15 March 2015

Despatch from the archives of Chinese Old Labour High Toryism


From the Russian Wikipedia page on Eastern Han Confucian literatus and Gongyang Zhuan 公羊傳 scholar He Xiu:
[He Xiu] was influenced by Dong Zhongshu (179-104 BC). He created the advanced Three Er historiosophical scheme, marking the stages of the historical process. The Spring and Autumn Annals attributed to Confucius are given as an example of the historical flow and ebb in space and time. He gave a detailed description of the ideal society, which supposedly existed in China in the distant past. The ancient Chinese state was allegedly based on the well-field system (described by Mencius) and was characterised by collective labour organised within the community. Families, as members of collective agricultural communities [общину], were given rights in common property (with elders supported by a double allotment). Ostensibly, a system of state social support developed there, along with a multi-tiered education system which selected the most gifted for state posts. There was also strict control over the quantity and quality of labour in the община. These ideas had a decisive formative influence on the utopian theories of Kang Youwei.
Yet more possible contact between Slavophilia and Political Confucianism, anyone? The parallels between Jiang Qing and Ivan Kireevsky were already clear enough to me, but this seems to be a lot deeper an angle! Also, how does that song by Culture Club go again? ‘Commie, commie, commie Confucian…’? No, that’s not it…

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