Marshall’s Citizenship Theoryand Its Enlightenment On China’s Construction Of The Harmonious Society

Since the formation of political culture in ancient Greek, citizenship has always been a key area of western political thought. As a master of modern citizenship theory, the famous British sociologist T. H. Marshall defined this concept integrallty for the first time in history, and explained the citizenship’s development history on the three dimensions of civic rights, political rights and social rights. Marshall delved into the inner link between the three kinds of rights, starting with the influence of each right on social class, he explained how the equal citizenship system relieves the social contradictions caused by capitalism market competition. Among all the three rights, Marshall thought highly of the social rights, because whose expansion would be highly relied on by the more equal social relationship. In order to adjusting the tensions between capitalism and democracy, Marshall proposed a perfect solution which is building welfare states. This solution played an important role in reducing the negative effects of class polarization on personal life chance. Since the mid of1980s, Marshall’s extraordinary contributions on citizenship theory have been recognized gradually, but at the same time, his books became the topic of mass comments, developments and criticisms. In this period, a number of western mainstream theorists proclaimed their opinions and comments on Marshall’s viewpoints, no matter criticism or praise, they provided materials for the further development of Marshall’s citizenship theory.At present, China is on the important stage of building the harmonious socialist society, handing correctly the relationship of every aspects, maintaining social stability and unity, promoting democratic politics in order to realize social fair and justice, which is our important goal to fight. However, a series of social contradictions emerged because of rights unfair:urban-rural dual structure, unfair right to education, employment discrimination and incomplete social security system. These elements blocked the way to our goal, restricted the expression of citizen’s equal rights, and damaged the reasonable rights of equal treatment for citizens as social members with complete and equal citizenship.The research on Marshall’s citizenship theory and his constant pursuit for equal rights has a certain sense of enlightenment for building the harmonious society in China. In addition, recognizing correctly the complete picture of citizenship which is an important western concept will facilitate our local interpretation and analyses of Chinese citizenship, solve the present social contradictions on the view of citizen’s equal rights, and finally provide some theoretical supports for exploring a way to building a harmonious society in China.