A Research On Wu Enyu’s Political Thought

Freedom and equality are always two disputed concepts. As the British historianLord Acton said:"The fervor of pursuing equality dashes our hopes for freedom.Chinese liberals had argued this question for very many years in the first half20thCentury. They united and worked as one in the respect of revolting against autocraticrule and striving for the freedom of speech. But when talking about the relationshipbetween freedom and equality and how to understand liberalism,they disputed witheach other.Even the writers of Guancha were disputers and such an argument lastedtill after Guancha had ceased publication in1948.Wu Enyu was Guancha’s writer. He assured all confidently that freedom isimportant because it impels social developments and progresses.But equality is thefoundation of whole people’s freedom.Equality and freedom are not conflictingconcepts.On the one hand,we should fight for freedom,on the other hand we must tryour best to win the struggle for freedom.Wu held an opposing opinion against LordActon that whole people’s freedom can only be reached if we firstly abrogateeconomical inequality.In order to reach equality,we must abrogate private propertyand then practise planned economy to realize socialism at last.Wu said this aim canonly be reached by violent means.Many liberals didn’t agree with Wu’s thought,theybelieved it needs no doubt that to practise socialism,but it is unnecessary to practiseplanned economy.Many other liberals preferred planned economy but did believe it isunnecessary to resort to violent means.Despite that many different ideas,but theyreached common ground when came to practise socialism in China.Notsurprisingly,because even the role model of liberals Hu Shi showed his great favorfor planned economy.We are to seek out the answer of why Chinese liberals preferredsocialism.Furthermore,why they accept the opinion that peaceful means wasunworkable which broke the line of liberalism.Does the tragedy of China’sliberals’,including Chu Anping who chose to stay in Chinese mainland caused by theirmisunderstanding or was a historical necessity?This thesis chose Wu as a casestudy,because as a scholar who received a doctorate of philosophy in political sciencehis behavior showed some representative feature.