A Study Of Xenophon's Public Economic Thought And Its Contemporary Value

The resolution of the 4th Plenary Session of the 19 th Central Committee pointed out that the main task of our country in the future is to build a modern national governance system,which needs to learn from all the experiences and ideas in the development of human civilization so far.The public economy thought of Xenophon,a philosopher in ancient Greece,is an important part of it.Based on the comparison of modern eastern and western civilizations,combined with the current domestic research literature of Xenophon,and with the latest theory of public economics as an analysis tool,this paper attempts to make a new analysis and explanation of Xenophon's academic contribution,so as to rediscover the practical significance of Xenophon's thought,so as to improve the theoretical basis research of China's national governance system,and also trying to make some contribution for the research of the thoughts of western economic history.Xenophon's public economic thought is the consequence of his constant practice and deliberate on his time background and the practical problems he has observed.He lived in the Greek's classical times with the characteristics of commercial prosperity,swelling of selfish desire,social disorder and continuing international wars.Xenophon is always problem-oriented,and through his own practice and thinking,he tries to explore a way to restructure the Greek world order.In his thinking,he clearly realized that these social disorder problems are actually caused by the collapse of the public economic system,so many of his discussions contain profound public economic thoughts.These thoughts still have practical guiding significance for today's fiscal reform and modernization of national governance.Xenophon put forward the hypothesis and concept of human nature related to public economy.The first is the hypothesis of human nature,which is the theoretical premise for him to solve the problem.He believes that human nature has both good and evil and will change with time and space.Secondly,he believes that a person,especially the elite,needs to have altruistic moral quality.These altruistic quality include temperance,benevolence,and filial piety and so on.Then,all people need to receive altruistic quality education throughout their lives,so he designed a relatively complete system to achieve this goal.Finally,Xenophon also discussed the altruistic view of wealth.He believed that a social elite with the ability to accumulate wealth should reconcile the relationship between their private interests and publicinterests,so as to make the accumulation of wealth a good thing for the country and the people.Xenophon discusses the law of public economic activities from various perspectives.He believes that the legitimacy of public goods of suppliers should be determined by the scope and quality of public goods they provide.There is a competitive relationship between suppliers and potential suppliers.When a supplier cannot provide enough high-quality public goods and services,it will be replaced by more excellent one.In addition to legitimate,Xenophon discusses specific ways and measures of public goods supply.First of all,he affirmed the important role of social elites in the whole social structure.They are considered to be able to provide support for the stability of social order and the accumulation of wealth.Secondly,he believes that the domestic public goods should benefit all sectors and provide various forms of public goods and relief measures.Finally,he paid more attention to the role of national defense as one of public goods,and determined the position of agriculture,business and handicraft industry in the society based on whether it is conducive to national defense.Xenophon also discussed the domestic and foreign interest relations from the perspective of public economy.From the domestic perspective,a country needs to provide a series of internal public goods and create appropriate conditions,which will promote the accumulation of wealth and the improvement of the quality of life of the people.The state should also provide the necessary external force for the order of the market economy.From the perspective of international relations,countries also need to provide reasonable public goods to maintain a peaceful universal social order in order to create external conditions conducive to their own development.Xenophon also analyzes the economic laws and phenomena in the process of public economic activities.Xenophon found the difficulty of governance.He thought that public economic governance system is difficult to maintain for a long time.Its rise and fall are closely related to the ethical level of the ruler.But Xenophon still tries to solve this problem.He believes that cooperation is a key way to improve national quality through altruistic education,so as to reduce the cost of cooperation.Xenophon also recognized the different economic subjects within the public economic system,which is policy makers,executors and consumers,and understood the interest differences among the economic subjects.For this reason,he put forward different requirements for each subject.The decision-maker should have the highest ethical quality and command ability,the executor should also have enough restraint and know how to accumulate wealth,and the consumer should have the basic quality of cooperation.Xenophon also realizedthe difference between public goods for the survival and development.He looked more at public goods for survival,and tried to use public goods for development ensure survival of people.In fact,Xenophon provides a comprehensive public economic governance program,which has a strong logic of public economy behind it.The popularization of altruistic quality and division of labor in public affairs reduces the cost of cooperation within the society,which makes the public goods that the whole society can provide increase in quantity and quality.The improvement of the quality of public goods and the abundant supply reduce the cost of private and international trade activities,promote the prosperity of commercial activities and the development of international trade,which will also increase the wealth of the country and citizens.Combined with the above analysis and the change of Xenophon's academic status in history,we can find that although the economic thought of ancient Greece has been familiar to people,the public economic thought of Xenophon has not been paid attention to for a long time.It is believed that the analysis of Xenophon's public economic thought from the perspective of national governance will help the modernization of governance and the development of public economic theory in China.