Revolution And Constitution In The Perspective Of Modernity

From the point of view of modernization, revolution is a dramatic political and social transformation in the context of the contradictory modernization. As a political act outside the system, revolution also requires an ideology with superiority and legitimacy as a spiritual support in addition to the public participation and a high degree of organization. The revolution in the modern sense is filled with the modern revolutionary spirit and consciousness. Revolutionary consciousness consists of three levels:From the awareness of time, the revolutionary idea means a beginning;From the view of legitimacy, the revolution subverts legality with legitimacy and reaffirms legality on the base of legitimacy;From the view of political practice, revolution makes a clean break with natural politics and theological politics, and opens the way for the human's rational politics.In the process of modernization of the ideas of revolution, the Chinese traditional dynasty change was converted into modern sense of the revolution. From the time consciousness of view, when the traditional Chinese revolution got into the modern world,the violent factors of traditional revolution gain force from modern scientific knowledge, particularly the new historical consciousness, which has become a discourse of legitimacy and a core philosophy dominating China in the 20th century. From the view of legitimacy, revolution won legitimacy in modern China largely due to its role in founding a modern state in China. Eventually China chooses the Russian-style revolutionary road to found a state. This style determines fundamentally that the political practice of China's revolution is associated with the political parties and the military and party-state system is formed eventually.The Western sense of the constitution was transmitted into the late Qing Dynasty China, the modern factors of constitution began to intervene in China's politics. From the perspective of modernity, the legitimacy of the modern constitution was recognized in Qing Dynasty in the constitutional reform. The modernity of constitution was advanced by Xinhai revolution to a degree that only the people's constitution had legitimacy. During the process of rise of people, the real legitimacy of constitution is separated from the formal legality of constitution and viewed as opposites in value. This produced different forms of modernity in the people constitution. It is a process of change from a national constitution with no class difference to the people's constitution with differences and differentiation in class. However, the nationals and the people both are modern "people" with moral legitimacy with comparison to monarch. There are different modern aspirations derived from the same people's constitution in different times and with various political needs. The difference between the people's constitutions of Republic of China and of the people's Republic of China essentially reflects a competition of social type between capitalism and socialism which was the competition of two different kinds of modernity.After the founding of The PRC, the theory of Continuing the revolution under the dictatorship of the proletariat was prescribed into China's 1975 Constitution. Thus revolution and constitution was connected together. The specific term comes from the continuous revolution in the sense of term's evolution. From the view of political practice, The PRC launched kinds of continuous revolution and eventually evolved into Continuing the revolution under the dictatorship of the proletariat. Continuing the revolution under the dictatorship of the proletariat became the content of the Constitution of the Chinese Communist Party and the China's 1975 Constitution. Continuing the revolution under the dictatorship of the proletariat is connected with modernity and reflects the organized modernity. Under the guidance of Continuing the revolution under the dictatorship of the proletariat, the mass ethics was integrated into the political ethics and the social organizations were integrated into political party too. The structure of party-society generated conflict between the party's unified leadership with the modern bureaucratic autonomy. Ultimately, national modernization construction promoted by political revolution by party leads to the conflict between revolution-style modernization with social structure. This is a paradox of revolution-style modernization.The constitution under the guidance of Continuing the revolution under the dictatorship of the proletariat is people's revolutionary constitution. From the view of the structure of revolutionary consciousness, people's revolutionary constitution takes the calendar of century AD and reconstructs revolutionary history with modern historical consciousness. Thus creating a people's dominant position in history is created and the legitimacy of people constitution is proved by popular sovereignty and the great democracy becomes the practice of revolutionary politics. In this sense, Continuing the revolution under the dictatorship of the proletariat and people's revolutionary constitution are completely dominated by the modern revolutionary consciousness, and modernity is profoundly embodied. First, China's 1975 Constitution sets pure revolution calendar in the time consciousness, which opens a new era. The historical narrative of preamble of China's 1975 Constitution declares the victory of the proletariat. It is not only the simple military superiority, but also an inevitable logic in history and morality.China's 1975 Constitution discovered and reconstructed the revolutionary image of people through historical narrative, and the history of modern China was shaped as the people's revolution history. In the context of the Marxist philosophy of history, the people's revolutionary history presented by the historical narrative of preamble of China's 1975 Constitution shows itself as the history of progress in time and the universal history in space, and ultimately the evolutionary history with the end of the world which dominated by the dialectics. Secondly, from the view of legitimacy, China's 1975 Constitution established the position of popular sovereignty. To make the concept of justice real, constitution must be real and be morally justified, to keep constitution not as a purely moral declaration, constitution must be presented as a legal system. The legitimacy of constitution is based on people's constitutional acts and its legislative embodiment is the constitutional provisions of popular sovereignty. The dual functions of constitution requires the dual nature of popular sovereignty. Based on the dual nature of popular sovereignty, we must distinct the popular sovereignty as fundamental political principle and the popular sovereignty as fundamental normative principle. The theory of Continuing the revolution under the dictatorship of the proletariat holds high the slogan of political popular sovereignty and advocates the right of revolution in the name of popular sovereignty to intervene the operation of law with political revolution. This constitutes the conflict between the popular sovereignty as fundamental political principle and the popular sovereignty as fundamental normative principle. The inherent conflict of popular sovereignty is derived from internal conflict of people in essence. This is reflected in the conflict of dual role as civil and as people in the construction of people's revolutionary history, and the conflict of dual roles between the proletariat and its political parties as the representative of people and all the people on behalf of the people of citizens. Finally, from the view of political practice, great democracy has become the form of Continuing the revolution under the dictatorship of the proletariat. On the moral level, the Western democracy replaces the traditional Chinese the Idea of God and converts the rule of legitimacy from the divine right of kings to democratic revolution. From the perspective of the system, great democracy in the cultural revolution becomes the specific democratic way under the guidance of Continuing the revolution under the dictatorship of the proletariat and was described in the constitution. In fact, great democracy is the social mobilization and mass movement launched by the party and is the public manifestation of democracy. From the perspective of modernity, great democracy is to go beyond free democracy and against the modern bureaucratic mechanisms.The end of Culture Revolution announced the end of the ideological legitimacy of the Continuing the revolution under the dictatorship of the proletariat. The reform aiming for four modernization replaced the revolution.It becomes the theme of the times. Continuing the revolution under the dictatorship of the proletariat is denied but the meaning and legitimacy of revolution has been extended. It leads the continuous tension of revolution. The human rights described in constitution challenges to the popular sovereignty. These are the conflicts between the public nature of popular sovereignty and the individual nature of human rights, and between the particularity of popular sovereignty and the universality of human rights.