societies, there were laws, but they were often laws under the king, or more bluntly, laws governing the common people. The people had a duty of obedience, but no right to be secured. The transition from "power" as the core to "rights" as the core is the most important symbol that distinguishes the modern rule of law from ancient law.
It is not enough for "power" to give up its central position, another important issue of modern rule of law is to limit "power" to the cage of contract. "If the law does not prohibit it, it can be done" here becomes "it cannot be done without the authorization of the law", and the combination of the two is the complete connotation of the modern rule of law.
Therefore, Wang Jianxun pointed out in the book "Domesticating Leviathan": "The core of the 'rule of law' is to use rules to restrain the behavior of all people, including those who hold power, and to demarcate boundaries for their actions." This requires not only that the rules be promulgated in advance through due process, but also that the rules are effectively enforced and that violations of the rules be adjudicated fairly. ”
Even so, the rule of law will still be challenged by power and ideology, and will become a "rule of evil laws". To this end, after a long period of exploration and practice, human beings have put forward the concept of limited **, as the highest form of the rule of law, giving the rule of law an additional layer of protection.
The rule of law is not the embodiment of the will of any person or organization, but the "basic consensus" of all members of the community; The rule of law is not a tool for enriching countries and strengthening their armies or maintaining social stability. The rule of law has and only serves the sole purpose of limiting power and guaranteeing the freedoms and rights of individuals.
Hayek said, "If a man is not required to obey anyone, but to the law, then he is free". Freedom does not come automatically, nor can it be done once and for all, so we need to be very vigilant about violations of freedom.
To sum up, modern civilization has gone all the way in the transformation from "identity to contract", and individual freedom, property rights, commerce and the rule of law have gone hand in hand, interlocking and showing its competitiveness more and more. The answer to this question is not only about the development of the modern nation, but also about the most basic happiness of every individual.