China’s Great Philosophers Would Despise What Mao and the CCP Created – The Epoch Times

Commentary

When the author of The Coming Collapse of China, Gordon Chang, predicted the imminent demise of the Chinese Communist Partys (CCP) rule two decades ago, he argued that regimes collapse when people are no longer afraid and think theyre no longer alone.

Changs forecast has yet to materialize. The state that Mao Zedong built is still in business. But two facts are worth noting.

First, it took the Soviet Union 74 years to implode and disappear, and a year before it happened, few analysts saw it coming. At this moment, the CCPs reign of terror in Beijing is just 73 years old. In Chinas extensive history, seven or eight decades is a mere flash in the pan.

Second, Maos CCP is wildly out of step with the Chinese philosophies that long dominated the countrys intellectual and cultural climate, namely, Taoism and Confucianism. If Changs prediction eventually proves true, we will someday assess the regime of Mao and his ideological successors as a deadly aberration in Chinese political and ethical thought.

The late Austrian School economist, historian, and political theorist, Murray Rothbard, identified the founder of Taoism, Lao-tzu, as the first libertarian intellectual.

Rothbard wrote:

For Lao-tzu the individual and his happiness was the key unit and goal of society. If social institutions hampered the individuals flowering and his happiness, then those institutions should be reduced or abolished altogether. To the individualist Lao-tzu, government, with its laws and regulations more numerous than the hairs of an ox, was a vicious oppressor of the individual, and more to be feared than fierce tigers.

After referring to the common experience of mankind with government, Lao-tzu came to this incisive conclusion: The more artificial taboos and restrictions there are in the world, the more the people are impoverished. The more that laws and regulations are given prominence, the more thieves and robbers there will be.

Confucius was a 6th century B.C. contemporary of Lao-tzu and even more influential over the centuries. For challenging elitist authoritarianism, he was revolutionary in his day. He spoke of the Mandate of Heaven, the notion that rulers must exercise power lightly and justly or Heaven would see to it that the people overthrew them. Confucius defended the right of rebellion against tyrants, whereas Mao and his successors brook no dissent and crushed resistance with calculating brutality.

Mao believed that all power flows from the barrel of a guneffectively an exaltation of force and a might makes right perspective. By contrast, both Taoism and Confucianism emphasize harmony and mutual respect. The founders of those ancient but enduring philosophies would be horrified to know that a Chinese leader starved and slaughtered 65 million of his countrymen to impose a system cooked up by a degenerate German scribbler named Karl Marx.

Maos bloody Cultural Revolution of the 1960s tried to cement his virulent Marxism as the sole ideology of China. His objective was to eliminate the Four Olds of custom, culture, habit, and ideas. Lao-tzu and Confucius never called for the violent imposition of their ideas to the exclusion of others.

Traditional Chinese philosophers like Lao-tzu and Confucius were culture-makers. Mao was the ultimate cultural nihilist, an enemy of culture itself. Whereas true culture spontaneously bubbles up among people as they interact, the artificial social arrangements that Mao sought to create in cultures place were top-down, narcissistic, and savage. It represented one maniacs delusions far more than it reflected consensus or pluralistic institutions.

Even though leaders after Mao drifted from the most extreme and doctrinaire of Maoist ideas and practices, they all staunchly rallied (and still rally) around the one-party, authoritarian state as the locus of wisdom. They tolerate no threat to their monopoly on power.

As he enters the second decade of his tenure, the current CCP leader, Xi Jinping, is ratcheting up oppression as he forms his own cult of personality. He heads an evil autocracy that persecutes minorities, arrogates total power to itself, and suppresses those who dare challenge its barbarity.

The teachings of Lao-tzu and Confucius aimed to achieve humane conditions and a virtuous people. The self-serving propaganda of the CCP is in a completely different league, aimed at maintaining power at seemingly any cost.

Of all the important Chinese philosophers, my personal favorite is Mencius. Born two centuries after Confucius, he is regarded by scholars as nearly the equal of Confucius in his influence.

It is, in fact, through the more prolific Mencius that we understand Confucius himself. Mencius interpreted Confucius and took the elders teachings to their logical conclusionsto what lovers of liberty today identify as an ancient version of 19th century classical liberalism.

Writing at Libertarianism.org in 2020, Paul Meany explained that Mencius believed individual growth was a very personal thing. It is far better to encourage it than to compel it:

Similarly to Confucius, Mencius believed that the government existed to cultivate a virtuous citizenry. This at first sounds like a recipe for an overbearing authoritarian regime of paternalism, and yet Mencius beliefs do not remotely resemble those of a totalitarian. Mencius did not agree with heavy-handed, top-down approaches.

Mencius, writes Meany, held economic views that Adam Smith defended some 2,000 years later. The Chinese philosopher argued against government monopolies and price-fixing. He defended free trade and opposed warfare as a means to national prosperity.

He expected government officials to act with fairness, justice, and integrity:

Mencius held those in power to strict standards. Like Confucius, Mencius believed leaders ought to be of the highest ethical character, given that their example would filter down to the rest of the population. If leaders did not practice ethical conduct, they could corrupt an entire society. If leaders did not keep clean moral characters or failed to fulfill their duties, it was morally permissible for them to be removed from office and replaced, by force if necessary.

The followers of Taoist and Confucian thought rarely succeeded in securing the kind of minimal and benevolent state they wrote about. Governments are experts at thwarting, at least temporarily, the goals of those who wish to put the state in its proper place. But no Chinese scholar worth his salt would argue that Chinese culture hasnt been profoundly shaped over the centuries by these two philosophies.

Moreover, there can be little doubt that if Lao-tzu, Confucius, or Mencius could pronounce judgment on todays Chinese regime, they would express profound contempt. The CCP has surely lost any mandate from Heaven if it ever had one.

The day the CCP dies is the day when from beyond the grave, great-thinking men like Lao-tzu, Confucius, and Mencius will smile in unqualified approval.

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

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Lawrence Reed writes a weekly op-ed for El American. He is president emeritus of the Foundation for Economic Education (FEE) in Atlanta, Georgia; and is the author of Real Heroes: Inspiring True Stories of Courage, Character, and Conviction and the best-seller Was Jesus a Socialist?

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China's Great Philosophers Would Despise What Mao and the CCP Created - The Epoch Times