Ah. A fellow knowledgeable China-hand. As far as I'm concerned, what Kung Tze does ca 5 BCE is really consdolidate and codify a large and diverse body of practices and beliefs under a fairly unified set of ethical ideas. In that sense, the Legalists were merely a refocusing of the same general body of mores, etc...into a somewhat different direction. One might call it a competing school to Kung Tze de Jiao Xun, but I would argue only because, at that time, Kung Tze "authority" as it's known today was by no means completely established. But in a sense, the early legalists weren't a HECK of a lot different from Confucious. As for Mr Donald's ramblings, the are in which they most closely approach reality is where filial obedience to the emperor is developed as an extension to his ethical system, but even here there are significant differences. For one, that filial loyalty is not portrayed as being ultimately political, but almost an extension of family (which is why the emperor was known as the "Son of Heaven"). Also, and this is fairly Cypherpunkish, unlike in the west the notin of Emperor was not ultimately a genetic one. That is, there's a "Mandate of Heaven", and when the mandate of heaven is removed from an Emperor and his line, it's time to bum-rush his show, which was done on a regular basis in China. As for the Taoists this comment by Mr Donald is almost completely nonsensical. -TD

From: "Enzo Michelangeli" <em@em.no-ip.com> To: <cypherpunks@al-qaeda.net> Subject: Re: China's wealthy bypass the banks Date: Fri, 12 Nov 2004 17:53:07 +0800

Re: China's wealthy bypass the banks Tyler Durden Wed, 10 Nov 2004 14:56:08 -0800

...

Oh No!!!!

Way overly simplistic. Also, you are comparing apples to bushels of wheat.

[James Donald:] However Confucianism vs Daoism/Taoism is rather different from what you would get in the west. Confucianism is somewhat similar to what you would get if western cultural conservatives allied themselves with nazi/commies, in the way that the commies are prone to imagine conservatives have supposedly allied themselves with nazis. Taoism somewhat similar to what you would get if anarcho capitalists allied themselves with pagans and wiccans...

WOW! I'll skip the obvious comments and ask, In which centuries are you suggesting this applies? Now? If so, you are clearly NOT talking about mainland China. Please re-define the centuries/epochs during which you believe this to have been true, and then maybe I'll bother responding.

Actually, that doesn't apply to any century. The ancient philosophical school that inspired Mao Zedong was actually Legalism, which provided the theoretic foundations to the absolutist rule of Qin Shi Huangdi (to whom Mao liked to compare himself). Mao, as many other Chinese reformers and writers of the early XX Century, hated Confucianism as symbol of China's "ancien regime" and decay. Which is why the campaign against Zhou En-lai of 1974-75 had an anti-Confucian theme (see e.g. the posters at http://www.iisg.nl/~landsberger/plpk.html )

Legalists and Qin Shi Huangdi himself were pretty nasty types, and their domination saw widespread confiscation of books, ridiculously harsh rule (arriving late to work could bring the death penalty!) and large-scale assassination or rivals: several Confucian philosophers were buried alive. The ruthless methods of the Qin dinasty ultimately resulted in its downfall: it only lasted one and half decade (221 - 206 BC), half of what Maoism did.

By comparison, Confucianism was remarkably enlightened, which is also why Voltaire expressed a good opinion of it. Some Confucian philosophers like Mencius (372-289 AC) were early theorists of people's sovereignty:

"The people are the most important element in a nation; the spirits of the land and grain are the next; the sovereign is the lightest [...] When a prince endangers the altars of the spirits of the land and grain, he is changed, and another appointed in his place." [Mencius, Book 7: http://nothingistic.org/library/mencius/mencius27.html ]

...and of the right to tyrannicide, justified by the loss of legitimacy brought by misrule:

"The king said, 'May a minister then put his sovereign to death?' Mencius said, 'He who outrages the benevolence proper to his nature, is called a robber; he who outrages righteousness, is called a ruffian. The robber and ruffian we call a mere fellow." [Mencius, Book 1: http://nothingistic.org/library/mencius/mencius04.html ]

Enzo