  In considering the social revolution which was to form the third part of the program of min shÊng, four questions appear, each requiring examination. It is in this field of Sun's programs that the terms of the Western ideology are most relevant, since the ideological distinctions to be found in old China as contrasted with the West do not apply so positively in problems that are to appear in a society which is to be industrially modern. Even in this, however, some of the old Chinese ideas may continue in use and give relevance to the terms with which Sun discusses the social revolution. Private property, that mysterious relation between an individual and certain goods and services, has been almost a fetish in the West; the Chinese, already subject to the collectivisms of the family, the village and the hui, does not have the deep attachment to this notion that Westerners—especially those who do have property—are apt to develop. Consequently, even though the discussion of Sun's programs with regard to distributive justice are remarkably like the discussions of the same problem to be found in the West, the possibility, at least, of certain minor though thoroughgoing differences must be allowed for, and not overlooked altogether. The four aspects to this problem which one may distinguish in Sun's program for min shÊng are: what is to be the sphere of state action? what is to be the treatment accorded private ownership of land? what is to be the position of private capital? and, what of the class struggle? Sun Yat-sen said: “In modern civilization, the material essentials of life are five, namely: food, clothing, shelter, [pg 253] Behind his demand for a program to carry out min shÊng there was the fundamental belief that a government which does not assure and promote the material welfare of the masses of its citizens does not deserve to exist. To him the problem of livelihood, the concrete aspect of min shÊng, was one which had to be faced by every government, and was a means of judging the righteousness of a government. He could not tolerate a state which did not assure the people a fair subsistence. There was no political or ethical value higher than life itself. A government which did not see that its subjects were fed, sheltered, clothed, transported, and lettered to the degree which the economic level of its time permitted, was a government deserving of destruction. Sun Yat-sen was not a doctrinaire on the subject of classes; he would tolerate inequality, so long as it could be shown not to militate against the welfare of the people. He was completely intolerant of any government, Eastern or Western, which permitted its subjects to starve or to be degraded into a nightmare existence of semi-starvation. Whatever the means, this end of popular livelihood, of a reasonable minimum on the scale of living for each and every citizen, had to prevail above all others.314 [pg 254]Within the limits of this supreme criterion, Sun Yat-sen left the government to its own choice in the matter of the sphere of state action. If the system of private initiative could develop more efficiently than could the government in certain fields, then leave those fields to private effort. If and when private initiative failed to meet rigid requirements to be established by the government it was not merely the privilege, it was the obligation of the government to intervene. Sun Yat-sen seems to have believed that government action would in the long run be desirable anyhow, but to have been enough of a political realist at the same time to be willing to allow the government a considerable length of time in expanding its activities. In a developing country like China it seemed to him probable that the ends of ming shÊng could best be served in many fields by private enterprise. “All matters that can be and are better carried out by private enterprise should be left to private hands which should be encouraged and fully protected by liberal laws....”315 From the outset, Sun Yat-sen's plan of empirical collectivism demanded a fairly broad range of state action. “All matters that cannot be taken up by private concerns and those that possess monopolistic character should be taken up as national undertakings.”316 This view of his may be traced, among others, to three suppositions he entertained concerning Bismarck, concerning "war socialism," and concerning the industrial revolution in China. Sun shows a certain grudging admiration for Bismarck, whom he believed to have offset the rising tide of democratic socialism in Germany by introducing state socialism, [pg 255] Concerning Sun's beliefs regarding the sphere of state action in economic matters, one may say that his ideology of empirical collectivism required a program calling for: 1) the protection of private enterprise and the simultaneous launching of great state enterprises at the beginning; 2) the intermediate pursuance of a policy by means of which the state would be the guarantor of the livelihood of the people, and establish the sphere of its own action according to whether or not private enterprise was sufficient to meet the needs of the people; and 3) a long range trend toward complete collectivism. [pg 256]With respect to the question of land, Sun Yat-sen believed in his own version of the “single tax,” which was not, in his programs, the single tax, since he foresaw other sources of revenue for the state (tariffs, revenue from state enterprises, etc.). According to the land-control system of Sun Yat-sen the land-owner would himself assess the value of his land. He would be prevented from over-assessing it by his own desire to avoid paying too high a tax; and under-assessment would be avoided by a provision that the state could at any time purchase the land at the price set by the owner. If the land were to go up in value the owner would have to pay the difference between the amount which he formerly assessed and the amount which he believed it to be worth at the later time. The money so paid would become “... a public fund as a reward, to all those who had improved the community and who had advanced industry and commerce around the land. The proposal that all future increment shall be given to the community is the ‘equalization of land ownership’ advocated by the Kuomintang; it is the Min-sheng Principle. This form of the Min-sheng Principle is communism, and since the members of the Kuomintang support the San Min Principles they should not oppose communism.” Continuing directly, Sun makes clear the nature of the empirical collectivism of his min shÊng program, which he calls communism. “The great aim of the Principle of Livelihood in our Three Principles is communism—a share in property by all. But the communism which we propose is a communism of the future, not of the present. This communism of the future is a very just proposal, and those who have had property in the past will not suffer at all by it. It is a very different thing from what is called in the West ‘nationalization of [pg 257] Sun Yat-sen believed in the restriction of private capital in such a way as to assure its not becoming a socially disruptive force. That is a part of his ideology which we have already examined. In the matter of an actual program, he believed in the use of “harnessed capital.”322 He had no real fear of capital; imperialist foreign capital was one thing—the small native capital another. The former was a political enemy. The latter was not formidable. In a speech on Red Labor Day, 1924, when his sympathies were about as far Left as they ever were, in consideration for the kindliness of the Communist assistance to Canton, he said: “Chinese capitalists are not so [pg 258] The restriction of private capital to the point of keeping it harmless, and thus avoiding the evils which would lead to the class war and a violent social revolution, was only half the story of capitalism in China which Sun Yat-sen wanted told in history. The other half was the advancement of the industrial revolution by the state, which was the only instrumentality capable of doing this great work. “China cannot be compared to foreign countries. It is not sufficient (for her) to impose restrictions upon capital. Foreign countries are rich, while China is poor.... For that reason China must not only restrict private capital, but she must also develop the capital of the State.”324 The restrictions to be placed upon private capital and upon private land speculation were negative; the development of state-owned capital and of capital which the state could trust politically were positive, as was the revenue which should be gained from the governmental seizure of unearned increment. In some cases the state would not even have to trouble itself to confiscate the unearned increment; it could itself develop the land and profit by its rise in value, applying the funds thus derived to the paying-off [pg 259] Ideologically, Sun Yat-sen was opposed to the intra-national class war. Class war could, nevertheless, be justified in the programs of Sun in two ways: 1) if it were international class war, of the oppressed against the oppressing nations; and 2) if it were the class war of the nationalist Chinese workers against foreign imperialism. In these two cases Sun Yat-sen thought class-war a good idea. He did not think class war necessary in contemporary China, and hoped, by means of min shÊng, to develop an economy so healthy that the pathological phenomena of the class struggle would never appear. On the other hand, in justice to Sun, and to those Marxians who would apologize for him to their fellow-Marxians, there can be little doubt that Sun Yat-sen would have approved of the class war, even in China, if he had thought that Chinese capitalism had risen to such power that it obstructed the way of the Chinese nation to freedom and economic health. Even in this he might not have set any particular virtue upon the proletariat as such; the capitalists would be the enemies of the nation, and it would be the whole nation which would have to dispose of them. A finically Scrupulous and detailed examination of Sun Yat-sen's programs for min shÊng is intellectually unremunerative, since it has been established that min shÊng may be called empirical collectivism; collectivism which is empirical cannot be rigidly programmatic, or it loses its empirical character. Sun, not accepting the dialectics of historical materialism, and following the traditionally Chinese pragmatic way of thinking, could not orient his revolution in a world of economic predestinations. With the characteristic Chinese emphasis on men rather than on rules and principles, Sun Yat-sen knew that if China [pg 260] One must consequently regard the programs of national economic revolution, of industrial revolution, and of social revolution as tentative and general outlines of the course which Sun wished the Nationalist Kuomintang and state to follow in carrying out min shÊng. Of these programs, the one least likely to be affected by political or personal changes was that of the industrial revolution, and it is this which is most detailed.326 His great desire was that the Chinese race-nation continue, not merely to subsist, but to thrive and multiply and become great, so that it could restore the ancient morality and wisdom of China, as well as become proficient in the Western sciences. A last suggestion may be made concerning the programs of Sun Yat-sen, before consideration of the Utopia [pg 261] |
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