_Min Shêng_ in the Ideology.
The principle of _min shêng_ has been the one most disputed. Sun Yat-sen
made his greatest break with the old ideology in promulgating this last
element in his triune doctrine; the original Chinese term carried little
meaning that could be used in an approach to the new meaning that Sun
Yat-sen gave it. He himself stated that the two words had become rather
meaningless in their old usage, and that he intended to use them with
reference to special conditions in the modern world.(142) He then went on
to state the principle in terms so broad, so seemingly contradictory, that
at times it appears possible for each man to read in it what he will, as
he may in the Bible. The Communists and the Catholics each approve of the
third principle, but translate it differently; the liberals render it by a
term which is not only innocuous but colorless.(143) Had Sun Yat-sen lived
to finish the lectures on _min shêng_, he might have succeeded in rounding
off his discussion of the principle.
There are two methods by means of which the principle of _min shêng_ may
be examined. It might be described on the basis of the various definitions
which Sun Yat-sen gave it in his four lectures and in other speeches and
papers, and outlined, point by point, by means of the various functions
and limits that he set for it. This would also permit some consideration
of the relation of _min shêng_ to various other theories of political
economy. The other approach may be a less academic one, but perhaps not
altogether unprofitable. By means of a reconsideration of the first two
principles, and of the structure and meaning of the three principles as a
whole, it is possible to surmise, if not to establish, the meaning of _min
shêng_, that is, to discover it through a sort of political triangulation:
the first two principles being given, to what third principle do they
lead?
This latter method may be taken first, since it will afford a general view
of the three principles which will permit the orientation of _min shêng_
with reference to the nationalist ideology as a whole, and prepare the
student for a solution of some of the apparent contradictions which are to
be found in the various specific definitions of _min shêng_.
Accepting the elementary thesis of the necessary awakening of the
race-nation, and its equally necessary self-rule, both as a nation
_vis-à-vis_ other nations, and as a world by itself, one may see that
these are each social problems of organization which do not necessarily
involve the physical conditions of the country, although, as a matter of
application, they would be ineffectual in a country which did not have the
adequate means of self-support. Sun Yat-sen was interested in seeing the
Chinese people and Chinese civilization survive, and by survival he meant
not only the continuation of social organization and moral and
intellectual excellence, but, more than these, the actual continued
existence of the great bulk of the population. The most vital problem was
that of the continued existence of the Chinese as a people, which was
threatened by the constant expansion of the West and might conceivably
share the fate of the American Indians—a remnant of a once great race
living on the charity of their conquerors. Sun Yat-sen expressly
recognized this problem as the supreme one, requiring immediate
attention.(144) Nationalism and democracy would have no effect if the race
did not survive to practise them.
The old Chinese society may be conceived as a vast system of living men,
who survived by eating and breeding, and who were connected with one
another in time by the proper attention to the ancestral cults, and in
space by a common consciousness of themselves as the standard-bearers of
the civilization of the world. Sun Yat-sen, although a Christian, was not
unmindful of this outlook; he too was sensible of the meaning of the
living race through the centuries. He dutifully informed the Emperor T’ai
Tsung of Ming that the Manchus had been driven from the throne, and some
years later he expressed the deepest reverence for the ancestral
cult.(145) But in facing the emergency with which his race was confronted,
Sun Yat-sen could not overlook the practical question of physical
survival.
He was, therefore, materialistic in so far as his recognition of the
importance of the material well-being of the race-nation made him so. At
this point he may be found sympathetic with the Marxians, though his
ideology as a whole is profoundly Chinese. The destitution, the economic
weakness, the slow progress of his native land were a torture to his
conscience. In a world of the most grinding poverty, where war,
pestilence, and famine made even mere existence uncertain, he could not
possibly overlook the problem of the adequate material care of the vast
populace that constituted the race-nation.
_Min shêng_, accordingly, meant primarily the survival of the race-nation,
as nationalism was its awakening, and democracy its self-control. No one
of these could be effective without the two others. In the fundamentals of
Sun Yat-sen’s ideology, the necessity for survival and prosperity is
superlative and self-evident. All other features of the doctrine are, as
it were, optional. The first two principles definitely required a third
that would give them a body of persons upon which to operate; they did not
necessarily require that the third principle advance any specific
doctrine. If this be the case, it is evident that the question of the
content of _min shêng_, while important, is secondary to the first
premises of the _San Min Chu I_. The need for a third principle—one of
popular subsistence—in the ideology is vital; the _San Min Chu I_ would be
crippled without it.
The Economic Background of _Min Shêng_.
What was the nature of the background which decided Sun Yat-sen to draw an
economic program into the total of his nationalist ideology for the
regeneration of China through a nationalist revolution? Was Sun Yat-sen
dissatisfied with the economic order of the old society? Was he interested
in a reconstitution of the economic system for the sake of defense against
Western powers?
He was unquestionably dissatisfied with the economic order of things in
the old society, but it was a dissatisfaction with what the old order had
failed to achieve rather than a feeling of the injustice of the Chinese
distributive system. He was bitter against a taxation system which worked
out unevenly,(146) and against the extortions of the internal-transit
revenue officials under the Empire.(147) He was deeply impressed by his
first encounter with Western mechanical achievement—the S. S. _Grannoch_,
which took him from Kwangtung to Honolulu.(148) But he had served in the
shop of his brother as a young boy,(149) and knew the small farm life of
South China intimately. On the basis of this first-hand knowledge, and his
many years of association with the working people of China, he was not
likely to attack the old economic system for its injustice so much as for
its inadequacy.(150)
That there were injustices in the old system of Chinese economy, no one
can deny, but these injustices were scarcely sufficient to provoke, of
themselves alone, the complete alteration of economic outlook that Sun
Yat-sen proposed. Chinese capitalism had not reached the state of
industrial capitalism until after its contact with the West; at the most
it was a primitive sort of usury-capitalism practised by the three
economically dominant groups of old China—landholders, officials, and
merchant-usurers.(151) The disturbances which hurt the economic condition
of the country, and thereby led to greater disturbances, had involved
China in a vicious cycle of decline which could scarcely be blamed on any
one feature or any one group in the old economy. The essential fault lay
with the condition of the country as a whole, directly affected by the
economic consequences of Western trade and partial industrialization.(152)
Sun Yat-sen’s positive dissatisfaction with the economy of his time arose
from the position which he felt China had in the modern business world. He
believed that, by virtue of the economic oppression of the Chinese by the
Western powers, China had been degraded to the position of the lowest
nation on earth—that the Chinese were even more unfortunate than “slaves
without a country,” such as the Koreans and the Annamites.(153) The
particular forms of this oppression, and Sun Yat-sen’s plans for meeting
it, may be more aptly described in the consideration of his program of
economic national regeneration.(154) The Chinese nation occupied the
ignominious position of a sub-colony or—as Sun himself termed it—“a
hypo-colony”; “Our people are realizing that to be a semi-colony is a
national disgrace; but our case is worse than that; our country is in the
position of a sub-colony (since it is the colony of all the Great Powers
and not merely subject to one of them), a position which is inferior to an
ordinary colony such as Korea and Annam.”(155)
What, then, were the positive implications of the principle of _min shêng_
in the nationalist ideology?
The Three Meanings of _Min Shêng_.
First, _min shêng_ is the doctrine leading the nationalist democracy on
its road to a high position among the nations of the earth; only through
the material strength to be found in _min shêng_ can the Chinese attain a
position by which they can exert the full force of their new-formed state
against the invaders and oppressors, and be able to lift up the populace
so that democracy will possess some actual operative meaning. _Min shêng_
is “... the center of politics, of economics, of all kinds of historical
movements; it is similar to the center of gravity in space.”(156) It
provides the implementation of nationalism and democracy.
Secondly, _min shêng_ means national enrichment. The problem of China is
primarily one of poverty. Sun wanted consideration of the problem of the
livelihood of the people to begin with the supreme economic reality in
China. What was this reality? “It is the poverty from which we all suffer.
The Chinese in general are poor; among them there is no privileged wealthy
class, but only a generality of ordinary poor people.”(157) However this
enrichment was to be brought about, it was imperative.
Thirdly, _min shêng_, as the doctrine of enrichment, was also the doctrine
of economic justice. If the nation was to become economically healthy, it
could only do so on the basis of the proper distribution of property among
its citizens. Its wealth would not bring about well-being unless it were
properly distributed.
More briefly, _min shêng_ may be said to be the thesis of the
indispensability of: 1) a national economic revolution against imperialism
and for democracy; 2) an industrial revolution for the enrichment of
China; and 3) a prophylactic against social revolution.
The significance of _min shêng_ as the economic implementation of
nationalism and democracy is clear enough to require no further
discussion. Its significance as a doctrine for the promotion of the
industrial revolution is considerable, and worth attention.
Western science was to sow the seed. _Min shêng_ economy was to reap the
harvest. By means of the details in Sun Yat-sen’s programs which he
believed sufficient for the purposes, the modernization of China, which
was to be a consequence of Western science in the ideology, was to lead at
the same time to the actual physical enrichment of the economic goods and
services of the country. The advocacy of industrial development is, of
course, a commonplace in the Western world, but in China it was strikingly
novel. Sun Yat-sen did not regard industrialism as a necessary evil; he
considered it a positive blessing, as the means of increasing the material
welfare of the Chinese people.
Time and time again, Sun Yat-sen emphasized the necessity of
modernization. His theory of nationalism led him to urge the introduction
of Western physical science into the ideology. His theory of democracy was
justified in part by the fact that democracy was to be regarded as a
modernizing force. Now his principle of _min shêng_ was also to lead to
that great end—the modernization of China to a degree to permit the
race-nation to regain in the modern world, which encompassed the whole
planet, the position it had once had in the smaller world of Eastern Asia.
The wealth of old China had been one of the factors enabling it to resist
destruction at the spear-points of its barbarian conquerors. Sun Yat-sen
knew this, and knew also that the position of the United States—which had
probably the greatest concentration of social and physical wealth and
power under one political system that the world had ever known—made that
nation impregnable in the modern world. Seeing that wealth was not only a
blessing to individuals, but to nations as well, he was anxious that his
beloved China should be guarded and assisted by the strength that the
ideology of _min shêng_, once accepted and effectuated, could give it.
_Min shêng_ is more than a vague aspiration for national welfare. The
general theory of nationalism and democracy required an additional point
to make them effective in the realities of international politics, and
_min shêng_ was to supply the hygienic and economic strength that the
Chinese race-nation needed for competition and survival; but it was to do
more.
_Min shêng_ is at the same time the last step of Chinese resistance and
the first of Chinese submission to Western culture. In seeking an economic
policy and an ideology which would lead to increased wealth of the nation,
the Chinese were preparing to resist the West with its own weapons. _Min
shêng_ is a submission in that it is a deliberate declaration of
industrial revolution.
It is beside the point to consider the ideological bases of the Western
industrial revolution. It was perhaps neither a voluntary nor a deliberate
process at all; no man in the first few decades of the nineteenth century
could have foretold what the end of a process of mechanization would
bring, or was likely to advocate the intentional following of a policy
which would transform the orientation and organization of man more
thoroughly than had any previous religious, political, and economic
transition. The industrial revolution of Euramerica, when viewed from the
outside, presents the appearance of a colossal accident, whether for good
or for bad, which was but half-perceived by the participants in it. Even
today, when the ideology and the institutional outline of the
agrarian-handicraft past is fading swiftly away in the new brilliance of
Western machine-culture, the new certainty, the new order have not yet
appeared. The great transition works its way beyond the knowledge or the
intervention of individual men.
This was decidedly not the case in China. Industrialism was something
which could be studied from the outside, which could be appraised, and
then acclaimed or resisted. Emperor Meiji and his Genro, with a flash of
intuition or an intellectual penetration almost unparalleled in the
political history of the world, guided Japan into the swift current of
mechanical progress; the island empire swept ahead of Asia, abreast of the
most powerful states of the world. The Chinese court, under the resolute,
but blind, guidance of the Empress Dowager, made a few feeble gestures in
favor of modernization, but vigorously opposed any change which might
seriously modify the order of Chinese society or the position of the
Manchus. In the shadow of the foreign guns, industrialism crept into
China, along the coasts and up the banks of the navigable rivers. One
might suppose that the Chinese were in a position to choose, deliberately,
for or against industrialism. They were not; in China, as in the West, the
machine age first appeared largely as an accident.
It is here that the significance of Sun Yat-sen’s _min shêng_ becomes
apparent. Above all other subsidiary meanings, it is a deliberate
declaration of the industrial revolution. Modernism had been an accident;
Sun Yat-sen wished to transform it into a program. What would be the
ideological consequences of such an attitude?
In the first place, a plan was indicated for almost every type of human
behavior. Sun Yat-sen himself drafted a preliminary scheme for a modern
manufacturing and communications system.(158) The road that China was to
take would not be the miserable, halting progress of industrialism,
complicated by delays and wars, which the West had known in the painful
centuries of readjustment from the medieval to modern civilization; China
would not stumble forward, but would deliberately select the swiftest and
easiest way to a sound industrialism, and then take it.
_Min shêng_ thus not only provides the Chinese with a way to make their
nationalism, their democracy, and their stateification felt in the hour of
their ultimate triumph; it gives them something to do to bring about that
triumph.
On the basis of the outlines of the ideology and the social system that
Sun Yat-sen proposed, viewed from the perspective of the old Confucian
world-society, the reader will realize that this declaration of the
industrial revolution is the boldest of Sun Yat-sen’s acts, and that the
meaning of _min shêng_ as a program of complete modernization and
reconstruction is superior to other possible meanings it may have, in
regard to theoretical national or social revolution. There is nothing
remote or philosophical about the significance of _min shêng_ when so
viewed; it is a plan to which a Lenin or a Henry Ford might subscribe with
equal fervor—although a Tagore would deplore it. It is here that Sun
Yat-sen appears as the champion of the West against the traditional
technological stagnation of China. Yet just there, at the supreme point of
his Westernism, we must remember what he was fighting for: the life of a
race-nation and a civilization that was contradictory to the West. The
stability of Confucianism could not serve as a cloak for reaction and
stagnant thought. For its own good, nay, its own life, Chinese
civilization had to modernize (i. e., Westernize economically) in order to
compete in a West-ruled world. But what, more specifically, was the
socio-economic position of Sun Yat-sen? Was he a Marxian? Was he a
liberal? Was he neither?
Western Influences: Henry George, Marxism and Maurice William.
As previously stated there are three parts which may be distinguished in
the ideology of the principle of _min shêng_. _Min shêng_ is, first, the
economic aspect of the national revolution—the creation of an active
race-nation of China implementing its power by, second, technological
revolution. Third, it connotes also the necessity of a social revolution
of some kind. Western commentators have been prone to ignore the
significance of _min shêng_ in the first two of these meanings, and have
concentrated on disputation concerning the third part. The question of the
right system of distribution has become so prominent in much Western
revolutionary thought that, to many, it sums up the whole moral issue
concerning what is good and bad in society.(159) They are uninterested in
or ignorant of the great importance that the first two aspects of _min
shêng_ possess for the Chinese mind. The third part, the application of
_min shêng_ to the problems that are in the West the cause of social
revolution, and to the possible application of social revolution to China,
is important, but is by no means the complete picture.
In attempting to state the definitive position of Sun Yat-sen on this
question several points must be kept in mind. The first is that Sun
Yat-sen, born a Chinese of the nineteenth century, had the intellectual
orientation of a member of the world-society, and an accepter of the
Confucian ideology. Enough has been shown of the background of his
theories to demonstrate their harmony with and relevance to society which
had endured in China for centuries before the coming of the West. The
second point to be remembered is that Westerners are prone to overlook
this background and see only the Western influences which they are in such
a good position to detect. Sun Yat-sen’s mind grew and changed. His
preferences in Western beliefs changed frequently. A few Westerners,
seeing only this, are apt to call Sun unstable and devoid of reason.(160)
It would, indeed, be strange to find any Western political or ideological
leader who thought in precisely the same terms after the world war and the
Russian revolution as before. Sun Yat-sen was, like many other
receptive-minded leaders, sensitive to the new doctrines of Wilson and
Lenin as they were shouted through the world. He was, perhaps, less
affected by them than Western leaders, because his ideology was so largely
rooted in the ideology of old China.
Apart from the winds of doctrine that blew through the world during Sun’s
life-period, and the generally known Western influences to which he was
exposed,(161) there were three writers whose influence has been supposed
to have been critical in the development of his thinking. These three were
Henry George, Karl Marx, and Maurice William of New York. A much greater
amount of material is needed for a detailed study of the influences of
various individual theories on Sun Yat-sen than for a general exposition
of his political doctrines as a whole. At the present time scarcely enough
has been written to permit any really authoritative description of the
relations between the ideology of Sun Yat-sen and the thought of these
three men. It is possible, nevertheless, to trace certain general outlines
which may serve to clarify the possible influence that was exercised on
Sun, and to correct some current misapprehensions as to the nature and
extent of that influence.
Sun Yat-sen’s opposition to the “unearned increment” shows the influence
of the thought of Henry George. Sun proposed an ingenious scheme for the
government confiscation of unearned increment in an economy which would
nevertheless permit private ownership of land. (Incidentally, he terms
this, in his second lecture on _min shêng_, “communism,” which indicates a
use of the word different, in this respect at least, from the conventional
Western use.)(162) The land problem was of course a very old one in China,
although accentuated in the disorders resulting from the impact of the
West. There can be little question that Sun’s particular method of solving
the problem was influenced by the idea of unearned increment.
He knew of Henry George in 1897, the year the latter died,(163) and
advocated redistribution of the land in the party oath, the platform, and
the slogans of the _Tung Meng Hui_ of 1905.(164) Since, even at the time
of the Canton-Moscow Entente, his land policy never approached the
Marxist-Leninist program of nationalization or collectivization of land,
but remained one of redistribution and confiscation of unearned increment,
it is safe to say that Sun kept the theory of George in mind, although he
by no means followed George to the latter’s ultimate conclusions.(165) It
may thus be inferred that the influence of Henry George upon the
nationalist ideology of Sun Yat-sen was slight, but permanent. An idea was
borrowed; the scheme of things was not.
Sun Yat-sen encountered Marxism for the first recorded time in London in
1897, when he met a group of Russian revolutionaries and also read in the
subject. The fact that Sun was exposed to Marxism proves little except
that he had had the opportunity of taking up Marxism and did not do
so.(166) Again, the _Tung Meng Hui_ manifesto of 1905 may have been
influenced by Marxism. It was not, however, until the development of his
_Three Principles_ that the question of Marxian influence was raised. Sun
Yat-sen made his first speech on the _Principles_ in Brussels in the
spring of 1905.(167) By 1907 the three principles had taken on a clear
form: nationalism, democracy, and _min shêng_, which the Chinese of that
time seem to have translated _socialism_ when referring to it in Western
languages.(168)
The most careful Marxian critic of Sun Yat-sen, writing of the principle
of _min shêng_ and its two main planks, land reform and state capitalism,
says: “This very vague program, which does not refer to class interests
nor to the class struggle as the means of breaking privileged class
interests, was objectively not socialism at all, but something else
altogether: Lenin coined the formula, ‘subjective socialism,’ for
it.”(169) He adds, later: “Hence Sun’s socialism meant, on the lips of the
Chinese bourgeoisie, nothing but a sort of declaration for a ‘social’
economic policy, that is, a policy friendly to the masses.”(170) T’ang
Liang-li declares that the third principle at this time adopted “a frankly
socialistic attitude,”(171) but implies elsewhere that its inadequacy was
seen by a Chinese Marxist, Chu Chih-hsin.(172) This evidence, as far as it
goes, shows that Sun Yat-sen had had the opportunity to become acquainted
with Marxism, and that even on the occasion of the first formulation of
the principle of _min shêng_ he used none of its tenets. The revolutionary
critic, T’ang Liang-li, who, a devoted and brilliant Nationalist in
action, writes with a sort of European left-liberal orientation, suggests
that the Third Principle grew with the growth of capitalist industrialism
in China.(173) This is true: economic maladjustment would emphasize the
need for ideological reconstruction with reference to the economy. There
is no need to resort to Marxian analysis.
That the third principle meant something to Sun Yat-sen is shown by the
fact that when Sung Chiao-jen, who a few years later was to become one of
the most celebrated martyrs of the revolution, suggested in the period of
the first provisional Republic at Nanking that the Third Principle had
better be omitted altogether, Sun was enraged, and declared that if _min
shêng_ were to be given up, the whole revolution might as well be
abandoned.(174)
Since _min shêng_, in its third significance, that of the development of a
socially just distributive system, was not Marxian nor yet unimportant, it
may be contrasted once again with the communist doctrines, and then
studied for its actual content. In contrasting it with Marxism, it might
be of value to observe, first, the criticism that the Marxians levy
against it, and second, the distinctions that nationalist and European
critics make between _min shêng_ and communism.
Dr. Karl Wittfogel, the German Marxist whose work on Sun Yat-sen is the
most satisfactory of its kind, points out the apparent contradictions in
the _San Min Chu I_: on the one hand, statements which are not only
objectively but subjectively friendly to capitalism (on the excellence of
the Ford plant; on the necessity for the coöperation of capital and
labor)—on the other, the unmerciful condemnation of capitalism; on the one
hand, the declaration that there is no capitalism in China—on the other,
that capitalism must be destroyed as it appears; on the right, the
statement that communism and _min shêng_ are opposed—on the left, that the
communist doctrines are a subsidiary part of the ideology of _min
shêng_.(175) How, asks Wittfogel, does this all fit together? He answers
by pointing out the significance of Sun’s theses when considered in
relation to the dialectical-materialist interpretation of recent Far
Eastern history:
His three principles incorporate
in their _development_ the objective change in the socio-economic
situation of China,
in their _contradictions_ the real contradictions of the Chinese
revolution,
in their _latest tendencies_ the transposition of the social
center of gravity of the revolution, which sets the
classes in action, and whose aim is no longer a
bourgeois capitalist one, but proletarian-socialist
and peasant agrarian-revolutionary.
Sun Yat-sen is according to this not only the hitherto most
powerful representative of the bourgeois-national,
anti-imperialist revolutions of awakening Asia; he points at the
same time outwards over the bourgeois class limitations of the
first step of the Asiatic movement for liberation. To deny this
were portentuous, even for the proletarian communist movement of
Eastern Asia.(176)
The modifications which the Marxians have introduced into their programs
with respect to the class struggle in colonial countries do not imply a
corresponding modification of their ideology. The determinism adopted from
Hegel, the economic interpretation of history—these and other dogmas are
held by the Marxians to be universally valid despite their Western origin.
We have seen what Sun’s chief Marxian exegete thinks of him. Now it may be
worth while to consider the actual relations of Sun’s doctrines with some
of those in Marxism. In the first place, Sun Yat-sen, during his stay in
Shanghai, 1919-1922 (with interruptions), was very much interested in
Communism and friendly to the Russian people, but not at all inclined to
adopt its ideology.(177)
In reference to specific points of the Communist ideology, Sun Yat-sen was
indebted to the Communists for the application of the principle of
nationalism, as a means of propaganda, as anti-imperialism, although, as
we have seen, it was fundamentally a thesis for the readjustment of the
Chinese society from the ideological basis of a world-society over to a
national state among national states.(178) Second, his habit of taking
Western doctrines and applying them to the Chinese nation instead of to
Chinese individuals, led him to apply nationalism to the class war of the
oppressed nations against the oppressing nations. There was no
justification of intra-national class war in the nationalist ideology of
Sun Yat-sen.(179) In his doctrine of democracy, his application of a
class-system based on intellect was a flat denial of the superior
significance of the Marxian economic-class ideology, as was his favoring
of the development of a five-power liberal government through _ch’üan_ and
_nêng_ in place of a dictatorship of the proletariat operating through
soviets. Finally, in relation to _min shêng_, his use of the Confucian
philosophy—the interpretation of history through _jên_—was a contradiction
of the materialist interpretation of history by the Marxians. It also
contradicted the class struggle; the loyalty of the Chinese to the
race-nation was to be the supreme loyalty; it was to develop from the _ta
chia_, the great family of all Chinese; and class lines within it could
not transcend its significance. Furthermore, purely as a matter of
economic development, Sun Yat-sen regarded the class struggle as
_pathological_ in society. He said, “Out of his studies of the social
question, Marx gained no other advantage than a knowledge of the diseases
of social evolution; he failed to see the principle of social evolution.
Hence we can say that Marx was a pathologist rather than a physiologist of
society.”(180) Finally, he did not accept the Marxian theory of surplus
value or of the inevitable collapse of capitalism. He even spoke of
capitalism and socialism as “two economic forces of human civilization”
which might “work side by side in future civilization.”(181)
All in all, it may safely be said that Sun Yat-sen’s ideology, as an
adjustment of the old Chinese ideology to the modern world, was not
inspired by the Marxist; that through the greater part of his life, he was
acquainted with Marxism, and did not avail himself of the opportunities he
had for adopting it, but consistently rejected it; and that while the
Communists were of great use to him in the formulation and implementation
of his program, they affected his ideology, either generally or with
reference to _min shêng_, imperceptibly if at all.
This conclusion is of significance in the estimation of the influence of
Maurice William upon the thought of Sun Yat-sen. It is, briefly, the
thesis of Dr. William that it was his own book which saved China from
Bolshevism by making an anti-Marxian out of Sun after he had fallen prey
to the Bolshevist philosophy. Dr. William writes of the lectures on
Nationalism and Democracy; “In these lectures Dr. Sun makes clear that his
position is strongly pro-Russian and pro-Marxian, that he endorses the
class struggle, repudiates Western democracy, and advocates China’s
coöperation with Bolshevist Russia against capitalist nations.”(182) Dr.
William then goes on to show, quite convincingly, that Sun Yat-sen, with
very slight acknowledgments, quoted William’s _The Social Interpretation
of History_ almost verbatim for paragraph after paragraph in the lectures
on _min shêng_.
It would be unjust and untruthful to deny the great value that William’s
book had for Sun Yat-sen, who did quote it and use its arguments.(183) On
the other hand, it is a manifest absurdity to assume that Sun Yat-sen,
having once been a communist, suddenly reversed his position after reading
one book by an American of whom he knew nothing. Even Dr. William writes
with a tone of mild surprise when he speaks of the terrific _volte-face_
which he thinks Sun Yat-sen performed.
There are two necessary comments to be made on the question of the
influence of Maurice William. In the first place, Sun Yat-sen had never
swerved from the interpretation of history by _jên_, which may be
interpreted as the humane or social interpretation of history. Enough of
the old Chinese ideology has been outlined above to make clear what this
outlook was.(184) Sun Yat-sen, in short, never having been a Marxian, was
not converted to the social interpretation of history as put forth by Dr.
William. He found in the latter’s book, perhaps more clearly than in any
other Western work an analysis of society that coincided with his own,
which he had developed from the old Chinese philosophy and morality as
rendered by Confucius. Consequently he said of William’s rejection of the
materialistic interpretation of history, “That sounds perfectly reasonable
... the greatest discovery of the American scholar _fits in perfectly_
with the (third) principle of our Party.”(185) The accomplishment of
Maurice William, therefore, was a great one, but one which has been
misunderstood. He formulated a doctrine of social evolution which tallied
perfectly with Chinese ideology, and did this without being informed on
Chinese thought. He did not change the main currents of Sun’s thought,
which were consistent through the years. He did present Sun with several
telling supplementary arguments in Western economic terms, by means of
which he could reconcile his interpretation of social history not only
with Confucian _jên_ but also with modern Western economics.
The other point to be considered in relation to Maurice William is a
matter of dates. The thesis of Maurice William, that Sun Yat-sen, after
having turned Marxian or near-Marxian, was returned to democratic liberal
thought by William’s book, is based on contrast of the first twelve
lectures in the _San Min Chu I_ and the last four on _min shêng_. Dr.
William believes that Sun read his book in the meantime and changed his
mind. A Chinese commentator points out that Sun Yat-sen referred to _The
Social Interpretation of History_ in a speech on January 21, 1924; his
first lecture on the _San Min Chu I_ was given January 24, 1924.(186)
Hence, in the twelve lectures that Dr. William interprets as Marxian, Sun
Yat-sen was speaking from a background which included not only Marxism,
but _The Social Interpretation of History_, as well.
Only on the third part does the influence of the Western thinkers appear
unmistakably. Henry George gave Sun Yat-sen the idea of the unearned
increment, but Sun Yat-sen, instead of accepting the whole body of
doctrine that George put forth, simply kept this one idea, and built a
novel land-policy of his own on it. Marxism may have influenced the verbal
tone of Sun Yat-sen’s lectures, but it did not affect his ideology,
although it shows a definite imprint upon his programs. Maurice William
gave Sun Yat-sen a set of arguments in modern economic terms which he
attached to his ideological thesis of the _jên_ interpretation of history,
which he based upon Confucianism. There is no evidence to show that at any
time in his life Sun Yat-sen abandoned his Chinese ideological orientation
and fell under the sway of any Western thinker. The strong consistency in
the ideology of Sun Yat-sen is a consistency rooted in the old Chinese
ideology. On minor points of doctrine he showed the influence of the West;
this influence cannot be considered solely by itself. The present
discussion of Western influences may, by its length, imply a
disproportionate emphasis of Western thought in the political doctrines of
Sun Yat-sen, but in a work written primarily for Westerners, this may be
found excusable.
_Min Shêng_ as a Socio-Economic Doctrine.
If one were to attempt to define the relations of the _min shêng_ ideology
to the various types of Western economic doctrines at present current,
certain misapprehensions may be eliminated at the outset. First:
Capitalism in its Western form was opposed by Sun Yat-sen; _min shêng_ was
to put through the national economic revolution of enrichment through a
deliberately-planned industrialization, but in doing so was to prevent
China from going through all the painful stages which attended the growth
of capitalism in the West. “We want,” said Sun Yat-sen, “a preventive
remedy; a remedy which will thwart the accumulation of large private
capitals and so preserve future society from the great inconvenience of
the inequality between rich and poor.”(187) And yet he looked forward to a
society which would ultimately be communistic, although never in its
strict Marxian sense. “We may say that communism is the ideal of
livelihood, and that the doctrine of livelihood is the practical
application of communism; such is the difference between the doctrine of
Marx and the doctrine of the Kuomintang. In the last analysis, there is no
real difference in the principles of the two; where they differ is in
method.”(188) This is sufficient to show that Sun Yat-sen was not an
orthodox Western apologist for capitalism; as a Chinese, it would have
been hard for him to be one, for the logically consistent capitalist
ideology is one which minimizes all human relationships excepting those
individual-contractual ones based on money bargains. The marketing of
goods and services in such a way as to disturb the traditional forms of
Chinese society would have been repugnant to Sun Yat-sen.
Second: if Sun Yat-sen’s _min shêng_ ideology cannot be associated with
capitalism, it can as little be affiliated with Marxism or the single-tax.
What, then, in relation to Western socio-economic thought, is it? We have
seen that the state it proposed was liberal-protective, and that the
society from which it was derived and to which it was to lead back was one
of extreme laissez-faire, bordering almost on anarchism. These political
features are enough to distinguish it from the Western varieties of
socialism, anarchism and syndicalism, since the ingredients of these
ideologies of the West and that of Sun Yat-sen, while coincident on some
points, cannot be fitted together.
Superficially, there is a certain resemblance between the ideology of the
_San Min Chu I_ and that of Fascism. The resemblances may be found in the
emphasis on the nation, the rejection of the class war and of Marxism, the
upholding of tradition, and the inclusion of a doctrine of intellectual
inequality. But Sun Yat-sen seeks to reconcile all this with democracy in
a form even more republican than that of the United States. The scheme of
_min ch’üan_, with its election, recall, initiative and referendum, and
with its definite demands of intellectual freedom, is in contradiction to
the teachings of Fascism. His condemnation of Caesarism is unequivocal:
“Therefore, if the Chinese Revolution has not until now been crowned with
success, it is because the ambitions for the throne have not been
completely rooted out nor suppressed altogether.”(189) With these
fundamental and irreconcilable distinctions, it is hard to find any
possibility of agreement between the _San Min Chu I_ and the Fascist
ideologies, although the transitional program of the _San Min Chu I_—in
its advocacy of provisional party dictatorship, etc.—has something in
common with Fascism as well as with Communism as applied in the Soviet
Union.
A recent well-received work on modern political thought describes a
category of Western thinkers whose ideas are much in accord with those
contained in the _min shêng_ ideology.(190) Professor Francis W. Coker of
Yale, after reviewing the leading types of socialist and liberal thought,
describes a group who might be called “empirical collectivists.” The men
to whom he applies this term reject socialist doctrines of economic
determinism, labor-created value, and class war. They oppose, on the other
hand, the making of a fetish of private ownership, and recognize that the
vast mass of ordinary men in modern society do not always receive their
just share of the produce of industry. They offer no single panacea for
all economic troubles, and lay down no absolute and unchallengeable dogma
concerning the rightness or wrongness of public or private ownership.(191)
Professor Coker outlines their general point of view by examining their
ideas with reference to several conspicuous economic problems of the
present day: public ownership; labor legislation; regulation of prices;
taxation; and land policies.(192)
According to Coker, the empirical collectivist is not willing to forgo the
profit motive except where necessary. He is anxious to see a great part of
the ruthlessness of private competition eliminated, and capital generally
subjected to a regulation which will prevent its use as an instrument of
harm to the community as a whole. While not committed to public ownership
of large enterprises as a matter of theory, he has little objection to the
governmental operation of those which could, as a matter of practical
expediency, be managed by the state on a nonprofit basis.
Sun Yat-sen’s position greatly resembles this, with respect to his more
immediate objectives. Speaking of public utilities, he said to Judge
Linebarger: “There are so many public utilities needed in China at the
present time, that the government can’t monopolize all of them for the
advantage of the masses. Moreover, public utilities involve risks which a
government cannot afford to take. Although the risks are comparatively
small in single cases, the entire aggregate of such risks, if assumed by
the government, would be of crushing proportions. Private initiative and
capital can best perform the public utility development of China. We
should, however, be very careful to limit the control of these public
utilities enterprises, while at the same time encouraging private
development as much as possible.”(193) Sun had, however, already spoken of
nationalization: “I think that when I hold power again, we should
institute a nationalization program through a cautious and experimental
evolution of (1) public utilities; (2) public domains; (3) industrial
combines, syndicates, and cartels; (4) coöperative department stores and
other merchandising agencies.”(194) It must be remembered that there were
two considerations back of anything that Sun Yat-sen said concerning
national ownership: first, China had already ventured into broad national
ownership of communications and transport, even though these were in bad
condition and heavily indebted; second, there was no question of
expropriation of capital, but rather the free alternative of public and
private industry. An incidental problem that arises in connection with the
joint development of the country by public and by private capital is the
use of foreign capital. Sun Yat-sen was opposed to imperialism, but he did
not believe that the use of foreign capital at fair rates of interest
constituted submission to imperialism. He said, in Canton, “ ... we shall
certainly have to borrow foreign capital in order to develop means of
communication and transportation, and we cannot do otherwise than have
recourse to those foreigners who are men of knowledge and of experience to
manage these industries.”(195) It may thus be said that Sun Yat-sen had no
fixed prejudice against private capital or against foreign capital, when
properly and justly regulated, although in general he favored the
ownership of large enterprises by the state.
Second—to follow again Professor Coker—the Western empirical collectivists
favor labor legislation, and government intervention for the protection of
the living standards of the working classes. This, while it did not figure
conspicuously in the theories of Sun Yat-sen,(196) was a striking feature
of all his practical programs.(197) In his address to Chinese labor, on
the international Labor Day, 1924, he urged that Chinese labor organize in
order to fight for its own cause and that of national liberation. It had
nothing to fear from Chinese capitalism, but everything from foreign
imperialistic capitalism.(198) Sun did not make a special hero class out
of the workers; he did, however, advocate their organization for the
purpose of getting their just share of the national wealth, and for
resistance to the West and Japan.
Third, the empirical collectivist tends to advocate price-control by the
state, if not over the whole range of commodities, at least in certain
designated fields. Sun was, has been stated, in favor of the regulation of
capital at all points, and of public ownership in some. This naturally
implies an approval of price-control. He more specifically objected to
undue profits by middlemen, when, in discussing salesmen, he said: “Under
ideal conditions, society does not need salesmen or any inducement to buy.
If a thing is good, and the price reasonable, it should sell itself on its
own merits without any salesmanship. This vast army of middlemen should
hence be made to remember that they should expect no more from the
nonproductive calling in which they are engaged than any other citizen
obtains through harder labor.”(199) In this, too, _min shêng_ coincides
with empirical collectivism; the coincidence is made easy by the relative
vagueness of the latter.
Fourth, in the words of Mr. Coker, “many collectivists look upon taxation
as a rational and practical means for reducing extreme differences in
wealth and for achieving other desired economic changes.”(200) Sun Yat-sen
agrees with this definitely; his land policy is one based upon taxation
and confiscation of the amount of the unearned increment (which, not
involving the confiscation of the land itself, is perhaps also taxation),
and proposes to apply taxes extensively. Quite apart from the question of
distributive justice, a heavy tax burden would be necessary in a country
which was being rigorously developed.
Fifth, empirical collectivists believe in land control, not only in the
cities, but in the open country as well, as a matter of agrarian reform.
We have seen that the land figured extensively in the ideology of _min
shêng_, and shall observe that Sun Yat-sen, in his plans for _min shêng_,
stressed the importance of proper control of land.
In summing up the theory of distributive justice which forms a third part
of the principle of _min shêng_, one may say that, as far as any
comparison between a Chinese and a Western idea is valid, the positive
social-revolutionary content of _min shêng_ coincides with the doctrines
of that group of Western politico-economic writers whom Coker calls
empirical collectivists. The correspondence between the two may not be a
mere coincidence of names, for in considering Sun Yat-sen’s _min shêng_,
one is struck by the empirical, almost opportunistic, nature of the
theory. A great part of the activity of the Chinese, whether material or
intellectual, has been characterized by a sort of opportunism; not
necessarily an opportunism of insincerity, it may be more aptly described
as a tendency to seek the golden mean, the reasonable in any situation. It
is this habit of compromise with circumstance, this bland and happy
disregard of absolutes in theory, which has preserved—with rare
exceptions—the Chinese social mind from the torment of any really bitter
and profound religious conflict, and which may, in these troubled times,
keep even the most irreconcilable enemies from becoming insane with
intolerance. This fashion of muddling through, of adhering to certain
traditional general rules of reasonableness, while rendering lip-service
to the doctrines of the moment, has been the despair of many Western
students of China, who, embittered at the end, accuse the Chinese of
complete insincerity. They do not realize that it is the moderateness of
the Confucian ideology, the humane and conciliatory outlook that centuries
of cramped civilized life have given the Chinese, that is the basis of
this, and that this indisposition to adopt hard and fast systems has been
one of the ameliorating influences in the present period of serious
intellectual antagonisms. Generalizations concerning China are rarely
worth much. It may be, however, that the doctrine of _min shêng_, with
respect to its positive socio-economic content, may appear vague to the
Western student, and that he may surmise it to be a mere cloak for
demagogues. It could easily do that in the West, or in the hands of
insincere and unscrupulous leaders. In China, however, it need not
necessarily have been formulated more positively than it was, because, as
we have seen, the intellectual temper of the Chinese makes any strict
adherence to a schedule or a plan impossible. It is easy, always, to
render the courtesies; it is hard to follow the specific content. Sun
Yat-sen apparently realized this, and wished to leave a general body of
doctrine which could be followed and which would not be likely to be
violated. In any case, the theses of _min shêng_, both ideologically and
programmatically, can scarcely be contrasted with the detailed schedules
of social revolution to be found in the West.
Sun Yat-sen’s frequent expressions of sympathy with communism and
socialism, and his occasional identification of the large principles of
_min shêng_ with them, are an indication of his desire for ultimate
collectivism. (It may be remarked, in passing, that Sun Yat-sen used the
word _collectivist_ in a much more rigid sense than that employed by
Coker.) His concessions to the economic situation of his time, the
pragmatic, practical method in which he conceived and advocated his plans,
are a manifestation of the empirical element in his collectivism.
_Ming shêng_ cannot, however, be thought of as another Western doctrine
for national economic strength, national economic reconstitution, and
national distributive justice; it is also a program for the improvement of
the morale of the people.
How is the _min shêng_ doctrine to fit in with the essentially
conservative spirit of the nationalist ideology? If, as Sun proposed, the
new ideology is to be compounded of the old morality, the old knowledge,
and modern physical science, how is _min shêng_, referring to social as
well as material programs, to be developed in harmony with the old
knowledge? In the terminology of ultramodern Western political science,
the ethical, the moral, and the emotional are likely to appear as words of
derision. In a milieu characterized by the curiously warmblooded social
outlook of the Confucians, such terms are still relevant to reality, still
significant in the lives of men. The sentimental is intangible in
politics; for that reason it is hard to fit into contemporary thought, but
though it cannot be measured and fully understood, its potency cannot be
disregarded; and for Sun Yat-sen it was of the utmost importance.
_Min Shêng_ as an Ethical Doctrine.
Reference has been made to the Confucian doctrine of _jên_, the
fellow-feeling of all mankind—each man’s consciousness of membership in
society. This doctrine was formulated in a society unacquainted with Greek
logic, nor did it have the strange European emphasis upon sheer
intellectuality which has played its way through Western thought. Not, of
course, as profoundly introspective as Christianity, nor appealing so
distinctly to the mystical in man’s nature, it was nevertheless concerned
with man’s inner life, as well as with the ethics of his outward behavior.
The Confucian was suffused throughout with the idea of virtue; the moral
and the physical were inextricably intertwined. Its non-logical content
scarcely approached the form of a religion; commentators on the old
ideology have not called it religious, despite the prominence of beliefs
in the supernatural.(201) The religion of the Chinese has been
this-worldly,(202) but it has not on that account been indifferent to the
subjective aspects of the moral life.(203)
The nationalist ideology was designed as the inheritor of and successor
to, the old ideology of China. The doctrine of nationalism narrowed the
field of the application of Confucianism from the whole civilized world to
the state-ized society of the Chinese race-nation. The doctrine of
democracy implemented the old teachings of popular power and intellectual
leadership with a political mechanism designed to bring forth the full
strength of both. And the doctrine of _min shêng_ was the economic
application of the old social ethos.
It is in this last significance, rather than in any of its practical
meanings of recovery, development, and reform, that Sun Yat-sen spoke most
of it to one of his followers.(204) He was concerned with it as a moral
force. His work was, among other things, a work of moral transformation of
individual motives.(205) _Min shêng_ must, in addition to its other
meanings be regarded as an attempt to extend the Chinese ideology to
economic matters, to lead the Chinese to follow their old ethics. Sun
Yat-sen had ample time in his visits to the West to observe the ravages
that modern civilization had inflicted upon the older Western moral life,
and did not desire that China should also follow the same course. The
humanity of the old tradition must be kept by the Chinese in their venture
into the elaborate and dangerous economy of modern life; the machine
civilization was needed, and was itself desirable,(206) but it could not
overthrow the humane civilization that preceded it and was to continue on
beneath and throughout it.
In this manner a follower of Sun Yat-sen seeks to recall his words: “I
should say that _min shêng_ focuses our ethical tradition even more than
the other two principles; after a Chinese has become nationalistic and
democratic, he will become socialized through the idea of his own
personality as an instrument of good for human welfare. In this proud
feeling of importance to and for the world, egotism gives way to
altruism.... So, I say again that _min shêng_ is an ethical endeavor ...
this, the final principle (and yet, the first principle which I
discovered, in the bitterness and poverty of my boyhood days), will come
imperceptibly into our lives.”(207)
In a philosophy for intellectuals such attitudes need not, perhaps, be
reckoned with; in an ideology for revolution and reconstitution, perhaps
they should. Sun Yat-sen conceived of his own work and his ideology not
only as political acts but as moral forces; _min shêng_ was at once to
invigorate the national economy, to industrialize the material
civilization, and to institute distributive justice, and in addition to
this, it was to open a new, humane epoch in economic relations. That is
why the term, instead of being translated, is left in the Chinese: _min
shêng_.