The Theory Of Social Order——In The View Of Political Ideological History

Good social order and related basic values are the eternal pursuits of human beings. The sociality of the human beings determines that the fundamental freedoms and rights of mankind must be realized in society. Good social order is the basis and premise for the human being to realize self-worth and happiness. Ancient thinkers always wanted to find a good social order, which allows the free development of the humanity of each person and also enables the continuation of the prosperity of the whole human society. Order has been a proposition throughout the human society. As long as the human society exists, the issue can not be avoided. Therefore, any country, any nation puts the construction of social order in a very important position.The theories on social order are not only a crystal of the wisdoms of the sages in every age but also a result of the historical practices of mankind. In combination with historical narratives and value judgments, the paper adopts the Marxist methodology to inspect the social order of mankind in a bid to respond to the issue of social order on the level of Marxist political philosophy. It explores the core contents of social order from both static and dynamic aspects in the interaction between the historical practices on human social order and the theories of ancient thinkers, mainly including the basic values, elements and operating laws of social order. On this basis, it considers the social order building in current China in a philosophical perspective.In the Western political philosophy history, the discussions on the concept of order can be traced back to ancient Greece at least. At that time, natural philosophers had begun reflection on the universe, and Thales, Pythagoras, Parmenides, Empedocles, etc. were all outstanding representatives to explore the cosmic orders or laws. But they explored the cosmic orders or laws in the sense of natural science or natural philosophy. They believed that some basic everlasting orders or laws exist in the universe. After the developments by Socrates and Plato, order possesses a social nature, and the order of human society is exactly a part of the cosmic order system. And Socrates completed a fundamental shift from the exploration of cosmic order to the exploration of the order of the human society. Socrates and his student Plato wanted to explore and establish an ideal social order according to the laws of the universe, under which, the social division of labor is up to the nature and is a typical order with social labor division and distribution based on natural ability. In Plato’s theories, social order is related to continence, consistency, coordination and justice. A just society must comply with such arrangement and distribution. Aristotle is the first proper empirical scientist in the human history. In the field of politics, he is the founder of political science. His study of the social order starts from the perspective of empirical science. His classification on the social order is based on an investigation to different states. In his eyes, there are many different social orders. During this period, people concerned about "what is order?" If Socrates and Plato founded the political philosophy, then Socrates founded the political science. Social order is the common core topic of their discussions. Their thoughts have become the basic ideological heritage for us to discuss social order.After mankind entered into the medieval age, the manifestation of social order was that the theology ruled everything. Augustine divided the world, according to the human mind, into the City of God on behalf of angles and the City of Hell on behalf of devils. By the City of God, he established a divine order beyond the mundane politics, and God realized his ruling of the human secular world through the guidance and salvation of human mind order. Secular order and secular politics were only transition links leading to divine order and divine politics. In people’s mind, the Middle Ages are a brutal, authoritarian and ignorant "religious era". Between the splendid ancient Greek and Roman civilizations and bright Age of Enlightenment, the medieval social order seems a regression and fracture of history. In fact, this is a misunderstanding of the Middle Ages. The medieval civilization originates from the integration between Germanic culture and Greek&Roman cultures, and Christianity plays a leading role in facilitating their fusion. Christianity, to certain degree, keeps the two cultures and enables them to develop under new historical conditions. Christianity becomes the provider of the element "religion" in the medieval social order. The destructiveness might be more serious if Christian churches failed to maintain order to certain degree in the collapse of basic beliefs and divine order in the late Middle Ages, especially when Martin Luther stressed that "the soul of each person can get salvation before God" in religious reform.After entering the Age of Enlightenment, rational rules were established in various fields. The awakening of human reason overturned the medieval theological order and made the core of the social order shift from God’s will to human reason. Humans began to think "how does a good social order exist?" Natural law became a fundamental principle of social order. Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau and others use social contract assumptions to demonstrate the formation of the social order of human society and the elements and conditions of its operation. They began to build a social order with humanity as the logical starting point, and the concept of "all men are created equal" was widely recognized in this period. Despite different views on each specific issue, they all paid attention to the explorations on social order in the meanings of secular society and political practice. The concerns by then Enlightenment thinkers about humanity, the relation between individual and nation, freedom, justice, etc. all have become important issues for the future people to examine the social order.In the17-19th century, with the spread of Enlightenment thoughts, the bourgeois Enlightenment thinkers promoted Enlightenment thoughts around the world, and bourgeois revolutions were widespread in Europe and America. Revolutionary unrests prompted thinkers to reflect and summarize revolution and social order. After experiencing the French Revolution, Burke, Hegel, Alexis de Tocqueville. et al had a timely reflection on the disasters brought about by the revolution and began to deeply reflect on "how to make good social order possible". From their points of view, they pointed out the destruction of revolution to social order and put forward the ways to promote social improvements and social progress while avoiding revolution. Burke held that the reform under the aristocracy can avoid revolution; Hegel argued that the establishment of a modern state is an effective way to avoid revolution; Tocqueville proposed the idea of establishing a democratic society featuring people’s sovereignty, central authority and local self-government to avoid the occurrence of revolution from the perspective of system. Despite different ways, their conclusions were consistent, i.e. revolution is not a must for the improvement of social order, without revolution, humans can still complete the progress in social order by reform and the key lies in that each class can seek their own legal status and legitimate interests in social order.With the mad expansion of the capitalist modes of production across the globe, the contradiction between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie was sharpened. The laissez-faire capitalist ideology became mainstream thought at that time and the concept of the supremacy of individual interests become too apparent. The bourgeoisie failed to respect other classes as people expected, and their exploitation of the working class was increasingly aggressive and cruel. Utopian socialist thinkers raised criticism of the capitalist social order. Marx’s theory on social order also emerged during this period. Marx’s main concern lied in breaking the then irrational capitalist social and political orders, and his theory on state and other methodologies profoundly revealed the laws of social order changes. Marxist classical writers hold that the state is a product of the irreconcilability of class contradictions. When it is inevitable that the society is split into irreconcilable opposites, for that they and the society are not destroyed in the struggle, there is a need for a force beyond the society to control the conflict within the range of "order". The force of alienation that is produced from the society and prevails over the society is state. State is a protection for social order. However, there is a contradicting movement in state itself. Contradiction is the driving force of things, and the contradiction between productivity and productive relation can not be overcome by state. When the sum of the productive relation that holds a dominant position as the economic base changes, it will lead to changes in the entire superstructure, i.e. changes in social order from a macro point of view. When the progress of productivity causes a new change in economic basis, social order will enter another dialectical movement and such movement exists in each stage of the human history. Thus the human society develops from a lower level to a higher level, until the realization of the communism puts an end to the conflict. Therefore, Marx highlighted the role of class struggle in the changes in social order and held that class struggle is the fundamental driving force of the development of social order. Marx advocated using violence to overthrow the capitalist society to establish the social order of socialist society.Currently, class struggle still exists. However, with the development of society, all classes are in progress. The struggle has promoted not only the progress of the proletariat but also the progress of the bourgeoisie. After going through two world wars, with the generation of Cold War, especially into the late20th century, we should see a new tendency that the social order of some capitalist countries has joined the inclusiveness of the proletariat and the compassion for the underprivileged. Both sides are seeking a common aspiration of mankind to avoid the disaster brought by revolution. They try to reach a balance through communication, making reconciliation and cooperation possible. This progress makes people find that "good order is desirable and possible".Since the reform and opening up, China’s order is re-established in political, economic and other aspects.The establishment of new order shows that the society is more diverse and people’s interests are becoming increasingly diversified. It should handle several contradictions to restore order under diversified stakeholders, namely the relation between freedom and order, fairness and efficiency, development and stability, unity and difference. The formation of good social order relies on well handling these contradictions.In combination with the history of thought and historical practices on social order and based on the current social practices of China, the paper proposes epochal theoretical issues and makes response to them.