Between Rights And Order: Criticism Of Political Philosophy On Neo-liberalism And Neo-conservatism

Real philosophy is the essence of ethos of times and the living soul of civilization.The philosophical problem always comes from the philosophy inside the problem and italways responds to major issues of the times. That’s the problem of the relationshipbetween the right and order. China is modernized rapidly. Its reform gets into the deepwater area and its development endeavors at a crucial stage.There appears a variety ofdifferent right subjects. The subjective consciousness of main body’s right conceptawakes increasingly; Rights consciousness enhances markedly; the contradictionbetween the interest subjects is increasing. How to build a properly functioningdemocratic country with a stable system to protect individual right is an importantpractical problem that builds modern national governance system and improves thegoverning ability level of modernization. The18th National Congress of the CommunistParty of China regards boosting national governance system and governance capacitymodernization construction as the main target of political democracy ofcomprehensively deepening reform, constructing the socialism with Chinesecharacteristics. In contemporary China, human rights theory becomes one of the mainprinciples of governing country. Right discourse becomes the mainstream politicaldiscourse. Protecting human rights constitutes an important goal of institutional change.Striving and maintaining the civil rights constitutes the political practice of new sight.It is that how to expand democracy and protect individual legitimate rights has becomethe value basis of governing a state and dealing with politics in modern times. Thedegrees of realization of individual rights and democratic participation are the mainmeasures of political modernization. Political modernization is a political system to givefull plays to people s democracy and protect the legal rights of individuals. However,just as Huntington says, The stability of the modernization can only be achieved byexperiencing instable turbulence of modernization. The efficient response of politicalsociety in changes to the request of social increasingly democratic rights needs to berealized by the development of institutional accommodate space. Order and stability are supportive or restrictively boundary requirements to guarantee that the system canaccommodate growing democratic rights of society. Whether from the angle of theory orpractice, political stability is the basic premise and fundamental guarantee to ensure thatall political modernizations will be advanced smoothly. The political modernization thatwe pursue is orderly and effectively institutional change, not so called BigDemocracy regardless of all institutions. The point is that how the relationship betweenpolitical rights and political order efficiently keep on a balanced point where those twocan mutually support and push on. If any extreme swing happened even the so-calledpendulum principle could destroy the future of political modernization of China. In theend of19th century, the German Max Weber worried about the political future of hiscountry, because of the long-term lack of traditional liberal democracy in Germany andunknown of how to pursue democracy, the public could stray into the mold Jacobin sdictatorship, and could be partial to the totalitarianism because of the unknown of howto pursue order. His prediction proved prophetic after Hitler s rose to power. China alsolacks the traditional political democracy. If there was no support by political order, theextreme upholding of civil rights and political rights could repeat the CulturalRevolution. And too much emphasis on order and stability may easily hinder theencouragement of political reform. Therefore, in the process of exploring socialistdemocratic politics with Chinese characteristics, the relationship between rights andorder is a very important matter, we need to deal with it scientifically, study it deeply ontheory and work carefully on practice.The contemporary political philosophy is the fundamental theory to explore thenature and law of the coordinating development and benign operation of the standardpolitical system. As for the relationship of rights and order, variety of schools, at leastthose of the contemporary western political philosophy have done a lot of deepsystematical exploration, forming all kinds of theories. Among them, the most strikingis the neo-liberalism and neo-conservatism. There is no doubt that the neo-liberalismpolitical philosophers, led by the United States, emphasize greatly on political rights.Almond s comparative politics, Robert Dahl’s democracy and its critics, Easton’s thesystematic analysis of the political life and Rawls’s theory of justice and so on,emphasize much on the participation of democratic rights which is the domainsindicator for the constitution of the political modernization. Huntington,neo-conservatism, emphasizes much on orderly politics in the political order in areforming society. The two parts form a sharp contradiction. The issue of therelationship between rights and order, of course, has caught the attention of some Marxist classical writers such as Marx and Engel s. In the process of their deep criticismof the capital bourgeois for a series of deceptive speech of capital ideology, such as freehuman rights and law’s order, they profoundly illustrate it is no more than theideological expression of capitalized citizen society.Today, Chinese Marxist political philosophy should be based on the presentChina s reality, draw the ideological resources from the Marxist classical writers,conduct the extensive dialogue with western political philosophy, especially theNeo-liberalism and the Neo-conservatism, criticizing their false premise and the natureof the content while actively drawing their rational thinking factors, so as to buildChinese discourse about the relationship between order and right from the angle ofMarxist political philosophy and promote contemporary political modernization processwith Chinese characteristics and modernization of the national governance system andcapabilities, on which this dissertation is based.The dissertation is divided into three parts, the introduction, the body and theconclusion. The body is composed of six chapters. The introduction section explainsthat the debate focus between the current neo-liberalism and the neo-conservatism is therights and the order. The neo-liberalism focuses on the preservation andaccomplishment of the individual rights, while the neo-conservatism regards the orderas the highest value priority. The two stands on each side, just like the pendulum theory.The neo-liberalism only concerns on the individual rights, while the neo-conservatismonly concentrates on order, which causes the neo-liberalism and neo-conservatism stayin power in the USA alternately, either carrying out the democracy or attaching on order.If we only emphasize individual rights instead of order and carrying out, democracymay form the tyranny of the majority; if we only focus on order and instead of ignoringindividual rights, all democracy will be strangled. Whether the pendulum of the rightsand order could be kept in the middle and the rights and order kept in balance are theproblems need to be solved in this article. The theoretical significance of solving thisproblem is to combine the two to discuss and makes it provide the new thoughts topolitical philosophy for constructing special Chinese socialism; the practicalsignificance is to solve the conflict between the social political order and the security tothe citizenship and maintain the steadiness of the society.Chapter one explains the development of thoughts of rights and order from thewestern political philosophy. It is divided into three periods. In the first period, thereexists contradictive conflicts between classic-liberalism and conservatism.Classic-liberalism lays stress on freedom, and conservatism stresses order. The point of conflict lies on individualism and nation, rationality and tradition, equality andinequality, universality and variety, perfect and imperfect of society, and freedom andorder. In the second period, there exists contradiction between neo-liberalism andneo-conservatism. Their conflict lies in how to ensure individual freedom.Neo-liberalism holds ensuring the right of individual right through interference of thestate, and neo-conservatism holds ensuring individual right through law againstcontrolling freedom through centralization of state power in politic and plannedeconomy. In the third period, it is concerning the contradiction between neo-liberalismand neo-conservatism.Chapter two mainly elaborates the thoughts of the power priority of neo-liberalism.Firstly, it illustrates the reason for the power priority, and the connotation of the powerpriority. What s more, it shows various forms of the power priority, liberty is prior toequality within, and rights are prior to utility, power and kindness. Secondly, itillustrates the realization of right priority in system. Lastly, it criticizes the rightthoughts of neo-liberalism from the position of Marxism.Chapter three explains the thoughts of the order priority of the neo-conservatism. Itfirstly demonstrates that neo-conservatism is critical of the right priority ofneo-liberalism, and neo-liberalism pays too much attention to individual rights, andignores the order so as to lead to instability. Otherwise, neo-conservatism holds thepriority of order, and thinks that the main task of the nation is to maintain the stability ofnation order. Take Huntington s political order thoughts as an example to analyze theview of political order of neo-conservatism. Huntington thinks that the stability ofpolitics depends on the balance between the political involvement and systematization.When there exists inverse proportion between the political involvement andsystematization, the political order is unsteady; in order to set up a steady political order,the focus should be given to the improvement of the level of politics and politicalsystematization. Finally, it criticizes the viewpoints of order priority ofneo-conservatism from the standpoint of Marxism.Chapter four analyzes the causes of the differences between neo-liberalism andneo-conservatism. They have different understanding of liberty, different principles ofdealing with the relationship between the individual and the nation. Also, they havedifferences in the relationship of liberty and equality. They have different attitudestowards democracy. They have different views on priority of rights and orders.In the chapter five, it criticizes the points of neo-liberalism s supreme individualrights and neo-conservatism s order first stood from the perspective of political philosophy of Marxism. From the point of the dialectical materialism and historicalmaterialism s view, it is believed that the right thoughts of Marxism are based on thecriticism to the capitalism, reveals the hypocrites and essence of the capitalism, putforward the right thoughts of Marxism and explains its theory premises, rightsconnotation, characteristics and contents; clearly demonstrates the foundation,development to establish the communist order. At last it explains the relationshipbetween rights and order for Marxism. It is that rights are the principal base of order andcompletion course of the communism thoughts of Marxism as well as how rights andthe order is macro realization form and security system of main right, and the dialecticaldevelopment relations between right and order, and the accordant principle betweenorder progress and spatial development of inclusive right.In chapter six, it mainly illustrates the enlightenment of Contemporary China’sdemocratic political construction, which critically comes from the rational factors ofWestern dominant values, neo-liberalism and neo-conservatism. Neo-liberalism insistson the priority of the right and pays more attention on democratic participation, but itdoesn t notice the reasonable factors of neo-conservatism; on the contrary,neo-conservatism holds the priority of the order, focuses on improving the level ofpolitical institutionalization and maintaining the stable political order, but it sacrificesthe liberty and democratic rights of the people as their price. Neo-conservatism focuseson order and neo-liberalism stresses on rights, so we will put them together by politicalsystem reform. On one hand, it focuses on expanding political participation and letspeople enjoy more democratic rights; on the other hand, it s better to improve the levelof political institutionalization and strengthen the system of democratic capacity. Doingso can properly deal with relationship between rights and order. And constructdemocratic political system of socialism with Chinese characteristics.