Modernity, State And Population Governmentality

Transformation and mordenity is the fundamental issue in sociology. This study was designed to explored and explained the process of persuing socialist modernity and the uniqueness in the Mao era, trying to give a competitive version of explanation on the socialist modernity.The core ideology of modernity is to meet the commitments and liberation of the population who under the jurisdiction. Historically, Malthus and Marx/Engels had a heated debate on the outlook and desirability of modernity. The former believed that "nature banquet seats" is extremely limited, modernity can only be extended to a limited crowd, while the left must leave. The latter believed that as long as the lifting of the shackles of material technical modernity and the alienation of modernity liberation coused by capitalism, modernity can bring about a better promise for all, that means the modernity of socialist can "guarantee that no anxiety and fear coused by excess population ever". However, Marx also pointed out in his population theory that "every special, historical mode of production has its own special, historical population laws";"different social mode of production has its different laws of population growth and excess population growth law", then is there a possibility to generalise the population laws of socialism? With the question, the perspective of this study focused on the era of Mao Zedong which started from1949. It is the time that build reality upon ideal, however, the reality is not optimistic. The socialist countries have to make every effort to bridge tension between socialism "shortage" and the certainty of its people’s lives. Under the logic of improve the willingness the socialist state designed and implemented a continuous social engineering. As Foucault said, in the construction of these social engineering, the state must build the corresponding population governmentality. Since the "country is a variable result just brought by a multi-governance institution," and the "history has shown that socialism can only operate by grafting onto various types of governmentality," then "in order to pursue a socialist modernity what kind of population governmentality the country had built and implemented?"That is the issue the paper try to explore.This research in its nature is a theoretic exploration, and it is critical, interpretive in the text rendering. This research has taken the national population planning events-process as a starting point.Firstly,the research framework of this paper proposed generally is " state-modernity-population governmentality", then made an interpretation for the various social projects in the process of pursuing socialist modernity, especially the management of the remaining population. According to the history and logic of Maoist socialist modernity, the explanatory framework of "socialist modernity, state and population governmentality" includes three core elements:first, the value-Utopia, the motive power and destination of socialist modernity, which is the promise of universal salvation; second, control-engineering, the catching up economic modernization and demographic transformation that started by material technical modernity and modernity liberation; third, level-classification-exclusion, namely the decentralization economic surplus population and the order remaining population, which means taking "decentralization" itself to prove the fact of "save" and forcing the disorder sociaty return to the state that socialist modernity promised. During the countries seek modernity,"’organized’/’population unitised’-’pack down’-’hierarchical/category/exclusion’" constitute the logic of population governance.In order to make an application or re-interpretation of the framework that the study proposed, the fourth and fifth chapters were relatively independent case study, and selected the major events in the Mao era to study, namely the "Great Leap Forward"(1958) and "Big streamlining"(1962-1963), educated city youth movement (1950-1980). These events clearly demonstrated the process of pursuing a socialist modernity, the conversion of modernity level, the overall plan, programs and skill in Mao era."Great Leap Forward" is an instant experiment to catch up modernization of the economy. It attempts to complete the catch up of national modernization economy by taking mass movement to convert an unlimited supply of surplus labor into capital under conditions of severe shortage of capital. Producing large-scale economic surplus population in the most intensive space and time is a direct consequence of "Great Leap Forward". Commpare to the cooling modernity.the huge economic surplus population is extremely redundant, and with respect to the promise of modernity in the socialist countries "pack down", the population is unbearable burden. Thus, an urgent, massive clean-up-exclude the remaining urban population became fundamental way to resolve crisis. The place where caused surplus rural population priorly provides the operational space for city to shift the crisis.If the large streamline that the Great Leap caused was a crisis triggered by management, then the youth movement is illustrated the normalization of cyclical political and economic crisis governance in Mao’s era. Educated youth going to the countryside lasts for up to1/4century, changing the fate of nearly20million young people. It can be called a well-designed, comprehensive organised and the most protracted social engineering in the history of the Republic. The nature and purpose of the Youth movement is multiple and in flux. From the very beginning of the movement to1968,the economic motive was in the primacy. It was mainly to solve the employment problem of educationed unemployee. At the same time, it was also a way to deal with the routine periodic economic crisis. But in1968, it became the governance means of political crisis to rebuild social and political order. Afterward political motive surpassed economic motive which made the movement became a political renovation project for youth population. It was also sugar coated by building a new socialist countryside, being a socialist new farmers, narrowing three poor aura. Overall,in Maoist,the nature of educated youth movement is a management and transformation projects that socialist China used to deal with the remaining population——a double surplus of economic and order. After Mao’s death, liberation from modernity levels down into the technical substance of modernity, population governmentality was also followed by transition. The aims of new population governmentality:the state transferred the population reproduction cost in the political framework that "pack down" to individuals and handed over the population burden to the market management. The shockness of youth spontaneously back to city is one of the key forces contributed to this transformation. Youth movement marked the end of the Mao era utopian project.In the end, this paper advocat the reflection on modernity. Marx’s "free man";"printless citizens" of market economy; Marcuse’s "One Dimensional Man";"mediocre public" under capitalism; Foucault’s "tame the flesh" under micro-power technology,all of these are modern theorists’ reflection on the real human condition for seeking true freedom.This paper put forward that freedom in a complex society needs to face reality and also needs to join ideal to reality. If the country in good faith to create freedom for all, we should not be afraid of authority and plans but turn against it. But in an open, pluralistic, and tolerant dissident sociaty is the presupposition which make the state become a tool to obtain the freedom rather than alienated into a means of oppression. In modern society, intellectuals must learn to critique and self-liberation, maintaining tension with the mainstream, to use their expertise to raise the narrative outside the mainstream, and provide another possibility and promote a self-survival aesthetics.