Journal of the Theory of History and Historiography 2002 Issue

Author: Qu Lindong
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2003-11-01
Features: The report "Social Class Structure in Contemporary China" points out: "Since 1978, with the implementation of reform and opening-up, the economic system has been continuously deepened, and the original working class, peasant class, and intellectual class have been differentiated, giving rise to new social strata such as the managerial class, private entrepreneurs, and rural migrant workers. The political and economic relationships among different social strata have undergone and continue to undergo various changes." "Different stages of social development have different social class structures. The social class structure of industrialized and modernized societies is completely different from that of traditional agricultural societies, although the former has evolved gradually from the latter." The book "proposes a theoretical framework for classifying social strata based on occupational classification, with the possession of organizational resources, economic resources, and cultural resources as criteria." According to this standard, it divides the social class structure of Chinese society into ten social strata: the state and society administrators, managerial personnel, private entrepreneurs, professional and technical personnel, clerical workers, self-employed industrial and commercial households, commercial service workers, industrial workers, agricultural laborers, and urban and rural unemployed, semi-unemployed, and underemployed. The book also points out: "Using only the indicator of the ownership of means of production to explain social class differentiation is not complete." "Regardless of whether people agree or disagree with the book's division of the ten social strata of contemporary Chinese society, the profound and fundamental changes in China's class structure are undeniable. And this change has already occurred in advanced countries in Europe and America. Therefore, using the ownership of means of production as the only standard for classifying strata cannot fully explain the complex social class structure of today. And this is precisely the fundamental and basic point that Chinese scholars have always understood in the dialectical materialism of history. The dialectical materialism of history is a theory that observes human history by examining changes in social structure. The social class structure is an important part of the overall social structure. The changes in the social structure of human society must inevitably affect the dialectical materialism of history itself. Therefore, it can be seen that the gap between the 'humanities' and the 'social sciences' or the 'human sciences' that has existed since the 19th century still exists today. As the Concise Encyclop?dia Britannica points out in its Chinese edition when summarizing the differences between the two, one view holds that "the difference between the sciences and the humanities lies in their methods of analysis and interpretation. Science moves from diversity and specificity to unity, consistency, simplicity, and necessity; conversely, the humanities emphasize uniqueness, unpredictability, complexity, and creativity." Another view it summarizes is that "the sciences and the humanities differ fundamentally in their methods of inquiry and explanation. Science is the product of reason, using concepts such as facts, laws, and causes, and communicates information through objective language; the humanities are the product of imagination, using concepts such as phenomena and reality, fate and free will, and express them through emotional and purposeful language." These arguments are not essentially different from the arguments proposed by neo-Kantian philosophers over 100 years ago. What is the reason for this chasm between the two? How can it be bridged? We believe that the deep root of this chasm lies in the opposition between mechanical materialism and idealism in social historical views and methodologies; from another perspective, it is also the manifestation of the opposition between humanism and scientism in worldviews and methodologies. The social historical view of mechanical materialism holds that human destiny is determined by external living conditions—Including living conditions unconsciously created by people themselves—People's production and living methods, ways of thinking, and behavior are all unconsciously dominated by these conditions, and they have no initiative choice. People with this social historical view will adopt scientism in methodology, and in the social sciences, it is reflected in the use of structural-functional analysis methods, summarizing various external conditions or material factors affecting human survival into various "models" or "structures" and conducting functional analysis. They believe that the knowledge system composed of such structural-functional analysis is science. The social historical view of idealism generally holds that human destiny is ultimately determined by divine will, but at the same time, it holds that specific human behavior is dominated by their motives and will, giving them full autonomy and initiative, and that the social historical process is the process of the manifestation of the motives and wills of people, especially elite figures. People with the social historical view of idealism will adopt humanism in methodology, taking every person in the research object as an individual with unique personality, values, and free will, emphasizing that researchers can only restore the original appearance of those unique personality, values, and free will through empathetic "insight" and "introspection," and oppose the use of scientism's inductive methods to induce "models," "structures," or "laws," believing that doing so would obscure the unique personality, values, and free will of the research object. To be fair, both of these social historical views and methodologies have seen one side of the truth. The fact is that in the history of human survival and development, people are constrained by objective conditions that cannot be influenced by their will, so there is an "unwilling" side; but at the same time, people are always constantly changing objective conditions according to their will, so there is an "autonomous choice" side. The problem is that neither side has seen that people are constantly accumulating and developing their material and spiritual strength in the practical process of seeking survival and development, gradually reducing the degree of "unwillingness" and increasing the degree of freedom of "autonomous choice." Because neither side has seen this central link of driving and transformation, only seeing the side they are on, neither can answer the fundamental questions they face: mechanical materialists cannot answer how the "structures" and "models" they discover are generated and changed, so they either avoid answering or ultimately attribute them to God; idealists cannot answer how the motives and wills of the elite figures they say determine the historical process are generated, why the motives and wills of elite figures from different eras and classes are completely different; faced with such questions, idealists are either the same or avoid answering, or ultimately attribute them to God. Once God appears, there is no place for science. Unfortunately, God cannot bridge the gap between the "humanities" and the "human sciences" or the "social sciences," nor can it overcome the opposition between humanism and scientism. How can we get out of this predicament? According to the statement of Wiener cited earlier, it is necessary to find "a key to unlock the door of historical generation and change, a driving force for historical development." If that key and driving force are found, the gap between the "humanities" and the "social sciences" or the "human sciences" that has existed for over 100 years can be bridged, and the opposition between humanism and scientism can also be eliminated. Where can that key and driving force be found? Originally, the dialectical materialism of history had long pointed out their location, but due to the long-term emphasis on class struggle, the dictatorship of the proletariat, and the "law of the replacement of the five production methods" in the past, various dogmatic teachings covered them with a thick layer of historical dust and strictly concealed them. Today, the great trend of reform and opening-up inspires us to clear away that historical dust, and the long-sealed "key" and "driving force" begin to reveal their scientific rational brilliance again. Originally, Marx and Engels had long pointed out that the dialectical materialism of history is "a theory that has found the key to understanding the entire history of society in the history of labor development." The starting point of its grand scientific system is a simple fact that is well-known to all and that no one would doubt: humans must eat, drink, live, and wear; to eat, drink, live, and wear, they must inevitably engage in labor production. Then, it expands its entire system from here: humans have been engaged in labor production from generation to generation, and they must inevitably improve their material and spiritual quality while constantly improving the objective conditions of survival: "In the behavior of reproduction itself, not only are objective conditions changing, such as villages becoming cities, wilderness becoming cleared farmland, but also producers themselves are changing, forging new qualities, developing and transforming themselves through production, creating new strength and new concepts, creating new ways of communication, new needs, and new languages"; thus, it must inevitably promote human nature to gradually detach itself from the barbarity of animals and become more civilized; thus, it must inevitably promote society to develop from low to high. This is the fundamental and universal law of human historical development revealed by the dialectical materialism of history. It is not the law that governs human destiny from something outside of humans, but the law that humans themselves, through their own practical activities, promote the development of their material and spiritual quality and ability from low to high, and thus also promote their society to develop from low to high. Therefore, Marx and Engels summarized all history as "always only the history of their individual development," and called the dialectical materialism of history "the science of the real person and its historical development." Enlightenment refers to a series of social characteristics relative to primitive and barbarism. Modern Europe not only saw itself as one of the most outstanding civilizations among several civilizations but also considered itself to be a (unique, at least) "civilized" world. What are the characteristics of this civilized state, there is no clear consensus so far, even among Europeans themselves. For some, civilization is contained in "modernity," that is, technological progress, the increase of productivity, and the belief in the development and progress of culture in history; for some, civilization means the enhancement of "individual autonomy" relative to other social factors—family, community, state, religious groups; for some, civilization means non-rudeness in daily life and broad social etiquette; and for others, civilization means reducing the scope of legitimate violence and expanding the restrictions on cruel behavior. Of course, for many, civilization includes some or all of the above characteristics. When 19th-century French colonialists talked about the "mission to spread civilization" (la mission civilisatrice), they meant that through colonial conquest, France (or all of Europe) imposed the values and norms contained in these definitions of civilization on non-European peoples. In the 1990s, various groups in Western countries talked about the "right to intervene" (right to interfere) in the political situations of all over the world, mainly non-Western countries, also on the of this civilized value to confirm the rights they claimed. Such values, whether we like to call them civilized values, secular humanism values, or modern values, are the product of the same historical system that elevates these values to the forefront of the social sciences, and they also spread like some people hope in the social sciences. Social scientists integrate these values into the definition of the topics they consider worth studying (social problems, ideological problems), into the concepts they invent to analyze such problems, and into the standards they use to measure these concepts. There is no doubt that most social scientists insist on value neutrality, claiming that they do not want to misunderstand or distort research data because of their own social and political tendencies. However, this kind of value neutrality does not mean that values do not play a role when evaluating the historical significance of the research object. Of course, this is the core point of the argument of Rickert (Heinrich Rickert) in his discussion of the logical characteristics of the so-called "cultural sciences" (culturalsciences) (1913). They cannot ignore "value" when evaluating the social significance of things. Indeed, the definition of "civilization" by Westerners and the social sciences is not completely unaffected by the concept of the diversity of civilization. However, whenever the question of the origin of civilized values is raised, that is, how they first (or so some claim) appeared in the modern Western world, the answer is almost inevitable that they are the product of the unique development trend of the past Western world; or, they are described as the heritage of classical antiquity and (or) the medieval Christian world, the heritage of the Jewish world, or the combination of the two—in which case it is sometimes called the Jewish-Christian heritage. Many objections have been raised and have already been raised to a series of assumptions. Whether the modern world, or the modern European world, is as "civilized" as described in European discourse has been questioned. Mahatma Gandhi had a famous satire on this. Someone asked him, "Mahatma Gandhi, how do you see Western civilization?" He replied, "That's a good idea." In addition, the assertion that the values of ancient Greece and Rome, or the values of ancient Israel, are more helpful than the values of other ancient civilizations in laying the foundation for what is called modern values has also been questioned. Moreover, whether modern Europe can be said to have originated from ancient Greece and Rome on the one hand and from ancient Israel on the other is not self-evident. In fact, people have been debating for a long time which is the cultural origin, ancient Greece and Israel. Both sides of the debate deny the rationality of the other's view. The debate itself is enough to make one doubt the rationality of this origin theory. Anyway, who would say that ancient Indian civilization is the birthplace of Buddhism, and Buddhism has become the core part of Japanese cultural history, so Japan can claim that ancient Indian civilization is its predecessor? Is it today that the United States is culturally closer to ancient Greece and Rome or ancient Israel than Japan is to ancient Indian civilization? After all, it can be proven that Christianity is far from representing a continuation but rather marks a clear break with ancient Greek, Roman, and Israeli civilizations. In fact, until the Renaissance, Christianity unambiguously put forward this claim. Moreover, the break with classical antiquity is still?