By Source, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=30522776
This Post includes the Chinese translation of Larry Catá Backer's reflections on Zhou Ruijin,
"Reflections on the Cultural Revolution: A Ten Thousand Character
Petition." It is part of a group of reflections on Zhou Ruijin's provocative essay. English version HERE.
此职位包括 文：白轲 对周瑞金《反思文革万言书》的“反思” 中国语文 版 翻译：高山
Reflections on Zhou Ruijin, "Reflections on the Cultural Revolution: A Ten Thousand Character Petition."Larry Catá Backer
对周瑞金《反思文革万言书》的“反思”文：白轲翻译：高山
周瑞金的反思文革这篇文章体现了邓小平 “解放思想，改革开放” 的巨大成功和潜在挑战。这一英明的主张曾引领党和国家走出那些在无产阶级大革命前夕以及革命中犯下的错误。由此，也许周先生反思的彻底与文章提出的质问，其本质都都深埋于“反思”之中。
“制度建设的成本可能会很高昂，在极端的条件下，甚至需要流血牺牲。但是一旦建立起来，维护社会的成本就会大大降低。以党治国，必然会带来党大于法、权大于法的后果，再好的制度也会沦为摆设，从而妨碍法治的实施。”
上述观点围绕着一个主要论点，其开始就表示“文革使我们认识到到专制的危害。” 并以“文革不是凭空而来的其一个因素就是阶级斗争的思维（十年文革，亿万人互相诬陷迫害）”为论据。这一斗争的破坏性不光是意识形态上同时也是物质上的，红色高棉时期的借马列名义而自焚似乎也证明了这点。阶级斗争不分敌我，普通百姓也可以同那些侵略领土的日本人相提并论。（“阶级斗争思维为什么错了”）这些分析都较为尖锐并来源于对要人治错不要集体领导错误的敏锐分析。也正是在此，周先生笔锋一转进行发问，一个列宁本人也曾问过的问题--该怎么办？周先生首先表示“民主政治是新型国家建立的逻辑基础”。在此之上，他做了几处对比指出国家，党，政府和法的区别，（法律不应作为统治者的工具）以及共产党和国家的区别。这些不同取决于其建立的基础即列宁式的政党不可避免的将会失败如果不以开放心态对待各种社会力量。这一提议否定了列宁的先锋党主张，并认为社会主义法在社会主义下不可能实施。或者换言之，结束以党治国从依法治国开始，即共产党自我约束于国家宪法，而国家宪法本身体现了党的纲领和党章。
讽刺的是，周瑞金可能正像毛泽东一样，按照邓小平的话来说是七分正确三分错误。周先生对文革错误宝贵的分析中正确的看到了领导人应为自身失误向自己的人民，向自己的组织负责。他的观点反映了邓小平认为阶级斗争不再是主要矛盾，共产党自身从革命党转换为执政党。这种转型的失误在古巴也出现了。这种国内内战的政治策略违背了列宁政党对全体人民的义务。他的观点同时正确的反映了现在党的基本路线以及国家宪法，任何个人和组织都必须遵守宪法和法律，无论是一般的法律还是更高级别的国家宪法。他还借用了童之伟关于中国社会主义宪政的观点。
但是周瑞金正如同毛泽东一样，其三分错的本质与破坏性都应当被打断。他在文中正确的指出先锋党施政不是一件易事。周先生指出领导者治国不是单靠发号施令，无论是个人崇拜还是脱离群众。但这不意味着要先锋党通过退位转化成西方式的国家社会主义制度。党的基本纲领对正确的党员行为批判是认可的：为了使党更好的领导人民，我们要更加解放思想，坚持改革开放。但这一切都离不开群众路线的实施。周先生忽视中国国家制度的列宁主义，没能建议通过群众路线来加强先锋党中的民主代表元素是可惜的。党的领导少不了倾听人民的呼声，并且正如邓小平所建议的，在现有制度下更好的实施民主集中。
为了将权力关进笼子里，我们必须需要法。周瑞金正确的呼应了习近平。但是我们也要承让于政治。法不可回避政治，而政治可以被原则限制。如果宪法中确定了原则，那么党应当去遵守，这正是周先生的观点。若有些原则未写入宪法而在别处，那么这部宪法应当和其制度相融合。法必须在原则之下，一部成文宪法是不够的。党的先锋代表不是一种绝对权力的表述，而是原则施加的义务。先锋性源于对这些义务的履行。正如国法体现原则中的行政性质，国法约束国家，原则约束党。作为母法的宪法应当在这些原则之下，这些原则的维护和阐述委托于先锋党并由其行使。权力必须在原则之下，但是阐释原则的权力不受法的约束。周先生没能看清这一点正是他分析中的错误，甚至是一些党员在日常工作中忽视的。在该原则下是通往更加民主的社会主义法制的列宁主义政党。
总之，我是有所保留的赞同瑞金。中国是宪政国家，其宪法应当代表并发展其国家利益。国家官员在宣誓仪式中宣称要拥护宪法是可佳的。但是这并不意味着依法治国坚持宪法作为最高法将不可避免的要求结束党作为先锋，在三个代表下有可能通过扩大党员基础来促进更强健的党内民主这一可能。(e.g., here). 的确，将权力关进笼子里不仅需要坚持党的基本路线（已写入法律和国家宪法之中）同时也需要当遵循自己的义务：实施和履行其基础政治原则，党必须保证这些原则在国家宪法中体现。这一原则-法-国家-政党的关系是建设社会主义法制的道路，并可以避免毛泽东的左倾错误以及在中国宪政中实施西方宪政的右倾错误。
Zhou Ruijin’s “Reflections on the Cultural Revolution” suggests both the great success and the future challenges of Deng Xiaoping’s brilliant program of emancipating the mind, reform and opening up that led China, and the Communist Party out of the errors committed immediately before and during the course of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. And that, perhaps, suggests as well the great strengths and small challenges of Zhou Ruijin’s “Reflections.” The essence of both is found deep within the “Reflection:”
The capital investment needed to build a system can be very high. In extreme circumstances, it requires bloodshed. However, once a system has been established, the cost needed to maintain the operation of society sharply decreases. A system in which the Party rules the state necessarily leads to the Party being above the law. When power is above the law, any system, no matter how good it is, becomes merely furniture and an impediment to the implementation of the rule of law.
That insight is woven around an argument that starts with the argument that the “Cultural Revolution Made Us Realize the Harm that Dictatorships Cause.” That argument is supported by the notion that “The Cultural Revolution Did Not Come Out of Nowhere” and that its key marker—class struggle—produced an ultimately self-destructive political and social culture through mutually fatal denunciations and rectifications (“During Ten Years of Cultural Revolution Many People Falsely Accused One Other”). This struggle was both ideologically and materially self-destructive in the way that the Khmer Rouge’s national self-immolation in the name of Marx and Lenin also appeared to be, it applied the rules of violent struggle that posited that the masses themselves were no less an enemy than the once invading Japanese (“Why Class Struggle Thinking is Wrong”). All of this is quite astute and the product of a keen analysis of the errors of substituting personal rule for collective leadership. And it is that that point, of course, that Zhou Ruijin takes a different course. He posits the same question as Lenin did—what is to be done? His answer starts with the assertion that “Democratic Politics is the Logical Foundation for Building A New Kind of State.” And to that end makes a severe distinction between state, party, government and law (“The Law Should Not be the Tool of Rulers”) and thus between the CCP and the state. That difference then lies at the foundation of what follows—that a Leninist Party must inevitably fail to “Be Open Towards Every Force in Society.” What follows from this bifurcation, this rejection of Leninist notions of a vanguard, is that the possibility of socialist law is not possible under socialism. Or put another way, that “Ending Rule of the State by the Party Begins with Rule of the State According to Law” and that such a conclusion is possible only where the Communist Party itself binds itself to the State Constitution whose construction is itself the expression of the CCP Basic line and its constitution.
Ironically, Zhou Ruijin, like Mao Zedong, may ultimately be, as Deng Xiaoping suggested, 70% right and 30% wrong. Zhou Ruijin provides valuable analysis of the errors that produced the Cultural Revolution and he is right to suggest that those with a leadership obligation are also responsible for the deleterious effects of their own errors. To the people who they serve and to their own organization that they have failed. He echoes Deng Xiaoping’s insight that class struggle was no longer the primary element of vanguard activity as the CCP transformed itself from a revolutionary to a ruling party. The deleterious effects of that failure might be discernible in Cuba. And the use of a strategy of civil war within a state belies the fundamental obligation of a Leninist party to all people, to lead by example. Ruijin also correctly echoes the current CCP Basic Line and the State Constitution, in pointing out that all individuals and organizations, must adhere to law, whether ordinary law or the higher law of the State Constitution. And he takes the best of Tong Zhiwei’s insights about the character of the Chinese Communist constitutional state.
But for Zhou Ruijin, like Mao Zedong, it is the nature of that 30% error, and its capacity to do harm, in each case, that gives pause. For it suggests, quite rightly, the difficulty of practicing leadership as a vanguard party. What Zhou Ruijin points out is that this leadership is not mastered merely by the power to command—either through cults of personality or by ensuring that the vanguard remains remote form the masses. Nor is leadership authenticated by the abdication of the CCP’s role as a communist vanguard with a state now transformed into a static socialist enterprise in the style of the West. The CCP itself provides the answer to the quite correct criticism of the behavior of cadres in the face of the Party’s own basic line: in order to lead the people the Party must better emancipate the mind, open up and endeavor to reform. But that is impossible without a better practice of the mass line. It is regrettable, then, that rather than suggest the ways to strengthen the democratic and representative elements of vanguard party governance through the mass line and a closer adherence to law and principle, the alternative was embraced—a rejection of the fundamental Leninist character of the Chinese state itself. In order to lead, then, the CCP must listen to the people, and it must, as Deng Xiaoping suggested, better practice democratic centralism within its own structures.
To put a cage around power one must have law; Zhou Ruijin is right, echoing Xi Jingping. But to have law one must concede politics. Law cannot avoid politics but it can be constrained by principle. If the principle is in the constitution then the party must yield—that is Zhou Ruijin’s point. But if the principle lies elsewhere then the constitution must be embedded within its structures; law must be constrained by principle—a written constitution is hardly ever enough. The vanguard authority of the CCP is not an expression of absolute power, but the exercise of the obligations imposed by principle; even as it continues to struggle to better perform as the servant of the principles from which its authority as a vanguard derive. Those principles must bind the CCP just as the law—which expresses the administrative character of principle—binds the state. The higher law of the Chinese constitution is itself bound by the higher principles of framework, the protection and elaboration of which is entrusted to the vanguard party and exercised through its leadership role. That power must be constrained by principle. But the power to elaborate principle is not constrained by law. The failure to grasp that insight is the critical failure of Zhou’s analysis, but perhaps more importantly, of CCP cadres to practice in their everyday working style. And in that principle lies the path toward a more democratically Leninist communist party as China builds its socialist rule of law.
I end by echoing and agreeing with Zhou Ruijin, but to different effect. China is a constitutional state. Its constitution must reflect and advance the interests of the nation. It is good that officials swear to uphold the State Constitution in their installation ceremonies. But it does not follow from this that “the beginning of rule of the state according to law with the constitution being the highest law” inevitably requires ending the vanguard leadership role of the CCP. Sange daibiao (三个代表) might suggest an alternative based on increasing democracy by broadening party membership and fostering vigorous intra-party democracy (e.g., here). It is conceivable that putting power in a cage requires both an adherence to the CCP basic line as expressed in law (the State Constitution) and the adherence by the CCP of its own paramount obligation to obey and apply its fundamental political principles—which the CCP must also ensure are always enshrined in the State Constitution. That relationship between principle-law-state-and party is a path toward socialist rule of law that avoid both the left error of Mao Zedong and the right error of Western party constitutionalism in China’s current constitutional order.
No comments:
Post a Comment