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[Ya-ta Boy]

Francis Fukuyama's �The Origins of Political Order: From Prehuman Times to the French Revolution� is available at Kyobo in Jamshil, and possibly other local bookstores. For Current Events Forum types, it's a must-read. To give you a flavor of his approach, I typed out an extended excerpt from Chapter 9 (p. 139-144): 'Political Decay and the Return of Patrimonial Government'

...[T]here was no reason to assume that political development was any more likely than political decay. Political order emerges as a result of the achievement of some equilibrium among the contending forces within a society. But as time goes on, change occurs internally and externally: the actors who established the original equilibrium themselves evolve or disappear; new actors appear; economic and social conditions shift; the society is invaded from the outside or faces new terms of trade or imported ideas. As a result, the preceding equilibrium no longer holds, and political decay results until the existing actors come up with a new set of rules and institutions to restore order.

The reasons for the Han Dynasty's [202 BC to 220 AD] eventual breakdown were multiple and involved shifts in all aspects of the original political equilibrium. The unity of the Han ruling family and its legitimacy were severely compromised in the second century A.D. because of the influence of the families of empresses and of the court eunuchs...

Environmental conditions also intervened. There were epidemics in 173, 179, and 182; famines in 176, 177, 182, and 183; and floods in 175. Misery on a popular level led to the growth of Daoism, a religion that found numerous adherents among the peasantry and other common people. Confucianism, an ethic rather than a transcendental religion, was always the code of the elite, and Daoism, which had evolved out of ancient folk beliefs, served as a kind of protest religion for nonelites. Daoism became the animating principle behind the great Yellow Turban peasant rebellion (they wore yellow scarves on their heads) that broke out in 184. The rebellion was inflamed by all of the accumulated hardships endured by the peasantry in the the preceding decade. Although it was suppressed after twenty years with great bloodshed (five hundred thousand people reportedly died), it succeeded in destroying a good deal of the empire's state infrastructure and productive capacity. The cumulative effect of these disasters was a reported drop in China's population of an astonishing forty million people, or two-thirds of the total, between 157 and 280.

From the standpoint of China's political development, however, one of the most important causes of the decline of the Han Dynasty was the recapture of the state by different patrimonial elites and the consequent weakening of the central government. The Qin effort to eliminate feudalism and create an impersonal modern state was undone; kinship returned as the primary avenue to power and status in China, a situation that lasted until the later years of the Tang Dynasty in the ninth century.

This was not a restoration of Zhou feudalism, however. Too much had changed since the Qin, including the creation of a powerful centralized state and bureaucracy, and a court invested with enormous ceremonial legitimacy. The Former Han had gradually eliminated territorially based pockets of patrimonial influence, so when aristocratic families reasserted themselves, they did so not by rebuilding local power bases but by inserting themselves directly into the apparatus of the central government. The difference between the Zhou and Han aristocracies was thus a bit like the difference between the British and French nobilities in the late seventeenth century: the English lords still lived on their estates and commanded authority locally, while their French counterparts were forced to go to Versailles and seek power through proximity to the court and king. In China, power at court was a route to landownership: powerful officials could acquire land, retainers, peasants, and exemptions from taxes.

THE RICH GET RICHER

Over time, China saw the growth of increasingly large estates, or latifundia, controlled by aristocratic families working in high offices either in the central government in Chang'an or in one of its provincial arms. This had the consequence of increasing the overall disparities in wealth and concentrating it in the hands of a small group of noble families, and of steadily depriving government of revenue as these landowners were able to shield more and more of the country's productive agricultural land from state taxation. These families were thus an early version of what we could today label a rent-seeking elite, who made use of their political connections to capture the state and use state power to enrich themselves.

There is something like an iron law of latifundia in agrarian societies that says that the rich will grow richer until they are stopped�either by the state, by peasant rebellions, or by states acting out of fear of peasant rebellions. In premodern agrarian societies, disparities in wealth do not necessarily reflect natural disparities in abilities or character. Technology is fixed and no one is rewarded for being entrepreneurial or innovative. Before the mechanization of agriculture, there were no particular economies of scale to be had, either, that would explain the growth of large latifundia in terms of efficiency. Even large landowners had their fields worked by individual peasant families farming on small plots. But small initial differences in resources reinforced themselves through the mechanism of debt peonage. A wealthier peasant or landowner would lend money to a poorer one; a single bad season or crop failure would then reduce the debtor to serfdom or slavery, with the forfeiture of his family's property. Over time, the advantages of greater wealth became self-reinforcing, since larger landowners could then buy influence in the political system to protect and expand their holdings.

This is why the anachronistic application of contemporary property rights theory to historical situations leads to fundamental misunderstandings. Many economists believe that strong property rights promote growth because they protect private returns to investment, thereby stimulating investment and growth. But economic life in Han Dynasty China resembled the world described by Thomas Malthus in his Essay on the Principle of Population much more than the world that has existed since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution of the last two hundred years. Today, we expect increases in labor productivity (output per person) as the result of technological innovation and change. But before 1800, productivity gains were much more episodic. The invention of agriculture, the use of irrigation, the invention of the printing press, gunpowder, and long-distance sailing ships all led to productivity gains, but between them there were prolonged periods when population growth increased and per capita income fell. Many agrarian societies were operating at the frontier of their of their technological production possibilities, where further investment would not yield higher output. The only kind of economic growth possible was extensive growth, in which new land was settled and brought into cultivation, or else simply stolen from someone else. A Malthusian world is thus zero sum, in which a gain for one party means a loss for another. A wealthy landowner was therefore not necessarily more productive than a small one; he simply had more resources to tide him over rough periods.

In a Malthusian economy where intensive growth is not possible, strong property rights simply reinforce the existing distribution of resources. The actual distribution of wealth is more likely to represent chance starting conditions or the property holder's access to political power than productivity or hard work. (Even in today's mobile, entrepreneurial capitalist economy, rigid defenders of property rights often forget that the existing distribution of wealth doesn't always reflect the superior virtue of the wealthy and that markets aren't always efficient.)

Left to their own devices, elites tend to increase the size of their latifundia, and in the face of this, rulers have two choices. They can side with the peasantry and use state-power to promote land reform and egalitarian land rights, thereby clipping the wings of the aristocracy. This is what happened in Scandinavia, where the Swedish and Danish monarchs made common cause with the peasantry at the end of the eighteenth century against a relatively weak aristocracy (see chapter 2. Or the rulers can side with the aristocracy and use state power to reinforce the hold of local oligarchs over their peasants. This happened in Russia, Prussia, and other lands east of the Elbe River from the seventeenth century on, as a generally free peasantry was reduced to serfdom with the collusion of the state. The French monarchy under the Old Regime was too weak to dispossess the aristocracy or remove their tax exemptions, so it ended up placing the burden of new taxes on the peasantry until the whole system exploded in the French Revolution. Which course the monarch chose�to reinforce the existing oligarchy or to lean against it�depended on a host of contextual factors like the cohesiveness of both the aristocracy and the peasantry, the degree of external threat faced by the state, and rivalries within the court.

The Chinese monarchy during the Han Dynasty initially chose to side with the peasantry against the increasingly powerful landowners. During the Former Han there were periodic calls to return to the well-field system abolished by Shang Yang. The well-field system by that time was seen not as a feudal institution but as a symbol of agrarian communalism, and demands for its restoration were driven by the plight of poor peasants being driven off their lands by large latifundists. In 7 B.C., a proposal was put forward to limit estates to three thousand mou (a unit of land of approximately 0.165 acre). The proposal died because of opposition by large landowners. Wang Mang, the court official who usurped the throne from the Liu family and brought the Former Han to a close, also tried to implement land reform by nationalizing large estates. But he too faced tremendous opposition and eventually exhausted himself dealing with a peasant uprising known as Red Eyebrows (for the color they painted their brows).

The failure of Wang Mang's land reform enabled the patrimonial aristocracy to extend its holdings and consolidate its power when the Later Han was restored. Owners of large estates succeeded in controlling hundreds or thousands of retainers, tenants, and kinsmen; they often commanded private armies as well. They secured tax exemptions for themselves and their dependents, reducing the empire's tax base and rural population available for corvee labor and military conscription.

The central government was further weakened by decay in the military. The bulk of the Chinese army was preoccupied fighting the tribal Xiongnu in the far northwest, where it had to operate from remote garrisons with long supply lines. It was hard to conscript peasants for this kind of service, and the government progressively turned either to mercenaries recruited from among the local barbarian populations or to slaves and convicts. Soldiers increasingly constituted a separate class of military households who lived and farmed near the frontier garrisons, and who passed on their occupations to their sons. Under these conditions, soldiers were more likely to be loyal to local commanders like the warlords Cao Cao and Dong Zhuo than to the distant central government.

When growing land disparities were combined with the environmental disasters and epidemics of the 170s, the Yellow Turban revolt exploded. The collapse of order and the disintegration of the central government in factional struggles then induced these powerful families to entrench themselves behind walled compounds and districts, where they were effectively beyond the weak state's control. In the final decades of the Han Dynasty, the central state disintegrated completely and power passed to a series of regional warlords who turned from trying to place their own candidates on the throne to ruling in their own names.

[Ya-ta Boy]

I can see why a peasant revolt of 2000 years ago might not seem like a current event, but when the writer is showing how internal political developments shape the fate of states, I think it deserves a listen (or at least a read). A summary:

1. The unity of the ruling elite is broken.
2. Severe environmental challenges aggravate the problems of everyday people.
3. Traditional establishment version of religion is challenged by another tradition based religion. (I have to wonder if yellow is the real color of revolt.)
4. Avenues to power were closed off to the general public and money and power were increasingly concentrated in the hands of the haves.
5. Power in the capital led to access to wealth
6. The wealthy were able to shelter their wealth from the government, leaving everyone else to pay. The advantages of wealth became self-reinforcing.
�the existing distribution of wealth doesn't always reflect the superior virtue of the wealthy and that markets aren't always efficient �


7. The wealthy began having their own private armies.

I'm curious. These are quite similar to Gibbons' in 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'. Does anyone know of a good book on the fall of the Han?

[visitorq]

As interesting as history is, the US today is not readily comparable to the ancient Han Dynasty in China...

Perhaps you'd get more replies if you made some direct comparisons or drew some conclusions of your own (ex. it's all the GOP's fault and we need Obama to save us by giving trillions more to Goldman-Sachs and JPMorgan and/or start some new wars? )

[ontheway]

[Ya-ta Boy]

[visitorq]

^ There you go again with the partisan hack talk again. Harping on the same old bullshit left/right wing narrative doesn't work anymore. Everybody knows both parties are bought and paid for, and that they're all buddies behind the scenes when the cameras are off. All the excuses in the world won't change the fact that your man Obama has given more money to private bankers than all other presidents combined. Anything he says regarding the budget is a sick joke, just like his entire presidency.

But wait, I thought you were going to tie this into the Han Dynasty somehow

[ontheway]

[Kuros]

No, we wouldn't revolt because of greed or the disproportionate accumulation of wealth. America is capitalist, individualistic, and a lover of liberty.

The revolt would be over the fraud on Wall Street and the vicious capture of Washington by the financial elite. Any policy arguments over who should be taxed what pale in importance to upholding the rule of law and punishing transgressors on Wall Street.

[Ya-ta Boy]

[Fox]

I think a major executive power grab is more likely than a people's revolution. It would take something like the threat of nation-wide starvation to make more than a tiny fraction of the citizen base seriously revolt, but overwhelming apathy combined with a not-entirely-unjustified hatred of Congress might be enough to cause the average citizen to stand by as a President assumed "emergency power." Obama wouldn't get away with it, but a white moderate Republican with similar policy positions might.

[Ya-ta Boy]

I think some people may have misunderstood my reason for posting this. excerpt. My intent simply was to give people a bit of the flavor of Fukuyama's new book. I consider him a significant public intellectual and thought people would be interested in his book since it so directly relates to the issues on this forum.

Maybe some chapter titles from the book would help:
Part I: Before the State
2. The State of Nature

Part II: State Builders
7. War and the Rise of the Chinese State
9. Political Decay and the Return of Patrimonial Government (where the OP came from)
12. Weaknesses of Indian Polities
14. The Mamlukes Save Islam
15. The Functioning and Decline of the Ottoman State
16. Christianity Undermines the Family

Part III: The Rule of Law
18. The Church Becomes a State
19. The State Becomes a Church

Part IV: Accountable Government
26. Toward a More Perfect Absolutism
27. Taxation and Representation

Part V: Toward a Theory of Political Development
29. Political Development and Political Decay
30. Political Development, Then and Now

I'm impressed with how non-Europecentric the book is. It gives me a 'globalized' feel, proper for the 21st Century. If you read the OP I'm sure you noticed that he doesn't use much jargon, so he is attempting to address the general public, similar to Kennedy's 'Rise and Fall of Great Powers' (but on a larger scale).

[young_clinton]

[Nowhere Man]

No.

The fact that the House of Representatives does not grow with the population as it was intended is the root mistake.

I'm pretty sure if I grabbed George Washington, put him in a DeLorean and fast-forwarded to now, he'd see that the minor mistake of not constitutionally capping representatives based on population is the butterfly whose whirlwind we're reaping.

One rep per 700,000 was not intended. Talk about centralization and consolidation of power? Talk about third parties not being possible? Talk about all these Tea Party types talking like they all Constitutional? Talk about anybody blowing on about their proud duty as a citizen to participate in the electoral process when each baby born removes them one step further from proper representation.

There's a huge, DUH, missing.

www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2210038808
http://www.jeffjacoby.com/6057/rx-for-the-house-enlarge-it
http://elections.firedoglake.com/2011/01/24/a-larger-and-fairer-house-of-representatives/
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/24/opinion/24conley.html?_r=1

(this is building,

And it's totally bipartisan, or even tripartisan if you like.

[Ya-ta Boy]

Six Easy Steps to Avert the Collapse of Civilization

http://fora.tv/2010/04/01/Six_Easy_Steps_to_Avert_the_Collapse_of_Civilization

David Eagleman is a neuroscientist and author. I ran across him here:
http://www.colbertnation.com/full-episodes/thu-july-21-2011-david-eagleman

[Kuros]