I’m suspicious of the general idea that all we need is to implement some particular institution, and there is no role for ex-post judgement to evaluate outcomes. It’s a very deep idea in Western ideologies. The neo-liberals say all we need are competitive markets, and the only policy prescription is to correct market failures so they become more like the ideal competitive market. Or the idea that all we need are elections, and there is no need for consultations and engagement with people in between elections. And now, all we need is to implement and enforce laws!
Why is there such a strong desire for “one ring to rule them all” solution in Western philosophy?
I don’t know about imperial China, but the current CCP led government long abandoned any idea that there is a perfect institution (eg equal distribution of property, public ownership, etc). Rather, the overall philosophy is the one that Deng espouses: to cross the river by feeling for stones; or it doesn’t matter whether the cat is black or white as long as it catches rats! That is, we need a government that takes nothing for granted and continually engages with the people to ensure that their reasonable aspirations are met.
As much as I appreciate economic insights of the physiocrats, particularly Quesnay’s Economic Tableau, there are fundamental misconceptions in the whole edifice of their social and societal views. For one the definition of ‘natural laws’ - private property certainly is not a natural law but a corollary of profit driven social division of labor. The same goes for personal freedom as specified by liberal westerrn enlightenment, which in a truly free society needs to be subordinated to collective freedom. However, the point is not merely to reject liberal values of equality and freedom but to elevate them beyond the individual in civil society to the level of collective freedom - free from the constraints of wage labor and class society.
Individuality can not be fully developed if the individual is separated from the collective - contrary to what liberal western ideology strenuously promotes as a fundamental achievment - isolated individual entitlement to anything a highly commercialized neoliberal ‘free market’ world is advertising - based on the capitalist competitive law of the jungle, no matter what the cost for society as a collective entity. Marx statement that ‘Society does not consist of individuals, but expresses the sum of relationships and conditions in which these individuals stand to one another’ is clearly phrasing the significance of the category of collectivity in society. Western personal freedom - which means unlimitited and reckless entitlement - is not an achievement - it is a fundamental capitalist disease. Thus the predominate definitions of 'personal freedom' do not hold.
Progress that benefits society and the whole population takes precedence over individual liberties - a communist principle enacted by the Communist Party of China and just recently stressed by Xi-Jinping.
Another fundamental flaw is the view that a 'well educated' strata of people - the ‘right people’ using the ‘right principles’ - should run the nation. It always has been the elites to specify those 'right principles' and having themselves put in a position to represent the 'right people'. The constitution of the US based upon the thinking of the founding fathers - Those who own the nation should rule it - is a striking example. Anyone can see how this turned out. That is exactly what is leading to liberal oligarchies thinly veiled as so called democracies - either the contemporary west or state dominated bureaucracies of the late Sovietunion. It is institutionalized class opression by the elites regardless if there is a legitimized supreme leader or not. Therefore institutions established as ruling bodies by elitist law are deeply suspicious since their purpose is to serve power and the interest of the ruling class - that might be what the physiocrats had in mind when talking about a desired equilibrium between public and private interest.
To paraphrase Michael Parenti - Those who make the laws - the oligarchic clique - represents its own privileged special interests as tantamount to the general interest.
The elites and the bourgeois middle class strata, who put their entitlement and individual privileges before the wellbeing of the collective and society as a whole, act like this strata and their interests were representative of society.
What's more, establishing that perfect equilibrium between the private and the public interest is a deceptive illusion at best, given the dynamics of any kind of capitalist societies.
It is not the rule 'for the people' but the rule 'by the people' - that is why there is no justifiable ruling as long as it is not a rule by the people - no leaders but collective rule by legal bodies representing the people - communes, councils, soviets - whatever you call it - unshackled from the ruling of an elitist class to permanently voicing the collective needs of society. Institutions and the state gradually have to wither away - as Lenin extensively elaborated in 'State And Revolution'
You had recently noted that China’s policies under Xi have re-orientated towards guaranteeing social stability rather maximising economic growth. This was arguably the chief objective of the imperial system that the Physiocrats professed to admire. The mandarinate was more clearly meritocratic than the administrative arrangement in Europe at the time of the Physiocrats and beyond. However, when the Chinese and European polities collided less than a century later, the European system allowing for greater ‘natural selection’ in the completion within and across countries proved decisively superior.
"Once the natural laws (“la loi naturelle” or even “physiocracy”, the term apparently invented by Quesnay who liked to play with Greek neologisms) that consist in personal freedom, private property and security of person, are discovered, there is not much more that a society needs to do but enforce them."
they sound like American Libertarians. nothing good comes from those people.
please define "natural laws" and how to discover them. if this is easy, then they should be universal or at least should show regularity with small, meaningless cultural variations, right?
The original caste system was based upon aptitudes. Nepotism, the family, destroyed it.
We see resistance against that when eunuchs were made the most powerful, but subversion from the outside will always damage any system.
The enforcement system became the aristocracy and now, the merchant classes have bought out all governments they can.
The system will break down again, preparing the way for a struggle involving the survivors. Not tomorrow, not this decade nor the next. The cause will not be human. Surprise! It is recurring.
Many families already know the cause. They are preparing for the aftermath. Controlling industries and nations, they must be stripped of that domination. Since they will retreat to their basements, bunkers etc, they should be given the same treatment allowed Salazar.
I’m suspicious of the general idea that all we need is to implement some particular institution, and there is no role for ex-post judgement to evaluate outcomes. It’s a very deep idea in Western ideologies. The neo-liberals say all we need are competitive markets, and the only policy prescription is to correct market failures so they become more like the ideal competitive market. Or the idea that all we need are elections, and there is no need for consultations and engagement with people in between elections. And now, all we need is to implement and enforce laws!
Why is there such a strong desire for “one ring to rule them all” solution in Western philosophy?
I don’t know about imperial China, but the current CCP led government long abandoned any idea that there is a perfect institution (eg equal distribution of property, public ownership, etc). Rather, the overall philosophy is the one that Deng espouses: to cross the river by feeling for stones; or it doesn’t matter whether the cat is black or white as long as it catches rats! That is, we need a government that takes nothing for granted and continually engages with the people to ensure that their reasonable aspirations are met.
***
As much as I appreciate economic insights of the physiocrats, particularly Quesnay’s Economic Tableau, there are fundamental misconceptions in the whole edifice of their social and societal views. For one the definition of ‘natural laws’ - private property certainly is not a natural law but a corollary of profit driven social division of labor. The same goes for personal freedom as specified by liberal westerrn enlightenment, which in a truly free society needs to be subordinated to collective freedom. However, the point is not merely to reject liberal values of equality and freedom but to elevate them beyond the individual in civil society to the level of collective freedom - free from the constraints of wage labor and class society.
Individuality can not be fully developed if the individual is separated from the collective - contrary to what liberal western ideology strenuously promotes as a fundamental achievment - isolated individual entitlement to anything a highly commercialized neoliberal ‘free market’ world is advertising - based on the capitalist competitive law of the jungle, no matter what the cost for society as a collective entity. Marx statement that ‘Society does not consist of individuals, but expresses the sum of relationships and conditions in which these individuals stand to one another’ is clearly phrasing the significance of the category of collectivity in society. Western personal freedom - which means unlimitited and reckless entitlement - is not an achievement - it is a fundamental capitalist disease. Thus the predominate definitions of 'personal freedom' do not hold.
Progress that benefits society and the whole population takes precedence over individual liberties - a communist principle enacted by the Communist Party of China and just recently stressed by Xi-Jinping.
Another fundamental flaw is the view that a 'well educated' strata of people - the ‘right people’ using the ‘right principles’ - should run the nation. It always has been the elites to specify those 'right principles' and having themselves put in a position to represent the 'right people'. The constitution of the US based upon the thinking of the founding fathers - Those who own the nation should rule it - is a striking example. Anyone can see how this turned out. That is exactly what is leading to liberal oligarchies thinly veiled as so called democracies - either the contemporary west or state dominated bureaucracies of the late Sovietunion. It is institutionalized class opression by the elites regardless if there is a legitimized supreme leader or not. Therefore institutions established as ruling bodies by elitist law are deeply suspicious since their purpose is to serve power and the interest of the ruling class - that might be what the physiocrats had in mind when talking about a desired equilibrium between public and private interest.
To paraphrase Michael Parenti - Those who make the laws - the oligarchic clique - represents its own privileged special interests as tantamount to the general interest.
The elites and the bourgeois middle class strata, who put their entitlement and individual privileges before the wellbeing of the collective and society as a whole, act like this strata and their interests were representative of society.
What's more, establishing that perfect equilibrium between the private and the public interest is a deceptive illusion at best, given the dynamics of any kind of capitalist societies.
It is not the rule 'for the people' but the rule 'by the people' - that is why there is no justifiable ruling as long as it is not a rule by the people - no leaders but collective rule by legal bodies representing the people - communes, councils, soviets - whatever you call it - unshackled from the ruling of an elitist class to permanently voicing the collective needs of society. Institutions and the state gradually have to wither away - as Lenin extensively elaborated in 'State And Revolution'
You had recently noted that China’s policies under Xi have re-orientated towards guaranteeing social stability rather maximising economic growth. This was arguably the chief objective of the imperial system that the Physiocrats professed to admire. The mandarinate was more clearly meritocratic than the administrative arrangement in Europe at the time of the Physiocrats and beyond. However, when the Chinese and European polities collided less than a century later, the European system allowing for greater ‘natural selection’ in the completion within and across countries proved decisively superior.
"Once the natural laws (“la loi naturelle” or even “physiocracy”, the term apparently invented by Quesnay who liked to play with Greek neologisms) that consist in personal freedom, private property and security of person, are discovered, there is not much more that a society needs to do but enforce them."
they sound like American Libertarians. nothing good comes from those people.
please define "natural laws" and how to discover them. if this is easy, then they should be universal or at least should show regularity with small, meaningless cultural variations, right?
The original caste system was based upon aptitudes. Nepotism, the family, destroyed it.
We see resistance against that when eunuchs were made the most powerful, but subversion from the outside will always damage any system.
The enforcement system became the aristocracy and now, the merchant classes have bought out all governments they can.
The system will break down again, preparing the way for a struggle involving the survivors. Not tomorrow, not this decade nor the next. The cause will not be human. Surprise! It is recurring.
Many families already know the cause. They are preparing for the aftermath. Controlling industries and nations, they must be stripped of that domination. Since they will retreat to their basements, bunkers etc, they should be given the same treatment allowed Salazar.
I suppose you have read Florence Gauthier's article Political economy in the eighteenth century – Popular or despotic? The Physiocrats against the right to existence, http://et.worldeconomicsassociation.org/papers/political-economy-in-the-eighteenth-century-popular-or-despotic-the-physiocrats-against-the-right-to-existence/.
According to her, the physiocrats demanded an iron-fist against everything that meddled with the market. Their chance came with the flour wars.