Chapter III. The Theory of Democracy.

Democracy in the Old World-Society.

In describing a few of the characteristics of the old ideology and the old society which may assist the clarification of the principle of democracy, it may prove useful to enter into a brief examination of what the word may mean in the West, to refer to some of the ideas and institutions of old China that were or were not in accord with the Western notion of democracy, and, finally, to see what connection Sun Yat-sen's theory of democracy may have either with the Western term or with elements in the Chinese background. Did Sun Yat-sen propound an entirely new theory as the foundation of his theory of democracy for the Chinese race-nation, or did he associate several hitherto unrelated ideas and systems to make a new whole?

The European word democracy may, for the purposes of this examination, be taken to have two parts to its meaning; first, with regard to the status of individuals in society; second, with respect to the allocation of political power in society. In the former sense, democracy may refer to an equalitarianism of status, or to a social mobility so easy and so general as to encourage the impression that position is a consequence of the behavior of the individual, and a fair gauge to his merit. In the latter part of the meaning, democracy may refer to the identification of the governed and the governors, or to the coincidence of the actions of the governors with the wishes of the governed. Each of these ideas—equalitarianism, free mobility, popular government, and representative government—has been referred to as the essence of democracy. One of them [pg 090] may lead to the discovery of a significance for democracy relevant to the scheme of things in the old Chinese society.

Egalitarianism and mobility were both present in old Chinese society. The Chinese have had neither an hereditary aristocracy equivalent to the Western, nor a caste-system resembling that of India or Japan, since the breakdown of the feudal system twenty-three centuries ago.109 The extra-legal egalitarianism of the Chinese has been so generally remarked upon by persons familiar with that nation, that further discussion of it here is superfluous. Birth has probably counted less in China than it has in any other country in the world.

The egalitarianism of intercourse was a powerful aid to social mobility. The Chinese never pretended to economic, political, or intellectual equality; the mere statement of such a doctrine would have been sufficient refutation of it to the members of the old society. Yet there were no gradations of weight beyond educational, political, and economic distinctions, and the organization of the old society was such that mobility in these was relatively free. Movement of an individual either upwards or downwards in the economic, political, or academic scale was retarded by the influence of the family, which acted as a drag either way. Movement was nevertheless continuous and conspicuous; a proof of this movement is to be found in the fact that there are really no supremely great families in China, comparable to the great names of Japan or of the Euramerican nations. (The closest approximation to this is the K'ung family, the family of Confucius; since the family is large, its eminence is scarcely more than nominal and it has no political power.).

Mobility in China was fostered by the political arrangements. The educational-administrative system provided a [pg 091] channel upwards and downwards. The government tended, for the most part, to be the way up, while the economic system was the way down for prominent official families. Few families managed to remain eminent for more than a few generations, and—with the great size of families—there was always room at the top. If a man were not advancing himself, there was always the possibility that a kinsman might win preferment, to the economic and political advantage of the whole family group.

Social relations—in the narrowest sense of the word—were characterized by an extreme attention to form as such, and great contempt for it otherwise. Ritualism never became a chivalry or a cult of honor. There was always the emphasis upon propriety and courtesy but, once the formalities were done with, there was little social distinction between members of different economic, political, or academic classes.110

In connection with control and representation, a great deal more can be said. In the first place, the relations between the governing ideologue in the Confucian teachings,111 and the governed accepters of the ideology in the Confucian system were to be discovered through yüeh.

[pg 092]

Yüeh, commonly translated “music” or “harmony,” plays a peculiar rôle in the Confucian teachings. It is the mass and individual emotional pattern, as li is the behavior pattern. If the people follow the proper behavior pattern, their emotional pattern must also be good. Consequently, the function of a truly excellent ruler was the scrutiny of yüeh. If he were a man of superior penetration, he should be able to feel the yüeh about him, and thus discover the temper of the populace, without reference to electoral machinery or any other government instrumentality. Yüeh is to be seen in the tone of voices, in the rhythm of behavior. If it is good, it will act with increasing effect upon itself. If bad, it serves as a warning to the authorities. As Prof. Hsü says, “For rulers and administrators yüeh has two uses; first, it enables them to ascertain the general sentiment of the people toward the government and political life; and second, it cultivates a type of individual attitude that is most harmonious with the environment. The joint work of li and yüeh would produce social harmony and social happiness—which is the ultimate aim of the State.”112

Yüeh is, however, a peculiar phenomenon, which can scarcely be called either representation or control. It is an idea rooted in the curiously pragmatic-mystical world-view of the Confucians, that same world-view which elevated virtue almost to the level of a physical substance, subject to the same sort of laws of disruption or transmission. Nothing like yüeh can be found in Western political thought; however significant it may have been in China, any attempt to deal with it in a Western language would have more than a touch of futility, because of the great chasm of strangeness that separates the two intellectual worlds at so many places.

A more concrete illustration of the old Chinese ideas of [pg 093] popular control may be found in the implications of political Confucianism, as Hsü renders them:

This summary could scarcely be improved upon although it represents a considerable latitude of interpretation in the subject-matter of the classics. The voice of the people was the voice of God. From other political writers of antiquity—Mêng Tzŭ, Mo Ti, Han Fei Tzŭ and the Legalists, and others—the Chinese received a variety of political interpretations, none of which fostered the development of autocracy as it developed in Europe.

[pg 094]

The reason for this is simple. In addition to the eventual popular control of government, and the necessity for the close attention of the government to the wishes of the people, the classical writers, for the most part, did not emphasize the position of government. With the increasing ideological solidarity of the Chinese world, the increasing antiquity and authority of tradition, and the stability of the social system, the Chinese states withered away—never completely, but definitely more so than their analogues in the West. There appeared, consequently, in China a form of laissez-faire that surpassed that of Europe completely in thoroughness. Not only were the economic functions of the state reduced to a minimum—so was its police activity. Old China operated with a government in reserve, as it were; a government which was nowhere nearly so important to its subjects as Western governments commonly are. The government system was one democratic in that it was rooted in a society without intransigeant class lines, with a considerable degree of social mobility for the individual, with the total number of individuals exercising a terrific and occasionally overwhelming pressure against the political system. And yet it was not the governmental system upon which old China might have based its claim to be a democracy. It could have, had it so wished, claimed that name because of the weakness or the absence of government, and the presence of other social organizations permitting the individual a considerable amount of latent pressure to exercise upon his social environment.

This arose from the nature of the large non-political organizations which sustained Chinese civilization even more than did the educational-administrative authorities. It is obvious that, in theory, a free and unassociated individual in a laissez-faire polity would be defenseless against extra-politically organized persons. The equities [pg 095] of modern democracy lie largely in the development of a check and balance system of pressure groups, affording each individual adequate means of exercising pressure on behalf of his various interests. It was this function—the development of a just statement of pressure-groups—which the old Chinese world-society developed for the sufficient representation of the individual.

There was no illusion of complete personal liberty. Such a notion was scarcely thinkable. Every individual had his family, his village, and—although this was by no means universally true—his hui, whether one or, less commonly, several. He was never left solitary and defenseless against powerfully organized interests. No more intimate community of interests could be discovered than that of a family, since the community of interests there would verge on the total. Ancient Chinese society provided the individual with mechanisms to make his interests felt and effective, through the family, the village, and the association.

In the West the line of influence runs from the individual, who feels a want, to the group which assists him in expressing it, to the government, upon which the group exercises pressure, in order that the government may use its power to secure what the first group wants from some other group. The line runs, as it were, in the following manner: individual-group-government-group. In China the group exercised its pressure for the most part directly. The individual need not incorporate himself in a group to secure the recognition and fulfillment of his interests; he was by birth a member of the group, and with the group was mobile. In a sense old Chinese society was thoroughly democratic.

On the basis of such a background, Sun Yat-sen did not believe that the Chinese had too much government, but, rather, too little. He did not cry for liberty; he denounced its excess instead. On the basis of the old social organization, which was fluid and yet stable, he sought to create a [pg 096] democracy which would pertain to the interests of the nation as a whole, not to the interests of individuals or groups. These could go on in the traditional manner. The qualifications implicit in Sun Yat-sen's championship of democracy must be kept in mind, and his acquaintance with the democratic techniques of the old society be allowed for. Otherwise his advocacy of the recognition of nationalist rights and his neglect or denunciation of individual liberties might be taken for the dogma of a lover of tyranny or dictatorship.

Old China possessed a considerable degree of egalitarianism, of social mobility, of popular control, and of popular participation, through the civil service, in what little government there was. In addition, ideological control ensured a minimum of conflicts of interests and consequently a maximum facility for self-expression without conflict with other individuals, groups, or society as a whole. Finally, the protection and advancement of individuals' rights and interests were fostered by a system of group relationships which bound virtually every individual into a group and left none to fall, solitary, at the mercy of others who were organized.

Why then did Sun Yat-sen advocate democracy? What were his justifications for it, in a society already so democratic?

Five Justifications of a Democratic Ideology.

Sun Yat-sen, realizing the inescapable necessity of nationalism, did not immediately turn to democracy as a necessary instrument for its promotion. He hated the Manchus on the Dragon Throne—human symbols of China's subjugation—but at first considered replacing them with a new Chinese dynasty. It was only after he had found the heirs of the Ming dynasty and the descendants [pg 097] of Confucius to be unworthy that he turned to republicanism and found democracy, with its many virtues.114 He early became enamored of the elective system, as found in the United States, as the only means of obtaining the best governors.115 In the final stage he had departed so far from his earlier way of thinking that he criticized Dr. Goodnow severely for recommending the re-introduction of a monarchy in China.

Sun Yat-sen, as a good nationalist, made earnest efforts to associate his doctrines with those of the sages and to avoid appearing as a proponent of Western civilization. It is, consequently, not unusual to discover him citing Confucius and Mencius on vox populi vox dei, and saying,

“The government of Yao and Shun was monarchical in name but democratic in practice, and for that reason Confucius honored these men.”116

[pg 098]

He considered that democracy was to the sages an “ideal that could not be immediately realized,”117 and therefore implied that modern China, in realizing democracy, was attaining an ideal cherished by the past. Democracy, other things apart, was a filial duty. This argument, while persuasive in Chinese, can scarcely be considered Sun Yat-sen's most important one in favor of democracy.

His most cogent and perhaps most necessary argument was based on his conception of national liberty as opposed to the liberty of the individual. He delivered a spirited denunciation of those foreigners who criticized the Chinese for being without liberty, and in the next breath complained that the Chinese had no government, that they were “loose sand.” (Another fashionable way of expressing this idea is by saying that “China is a geographical expression.”) He said: “If, for instance, the foreigners say that China is ‘loose sand,’ what do they finally mean by that expression? They mean to say that each individual is free, that everybody is free, that each one takes the maximum of liberty, and that, as a result, they are ‘loose sand’.”118 He pointed out that the Chinese had not suffered from the loose autocracy in the Empire, and that they had no historical justification for parroting the cry “Liberty!” simply because the Westerners, who had really lacked it, had cried and fought for it. He cited John Millar's definition of liberty, given in The Progress of Science Relative to Law and Government, 1787: “True liberty consists in this: that the liberty of each individual is limited by the non-infringement on the liberty of others; when it invades the liberty of others, it is no longer liberty.”119 Sun Yat-sen had himself defined liberty as [pg 099] follows: “Liberty consists in being able to move, in having freedom of action within an organized group.”120 China, disorganized, had no problem of individual liberty. There was, as a matter of fact, too much liberty.121 What the Chinese had to do was to sacrifice some of their individual liberty for the sake of the organized nation. Here we find a curious turn of thought of which several other examples may be found in the San Min Chu I: Sun Yat-sen has taken a doctrine which in the West applies to the individual, and has applied it to the nation. He believes in liberty; but it is not the liberty of the individual which is endangered in China. It is the liberty of the nation—which has been lost before foreign oppression and exploitation. Consequently he preaches national and not individual liberty. Individual liberty must be sacrificed for the sake of a free nation.122 Without discipline there is no order; without order the nation is weak and oppressed. The first step to China's redemption is min tsu, the union (nationalism) of the people. Then comes min ch'üan, the power of the people. The liberty of the nation is expressed through the power of the people.

How is the power of the people to be exercised? It is to be exercised by democratic means. To Sun Yat-sen, the liberty of the nation and the power of the people were virtually identical. If the Chinese race gained its freedom, that freedom, exercised in an orderly manner, could mean only democracy. It is this close association of nationalism (min tsu) and democracy (min ch'üan), this consideration of democracy as the expression of nationalism, that forms, within the framework of the San Min Chu I, what is probably the best nationalist argument for democracy—best, that is, in being most coherent with the Three Principles as a whole.

[pg 100]

If the view of democracy just expressed be considered an exposition of the fundamental necessity of democracy, the third argument may be termed the dialectical or historical championship of democracy. Sun Yat-sen believed in the existence of progress, and considered that there was an inevitable tendency toward democracy: the overthrow of the Manchus was a result of the “... world tide. That world current can be compared to the course of the Yangtze or the Yellow River. The flow of the stream turns perhaps in many directions, now toward the north, now toward the south, but in the end flows toward the east in spite of all obstacles; nothing can stem it. In the same way the world-tide passes ...; now it has arrived at democracy, and there is no way to stem it.”123 This belief in the inevitability as well as the justice of his cause encouraged Sun, and has lent to his movement—as his followers see it—something of the impressive sweep that the Communists see in their movement.

Sun Yat-sen did not devise any elaborate scheme of dialectical materialism or economic determinism to bolster his belief in the irreversibility of the flow to democracy. With infinite simplicity, he presented an exposition of democracy in space and time. In time, he saw a change from the rule of force to theocracy, then to monarchy, and then to democracy; this change was a part of the progress of mankind, which to him was self-evident and inevitable.124 In space he perceived that increasingly great numbers of people threw off monarchical rule and turned to democracy. He hailed the breakdown of the great empires, Germany and Russia, as evidence of the power of [pg 101] democracy. “... if we observe (things) from all angles, we see that the world progresses daily, and we realize that the present tide has already swept into the age of democracy; and that no matter how great drawbacks and failures may be, democracy will maintain itself in the world for a long time (to come). For that reason, thirty years ago, we promoters of the revolution, resolved that it was impossible to speak of the greatness of China or to carry out the revolution without advocating democracy.”125

A fourth argument in favor of democracy, and one which cannot be expanded here, since it involves reference to Sun Yat-sen's practical plans for the political regeneration of China, was his assertion that democracy was an adjunct to appropriate and effective public administration. Sun Yat-sen's plans concerning the selection of officials in a democratic state showed that he believed the merging of the Chinese academic-civil service technique with Western democracy would produce a paragon among practicable governments.

Fifthly and finally, Sun regarded democracy as an essential modernizing force.126 In the introduction of Western material civilization, which was always an important consideration to his mind, he felt that a certain ideological and political change had to accompany the economic and technological revolution that—in part natural and in part to be stimulated by nationalist political interference—was to revolutionize the min shêng of China, the economic and social welfare of the Chinese people. While this argument in favor of democracy is similar to the historical argument, it differs from the latter in that Sun Yat-sen saw the technique of democracy influencing not only the political, but the economic and social, life of the people as well. The growth of corporate responsibility, the development [pg 102] of a more rigid ethical system in matters of finance, the disappearance of too strict an emphasis upon the personal element in politics (which has clouded Chinese politics with a fog of conspiracy and intrigue for centuries), a trust in mathematics (as shown in reliance upon the voting technique for ascertaining public opinion), and the development of a new kind of individual aggressiveness and uprightness were among the changes which, necessary if China was to compete in the modern world, democracy might assist in effecting. While these desiderata do not seem large when set down in the vast field of political philosophy, they are of irritating importance in the inevitable trivalities upon which so much of day-to-day life depends, and would undoubtedly improve the personal tone of Sino-Western relations. Sun never divorced the theoretical aspects of his thought from the practical, as has been done here for purposes of exposition, and even the tiniest details of everyday existence were the objects of his consideration and criticism. In itself, therefore, the modernizing force of democracy, as seen in Sun's theory, may not amount to much; nevertheless, it must not be forgotten.127

Democracy, although secondary in point of time to his theory, is of great importance in Sun's plans for the political nature of the new China. He justified democracy because it was (1) an obligation laid upon modern China by the sages of antiquity; (2) a necessary consequence of nationalism, since nationalism was the self-rule of a free people, and democracy the effectuation of that self-rule, and democracy the effectuation of that self-rule; (3) the government of the modern age; China, along with the rest of the world, was drawn by the tide of progress into the [pg 103] age of democratic achievement; (4) the political form best calculated for the obtaining of good administration; and (5) a modernizing force that would stir and change the Chinese people so as to equip them for the competitions of the modern world.

In the lecture in which he criticized the inadequacies of democracy as applied in the West, Sun Yat-sen made an interesting comment on the proletarian dictatorship which had recently been established in Russia. “Recently Russia invented another form of government. That government is not representative; it is absolute popular government. In what does that absolute popular government really consist? As we know very little about it, we cannot judge it aright, but we believe that this (absolute popular government) is evidently much better than a representative government.”128 He went on immediately to say that the Three Principles were what China needed, and that the Chinese should not imitate the political systems advocated in Europe and America, but should adapt democracy in their own way. In view of his objection to a permanent class dictatorship, as opposed to a provisional party dictatorship, and the very enthusiastic advocacy of democracy represented by the arguments described above, it appears unlikely in the extreme that Sun Yat-sen, had he lived beyond 1925, would have abandoned his own plan of democracy for China in favor of “absolute popular government.” The phrase was, at the time, since Sun Yat-sen was seeking Russian assistance, expedient for a popular lecture. Its importance might easily be exaggerated.

The Three Natural Classes of Men.

Having in mind the extreme peril in which the Chinese race-nation stood, its importance in a world of Western or [pg 104] Western-type states, and seeing nationalism as the sole means of defending and preserving China, Sun Yat-sen demanded that the Chinese ideology be extended by the acquisition of knowledge. If this modernizing and, if a neologism be permitted, stateizing process were to succeed, it must needs be fostered by a well-prepared group of persons within the society.

In the case of the Confucian social theory, it was the scholars who took the ideology from the beliefs and traditions of the agrarian masses or whole people, rectified it, and gave it back to them. This continuous process of ideological maintenance by means of conformity (li) and, when found necessary, rectification (chêng ming) was carried on by an educational-political system based upon a non-hereditary caste of academician-officials called Mandarins by the early Western travellers. In the case of those modern Western states which base their power upon peculiar ideologies, the philosophy-imposing caste has been a more or less permanent party- or class-dictatorship. Superficially, the party-dictatorship planned by Sun Yat-sen would seem to resemble these. His theory, however, presents two bases for a class of ideologues: one theoretical, and presumably based upon the Chinese; and one applied, which is either of his own invention or derived from Western sources. The class of ideological reformers proposed in what may be called the applied aspect of his theory was to be organized by means of the party-dictatorship of the Kuomintang. His other basis for finding a class of persons whose influence over the ideology was to be paramount was more theoretical, and deserves consideration among the more abstract aspects of his doctrines.

He hypothecated a tripartite division of men:

The harmony of this conception with the views of Confucius is evident. Presbyter is Priest writ large; genius is another name for scholar. Sun, although bitterly opposed to the mandarinate of the Empire and the pseudo-Republic, could not rid himself of the age-old Chinese idea of a class organization on a basis of intellect rather than of property. He could not champion a revolutionary creed based upon an economic class-war which he did not think existed, and which he did not wish to foster, in his own country. He continued instead the consistent theory of an aristocracy of intellect, such as had controlled China before his coming.

The aristocracy of intellect is not to be judged, however, by the old criteria. Under the old regime, a scholar-ruler was one who deferred to the wisdom of the ancients, who was fit to perpetuate the mysteries of the written language and culture for the benefit of future ages, and who was [pg 106] meanwhile qualified by his training to assume the rôle of counsellor and authority in society. In the theory of Sun Yat-sen, the genius leader is not the perpetuator but the discoverer. He is the social engineer. His work is similar to that of the architect who devises plans for a building which is to be built by workers (the unthinking) under the guidance of foremen (the followers).130 In this guise, the new intellectual aristocrat is a figure more akin to the romantic Western pioneers and inventors than to the serene, conservative scholars of China in the past.

The break with Western thought comes in Sun's distinguishing three permanent, natural classes of men. Though in their aptitudes the hsien chih hsien cho are more like modern engineers than like archaic literary historians, they form a class that is inevitably the ruling class. To Marxism this is anathema; it would imply that the Communist party is merely the successor of the bourgeoisie in leading the unthinking masses about—a more benevolent successor, to be sure, but still a class distinct from the led proletariat of the intellect. To Western democratic thought, this distinction would seem at first glance to invalidate any future advocacy of democracy. To the student interested in contrasting ideological control and political government, the tripartite division of Sun Yat-sen is significant of the redefinition in modern terms, and in an even more clear-cut manner, of the Confucian theory of scholarly leadership.

How were the geniuses of the Chinese resurgence to make their knowledge useful to the race-nation? How could democracy be recognized with the leadership and ideological control of an intellectual class? To what [pg 107] degree would such a reconciliation, if effected, represent a continuation, in different terms, of the traditions and institutions of the old Chinese world? Questions such as these arise from the fusion of the old traditions and new necessities.

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.

[pg 108]

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:

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.