| From the date of the birth of the Magna Carta, Constitutional system in United Kingdom has gone through almost800-year. At least two historical periods experienced feudal society and capitalist society. When the scholars of today be understood as one of the constitutional and democratic system, and do our best to celebrate the great era of constitutional democracy, little attention has been paid to the question, that is, at least in the United Kingdom, the constitutional system is not the start of a democratic system, it has a long history of gradual democratization process. Various systematic factors such as parliamentary constitutional democracy, electoral system, multi-party system, cabinet system, and more, were historically formed in this process. Their meanings also have not been fixed since they formed. Therefore, we must look back on the history of the generation process for philosophy research to British constitutionalism and even constitutional democracy of capitalist. This historical retrospective will undoubtedly help us to clarify the concept, grasp the whole thing closely interlinked better. Only through the historical depth of investigations, will enable us to discover the true historical features of the formation of constitutionalism in United Kingdom, what can help us to more accurately understand the modern United Kingdom real historical process of constitutional development, outlining the basic characteristics of formation and development of constitutional politics rule.The basic view of this article is that the history of United Kingdom constitutionalism is a history of "fighting for right", the relationship between "power" and "right" is the core issue in the development of the theories of constitutionalism in United Kingdom, the essence of any democracy is that "right" be used to restrict and limit "power". Therefore, one main idea of the statute of the constitutionalism is the authority of a government, another is recognizing and upholding the basic rights of citizens. However, the original meaning of democracy is "rule by the people" or "people are the masters", the constitutional system is just a historical stage in the development of democratic political process, which is bound to be beyond.Because in capitalist society, in a society that the logic of capital be carried out, inevitably produce class division between rich and poor,the "rights" which reflect the law, the concept of formal equality among members of society can not hide the inequality in fact, in the final analysis it is a safeguard for the interests of the bourgeoisie. Constitutional democracy in capitalism is largely a secretive existence of oligarchy.Based on this fundamental point, the overall structure is divided into three sections of this article. Part I includes the chapter I and chapter II. We set forth the political legacy of the ancient British society and the conformation of British constitutional system within the political framework of the British feudal society. Since the establishment of England Kingdom, the legacy of complying with customs and habits formed during tribal commune times, which formed by the Anglo-Saxons who belonging to Germania, leaving two political heritages to this Kingdom: one is the political concept of "King under the law", another is the conference tradition of political consultation, that is the Witan composed by members of the aristocracy. Both of these two heritages are linked to restrictions on royal power, the former place the royal power under the law, while the latter is an organization of nobility which limits the royal power. It is these two heritages which made a foreshadowing of the political and cultural traditions for the emergence and development of the British constitutional system of the future, so that the British can get of British constitutionalism by means of the struggle between the monarchy and the aristocracy as early as in the feudal society. The two are constitutionalism legal system and the organization of parliament and the parliamentary system.These two cornerstones contain a basic contradiction which is the contradiction between power and right. Before the "glorious revolution" which took place in1688, political struggles in British feudal society mostly revolved around the race between royal power and constitution or parliament.The second part consists of chapter III to chapter11th. Main part of it is the analysis and elaboration of the process of democratization of British constitutionalism by historical trail. The beginning of this process is the "glorious revolution" in1688, the development of constitutional system in United Kingdom bred a variety of factors, such as the Bill of rights to protect individual freedoms, parliamentary, electoral system, political system, the Cabinet, and so on during more than300years. In the meantime, political theories which closely related to the constitutional system also flourishing, United Kingdom became a cradle of the liberalism theory. And since the second half of the19th century, struggles of working class to fight for their own interests promote the development of the British constitutional system further more.After20th century, the process of democratization of British constitutionalism had almost be completed, but the historical limitations of it is also exposed.The final chapter is the third part of this article. Main part of it is the overview of historical character in constitutionalism’s democratization in United Kingdom, and set out the analysis and criticism to capitalist democracy of Marx and Engels. As an end, we review "the third way" theory of Anthony Giddens, the contemporary British social theorist, as well as his criticism to the constitutionalism’s democracy of capitalism and his vision for the further democratization of the constitutionalism’s democracy. |
