I just found the full text of Qin Hui’s presentation on the Independent Chinese PEN Center website. My translation of the full text I have now posted below above the excerpt I found a few days ago on the PRC Sohu website. The full text is much more hard-hitting than the excerpt I posted earlier.
The members and lecturers at the now-banned Unirule Institute of Economics [Tiān zé jīngjì yánjiū suǒ 天则经济研究所] a independent economic Beijing think tank did not hide their conviction that free and open markets, ideas and political system are connected. Marx himself insisted on the connection between the economic foundation of society and its political and social superstructure.
“What Marx meant by economic determinism can be explained by Engels’s letter to J. Bloch written in September 1890? The letter was written just five years before his death. Naturally it may be regarded as the product of Engels’s mature thought.
He writes:
“According to the materialist conception of history, the ultimately determining element in the history is the production and reproduction of real life. More than this neither Marx nor I have ever asserted. Hence, if somebody twists this into saying that the economic element is the only determining one, he transforms that proposition into a meaningless, abstract, senseless phrase. The economic situation is the basis, but the various elements or the superstructure political forms of the class struggle and its results, to wit: constitutions established by the victorious class…philosophical theories, religious views and their further development into systems of dogmas…exercise their influence upon the course of historical struggle. There is an interaction of all these elements in which, amid all the endless host of accidents, the economic element finally asserts itself as necessary”
Base and Superstructure: Definition, Features and Active Role
The understanding of this relationship between economics and society varies considerably according to the allegiance of ‘Marxist’ thinkers to various and not necessarily compatible strata of ‘Marxist’ thought as re-imaging by Lenin, Stalin and other thinkers. The big schism in European socialist political parties resulted in the split that became the Socialist International and the Communist International in 1919 was related to this. Socialist parties that wanted to join the Communist International as ‘communist parties’ (aspirational actually since according to their thinking communist would take quite some time to achieve) had to accept Twenty-One conditions including the leadership of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union until such time as social and political progress would result into the abolition of states and world communism. One fossil of that time with us today is how the Chinese Communist Party refers to itself in English — the Communist Party of China (CPC) — which seems to me to suggest a branch office of the worldwide communist movement guided by Moscow rather than a separate communist party.
The conviction that economic base and political, social and cultural superstructure are intimately related with the economic based determining the superstructure and the superstructure in turn developing a rationale to justify the economic base motivated Mao Zedong. Mao’s disagreement with some other prominent Chinese communists including Liu Shaoqi, Deng Xiaoping and others had to do with the pace of change. Mao believed that a Chinese Great Leap Forward into Communism, leaving the Soviet Union communistically backward in China’s wake was possible. Accordingly, Mao twice rejected the contract responsibility system aiming to boost agricultural production through personal incentives. The contract responsibility system according to current PRC official legend was thought up by a group of peasants in Anhui Province after Mao’s death.
A Renmin University professor told me in the 1990s that he had read in the 1970s a hand-copied (Chinese samzidat) article circulated among some Chinese elites written by a Chinese Ambassador to the UK. The article argued that China could not leap from a peasant society directly to communist but rather socialist orthodoxy make it clear that China would need to pass through a capitalist stage before it could become communist. This argument struck me as an ingenious communist argument for the opening and reform that came later. I have never seen anything that confirms what the professor told me so I am not sure that it is true.
The Unirule seminars were open to all — I attended twice while I was working at US Embassy Beijing (2007 – 2012) at the suggestion of Bob Tansey, then in the Economic Section.
Qin Hui, was a professor of Chinese History at Tsinghua University until his book Leaving Imperial Rule Behind 走出帝制 Zǒuchū dìzhì finally gave the Chinese Communist Party too great a feeling of indigestion — see New York Times article “On China’s Constitution Day, Book on Constitutionalism Largely Disappears“. Qin Hui later moved to the Chinese University of Hong Kong.
Qin Hui’s discussion of the possibility of peaceful reform of the Chinese political system — although he is careful never says that is what he was talking about –is especially interesting because of his deep study and personal experience of the East European communist regimes prior of their collapse. Qin Hui’s wife, Professor Jin Yan, is a leading Chinese scholar on Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union.
See also another Qin Hui meditation on the possibilities of regime democratization — 2016: Qin Hui on 20th Century Democratic Transformations: Successes and Failures
The collapse of the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe communist regimes has long been a topic of intense interest for the Chinese Communist Party as well as for Chinese liberals who hope that China’s current PRC regime will one time evolve peacefully into a recognizably republican form of government. Some in the Party fear that as China becomes more wealthy and more middle class, it will face increasing pressure to transform itself into a recognizably republican political system.
Chinese liberals have also been inspired by the democracy movement of Eastern Europe. Inspired by the Charter 77 of the Czechoslovak democracy movement, Liu Xiaobo and other Chinese liberal signed Charter 08. Some Chinese lawyers — there was even a conference in Chongqing in 2010 to discuss it — hoped that the current PRC Constitution could evolve into a more liberal document. At the time, the ‘leadership of the Communist Party’ was only in the preamble. Later its was moved from the preamble into Article One of the PRC Constitution.
Article 1 The People’s Republic of China is a socialist state governed by a people’s democratic dictatorship that is led by the working class and based on an alliance of workers and peasants.
The socialist system is the fundamental system of the People’s Republic of China. Leadership by the Communist Party of China is the defining feature of socialism with Chinese characteristics. It is prohibited for any organization or individual to damage the socialist system.
Constitution of the People’s Republic of China
Increasing repression in China may well be the Chinese Communist Party’s reaction to increase pressure from Chinese with more democratic (or republican if you prefer) ideas. A fever caused by communist antibodies fighting things out with liberal viruses infecting the PRC body politic. Democratic movements in former Eastern European and former Soviet republics — the so-called color revolutions — created great concerns within the Chinese Communist Party.
This version of Qin Hui’s talk I came across on Sohu and translated it. Since I have come across a more complete version on the Chinese Independent Pen association website — 秦晖：福利问责与宪政之路
If you speak Chinese you’ll enjoy watching this YouTube video Qin Hui giving a talk on the history and present situation of social welfare in the PRC. YouTube has many other videos of Qin Hui’s lecture series on topics such as the Intellectual History of the West in the Modern Era (Socialism and Social Democracy), Changes in Chinese Philosophy during the Qin and Han Dynasties, the New Poor in China’s Cities.
Qin Hui: Accountability for Public Welfare and the Road to Constitutionalism
Speaker: Qin Hui
Reviewer: Xiong Yuegan, Wang Jianxun, Qi Chuanjun
Zhang Shuguang:
Welcome, everyone! Today at this 464th biweekly seminar of the Unirule Institute we are honored to have Professor Qin Hui with us. That so many people have come testifies to the great respect we all have for Professor Qin. The topic of Professor Qin’s talk today is “Welfare Accountability and the Road to Constitutionalism”, which I think is also a very important issue now facing China. We have indeed come to a crossroads of constitutionalism, and the issue of constitutionalism is not an empty issue, but one that involves various aspects. In fact, the issue of welfare is also a very important issue. Professor Qin Hui has done a lot of research and often discussed this issue over the years. You may be aware of some of his views but today, I think his remains a very important perspective. Professor Qin gives us an overview of the issues and examines the constitutional issue from the standpoint of social welfare. We will start with an hour to an hour and a half lecture by Professor Qin Hui today and then go on to our discussants. This is an important issues for us in China to discuss these days. We should make our voices heard on what the next step should be. I think it is a very important time to have this meeting now that we have the new 18th National People’s Congress and with new leaders coming into power.
Now I invite Professor Qin Hui to speak.
Qin Hui:
“Welfare” is something we often talk about. For example, before the housing reform, our houses were called welfare houses. However I think we Chinese people don’t know what welfare means. For example, this year Wang Yang said, saying “we should put to rest the misconception that the happiness of the people is a gift from the Party and the government”. This statement immediately caused an uproar, many Maoists scolded Wang Yang, criticizing him very severely. In fact, this their critiques, frankly speaking, is not at all heretical ideologically. Because our government always talks about “serving the people”, doesn’t it?
And frankly speaking, even in the imperial era, the modernists of the late Qing Dynasty were already saying, “What is the emperor for? It is to do things for the people; what are government ministers for? They are to help the emperor do the people’s work. Taxation is the people paying their wages. If they don’t do the job, they should be replaced. They have nothing to say about it. They don’t do the job out of the kindness of their hearts; if they don’t do it, they should be laid off. This is what the reformist faction preached back in the imperial era. When people say that today, somehow it is earth shattering.
The most important thing about this view is that the government should be responsible for public services and especially for disaster relief. We all know that there seems to be controversy about what responsibilities the government should have, such as health care, education and so on. Some of the most radical laissez-faire theorists argue that the government should not assume any responsibility to run education or health care. However, even the most radical libertarians don’t say that the government can skip disaster relief. The are of disaster relief gives us, however, the clearest perspective of the role of government.
In 2009, I spent a semester as a guest lecturer in Taiwan. When I first arrived in Taiwan, I encountered a typhoon, Typhoon Fanapi, which was reported here as well. When it hit Taiwan, it was a super typhoon, a category 15 according to our classification. At that time in Kaohsiung, it rained heavily for a day, more than 900 mm, nearly double the 721 heavy rain in Beijing. By more than double the 721 rain in Beijing. By double I mean that at the peak of the rainstorm in the town of Qinglonghu in Fangshan, but it didn’t rain that much in Beijing. Most areas of Beijing got two to three hundred millimeters. More than 30 people died. The 30-odd people I’m talking about here are the ones from Fangshan, because a total of 79 people died, but the rain in Fangshan was heavier and it was considered a natural disaster, so more than 30 people died.
However, the death of more than 30 people in Beijing cannot be considered a natural disaster, because it only rained 200 to 300 millimeters in Beijing. In Kaohsiung, it rained more than 900 millimeters, but how many people died in Kaohsiung? Two people died. Then the media scolded the government, saying that the government of Kaohsiung is terrible, he should apologize, some media said that the mayor of Kaohsiung took a nap at noon on the day of the typhoon, the media scolded to death. The city government said no, and then released a video saying what he was doing at 11 o’clock and what he was doing at 12 o’clock. Then the media said again, including those opposition members in the council, said, what about 12:30? Released 12:30, and then said what about 1:00, what about 2:00? Non-stop chasing. Then it released another video of 3 o’clock, which I have seen in Taiwan, a car driving in heavy rain, saying that the mayor had gone to inspect the disaster. Then the councilman said that the license plate was not clear enough to prove that it was the mayor’s. Then the deputy mayor came out and said, he said the mayor is not a criminal, do you really need to keep an eye on him every minute?
But that just wouldn’t do. Finally, the mayor under pressure had to admit that he took a nap in his residence between 3:00 and 5:00. This was a big deal. He was scolded severely. Then he cried several times on TV, and the Kaohsiung government made a collective apology on TV. Then he went around to inspect the disaster situation, in fact, he gave out money. People of all social stations, high and low, took the money but cursed him as usual. This is the so-called “put down the chopsticks and scold the mother”. What damage did such a typhoon cause in Taiwan? Only two people died. Our newspaper also broadcast this story. It made Taiwan look bad so the mainland media was very happy to broadcast it.
However Typhoon Fanapi didn’t stay in Taiwan for long. The next day it blew over to the mainland. By then however, it was no longer a super typhoon have been reduced to a tropical storm in the Taiwan Strait. This tropical depression however killed 136 people in just one mainland province. Yet there was not have a word about accountability on our side. On the contrary, the media said that government is really great, only 136 people died, originally the mainland should have lost 1.36 million to be right, but only 136 people died so the government is really great, saving all those lives. Our media overwhelmingly reports how leaders at all levels care about the masses and and grassroots officials are mighty warriors fighting for the people.
Our newspapers have even went to far as to publish a resolution of the provincial party committee, saying that public opinion propaganda should be more active, to vigorously publicize and report on the effectiveness of rescue and relief, focusing on the emergence of grassroots organizations and grassroots cadres to play a fighting role, so that the people in the disaster area can feel more deeply the care of the Party and the government. This contrast is very stark. I think it fully illustrates what the concept of public service really means in China.
But in fact, I would say that that things are much better now. It was just awful before reform. As you know, during the Three Years of Hardship, many victims were given a steamed bun, and we all know the classic line in the model opera, “The villagers held the steamed bun in their hands and with tears rolling down their cheeks, said that Chairman Mao’s kindness was higher than the sky, thicker than the earth, and deeper than the ocean. The kindness of getting a steamed bun is higher than the sky, thicker than the earth so deep. But what if you can’t get that steamed bun? Don’t you just starve to death? They can’t be held accountable if you die of hunger, it’s a natural disaster, right? Right down to the present, in the recent broadcast of the film “Jiao Yulu” it is still called a natural disaster. If you don’t get a bun you deserve to die of hunger. The government is not responsible — the responsibility is God’s. But what if the government does gives you a steamed bun? That is a great act of kindness.
The most grotesque thing is that at that time — and people of our age know this — there was widely propagandized incident of “for the sake of sixteen class brothers”. In fact, this incident was very simple. The government drafted a group of civilian workers to serve without pay to build a highway on the Sanmenxia reservoir. After the repair work was completed, a mass poisoning case occurred at the government-run construction site canteen. Many fell ill from the poison yet the government found medicine to treat them. Transportation was difficult so an airplane was sent to drop the medical supplies. A simple story but the propaganda apparatus made as much of it was they could. What did the median reports say? The report said, the general civilian workers got a bit sick, the central government sent a plane to rescue them. How the Party and government care for the people! One person said at the time, “Chairman Mao cares more about my son than we do, boy, Chairman Mao is your real father and mother.” These people openly say, those civilian workers didn’t really matter much one way or the other. But that someone would intervene and help? What a great act of kindness.
But we do know that those people were not poisoned at home. Very many people were poisoned so is still a public safety incident and the government was responsible for saving them. Not only were these people not poisoned at home, they had been drafted by the government to serve was laborers and they had been poisoned at the construction site. The government had not intended to poison them, that’s for sure. However, as long as this kind of thing happens to government conscripts, the government is certainly responsible. That is completely different from getting poisoned at home. And this is not a Western point of view.
That is also our Chinese traditional view. If you don’t believe me, just look at what happened to Lady Meng Jiang. The Founding Emperor of the Qin Dynasty assigned Lady Meng Jiang’s husband assigned to work as a civilian laborer. He died on the construction site. It was not the emperor who killed him by poison. What did the people say? Lady Meng Jiang’s tears were enough to bring down the Great Wall. There was no need for sixty or so Lady Meng Jiang’s to do it. What does this incident show us? Isn’t it the minimal responsibility and obligation of the government to avoid such incidents? That it was reported at all is intriguing. At first, the Pinglu County Communist Party Committee was very nervous about it and so imposed censorship. The media was not allowed to report it because there could be liability for the accident. However a Xinhua News Agency reporter told them you can publicize the rescue. Thus the story became one about a great magnanimous deed.
But in fact, many of these “sixty-one class brothers” were actually the children of the rich and even the families of counter-revolutionaries, as an investigation later revealed. Why? Because at that time, these kinds of people could not escape servitude. Even poor and middle peasants could sometimes beg their way out of it. This was also true when were were sent down to the countryside to a labor brigade. Back then, the so-called socialist projects were all done by labor reform prisoners. This was true in the Soviet Union as well. That was forced labor. The first to be pressed into this forced labor was this group of untouchables. Therefore, many of the so-called “sixty-one class brothers” were actually children of the rich. Some didn’t die but later became disabled. This was also due to the kindness of Chairman Mao. In fact, if while in government service you were poisoned, then the government is of course responsible, and if the government saved you and you didn’t die but still suffered permanent harm then you should claim from the government. This is a very simple. I too am disabled. So this naturally became a matter for that which is dearer to me than my parents.
What is inexplicable and strange here is that in performing this kind of public service, if the government has done even a little or a big thing, we are supposed to be grateful for it. But as for the general public, they are supposed to naturally think that they should come out to donate when such things occur. So there is a social phenomenon that everyone will thank the government and that rich people will be sternly “forced to donate”. Immediately some people will say, “Why don’t the rich people donate money? They give so little!”
For example, after the earthquake a few years ago, someone pushed Wang Shi 王石, asking him “why do you give so little?” Wang Shi said, “The money belongs to the shareholders. I cannot make a decision with holding a meeting of the Board of Directors.” Then Wang Shi did not call a board meeting, and used the shareholders’ money to donate a large sum.
On this, frankly speaking, I am not taking the part of the rich. Teacher Mao [Unirule co-founder Mao 茅于轼 ] has such a saying, he says “do things for the poor while speaking up for the rich“. If I were a leftist, if I were a socialist, if I were very dissatisfied about the gap between the rich and the poor, and if I wanted very much to promote social equality, then you could ask for more taxes and you could ask for more progressive taxation. No matter how high taxes are, however, the citizen’s obligation is to pay taxes. As long as he pays taxes, anything else is voluntary. You could donate a little something but how can you force a donation? This is not an obligation of the people. The people have an obligation to pay taxes; if you are a leftist you might favor asking them to pay more taxes; if you are a rightist you might want to ask them to pay less taxes. There is no leftist rationale for forced donations. We know that one great danger of forced donations is that they become distasteful.
We know that the ancient Chinese word “donate” originally means to donate, but what did it become later? We know that during the Republican Period there was an expression ‘caustic taxation’ Kējuānzáshuì 苛捐杂税. A ‘caustic tax’ is a mandatory donation. You must donate. Later on the insistence gets stronger and stronger until finally this forced donation becomes a tax. So I find this strange. I think it is just common sense. I am not making any profound point here. Donation is a voluntary behavior. You can do it and be thanked or not. You cannot be held accountable for it. The reason is very simple.
The government’s public service is very different. The government’s public service is a duty they have to do. If they do it, we do not thank them for it. They are accountable. That’s the way it should be, but now we have the two relationships. Things have become completely reversed. It seems that the government has taken on the role of a philanthropist. Anything the government does seems to be a gift. If the government does even a little, we have to show our gratitude for it. If they don’t, they cannot be held accountable. The people, on the other hand, seem to have this so-called obligation in addition to paying taxes. You have to donate this, you have to donate to that. So I think this is really very strange. So given this, I don’t think the concept of public welfare really exists. So I think it’s pure nonsense to think about high welfare or low welfare in China, China doesn’t even have zero public welfare.
On the other hand, there is actually a tradition of this in China. China has a tradition of cursing welfare since ancient times. The most powerful scolds about welfare were the ancient Chinese Legalists. from “The Book of Lord Shang” and “Han Feizi” to Wang Anshi, all of them took this line: on the one hand, they talk about a strong state, on the other hand, they say that the state has no obligation at all to help the poor. The poor are all either lazy or drunkards. They deserve to die of hunger. The state should not care about them at all. But what does it mean that the state should not care about them? Does it mean that they are left to fend for themselves? No, not at all. The state can not save them, but they should be arrested and reformed. This is the so-called prohibition of the blind, the so-called arrest the beggars and arrest the vagrants. Europe really used to have this kind of law. It was called the “Bloody Code“. If you wanted to make it sound better, you called it the “old poor law”; if you wanted to criticize it, you called it the “Bloody Code”. Our Chinese forced labor internment is the very same thing. That is, if you are poor, the state does not need to give you relief, but you are not allowed to run around either. You can be arrested and sent to repair the Great Wall to or sent to the Great Wall to sieve sand. As a matter of fact, this is much like the way Sun Zhigang’s case was handled.
But by the 1930s, this became what is called ‘the welfare state’. This is when the word welfare state entered the English language, and when it started to catch on in English-speaking countries. By this time, the welfare state a positive connotation. Many people, like the British economist George Schuster in 1937 and some political scientists like Alfred Eckhard Zimmern, a scholar of international politics at Oxford University, started speaking about the “welfare state” in the 1930s. At this time they were talking about “welfare state” as something positive and that we should build a welfare state or something like it. But what is interesting is that then they were talking about the welfare state in a positive sense and what they were attacking was not laissez-faire. They didn’t talk about fighting laissez-faire, they wanted to build a welfare state. What is the object of their attack? The object of their attack was the “power state”, that is, at that time “welfare state” and “power state” were directly opposing conceptions.
The so-called “welfare state” was a democratic state, providing services to the people; the so-called “power state” was a totalitarian state, mainly referring to the Nazis and Fascist Italy at that time. But this was still the term used by some scholars. In 1942, the term suddenly became popular, mainly because the highest religious figure in Britain at that time, the Archbishop of Canterbury, William Temple, wrote a very influential book called Citizen and Churchman. The book was written in the context of World War II, and as a church leader, he called for unity, adding that we should build a “welfare state”. He said what our enemies are trying to create is a “warfare state”.
There is a play on words in English here, because as you know the pronunciation of “welfare state” and “warfare state” is very similar. “Welfare” is welfare, and “warfare” is war. He means that our enemies – Germany and Italy – are militaristic countries, militaristic and aggressive. And we, the democracies, are the ones who provide welfare for the people. At this time, the so-called “welfare state” was not opposed to the “laissez-faire”, but to the “warfare state which was the opposite of “warfare state”. To put it simply, the democratic state engages in welfare, while the authoritarian state uses its people as cannon fodder. But a big issue here is the context in which the word “welfare state” was used in both German and English. No matter whether it was used as a pejorative or a positive term, in the usage of the extreme right wing who opposed the welfare state or by the political scientists and theologians who advocated the welfare state, they all contrasted the welfare state with the totalitarian state. They did not compare it to a laissez-faire state.
However when Temple did not define the concept clearly when he introduced it. He said that we in Britain and the United States are “welfare states”, while Germany and Italy are “warfare state”. But there is a big problem with that formulation. That is, although Germany and Italy were autocratic, they did provide considerable welfare to their people. The point should be made that the so-called National Socialist German Workers’ Party was not just a name but this it did engage in many public services. At that time, in 1942, Britain was also a wartime state, and was also at war/ Therefore some people later said that Britain was the “warfare state”. Someone wrote a book entitled Warfare State: Britain, 1920-1970 . Thus arises a big question: What is the difference between them? If you were to say that Germany and Italy only fought wars and only Britain engaged in welfare you would not be being truthful. Both sides did both. The truth is simple. If I were to make a note for Temple I would say that there are at least three aspects that are easy enough to distinguish.
The first one is what I said earlier: the so-called welfare in the welfare state is a kind of questionable responsibility. In Germany and Italy, the so-called centralized state, the so-called welfare is something to be thankful for. To put it simply, it is the state’s right to provide if it wishes but not its responsibility. The state has the so-called right to do or not to do as it pleases. If it does it, you have to thank it; if it doesn’t, you can’t hold it accountable.
This however is not the case with public service in a democracy. Services in a democracy are not based on the interest of the leaders, but on the demands of the people. If the government does it, the people do not need to thank the government for it; if the government does not do it, the people have to be hold it accountable. The most typical example is a high welfare country like Sweden, where the government is said to be responsible from the cradle to the grave, but when do you ever hear of Swedes being thankful to their government? Do you hear Swedes say anything about being thankful to the Socialist Party and being happy and thankful to this or that leader? Do you hear Swedes ever saying something like [note: a Chinese saying] ‘when you drink water don’t forget the person who drilled the well? Do you ever hear about warm tears rolling down their cheeks in thanksgiving? Not at all. Greece, is not such a place either. Greece has high welfare, welfare that is so high that the country afford to provide it all. The people, however, take it for granted. They don’t say thank you but if it is not provided, they curse the government on the streets. As for some other countries, including Germany, Italy, the Soviet Union, and of course in the past China ourselves, it was not that these governments did not do anything, but anything it did was a kind of gift, a kind of imperial grace. If it did not do anything, it was not responsible in any way.
At one conference where I made this point, a scholar stood up and said, no, our country has a responsible government, our country only fault is that manages things too much. I responded, the word you talk about responsibility is indeed in our documents, but what does it mean? The kind of responsibility I am talking about means “duty-bound”. Our government often talks about what we are duty-bound to do, even duty-bound to liberate all mankind, that we should do something for two-thirds of our class brothers in the world.
We should note that this is only a ‘so-called’ duty-bound because it just means that the government wants to do. The responsibility we are talking about is not just a duty, but a legal duty, that is, what you must do. In a country like Sweden, the Socialist Party has been in power for most of the time, but there have been times when the Liberal Party come to power in transfer of power among political parties as happened for quite a few years during the 1990s. The Liberal Party, dislikes the welfare state, it criticizes it constantly. Yet it has to carry out the welfare state even when it is in power. Why? Because even if the political party doesn’t want to do it, the people force it to. The welfare state is not a royal state. Here what I am saying is that the authoritarian state can give you gifts, but that only means that it acting as a royal state bestowing a gift and not a welfare state. That’s the first thing.
Secondly, and a related point, is that since welfare is a responsibility of the state, and it is a responsibility of the state to the citizens, that welfare a matter of positive regulation. Of course, even positive regulation is controversial. I am certainly aware of those who say that even positive regulation should not be done but that is a separate issue. First of all, such regulation is all about regulating inequality and increasing equality. That is reflected in the Gini coefficient which decreases from its level at the initial distribution after the secondary distribution. If welfare is high, than the decline is obvious; if welfare is low, then the effect is slight. It might stay constant but not rise. That is to say, welfare cares for the disadvantaged, it takes care of the poor, it reduces inequality. But the grace of the imperial state is different, different because there the so-called welfare there is the royal grace, the gift of the emperor. That is, a gift to people useful to him. Therefore, the people first in line to receive it are always the rich and powerful; the common people either do not get it or they are last in line to get it.
We see this point in fact if we look at the “Memorandum Written Before Dawn Preparing for an Audience with the Ming Emperor” 《明夷待访录》. Three centuries ago there was as famous saying of Huang Zongxi 黄宗羲. Huang said that welfare is what “any advantage that superior do not want and so leave to their inferiors; a blessing desirable to one’s superior must be left for them”. That kind of welfare, after distribution, does not reduce inequality; in fact it increases inequality. This kind of welfare is a social regulation that increases inequality. I call it ‘negative welfare’. If this regulation had no effect on the inequality of income distribution, then I would call it zero welfare. As you know, this is very different from the welfare that democratic states engage in.
In many high welfare countries, like Norway, Sweden and Finland in Northern Europe, the Gini coefficient of their initial distribution decreases significantly after the secondary distribution and in some cases by about half. Some countries, like the United States, have traditionally favored laissez-faire, before the secondary distribution the Gini coefficient is 0.34, after the secondary distribution is 0.324, this change is very small, but it does decline, the issue is only about by how much. But some other countries are very different.
The statistical picture of China is not so clear but we can still say something about it. For example, in 1978, at the beginning of the reform era, China was considered very egalitarian, when the Gini coefficient of the distribution of wages within the city, and here I want to talk only about wages although inequality of people at that time was not expressed in wages, but in the so-called benefits they received. But if we talk about wages, the Gini coefficient in the city was very low, only 0.164. In the countryside, because wages were not fixed, and given on the basis of work points, the difference was a little larger, to 0.227, which is also very low. Some people say that if the income of urban and rural residents is added together in the national statistics, just on account of the urban-rural difference, the difference in benefits that people in the city get relative to people in the countryside, then the national Gini coefficient in 1978, the era of so-called egalitarianism, has reached 0.331. We know that at that time, the United States We know that the Gini coefficient of the United States at that time was only 0.324 after the secondary distribution. That is, in 1978, the most egalitarian era in China, and if we take into account the secondary distribution, then China was already a more unequal country than the United States.
However that statistical tool devised by Albert O. Hirschman was about primary income although here he figured in the rural-urban difference. Negative welfare within the city is also very strong. As you know, Mao Zedong said back in the day that our whole system was run for the benefit of the bureaucrats, that it was the Ministry of Urban Health, the Ministry of Bureaucratic Health or the Ministry of Urban and Bureaucratic Health. That was why Chairman Mao is promoted the barefoot doctors. The barefoot doctors however were not a state provided welfare benefit. The state basically contributes nothing at all. This was actually the people trying to save themselves. This was true not only in the 70s. This was true in ancient China as well. Relief was a local community function that was destroyed for a time by land reform but began to come back during the 1970s. After Mao said this, our Ministry of Public Health was still the same old urban Ministry of Urban Public Health. There were no major changes.
In fact, the real change came with reform, especially after 2005. Our country emphasized the so-called people’s livelihood, and then began to engage in “new rural cooperative medical care”. The difference between the so-called new rural cooperative medical care and the original cooperative medical care is that the original cooperative medical care was not the responsibility of the state. That is, the state exercised its right to force the people to pay. It forced the people to pay without itself making a contribution itself. Under the new cooperative medical care, however, that state has to pay a large share. But what kind of distribution pattern does this medical welfare under the new rural cooperative conditions?
After the introduction of the New Rural Cooperative Medical Care in 2005, the central government met in 2007 to recognize the provinces that had done well. Among them, the first one was Jiangsu Province. In 2007, its participation rate reached 95%, ranking first in the country, and all rural health indicators were also ranked top. But what was the situation of the New Agricultural Cooperative in Jiangsu in that year? This year’s New Agricultural Cooperative covered 43 million farmers, per capita funding, that is, the distribution of welfare medical resources for farmers is 76 yuan per capita. Here I want to say, this 76 yuan is not exactly welfare, but most of it is. According to the rules at that time, farmers pay 10 yuan, the government subsidizes 40 yuan, the national standard is 50 yuan, but Jiangsu Province exceeded the amount, Jiangsu Province got 76 yuan, so Jiangsu Province was praised. Jiangsu Province is indeed doing a good job. He invested 76 yuan per capita, of which 66 yuan is welfare, which is a transfer payment. And 10 yuan is a kind of compulsory savings. This is already much more than the national regulation, but in this province, there are still 7 million people who are not covered, which means that they are allocated zero resources for welfare.
On the other hand, the province had another level of medical coverage, for example, for urban people at that time, if they were dependents, there was a medical insurance system for urban residents with work items, covering 10.88 million people, with a per capita funding of 150 to 550 yuan; if they were employed, they enjoyed a higher standard of reimbursement, called the basic medical insurance system for employees, covering 14.34 million people, with a per capita funding of 1200 to 1500 yuan . And the highest class is the so-called publicly funded medical care. This public medical care, especially the kind of unlimited reimbursement, that is, no matter how much you spend, the state will reimburse you, that is basically a certain level of cadres. These people are only 140,000 in a province like Jiangsu, which has 80 million people, but the per capita financing of these people reaches 4,200 to 6,000 yuan, which means that a person who enjoys full publicly funded medical care has the equivalent of 90 farmers in terms of welfare medical resources.
But the initial distribution of income of medical welfare benefits is by no means 90 times that of the peasants. If we calculate a Gini coefficient according to this figure, we can draw a Lorenz curve to calculate this Lorenz curve of the distribution of welfare medical resources. The Gini coefficient comes to about 0.7. The Gini coefficient of the initial distribution in Jiangsu province was only 0.4, This means that the distribution of welfare medical resources was actually more unequal than the initial distribution. Welfare medical resources should not be distributed equally. The poor should take priority. In a normal situation resources should be allocated in the order from the poor to rich. Those familiar with Gini calculations are familiar with listing allocations from the poorest to the richest. When we do that, we get a downwardly sloping sloping Lorenz curve for the initial distribution. Welfare benefit income distributions should be just the opposite because the poor should get more and so it should be a level line above the line of perfect equality. As for the medical welfare benefits distribution in Jiangsu Province that I have been talking about, the secondary welfare benefit distribution is a downwardly sloping curve. That is to say, if we take the income distribution of Jiangsu Province in 2007, after the secondary distribution, and then do a Gini coefficient, it is definitely higher than the original, not lower than the original. But despite this, I still have to say that Jiangsu Province’s new agricultural cooperation program is quite good and that China’s new agricultural cooperation program is also very successful.
What does its accomplishment lie? Even though, to be blunt, although the new rural cooperative is still negative welfare, I would say that there is progress because it is not as negative as our original system. Under the former system, our original system, the peasants do not get anything and all public welfare medical resources were directed to city people and the bureaucrats. In that case, the Gini coefficient of the distribution of welfare medical resources back then might not be 0.7, but 0.8 or 0.9. After the implementation of the New Agricultural Cooperative Scheme, it has dropped to 0.7. Although it has not changed its negative welfare nature, its negative degree has been reduced, that is, as a negative number, its absolute value is decreasing, and it is approaching zero welfare. In other words, what is the progress of China’s welfare system now. If we look at it numerically, it means that China is gradually changing its negative welfare status and moving toward zero welfare.
In this process, can we see the opposition between the welfare state and the laissez-faire state? I don’t think so. Because under a condition of negative welfare, if you want to move toward zero welfare, then both welfare state theorists and laissez-faire theorists can support it. If you are a laissez-faire advocate, you should call for an end to that kind of privileged welfare, and if you want to reduce welfare, you should reduce it to those who are in office. If you are a leftist, a welfare state advocate, then you must be talking about welfare only for the disadvantaged, that is, only for those disadvantaged people. So if the welfare of the disadvantaged increases and the welfare of the privileged decreases, it is actually converging towards zero welfare within a certain period of time. And this convergence is actually a joint result of two pressures: from both the proponents of the welfare state and the proponents of the laissez-faire state.
Logically, at a certain point, this process will lead China to zero welfare. Zero welfare is not the absence of welfare, but the fact that it does not contribute to the inequality of income distribution. It neither increases inequality nor decreases inequality. After reaching this state, I think the kind of problems known in Western societies will become apparent. Will we then move towards positive welfare and make it more positive? At this point arises the so-called high welfare versus low welfare debate, the so-called laissez-faire and welfare state debate. Before reaching the critical point of zero welfare, China’s welfare is a positive or negative issue, not a high or low issue. And changing the negative welfare situation benefits both social democrats and economic liberals. In any country, this is the result of the combined effect of both these forces. This is the second point I made — that the imperial state is necessarily a negative welfare state. This is because welfare in the imperial state is not something that the people demand but rather something that is granted by the grace of the ruler. The grace of the ruler will certainly have a specific tendency. If we don’t bring a discussion of negative welfare into the picture, then China can be said to have been a welfare state since ancient times.
Do you know what the salary of the emperor of China was? Nobody knows. It is commonly believed that the emperor of China did not receive a salary, but he lived a well-provisioned life, enjoying welfare from cradle to grave. The state also provided for his 3,000 beauties, his tomb of 10,000 hectares, his 100-mile garden, and his nine palaces. All this was welfare provided by the state. What, if anything, was the initial Gini distribution of the emperor? We don’t know, maybe it was zero. In this sense, China since ancient times has been very equal, the emperor and a beggar are all the same: for both their wages are zero. The difference is that the beggar starved to death since the state will not care about him while the that state pays for all the emperor wants so he never has to pay for anything himself.
If we don’t introduce the concept of negative welfare then we can’t discuss income distribution of a country like China. I think many Western scholars today are very ignorant about this issue because when they think about welfare, they only thing about high welfare and low welfare, the disadvantages of high welfare and the disadvantages of low welfare. They never discuss negative welfare. Just because of this tendency, they tend of have a certain mindset: if the state doesn’t care about the people, it is highly liberal; of the state imposes tyranny over the people, it must be for equality. So-called tyranny and welfare are somehow thought to be related. Some say that in order to have welfare we need to have dictatorship. Others say that in order to opposed to authoritarianism, we can’t have any welfare. Although those statements come from two different people, they both end up in the same place. This is my second point, that is, welfare in the welfare state must be positive welfare, not negative welfare. As for the level of welfare, that is a different matter. I think the difference between high and low is quantitative, and positive and negative is qualitative. The quantitative and the qualitative should not be confused.
Third, because of these two points I just mentioned, the welfare of any welfare state must be the right of the citizens and the responsibility of the state and not the other way around, the right of the government and the responsibility of the citizens. To put it plainly, by welfare, I mean it is what the people ask the government to provide and what the people asks the government to do. Welfare is not what the government asks the people to do. Specifically, there are many things that are not welfare if the government asks the people to do them. Nearly the same thing can be welfare if the people ask the government to do them. For example, in many welfare states, labor is considered a right and the state has to guarantee it, so the state has introduced many policies to guarantee employment, including pre-employment training, stimulating the economy with Keynesianism, etc. There are certainly various arguments about the pros and cons of this practice, but there is no doubt that this practice is an act that the people demand and the government has to do. If it were the other way around, it would not be welfare.
If, on the other hand, instead of the people asking the government to guarantee their employment, the government arrests them for reeducation through labor or reform through labor, for the gulag, can this be called welfare? Of course not. This is negative welfare. Shang Yang 商鞅 said plainly that the state does not need to save the people; we can take those those poor people out to build the Great Wall. That was certainly not welfare. For example, in Western society, there are many people living in slums. They can demand that the government build low-cost housing for them so that they can leave the slums. If the government does this, it is of course, welfare.
In China however, instead of slum dwellers asking the government to give them a better life, the government accuses these people of living in illegal buildings, sends a bunch of urban management environmental officers to beat them up, and then evicts them. And when the government does this, the newspapers openly say, “There must be no compensation, no resettlement, or else there will be no end of trouble”. That is, they evict them without making any provision for them. This is certainly no way to eliminate slums.
Another example is education. The people demand that the government provide free education. This is a kind of welfare, the so-called compulsory education. When we talk about compulsory education in the international context, it mainly refers to the obligation of the state, which of course also includes obligations on the part of the people. That is parents are obliged to send their children to school.
What it mainly means is that the state must provide education to the people. If it is not provided, the people will hold that state accountable. But in China, we have had the Compulsory Education Law since the 1980s, but it has not been enforced, and the state has not been obliged to enforce it so we need something like Project Hope. It cannot be said however that the Compulsory Education Law has not been implemented. For a long period of time, the Chinese government treated the Compulsory Education Law as an obligation on the part of parents. During the 1990s, in many places in Guangdong and Fujian, local governments dragged some parents out of rural markets and paraded them around, saying that they had violated the Compulsory Education Law and had not paid to send their children to school. In fact, those parents were ones who could not afford to pay school fees. The government would accuse them saying ‘you have violated the Compulsory Education Law by not paying for the education designated by the government’. This still happens today. As we all know, we have improved education services for people who have residency permits. However education for the migrant population is still a very big problem. This is our problem: on the one hand, the government cannot be accountable:, migrant workers cannot ask the government for free medical care, but the government has the right to ban migrant schools, and the government often forcibly bans very rudimentary schools for migrant workers. Is this welfare? It certainly is not.
The most interesting thing is the so-called old-age pension. The state provides pension insurance, which is certainly a kind of welfare. But one of the interpretations of welfare that we have now, as you know, is to linking it to the ban on peasants holding land. We say that peasants cannot own their own land, that peasant land must be controlled by the state on the grounds that peasants need to cultivate their land for their old age. The argument is that we don’t have social security but we have what is called land security. This so-called land security means depriving the peasants of their property rights.
I am not here to make an argument for private ownership of land, which may have certain shortcomings worth pointing out, but the abolition of private ownership of land has nothing to do with welfare in any case. The reason is simple: the so-called peasants’ pensions are actually the government’s way of leaving the peasants to solve their own pension or medical problems. All the government does is to force him, not to do this, not to do that. Can this really provide protection for farmers? As I said long ago, for example, if a farmer does not have public health care, and he gets sick, he can sell his land to save his life, but your so-called land welfare now means that if he get sick, he can only wait for death. He can not afford to go to the doctor. The state does not give him public health care, and the state also forbids him to sell his land to save his life. So are you not forcing him to die? If you want to talk about welfare, then this can be called a classic example of negative welfare.
One of our friends agrees with this logic. He says that we can’t have private land ownership now because our social security doesn’t cover the peasants yet. If our social security covers the peasants in the future, we can consider giving them private ownership of land. Why do I think this logic is so upside-down? The facts are, in my opinion, just the opposite. If you provide a lot of social security to the farmers, you can ask the farmers to limit their rights to the land as a price for that because I have already given you the package of welfare benefits. Now your logic is that when I don’t care if he lives or dies. Moreover, I won’t allow him to do something to avoid death. That is forcing him to die. You don’t allow him to pay for public health care, and you don’t allow him to sell his land to save his life, so can you say that you are not just letting him die? If I may say so, you provide him with high welfare, you certainly have a reason to restrict his rights accordingly. So I think the word “welfare” has been completely turned upside-down in China today.
In fact, the most obvious example is compulsory internment. We used to catch vagrants, beggars, and even people who were not vagrants or beggars, people like like Sun Zhigang, a young man in Shenzhen who had a real job but was suspected of being a migrant worker. He was arrested and killed. That made a lot of people angry.
The Tianjin Civil Affairs Bureau is said to have introduced a new way to seek help. said that we have now changed to a new way of seeking help, which is eight words: “Come if you want, leave if you want”. To put it simply, if the homeless person asks for relief, you can’t push him away; but if he wants to leave, you can’t hold detain him. This is what I was talking about, that is, whether it is about what the government wants the homeless to do, or the homeless want the government to do. The latter is positive welfare, the latter is negative welfare.
Frankly speaking, this problem exists not only in China, but also in the West. This can be seen in the difference between the old and the new Poverty Relief Acts. As you know, according to the Elizabethan Poor Law of 1601, the poor were forcibly taken to the poorhouse. Marx never favored this kind of welfare state, even though Marx was undoubtedly a big leftist. But then, the new Poverty Relief Act established two things, the first being that the government could not arrest the homeless. We can say that there are still homeless people in a country as rich as the United States.
Of course in a country like China, there aren’t any more homeless people. If someone is a vagrant they get detained so of course there aren’t any. The forest is big and all kinds of birds live there. In the United States there are certainly some people like to wander around. But once October comes, these people can not stand it, and then immediately ask the government to give them a place to stay. Then the government will send them somewhere. Sometimes politicians go there to make a political show like the time that Clinton went to a shelter to eat Christmas turkey with the homeless. Then when the weather is warm, these people run away again. You can’t put him away. So I say, now that our Civil Affairs Bureau knows how to let the homeless “come and go when they want“, this means that they also know what welfare is, and that what they did before was not welfare. In other words, welfare must be the right of the citizens and the responsibility of the government, not the other way around, the right of the government and the responsibility of the citizens. We certainly do not have such a concept now. The government says, “We can’t have slums, and all slums must be demolished”, and it says, “No compensation, no resettlement, or else there will be endless problems”.
The three criteria I mentioned above boil down to the fact that a welfare state must first be a democracy. A welfare state must first be a democracy, but is a democracy necessarily a welfare state? Of course not. The democracy I am talking about here is, of course, a constitutional democracy. One of the characteristics of a democratic state, or I might even say, not a democracy but a constitutional one, is that there is a contractual relationship between the government and the people it rules.
In fact, so-called constitutional government is nothing but that the power of the government is based on a contract with the people. The people give up some of their rights to the government, and what they want in return is government services. So if the people need the government to assume more responsibility, they must be ready to give up more rights. If the people think that the government has too much power and hinders their freedom, of course they cannot expect the government to take too much responsibility. This state of correspondence between power and responsibility is the so-called constitutional government. Some people think that the government should take more responsibility and provide more services, and they are willing to grant more power to the government, which is expressed in the economy by letting the government collect more taxes. On the contrary, some people think that it is dangerous for the government to have more power, and they think that we shouldn’t give the government so much power and so we need to limit the power of the government. At the same time however, you can’t both want the horse to run and not give it hay to eat. If the government assumes less responsibility it is also accountable for less. The so-called constitutional government is about this, and from this logic come the conceptions of so-called big government and small government.
Here I would like to say that today, when people in the West discuss big government and small government they generally do not make a distinction between big responsible government or a big power government or a small responsible government or a small power government. The logic of constitutionalism is that rights and responsibilities are tied together in one package. Both a big government and a small government must have corresponding rights and responsibilities. But in reality, this logic does not actually work all the time. We see this now in the crisis occurring in the West.
What is the nature of the crisis in the West? As you know, there is a lot of fighting between the left and the right in the West. Some say it is because there is too much freedom and especially too much banking freedom. That’s what the leftists say. Some say it is because of too much welfare, especially after the problems in Europe, this argument has become more common. Some say the problems are caused by the welfare state. In my opinion both the welfare state and laissez-faire have advantages and disadvantages. In fact, I know no less about the disadvantages of the welfare state than those who criticize it, and we can say that the welfare state makes people unmotivated and so on. But the problem that the West is encountering now, I think, is not a problem in this sense, because the reason is very simple, it is although both the welfare state and laissez-faire state have problems, but theoretically either one can be built on a foundation of fiscal balance. A welfare state means high taxes and high benefits. A laissez-faire or low-welfare state has low taxation and low welfare. Theoretically speaking, no advocate of the welfare state is claiming that welfare is created out of thin air. Even if a Keynesian is in favor of some degree of deficit budgeting, no Keynesian is in favor of unlimited deficits.
The problem in the West however is that this debt hole is getting bigger and bigger. High taxes and high benefits have their drawbacks, of course, everyone knows this, but this does not create such a debt hole. What would cause such a debt hole? The reasoning is simple. I think this is related to the democratic system, because under the democratic system, whether on the left or the right in the West, half of their policies are easy to implement but the other half is hard to implement. The people might choose to cut taxes as is their right, but they don’t want to cut welfare. The people vote for the left because they want it to increase welfare, but they don’t want it to increase taxes. So when the right comes to power, the government’s power is reduced, but you can’t shirk the responsibility to provide welfare. And once a leftist comes to power, the government’s responsibility increases, but its right to collect taxes does not increase correspondingly. This ends up, as we Chinese generally say, with both wanting the horse to run, but not wanting to let the horse eat hay. This, of course, it will create a big debt hole.
As to why there was not such a big debt hole in the past, and why the same constitutional democracy did not create such a hole in the past? I can’t go into details here. I think it has to do with globalization. Before globalization there was no such phenomenon, and with globalization there was a powerful overdraft function, which then made this phenomenon very serious. So we can say this, a problem like the one that has arisen in Greece, we don’t know frankly whether it’s a problem of big government or of small government. It provides a lot of benefits, you could say it’s a big government. But frankly, Greece collects very little tax, Greeks don’t pay much tax, so in a sense you can say it’s a small government again. You can indeed say that it is guilty of both wanting the horse to run and wanting the horse not to eat hay.
We can talk more about how to solve this problem but there is another possibility. This phenomenon is still relatively rare and recent but has become more common since globalization. In the past, a different phenomenon was more common: that is, the horse will eat all the food, but it will not run. To put it simply, this is not a man riding a horse, but a horse riding a man. This horse is riding on the head of a man. The horse wants people to provide it with mountains of delicious food but it doesn’t want to run. If it runs a step, it will be as if you were the beneficiary of royal grace and it will cry in pain. If it does not run, this is just a kind of natural disaster that you can’t do anything about. So I think the biggest blind spot that some of our friends have when they talk about problems in big countries is that they always think that it is somehow connected to welfare.
These people seem to think that Sweden is the most authoritarian country in the world and that China was freest back during the reign of the Founding Emperor of Qin. The Founding Emperor of Qin gave out no welfare, spent nothing on public health nor on compulsory education. He could arbitrarily arrest and kill people and with them their entire clan out to distant relatives. For the crime of “judging the present government according to the criteria of past” he send people like Lady Meng Jiang’s husband to the construction site to die of exertion. None of this matters. Why not? Because the Founding Emperor of Qin did not engage in welfare. As long as he did not engage in welfare, he was a laissez-faire ruler. Many of us now, and especially Western economists, have this kind of bipolar thinking, most notably John Naisbitt.
John Naisbitt came to China over a decade ago and wrote a book called Megatrends Asia that proclaimed China as the world model of liberalism. He wrote that the world has been corrupted by socialism. Japan once did well but now it has become infected with the disease of welfare. He said that only China is the great. China is definitely the most classic country of liberalism in the world, because the Chinese government does not care about the lives of its people. Thus the people have not alternative but to work very hard to create a miracle. That’s the biggest problem. They think that if there is no welfare that means you have a lot of freedom. Of course it doesn’t work that way. Often quoted is Jefferson’s [sicsaying: ‘that government is best that governs least’;. When Franklin Roosevelt was elected for the second time in 1937, a friend of his, a very famous American political commentator, known to many of us in journalism history, who was known to be very outspoken, combined these two statements and said that the best government is the one that provides the most services. The best government is the least regulated government, and that’s absolutely true. But what is also true is that the best government is also the government that can provide the most services. This logic is also the concept of the best government that I’m going to talk about here, which is to have the least power and the most responsibility. Is such a government possible? Such a government is undoubtedly best but is not a realistic possibility at present.
But what if the opposite were true? That is, if the government both taxes and does not provide any welfare, then of course we would not consider such a government to be good, but is it impossible to have such a government? Of course not. Not only is such a government possible, but it is usually said that governments that were not formed under constitutional constraints were such governments.
I am not only talking about China here, because as you know, there was no welfare states in the West in the pre-constitutional era, and the so-called welfare state came only after the constitutional government. And the so-called old Poor Law, where the state did not help the poor but could arrest them was enforced in the West during the 17th century. So I would say that what we call constitutionalism is actually about solving the problem of how to avoid the the worst government, that is, the problem of a government has too little responsibility and too much power. The problem arises because the government’s rights cannot be limited and the government’s responsibility may not be questioned. That is, you can neither hold it accountable nor limit its rights. Solving this kind of problem requires a two- pronged effort: limiting the government’s rights and ensuring that the government carries out its responsibilities.
For example, in the recent July 21 rainstorm, the Beijing government prepared considerable materials to publicize how grateful the government was to the officials at all levels in Beijing. Online opinion immediately contradicted this however. People asked, “Why talk about gratitude when so many people died?” As a result, this government propaganda effort was aborted and the government ended up defending itself by saying that the rainfall was very heavy. That claim too was retracted in the end. They couldn’t even say that it was 400 mm, and finally the director of the Beijing Meteorological Bureau came out and said that we can’t even compare it with past rainstorms because there were too few observation points in Beijing during the 1960s.
A retired worker in my hometown who used to live in a shantytown until he was given a low-cost housing unit. I once asked him, you worked so hard to get a place for yourself you must feel good about it and grateful. He said thanks for nothing, I have been gotten low wages all my life. They exploited me to such an extent that now old and dying they give me such a small place. Just look at the housing that officials get. This is what I am owed and what I should have gotten long ago. In those words I see progress in the thinking of the Chinese people. My hope for constitutional government in China lies there.
We now usually say that constitutionalism is related to liberalism. On this issue, let me tell you about the discussion I had with two friends. Some of my friends said that we are totally opposed to welfare. I said, in fact, if under constitutional government, at least according to the theory of liberal economics, of course, liberal economics itself can be questioned, this is of course a different matter. But assuming that under the theory of laissez-faire economics, then under constitutional conditions, it is indeed possible to argue against welfare. This is because the state under constitutionalism is equivalent to a family. If there are two heads of the family, one is left and the other is right, I call them the left husband and the right wife. This husband is very left, he advocates giving more money to the servant so that she can buy more food, that is, giving more authority to the government so that it can perform more services; and this wife is a strong rightist, she advocates giving less money to the servant so that she can buy less food. So these two quarreled, which I think is quite normal, and this quarrel is meaningful because it is about how much money to give the servant and how much food to buy. This is a real issue, not a false one. As for the issue of the servant, that is simple: just wait for them to finish their quarrel. Let them quarrel out an agreement about how much money to spend to buy so much food and that’s the end of it. Of course now it’s a little different, the two families reached a consensus. Not only do they not pay but they also buy a lot of vegetables but do not pay so the servant has to go out and borrow some money. This of course is a bit of a problem, but usually that kind of a problem does not arise.
But this is not our present situation. This government is not a servant, but a master. This master has a long-time worker, who is very left, and a tenant, who is very right. This leftist long-time worker is always asking his master to give him better food, and this rightist tenant is always asking him to lower the land rent. You shouldn’t be collecting so much tax so you should lower the land rent. Are these two demands justified? I think they are both reasonable. Frankly, in this context, the demands these two people would not be at all contradictory. It would be best if these two people cooperate, and even if these two people cannot cooperate, they might as well each ask the owner. But now a funny thing happens. The leftist maid and the rightist tenant see themselves as the left male and the rightist wife and then quarrel with one another. The leftist maid blames the rightist tenant, saying, “Why do you ask for lower rent? Many of our leftist friends are now advocating that the government should impose higher taxes. Then the right tenant said accusingly, “Leftist servant, why do you ask your master to improve your food? The master is just spoiling you with the disease of welfare when you should be given grass roots and bark to eat. What do you ask to improve your diet? ….. honestly, what is the point of such an argument? And who are the people who are happiest when such an argument occurs? I think this is a big problem for us in today’s China, that is, these leftist maids and rightist tenants think they have become leftist husband and rightist wives. This is a very big problem.
Another time a friend talked about this. I responded, “Actually, we have all read The Road to Serfdom, which argues that if you place a great deal of hope in government services then you are walking into a trap. If you are now free, and you want to avoid taking the road to serfdom, you might argue against welfare. Even that is debatable since after all, there is a certain logic to it. But what if you were a slave already?
If you were in Auschwitz, for example, would it be a claim against freedom for the prisoners of Auschwitz to demand better food from the prison authorities? If it is an offense against freedom for a prisoner in Auschwitz to ask for better food, and it is justice for him to ask for more food and for the government to shoot him? What then what is the situation in Auschwitz? Would it be better for the prisoners’ freedom to support their demands for better food, or would it be better for their freedom to suppress such demands? This friend immediately asked me a rhetorical question, saying, “You are right, but there is a premise, that is, where does the money for better food come from? He said that if the prison authorities were asked to pay for it, then of course, for example, if Hitler were asked to pay for it, then of course, that would be fine. But if the money was generated by the prisoners themselves, doesn’t that kind of demand lead to increased oppression? I answered that if fact the situation could not be simpler, first, the actual situation of Auschwitz is, of course, that the expenses of Auschwitz are created by the prisoners, Auschwitz is not a charity project, by no means does Hitler pay to run it, nor is the SS paid to run it. Auschwitz is a place of slavery for prisoners and whether the food is adequate or not is a consequence of the prisoners’ labor. But can you then say that it was right to starve the prisoners to death and that it was wrong for the prisoners to demand better food? Of course, you can’t say that. If we ask for better food, will it lead to more slavery for the prisoners? I think the reasoning is very simple: just to demand better food and to slacken off work and strike. Under the conditions of Auschwitz, the two are not contradictory. If you ask him to cut taxes, I think that’s right, and if you ask him to increase welfare, that’s also right. There’s no contradiction between the two at all. This friend then said, he said how can we compare now to Auschwitz? We are not free, but we are not at all like that. I said, you are right, because we are not like this, if it is really like Auschwitz, who dares to ask for better food? Wouldn’t they just send you straight to the incinerator?
In Auschwitz, it was impossible for the prisoners to go on strikes, to slacken off their work, and even more impossible to ask for better food. Just because of this, the problems of Auschwitz could not be solved peacefully. Auschwitz could either be liberated by the Allies, or the inmates could riot.
However, exactly because there are some other situations, in which people are not free yet are not so dangerous as Auschwitz. In such situations, prisoners could demand better food, and at the same time they could play tricks, engage in slacking off work and strikes. In such a situation I think there is a chance for improvement and peaceful transition in a camp like Auschwitz. How could that be possible? The reasoning is very simple, on the one hand, I desperately ask for good food, on the other hand, I will not give you work. The result will certainly cause losses for Auschwitz, but the prison side will take the initiative to give you more freedom. It is not a question of you wanting freedom, but this prison itself has the incentive to engage in constitutionalism. If it does not disband and must negotiate with you, how much work you actually you do for me and how much I pay you. This actually becomes a kind of free employment contract. This is actually very simple, so I say why can’t these two efforts exist at the same time? Of course they can, and I would say that it is precisely in these countries that such claims are still most likely to be made. Because as you know, in this kind of country, the state has an ideology, and this ideology says, I can’t do this, I can’t do that, our National People’s Congress Standing Committee Chairman once said, no, no, can’t do. A multi-party political system is not allowed, the separation of powers is not allowed, I can’t …… but the state ideology doesn’t say that welfare is not allowed or that the people may not ask for welfare. The state does not say openly that the people must be grateful to it. When this point is reached there is a considerable amount of room so constitutionalism could arise in this kind of country. The actual examples we have seen should that the rise of constitutionalism are very closely related to government accountability for welfare.
Now many of us are putting the first step in progressive democracy on the point of fiscal openness and budget transparency. But I want to ask you now, not only about the Chinese government, but is there a government in the world that is unconditionally willing to be fiscally open? No one is so willing. Why would a government have an incentive to be open? The real motivation is very simple, aside from the hope that the government will be kind. If the government is free to arbitrarily levy and collect money from you, and then that money might be used for the government’s private ends. It won’t give the money it collects can be used for self-service. It won’t give you the money or if it gives it to you, you must be grateful for it. You have no right to it if it doesn’t choose to give it to you. Why should it show you its books when it has plenty of money to spend on its own personal preferences?
In many cases however governments do show their books voluntarily. Why? It is because it is squeezed from both sides. On one side, the state is always asking you for money but you complain and look for ways to avoid paying and on the other side you are always pushing it to spend money — that state must provide education, the heat is too low, meat is too expensive or meat is cheap but nowhere to be found. You keep putting pressure on that state and after a time the budget becomes open. Even if you don’t ask to see it, they want to show it to you. They will say, see in this account there is only so much money. If you want these services come discuss it with me. I can not do it now but if we discuss it. If you are willing to pay more for it, or you can let me do a little less, just like a servant. Either you give me a little more money, or let me buy a little less food. Otherwise I can’t do what you want me to do. At this point, the budget is open, there is financial transparency, Even if you do not want it, they will give it to you. They will want to disclose it to you because if they do not then there is no way that they can prove that they are not to blame.
In fact, we have to think how the world’s constitutional processes, from the earliest ones in Britain, France and later in Eastern Europe, we see that the first two countries in Eastern Europe to embark on constitutional government were Hungary and Poland. East Germany’s situation is a special case. What Hungary and Poland had in common was that they had the highest fiscal deficits in all Eastern European countries at the time. Both governments were stuck with being accountable to their people. The same was true in England and France many years earlier.
Why did England and France come to have constitutional government? In fact, to be honest, and the Enlightenment thinkers did write many articles about constitutional government. Where it really has much to do with them, I am not sure. However there is a direct relationship between constitutional government and a government’s deficit being so heavy that it must open a national assembly to raise funds publicly. If the government hadn’t had such a big budget deficit, there would have been no such thing. So I would say that the biggest problem we have in China right now is that China’s fiscal situation is a very big obstacle to moving toward constitutional government. Some of our friends are very confused about this issue.
When SARS broke out in 2003, some people demanded that the government must take responsibility for SARS patients in one way or another. One of our liberal friends came right out and said, “What do you want? Do you want to create a fiscal deficit? Do you want to ruin China’s finances? And he said you’re violating the principles libertarianism because you’re empowering the government by imposing responsibility on the government. I say that if I’m not going to hold it accountable even a little bit, does it have one iota less power? Even if it doesn’t care if I live or die, it can still take me and shoot me, so what does accountability to me have to do with anything? This friend’s views are so extreme that he thinks that patients quarantined under SARS should be pay their own medical expenses and that the state should not provide him with publicly funded medical treatment. The state didn’t even provide him with medical expenses after he was arrested and quarantined, so it can be said that the government shirked its responsibility to a considerable extent.
I certainly don’t want to argue the opposite point: that huge deficits are necessarily conducive to constitutional government. Much less would I argue that artificial deficits should be created in order to advance constitutional government. However the kind of situation in which the left and the right work together to promote a kind of pathological surplus under the twin conditions of low freedom and low welfare conditions while the government increasingly works for its own purposes is a problem that we need to be thinking about. Under such circumstances, constitutionalism cannot arise.
In countries like Poland and Hungary, like many Eastern European countries, at that time the relationship between political liberalism and constitutionalism seems very obvious, because political liberalism’s appeal is constitutional democracy. However at the time in Eastern Europe, to be honest, the margin allowed for free for speech was very small. At that time, Eastern Europe, like our National People’s Congress Standing Committee Chairman, was also talking about the “five prohibitions”.
[Note: this is a reference to a 2011 statement by National People’s Congress Standing Committee Chair Wu Bangguo’s Five Things Not to Do:
— No transfer of power among multiple political parties
–Not to allow pluralism of guiding ideology
–Not to engage in the “tripartite separation of powers” and a bicameral system
–No federalism
–No privatization]
Wikipedia via Google Translate: The Five Things We Don’t Engage In]
However, the ideology of the Eastern European countries could not prevent the people from holding government accountable for their welfare: the people of the Eastern European countries were indeed greatly influenced by socialism. Socialism as it was then understood in Eastern Europe was democratic socialism. If you look at the history of the Eastern European countries, many had been under socialist rule before World War II. For example they had leaders like Józef Piłsudski in Poland, Edvard Benes in the Czechoslovak Republic: these people were social democrats. They had known socialism before.
Democratic socialism is the welfare state, which is characterized by what I just mentioned, that is the people will not thank the government for carrying out its responsibilities. If it fails to do so, the people will hold the government accountable. Owing to this tradition, by the time the Stalinist system was established four or five years later, these people held the same views. To be honest, these Eastern European countries did much more for their people than we do in China. I do not know whether this this means that they are more progressive or more backward than Chinese people. Anyways, they don’t know how to be grateful to the government. The government is expected to do what it is supposed to do and people don’t think that the government is a philanthropist.
Here I want to say that there are only two cases in which we should be grateful to the government. The first is when a government official dies in the line of duty, which I think is something to be thankful for. Just as for a citizen should not avoid military service, but even so it is not a citizen’s duty to die. If you are a martyr, then people should be thankful to you. The second case, if a government official pays for a public service out of his own pocket, then we should also be thankful for that too. In this case, the government plays the role of a philanthropist or the official plays the role of a philanthropist. If it is run with taxpayers’ money, with public revenues to do these things, then of course it is proper to do so.
The people of Eastern Europe know this, so they continued to hold the government accountable. And although the Soviet system was authoritarian, its ideology claimed, at least verbally, that the government was to serve the people. It could not openly deny the right of the working people to demand welfare, so while political demands for multi-party systems and the like were forbidden, and that was no limitation on accountability for the government built into its economic system. And although the Soviet system was authoritarian, its ideology claimed, at least verbally, that the government was to serve the people. It could not openly deny the right of the working people to demand welfare, so while political demands for multi-party systems and the like were forbidden, and that was not limitation and accountability for the government built into its economic system.
There was, however, room for civil pressure for limited power and accountability in each specific case. Of course, at that time, under the socialist system, there was no such thing as taxation, because all enterprises were state-run enterprises. However, one manifestation of the government’s excessive taxation at that time was the so-called increase of labor quotas. This caused, for example several incidents of labor unrest in East Germany. The government declared that it was the duty of the working class to increase the labor quota. When the quota was immediately raised by 10% without increasing the wages of the workers, the workers immediately took to the streets. This was tantamount to rebelling against arbitrary taxation and extortion. But in fact, to be honest, this is not the main object of protest. What people were most concerned about was that government services were inadequate. We know that that was true in both Poland and Hungary.
In Hungary, after the big repression in 1956, the government in order to re-establish its legitimacy spend a lot of money on improving welfare. This was meant to redeem itself the events of 1956, but this was impossible so it borrowed and got itself into butt load of debt. As you know, this matter even affected the privatization process of Hungary: the state sold state assets to pay off the debt. In the case of Poland, the sell-off was done at the direct request of the people at that time.
Poland’s Poznan incident of 1956 and the protests after 1970 were all about welfare accountability. As a result of welfare accountability, Poland’s deficit was under increasing pressure, so the Polish government was trying to shirk its responsibility any way it could. Here I would like to say that one of the slogans of our own Chinese market economy, I think, is what the Polish government tried to achieve at that time. That is to ask the people to “Look to the market, not to the mayor”. Back then, the Polish government tried every possible way to get the people in markets where they would become responsible for their own survival and arguing that this was not the proper role of government. However, whenever the government did this, the people looked to the mayor and not to the market.
Here I want to say, that in its original meaning the market economy limits government power. In principle, is that the market and not the mayor decides. That is, the mayor can’t cause the people trouble but the people can cause the mayor trouble. Today, however, we are in the polar opposite situation. Advocating limiting the power of government is very dangerous so we dare not talk about it but what we can talk about is the shirking of responsibility. So we say, now that we have a planned economy, the government is more exhausted by its responsibilities to handle issues like the old age, sickness and death of the people. A market economy is good for a government: the people are on their own, officials can eat, drink, shop and gamble without the people paying attention to you. The Polish government at that time actually tried to do this, they were always saying, we have to reduce our price subsidies, we can’t have the heat turned up too high… but the people would not hear of it. The result was that the state budget deficit kept getting higher and higher.
Later, in September-October 1981, Solidarity’s first congress adopted a manifesto that said basically the same thing. By 1988, the Polish government was very keen on a market economy, and especially on privatization. Why? Because it found that the trade unions in the state-owned factories, of course, were generally government-run, but at the right moment, if there was a change in the government, they immediately turned on the government. Because the reason is very simple, generally speaking, trade unions are for the enterprise side. However because you are a state-owned enterprise, the state is the boss, so in state-owned enterprises, the union is directed at the government.
So the Polish government at that time was trying to make the enterprise the boss, so that the union would not be directed against it so that it would be able to stand above workers and management and be able to lead both sides. In 1988, the government introduced a “market economy package”, saying that the government would liberalize prices and so on but it was rejected again. In that vote, only 7% of the people supported the idea. The Polish Premier resigned. In fact, after that many officials within the Polish government system found their work futile. No matter what you did, the people would not thank you; no matter what you did, the people complained a lot. So from 1980 to 1990, Poland had seven prime ministers in nine years. Each of them was forced to resign because they couldn’t cope with accountability. This makes it easy to understand why the round table was held later in 1989.
As we all know, before the Round Table there was an agreement between the two sides at that time, the Solidarity Union said, “I will concede to you a majority of the seats at stake in this election; I will only take a minority, I will only be the constructive opposition, I will never take power. I will take the 35% of the seats in the election the other 65% are allocated to you, all yours. But there is a premise that your candidates will not have their seats contested: that is to say, only you are the candidate, but everyone can vote. In this case, it is obvious that the election will not cause regime change because even if there were 35% of the seats the government couldn’t win it still had 65% of the seats that were allocated to uncontested constituencies and so still control the national assembly. However what it did not expect was that in the subsequent election process, not only did it did not get the 35% of the votes, it did not get the 65% of the seats in the uncontested constituencies either. These candidates were rejected by the voters in the first round of voting; only two people passed. Later it was the Solidarity Union that came out and said, “Let’s all vote for them, otherwise there will be no way to fulfill the Round Table Agreement”. They were elected in the end.
After they were elected, these people felt very humiliated. Soon after their election, they announced that they were withdrawing from the Communist Party. As a result, the 65% was lost. Although it was had lost, the roundtable did not say that the Communist Party had to hand over power in this case. They made no such statement. The last communist prime minister said of his own accord, “I am not going to do this; I can’t do it anyway, so one of you should do it.
That’s how the political transition was done. So you could call this process enlightened. It’s true, their government was more enlightened than ours. But frankly, it’s not a question of enlightenment, the key thing is that during the previous ten years, the people in government had come to feel that constitutionalism would be good for them. This is because they had gotten really burnt out by all the demands made on them. They could only ask people ‘don’t look to the mayor but look to the market’ if there was a constitution. Under non-constitutional conditions, the people just have to look to you, the mayor, and they will keep looking to you the mayor until you die from exhaustion. So I think that constitutional government actually has a lot to do with this.
At this point, people will say, are you making the argument, that Solidarity and that the governments of Poland and of Hungary did not advocate a market economy? If this is true, then why did they still engage in economic reform? And if these people were so accustomed to demanding welfare, then after the revolution, wouldn’t the democratic government be left with a Greek-style situation? Indeed, if the Polish people had demanded such unlimited welfare accountability after the revolution, Poland would have become what Greece is today. However, it is very strange that before the constitution, the people in Poland demanded unlimited government accountability for welfare, but after the constitution, the people soon became contractually-minded.
The reason is very simple: before there was no such contract, but in the process of the Round Table Agreement, there came to be a contract, and this contract was based on a menu of choices. For example, in the elections after the Round Table, all kinds of claims were made. For example, there are some Stalinist parties that say, I can guarantee you cheap meat, I can guarantee that I can keep your heat will be warm, on the condition that you let me play role of the gulag keeper, so would that work for you? It’s OK if you sign such a contract. People wouldn’t sign, of course. Then people like Tadeusz Mazowiecki said, I will definitely raise prices when I come to power, but on the condition that I can let you have freedom, I can let you organize unions, etc. Everyone voted for Mazowiecki. When Mazowiecki came to power, of course, the prices went up. As you know, before 1989, when prices in Poland went up by 20%, workers took to the streets, but from 1989 to 1990, prices in Poland went up seven times, and the Polish people basically remained calm and steady, not reacting very much at all. This is actually not surprising, in fact, this is the same as the taxation.
As you know, the revolutions in England and France were caused by the king’s taxation. People did not want to pay the tax and so as a result conflict broke out between the parliament and the king. But once the constitution was established, the congress levied taxes under the system of no taxation without representation. Although the result was higher taxes than the king’s had been but the people are willing to pay. Why? It is because of the existence of a contract. The same goes for welfare. Before the constitution, the people could hold the government infinitely accountable; not so after the constitution. Before the constitution, the people weren’t willing to pay taxes; after the constitution they were willing to do so.
The government can only enter into a contract with its authorizer that corresponds to its rights and responsibilities. If you want the horse to run more, you have to give the horse more hay. A contract that requires both the horse to run and the horse not to eat grass is simply unfulfillable and does no one any good. If you force things, then you have a Greek type of situation. But what is the process that actually drives the parties toward negotiating a contract in the absence of a contract? How can either party be willing to bargain with you if they have a zero offer on the other party in advance?
If you get the kind of horse that rides on people’s heads instead of people riding it, they get used to eat many kinds of delicacies. You have to let it eat all it wants and if it runs a step then you must thank it a thousand times. If it does not run, there is nothing you do about it. You would prefer that a horse that eats less and runs more but asking the horse to run but not to eat hay is not a reasonable strategy. You can’t actually get a horse that runs but does not eat hay but you should not get a horse that eats a lot of exotic delicacies but won’t run. In the end, you and the horse agree on a contract that specifies how much hay the horse get and how far the horse has to run.
Don’t you think the process went something along those lines? Before reaching a contract, of course, it is possible to ask for a lot of money. That is different from making an excessive demand after a contract has been reached. Here I have to say that the Greeks today are bad because they really do pursue the impossible result of asking the horse to run and not to eat grass 38 years after the completion of the constitutional government.
But for Poles in those pre-constitutional days, making a demand both for the horse to run but not to let it eat grass made sense because without a sky high initial demand there would be no room for bargaining since they were not in a position for bargaining. This lead to completely progressive, peaceful reform without violence. Once a final agreement had been reached how much hay the horse is to eat and how much the horse is to run, the day that a constitution has taken shape has arrived.
That’s all I have to say, thank you!
Source: Beijing Tianze Institute of Economic Research
——————————–
Online excerpt found on Sohu, a Chinese website.
Compared with the full-text version above you can see that this version leaves out parts that the Communist Party might find excessively critical of the Chinese political system. Interesting for what it leaves out as for what stayed in — what stayed in is interesting and valuable too. Chinese have long been encouraged to report ideologically suspect articles on PRC websites so I imagine that whoever edited the Qin Hui’s talk down to this version had that in mind. The latest version of report-thy-neighbor I translated earlier as PRC: Are Your Neighbors Distorting History or Spreading Politically Incorrect Ideas Online? Report Them!
Accountability for Public Welfare and the Road to Constitutionalism — Unirule’s 464th Biweekly Seminar
Updated：2013-01-29
Author: Qin Hui
Government can levy taxes on you but why should it show you the books? Government can spend a lot of money for its own purposes, why ever should it show you the books? In many cases, however, governments do show the books. Why is this? It is because it caught in a squeeze. On the one hand, if it asks you for money, you will complain, use any tactics you can think of to avoid paying. But then you push government very hard to spend money: you want more spent on education, the heating is not warm enough, meat is too expensive, meat is cheap but you can’t find it anywhere.
You keep putting on the pressure until finally, after you keep on pushing, the budget is open, even if you don’t ask for it to be open, the government takes the initiative to show it to you. It says there is onlyso much money, if you want these services, I cannot provide them. You discuss it and in the end you give the government more money for more or less for less, treating it just like a servant. Give the government more money, feed it more or else it cannot do more. By this time, the budget is public and there is financial transparency. The government is showing you the books on its own accord. If the government does not do this, it cannot claim that it is not to blame
In fact, we have to think how the world’s constitutional processes, from the earliest ones in Britain, France and later in Eastern Europe, we see that the the first two countries in Eastern Europe to embark on constitutional government were Hungary and Poland. East Germany’s situation is a special case. What Hungary and Poland had in common was that they had the highest fiscal deficits in all Eastern European countries at the time. Both governments were stuck with being accountable to their people. The same was true in England and France many years earlier.
Why did England and France come to have constitutional government? In fact, to be honest, and the Enlightenment thinkers did write many articles about consititional government. Where it really has much to do with them, I am not sure. However there is a direct relationship between constitutional government and a government’s deficit being so heavy that it must open a national assembly to raise funds publicly.
If the government hadn’t had such a big budget deficit, there would have been no such thing. So I would say that the biggest problem we have in China right now is that China’s fiscal situation is a very big obstacle to moving toward constitutional government. Some of our friends are very confused about this issue.
When SARS broke out in 2003, some people demanded that the government must take responsibility for SARS patients in one way or another. One of our liberal friends came right out and said, “What do you want? Do you want to create a fiscal deficit? Do you want to ruin China’s finances? And he said you’re violating libertarianism because you’re empowering the government by imposing responsibility on the government. I say that if I’m not going to hold it accountable even a little bit, does it have one iota less power? Even if it doesn’t care if I live or die, it can still take me and shoot me, so what does accountability to me have to do with anything? This friend’s views are so extreme that he thinks that patients quarantined under SARS should be pay their own medical expenses and that the state should not provide him with publicly funded medical treatment. The state didn’t even provide him with medical expenses after he was arrested and quarantined, so it can be said that the government shirked its responsibility to a considerable extent.
I certainly don’t want to argue the opposite point: that huge deficits are necessarily conducive to constitutional government. Much less would I argue that artificial deficits should be created in order to advance constitutional government. However the kind of situation in which the left and the right work together to promote a kind of pathological surplus under the twin conditions of low freedom and low welfare conditions while the government increasingly works for its own purposes is a problem that we need to be thinking about. Under such circumstances, constitutionalism cannot arise.
In countries like Poland and Hungary, like many Eastern European countries, at that time the relationship between political liberalism and constitutionalism seems very obvious, because political liberalism’s appeal is constitutional democracy. However at the time in Eastern Europe, to be honest, the margin allowed for free for speech was very small. At that time, Eastern Europe, like our Chairman, was also talking about the “five prohibitions”.
[Note: this is a reference to a 2011 statement by National People’s Congress Standing Committee Chair Wu Bangguo’s Five Things Not to Do:
— No transfer of power among multiple political parties
Wikipedia via Google Translate: The Five Things We Don’t Engage In ]
–Not to allow pluralism of guiding ideology
–Not to engage in the “tripartite separation of powers” and a bicameral system
–No federalism
–No privatization ]
However, the ideology of the Eastern European countries could not prevent the people from holding government accountable for their welfare: the people of the Eastern European countries were indeed greatly influenced by socialism. Socialism as it was then understood in Eastern Europe was democratic socialism. If you look at the history of the Eastern European countries, many had been under socialist rule before World War II. For example they had leaders like Józef Piłsudski in Poland, Edvard Benes in the Czech Republic: these people were social democrats. They had known socialism before.
Democratic socialism is the welfare state, which is characterized by what I just mentioned, that is the people will not thank the government for carrying out its responsibilities. If it fails to do so, the people will hold the government accountable. Owing to this tradition, by the time the Stalinist system was established four or five years later, these people held the same views. To be honest, these Eastern European countries did much more for their people than we do in China. I do not know whether this this means that they are more progressive or more backward than Chinese people. Anyways, they don’t know how to be grateful to the government. The government is expected to do what it is supposed to do and people don’t think that the government is a philanthropist.
Here I want to say that there are only two cases in which we should be grateful to the government. The first is when a government official dies in the line of duty, which I think is something to be thankful for. Just as for a citizen should not avoid military service, but even so it is not a citizen’s duty to die. If you are a martyr, then people should be thankful to you. The second case, if a government official comes out of his own pocket to run a public service, then we should also be thankful for that too. In this case, the government plays the role of a philanthropist or the official plays the role of a philanthropist. If it is run with taxpayers’ money, with public revenues to do these things, then of course it is proper to do so.
The people of Eastern Europe know this, so they continued to hold the government accountable. And although the Soviet system was authoritarian, its ideology claimed, at least verbally, that the government was to serve the people. It could not openly deny the right of the working people to demand welfare, so while political demands for multi-party systems and the like were forbidden, and that was not limitation and accountability for the government built into its economic system.
There was, however, room for civil pressure for limited power and accountability in each specific case. Of course, at that time, under the socialist system, there was no such thing as taxation, because all enterprises were state-run enterprises. However, one manifestation of the government’s excessive taxation at that time was the so-called increase of labor quotas. This caused, for example several incidents of labor unrest in East Germany. The government declared that it was the duty of the working class to increase the labor quota. When the quota was immediately raised by 10% without increasing the wages of the workers, the workers immediately took to the streets. This was tantamount to rebelling against arbitrary taxation and extortion. But in fact, to be honest, this is not the main object of protest. What people were most concerned about was that government services were inadequate. We know that that was true in both Poland and Hungary.
In Hungary, after the big repression in 1956, the government in order to re-establish its legitimacy spend a lot of money on improving welfare. This was meant to redeem itself the events of 1956, but this was impossible so it borrowed and got itself into buttload of debt. As you know, this matter even affected the privatization process of Hungary: the state sold state assets to pay off the debt. In the case of Poland, the sell-off was done at the direct request of the people at that time.
Poland’s Poznan incident in 1956 and the protests after 1970 were all about welfare accountability. As a result of welfare accountability, Poland’s deficit was under increasing pressure, so the Polish government was trying to shirk its responsibility by all means. Here I would like to say that one of the slogans of our own Chinese market economy, I think, is what the Polish government tried to achieve at that time. That is to ask the people to “Look to the market and not to the mayor”. Back then, the Polish government tried every possible way to get the people in markets where they would become responsible for their own survival and arguing that this was not the proper role of government. However, whenever the government did this, the people looked to the mayor and not to the market.
Here I want to say, that in its original meaning the market economy limits government power. In principle, is that the market and not the mayor decides. That is, the mayor can’t cause the people trouble but the people can cause the mayor trouble. Today, however, we are in the polar opposite situation. Advocating limiting the power of government is very dangerous so we dare not talk about it but what we can talk about is the shirking of responsibility. So we say, now that we have a planned economy, the government is more exhausted by its responsibiltites: how it to manage for the old age, sickness and death of the people. A market economy is good for a government: they people are on their own, officials can eat, drink, shop and gamble and the people are not paying attention to you. The Polish government at that time actually tried to do this, it was always saying, we have to reduce our price subsidies, we can’t have the heat turned up too high… but the people would not hear of it. The result was that the state budget deficit kept getting higher and higher.
Later, in September-October 1981, Solidarity’s first congress adopted a manifesto that said basically the same thing. By 1988, the Polish government was very keen on a market economy, and especially on privatization. Why? Because it found that the trade unions in the state-owned factories, of course, were generally government-run, but at the right moment, if there was a change in the government, they immediately turned on the government. Because the reason is very simple, generally speaking, trade unions are for the enterprise side. However because you are a state-owned enterprise, the state is the boss, so in state-owned enterprises, the union is directed at the government.
So the Polish government at that time was trying to make the enterprise the boss, so that the union would not be directed against it so that it would be able to stand above workers and management and be able to lead both sides. In 1988, the government introduced a “market economy package”, saying that the government would liberalize prices and so on but it was rejected again. In that vote, only 7% of the people supported the idea. The Polish Premier resigned. In fact, after that many officials within the Polish government system found their work futile. No matter what you did, the people would not thank you; no matter what you did, the people complained a lot. So from 1980 to 1990, Poland had seven prime ministers in nine years. Each of them was forced to resign because they couldn’t cope with accountability. This makes it easy to understand why the round table was held later in 1989.
As we all know, before the roundtable, there was an agreement between the two sides at that time, the Solidarity Union said, “I will concede to you a majority of the seats at stake in this election; I will only take a minority, I will only be the constructive opposition, I will never take power. I will take the 35% of the seats in the election the other 65% are allocated to you, all yours. But there is a premise that your candidates will not have their seats contested: that is to say, only you are the candidate, but everyone can vote. In this case, it is obvious that the election will not cause regime change because even if there were 35% of the seats the government couldn’t win it still had 65% of the seats that were allocated to uncontested constitutences and so still control the national assembly. However what it did not expect was that in the subsequent election process, not only did it did not get the 35% of the votes, it did not get the 65% of the seats in the uncontested constituencies either. These candidates were rejected by the voters in the first round of voting; only two people passed. Later it was the Solidarity Union that came out and said, “Let’s all vote for them, otherwise there is no way to fulfill this roundtable agreement”. They were finally elected.
After they were elected, these people felt very humiliated. Soon after their election, they announced that they were withdrawing from the Communist Party. As a result, the 65% was lost. Although it was had lost, the roundtable did not say that the Communist Party had to hand over power in this case. They made no such statement. The last communist prime minister said of his own accord, “I am not going to do this; I can’t do it anyway, so one of you should do it. And that’s how the changeover was accomplished. So you could call this process enlightened. It’s true, their government is more enlightened than ours. But frankly, it’s not a question of enlightenment, the key thing is that during the previous ten years, the people in government had come to feel that constitutionalism would be good for them. This is because they had gotten really burnt out by all the demands made on them. They could only ask people ‘don’t look to the mayor but look to the market’ if there was a constitution. Under non-constitutional conditions, the people just have to look to you, the mayor, and they will keep looking to you the mayor until you die from exhaustion. So I think that constitutional government actually has a lot to do with this.
At this point, people will say, are you making the argument, that Solidarity and that the governments of Poland and of Hungary did not advocate a market economy? If this is true, then why did they still engage in economic reform? And if these people were so accustomed to demanding welfare, then after the revolution, wouldn’t the democratic government be left with a Greek-style situation? Indeed, if the Polish people had demanded such unlimited welfare accountability after the revolution, Poland would have become what Greece is today. However, it is very strange that before the constitution, the people in Poland demanded unlimited government accountability for welfare, but after the constitution, the people soon became contractually-minded.
The reason is very simple: before there was no such contract, but in the process of the Round Table Agreement, there came to be a contract, and this contract was based on a menu of choices. For example, in the elections after the Round Table, all kinds of claims were made. For example, there are some Stalinist parties that say, I can guarantee you cheap meat, I can guarantee that I can keep your heat will be warm, on the condition that you let me play role of the gulag keeper, so would that work for you? It’s OK if you sign such a contract. People wouldn’t sign, of course. Then people like Vyetsky said, I will definitely raise prices when I come to power, but on the condition that I can let you have freedom, I can let you organize unions, etc. Everyone voted for Tadeusz Mazowiecki. When Mazowiecki came to power, of course, the prices went up. As you know, before 1989, when prices in Poland went up by 20%, workers took to the streets, but from 1989 to 1990, prices in Poland went up seven times, and the Polish people basically remained calm and steady, not reacting very much at all. This is actually not surprising, in fact, this is the same as the taxation.
As you know, the revolutions in England and France were caused by the king’s taxation. People did not want to pay the tax and so as a result conflict broke out between the parliament and the king. But once the constitution was established, the congress levied taxes under the system of no taxation without representation. Although the result was higher taxes than the king’s had been but the people are willing to pay. Why? It is because of the existence of a contract. The same goes for welfare. Before the constitution, the people could hold the government infinitely accountable; not so after the constitution. Before the constitution, the people weren’t willing to pay taxes; after the constitution they were willing to do so.
So I can say that the government can only enter into a contract with its authorizer that corresponds to the rights and responsibilities. If you want the horse to run more, you have to give the horse more hay. A contract that requires both the horse to run and the horse not to eat grass is simply unfulfillable and does no one any good. If you force things, then you have a Greek type of situation. But what is the process that actually drives the parties toward negotiating a contract in the absence of a contract? How can either party be willing to bargain with you if they have a zero offer on the other party in advance?
So I would say that for the kind of horse that rides on people’s heads, rather than being ridden by people, they are used to mountains of food, you must let it eat wildly, and it runs a step you have to thank it a thousand times. If it does not run, there is nothing you do about it. You would prefer that the horse eat less and run more but asking the horse to run but not to eat hay is not a reasonable strategy. You actually can’t get the horse to run and not to eat hay, but it also can’t be eat a lot of exotic delicacies and not run. Finally you can agree on a contract that specifies how much hay to eat and how much road to run.
Don’t you think the process went something along those lines? Before reaching a contract, of course, it is possible to ask for a lot of money. That is different from making an excessive demand after a contract has been reached. Here I have to say that the Greeks today are bad because they really do pursue the impossible result of asking the horse to run and not to eat grass 38 years after the completion of the constitutional government.
But for Poles in those pre-constitutional days, making a demand both for the horse to run but not to let it eat grass made sense because without a sky high initial demand there would be no room for bargaining since they were not in a position for bargaining. This lead to completely progressive, peaceful reform without violence. Once a final agreement had been reached how much hay the horse is to eat and how much the horse is to run, the day that a constitution has taken shape has arrived.
That’s all I have to say, thank you!
Source: Beijing Tianze Institute of Economic Research
—天则第464次双周讨论会
主讲人：秦晖
评议人：熊跃根 王建勋 齐传钧
张曙光：大家好！今天是天则所第464次双周讨论会，我们有幸请到了秦晖教授。今天来这么多人，也说明了秦教授在大家心目中的地位。秦教授今天讲的题目是《福利问责与宪政之路》，我想这个问题也是当前中国面临的非常重要的问题。我们现在确实走到了宪政的一个十字路口，而宪政的问题也不是一个空的问题，而是牵涉到各个方面的问题。其实福利问题也是其中一个很重要的问题。秦晖教授这些年来在这方面有很多研究，也有很多言论，大家可能也知道一些，但是今天把这个问题归纳起来，从福利问题来讨论宪政问题，我觉得还是一个很重要的角度。这样，我们今天先秦晖教授做一个小时到一个半小时的讲演，然后我们评议人再做一些讨论。我想在中国目前这个时候，讨论这个问题，意义非常重大。我们应该发出我们的声音来，到底下一步该怎么走，遇到十八大换届，新的领导人上台，确实是个很重要的时机，我觉得非常重要。
下面请秦晖教授先做讲演，大家欢迎。
“福利”这个词是我们经常谈的。比如房改以前，我们的房子就被叫做福利房。但是实际上，我觉得我们中国人是根本不知道什么是福利的。比如今年汪洋曾经讲过一句话，说“要破除人民的幸福是党和政府的恩赐这种错误认识”。这句话马上引起轩然大波，很多毛派的人都骂汪洋，骂得很厉害。其实这个话，老实说，从意识形态讲是一点都不异端的。因为我们政府不是一直讲“为人民服务”吗？而且老实说，就在帝制时代，晚清的维新派已经讲了，皇帝是干什么的？就是为老百姓办事的；臣是干什么的？就是帮助皇帝为老百姓办事的；赋税就是老百姓给他们支付的工资。支付了工资你还不办，不办就换掉你，没有什么可说的。办了不是你的恩情，不办你就该下岗。这是当年帝制时代，维新派就讲过的话。我们现在好像成了一个石破天惊的事情。
这个事情我觉得最有意思的就是关于政府公共服务应该承担什么责任，最有意思的就是关于救灾。大家知道政府应该承担什么责任，比如说医疗、卫生、教育等，好像都有争议，一些最彻底的自由放任论者一般是不强调政府应该有什么办教育、办医疗的责任的。但是好像任何一个最彻底的自由主义者也没有说政府可以不救灾的。但是就是在救灾这个问题上，我觉得是最典型的。
2009年，我曾经在台湾做过一个学期的客座。我刚到台湾就碰到一场台风，就是凡亚比台风，我们这里也报导过。它在台湾的时候是超强级台风，按照我们的分级是15级的样子。当时在高雄，下了一天的大雨，900多毫米，比北京的721大雨要大出一倍多。所谓比北京的721大雨要大出一倍多，是指比房山青龙湖镇暴雨高峰点高出一倍多，但是北京市内没有下那么大的雨。北京市内绝大部分地方是两、三百毫米，就死了30多个人。我这里讲的30多个人是把房山的人去掉的，因为一共死了79个人，但是房山的雨下得比较大，也算是天灾，大概死了30多人。但是北京市内死了30多人就不能说是天灾了，因为北京市内其实雨只下了两、三百毫米。高雄那天下了900多毫米的雨，结果高雄死了几个人呢？死了2个人。然后媒体骂政府骂得一塌糊涂，说高雄政府糟糕透了，他应该道歉，有媒体说高雄市长台风来临那天中午睡了午觉，媒体骂得要死。市政府说没有，然后就公布了一段视频，说他11点钟在干什么，12点钟在干什么。然后媒体又说，包括议会中的那些反对派议员说，那12：30呢？公布了12：30，又说1点呢？2点呢？不停地追。然后它又公布了一个3点钟的视频，我在台湾都看过，一台汽车在大雨中开，说是市长去视察灾情了。然后议员说，这个车牌看不清楚，不能证明是市长的。然后副市长就跑出来说，他说市长又不是刑事犯，犯得着你们每分钟都盯着吗？但是就是不行。最后，这个市长被追问得不过，他只好承认，说他在3点到5点之间曾经在他的官邸休息过一次。这就不得了了，把他骂死。然后他在电视上先后哭了好几次，高雄政府集体在电视上道歉。陈菊在电视上说，我只有道歉、道歉再道歉。然后他到处视察灾情，其实是送钱去的。但是每到一个地位，灾民拿了钱还是照样骂他。这就是不折不扣的所谓“放下筷子骂娘”。这样的台风在台湾造成了什么损失呢？只死了2个人。我们的报纸也在那里播这个事儿，那是台湾出的洋相嘛，我们都很乐于播的。
但是问题是凡亚比在台湾是不长眼的，接着第二天就刮到大陆了。它在台湾海峡的时候已经降低为热带风暴，登陆以后就降低为低气压，但是就是这个低气压，在大陆仅仅一个省就死了136个人。在台湾是超强台风，死了2个人，登陆大陆以后，仅仅一个省就死了136个人，但是我们这边一句问责的语言都没有。相反，政府真伟大，只死了136个人，本来大陆应该死136万才对的，结果只死了136，政府真伟大，真是救命恩人啊。我们的媒体铺天盖地地报导，各级领导如何关心群众，对老百姓恩重如山，而且我们报纸上公然就登了一则省委的决议，说舆论宣传要更加积极，要大力宣传报导抢险救灾成效，重点宣传涌现出来的基层组织、基层干部发挥的战斗堡垒作用，让灾区群众更深切地感受到党和政府的关怀。这个对比太鲜明了。我觉得，这充分说明了公共服务这个概念在中国到底是一个什么含义。
但是实际上，我要说，现在还要好多了，改革以前更不得了。大家知道三年困难时期，很多灾民，拿到一个馒头，大家都知道样板戏里有一句唱词，很经典的，叫做“乡亲们手捧馒头热泪滚，毛主席的恩情比天高，比地厚，更比海洋深”。拿到一个馒头就比天高、比地厚那么深的恩情，但是拿不到馒头饿死了呢？饿死了你不能问责的，那是自然灾害，是吧？直到现在播的《焦裕禄》中还说自然灾害。你没有馒头饿死活该，政府是没责任的，这是老天爷的责任。但是如果政府给了你一个馒头呢？那就是天大的恩情。
最怪诞的是当时，我们这个年龄的人都知道，那个时候广为宣传的“为了十六一个阶级兄弟”的事件。其实这个事件很简单，是一帮民工，政府征来无偿服劳役的民工，在三门峡水库的配套公路上，修政府要他们服的那种劳役，然后就在政府办的工地食堂里发生了恶性中毒案件，毒倒了一大片。然后政府就找药来给他们治。交通不方便，还派飞机空投了。就这么一件事，哇，那个时候宣传得简值不得了，你看看。这个说法是怎么说的？那个报道说，咱这些普遍民工闹点病，中央就派飞机来救咱，党和政府真是贴心人啊。有一个人还说，毛主席比咱老汉还关心我儿子，小子，毛主席才是你的亲爹娘。这些人公然说，我们普遍民工闹点病其实不是什么大不了的事，是活该死的，是吧。但是居然有人不想让你死，当然那就是伟大的恩情。
可是我们要知道这些人，他不是在家里中毒啊。即使在家里中毒，毒了那么多人，那也是一个公共安全事件，政府责无旁贷地要承担救护责任。何况这些人并不是在家里中毒，这些人是政府征调他们来服劳役，在工地中的毒。当然肯定不是政府有意要毒他们，这个是肯定的。但是很简单，只要是在政府征调劳役过程中出现的这种事，政府当然是要有责任的，这和你在家中毒是完全不一样的。而且这不是西方观点，我们中国人传统观念就是这样。你不信就看看孟姜女的事。孟姜女的老公就是被秦始皇调去做民工，结果死在工地上的，也不是秦始皇把他毒死的。结果老百姓怎么骂的？一个孟姜女就把长城哭倒了，何况六十几个孟姜女。如果这样的事情发生，这是一桩什么事？政府避免这样的事，这不是它最起码的义务吗？而且后来就报道说，这个事情很有意思。刚开始发生这个事情的时候，平陆县委很紧张的，要封锁消息，不准报道，因为这是个责任事故。但是后来新华社记者说，你可以宣传救人啊。结果后来“哗”一声就变成一桩大恩情的事。
但实际上这“六十一个阶级兄弟”，后来调查，其实有很多都是地富子女甚至反革命家属。为什么呢？因为当时的劳役，这些人是逃不掉的，贫下中农有时候还可以软磨。我们插队的时候也是这样，那时候所谓的社会主义工程，都是由劳改犯来干，包括苏联也是这样的。那就是强制劳役，强制劳役首先强制这帮贱民。因此所谓“六十一个阶级兄弟”其实有好多是地富子女，而且其中有一些虽然没死，但是后来都落下了残疾，落下了残疾也是毛主席的恩情。其实这样的事儿，在政府调你服役的过程中，你如果中了毒，政府当然是有责任的，而且政府救了你那是应该的，你没有死，但是你还是受了损失，你应该向政府索赔的。这是很简单的道理，我残疾了嘛。可是这居然成一桩比父母还亲的事。
我觉得这太莫名其妙了，但是另外一方面还有一个很奇怪的，就是在这一类的公共服务上，政府做了哪怕屁点大的事，我们就要感恩戴德的不得了。但是一般的老百姓，好像我们天然认为在这种事情上他们应该出来捐献，因此在这种事情上有一种现象，就是一旦出了这种事情，大家就千恩万谢政府，厉声“逼捐”富人，马上就有些人会说，富人为什么不捐钱？捐得那么少？像前几年的地震中，就有人逼王石，说你怎么只捐那么一点。王石说，股东的钱，不开董事会我不好决定的。说不行，然后王石就不开董事会，就挪用股东的钱来捐了一大笔。这个事情，老实说，我不是为富人说话，茅老师有这样的说法，他说“为穷人办事，为富人说话”。其实我在这里倒不是想为富人说话，假如我是一个左派，假如我是一个社会主义者，我对贫富分化很不满意，我对社会平等有很高的诉求，那你可以要求多征税，你可以要求加大累进税的累进度，但是不管税增大到多大的地步，公民的义务就是纳税，他只要纳税了，那么其它的就是他自愿的东西，他献一分钱也是献爱心，怎么能逼捐呢？这不是老百姓的义务吗？老百姓的义务就是纳税，你是左派你可以要他多纳一点，你是右派你可以要他少纳一点，但是这和逼捐是没有关系的，任何左派理念也不可能推出一个强迫捐助的东西来，而且我们知道，强迫捐助一个最大的危害就是这个捐助后来就变了味。
大家知道我们古汉语中的“捐”本来的含义就是捐助，但是后来就变成什么了？大家知道民国年间有个成语叫苛捐杂税。这个苛捐杂税就是因为捐助是强制的，你必须捐，结果就越搞越多，就变成逼捐，这个捐就变成税了。所以我觉得这个事情非常奇怪，其实按照一般的常理，我这里并不是讲什么深奥的道理，捐献就是一种自愿行为，做了，你要感谢，不做，你也不能问责。道理很简单，但是政府的公共服务那就不一样了。政府的公共服务是你要尽的职责，你要做，你做了，我们不感谢，不做，我们要问责。本来应该是这样的，但是我们现在把这两个关系完全颠倒过来了，似乎政府扮演了一个慈善家的角色。政府做的任何事情好像都是它的恩赐，政府做了一点，我们要表示感谢，不做，也不能问责。老百姓好像倒是除了纳税以外还有这种所谓的义务，你必须捐这个，捐那个。所以，我觉得这个事情实在是非常怪。那么在这种背景下，我觉得根本就不会有现在的福利概念的。所以我认为在中国考虑什么高福利、低福利，纯粹是瞎扯的，中国连零福利都没有的。
反过来讲，其实在中国也有这样的传统。中国自古以来，就有骂福利的传统，骂福利最厉害的就是中国古代的法家，从《商君书》、《韩非子》一直到王安石都是这样，一方面讲强国家，一方面讲国家根本不需要救助穷人的，穷人不是懒汉就是醉鬼，饿死活该，国家根本不该管他们。但是国家不该管他们意思是什么呢？意思是说让他们自生自灭吗？不是。国家可以不救他们，但是要把他们抓起来劳改，就是所谓的禁止盲流，所谓的抓乞丐、抓流浪汉就是这个。其实欧洲以前也有这种法律，叫做血腥立法。正面的话叫做旧《济贫法》，反面的话就叫做血腥立法，实际上和我们的强制收容是一样的，就是你这个穷人，国家不需要救济你，但是也不准你到处乱跑，可以把你抓起来去修长城去或者送到长城去筛沙子去，就是类似于孙志刚那样的做派。
但是到了30年代，这个福利国家，就是这个welfare state词进入英语，然后就开始在英语国家流行。这个时候，福利国家已经成为一个褒义词。很多人，像1937年英国经济学家舒斯特(George Schuster)和一些政治学家，就是牛津大学国际政治学者齐默恩（Alfred Zimmern），他们在30年代开始用英语讲“welfare state”。这个时候他们是把“welfare state”作为一个褒义的概念来讲的，就是说我们要建设福利国家之类的。但是很意思的是，他们这个时候都讲福利国家是褒义，他们抨击的对象也不是自由放任，他们并没有说我要克服自由放任，要搞福利国家。他们抨击的对象是什么呢？他们抨击的对象是“power state”就是那个时候“welfare state”和“power state”是一对反义词。
所谓“welfare state”就是民主国家，要为老百姓提供服务；所谓“power state”就是极权国家，那时候主要指的是纳粹和法西斯意大利。但是这时候还是一些学者这样讲。到了1942年，这个词突然就流行起来了，流行主要是当时英国最高宗教人士，就是坎特伯雷大主教W. 坦普尔写了一本影响很大的书，叫做《教徒与公民》，就是在二战这个背景下，他以教会领袖的身份，号召大家要团结起来，其中就提到我们要建立一个“welfare state”，他说我们的敌人要搞的是“warfare State”。
这里有一个英语的文字游戏，因为大家知道这个“warfare State”和“welfare state”发音是非常近的。“welfare”是福利，而“warfare”是战争。他的意思就是说，我们的敌人——德国、意大利，那都是军国主义国家，都是穷兵黩武，对外侵略的。然后我们这些民主国家是为老百姓提供福利的。这个时候，他这里讲的，所谓“welfare state”也不是和“laissez-faire”对立的，而是和“warfare state”对立的。讲得简单一点，就是民主国家要搞福利，而专制国家是把老百姓当炮灰的。但是这里面有个很大的问题，就是在福利国家这一个词的发声学背景中，无论在德语中，还是英语中，作为贬义词还是作为褒义词，反对福利国家的极右翼到倡导福利国家的政治学家和神学家，他们当时都是把福利国家和极权国家相对立，而不是和自由放任相对立的。但是当时坦普尔提出这个概念以后，他就没有明确的定义。他说我们英美是“welfare state”，而德国、意大利是“warfare state”。但是这里有一个很大的问题，就是当时的德国、意大利虽然专制，但并不是一点福利都不搞的，而且我们知道德国、意大利搞的那种公共福利其实也很多的，应该说他的那个所谓国家社会主义德国工人党也不是徒有其名，还是搞了很多那种公共服务的。而当时英国，在1942年也是战时状态下的国家，也在打仗，因此后来就有人说英国才是“warfare state”。专门有人写了一本书，叫做《军国国家：英国》。那么这里面就有一个很大的问题，这两者到底区别在哪里呢？你要说只有德国、意大利才打仗，或者说只有英国才搞福利，那都是不对的，肯定他们两边都搞了这两项。他认为其实道理很简单，如果我要为坦普尔做备注，我觉得起码有以下三个方面是很容易区分的：
第一，就是我刚才前面已经讲了的，就是福利国家中的所谓福利，是一种可问之责。而德国、意大利这些所谓的集权国家，所谓的福利是一种必谢之恩，讲得简单一点，那是他的权利而不是他的责任。所谓权利，就是说他可以做，也可以不做的。他做了，你要感谢；他不做，你也不能问责。但是民主国家的公共服务就不是这样。民主国家的服务不是基于领导人的兴趣，而是老百姓的要求。如果政府做了，老百姓是不需要感谢的；政府如果不做，老百姓就得问责。最典型的例子，就是像瑞典这样的高福利国家，据说是从摇篮到坟墓都是政府承担责任的，但是你听哪一个瑞典人对政府有感恩戴德之辞呢？你听瑞典人说过什么翻身感谢社会党，幸福感谢谁谁的言论吗？你听瑞典人讲过什么吃水不忘挖井人，什么时刻想念谁谁？拿个什么，热泪滚滚，有这种言论吗？根本没有的。希腊这样的地方，高福利的，而且高福利搞得国家都搞不下去了，但是老百姓认为理所当然，搞了也不感谢，不搞老百姓就骂人，就上街了。可是在另外一些国家，包括德国、意大利，也包括苏联，当然也包括我们以前，不是说这些政府就没有做任何事，但是它做的任何事都是一种恩赐，是一种皇恩浩荡，他不做其实是没有任何责任的。
我有一次这样讲了之后，有一位学者就站起来说，不对，我们国家是一个大责任政府，我们国家就是管事情太多了。我说，你讲的责任的确在我们的文件中也有，这叫什么呢？这叫“义不容辞”。我们政府经常讲我们义不容辞要做什么事，甚至义不容辞要解放全人类，要为世界上三分之二的阶级兄弟都要做什么，但是大家要注意，这只是所谓的义不容辞，也就是说是他想做的。我们讲的责任实际上不是义不容辞，而是法不容辞，就是你必须做的。像瑞典这样的国家，它大部分时间是社会党执政，但是也曾经在政党轮替中也出现过自由党上台的，像90年代就有好多年是自由党执政，但是自由党是不喜欢福利国家的，它不断地骂，但它上了台也不得不做。为什么？因为不是你想做的，而是老百姓逼得你做的。福利是可问之责还是必谢之恩，福利国家不是皇恩国家。这里我讲专制国家是可以给你一些恩赐的，但是那只能说明那是一个皇恩国家，不是福利国家。这是第一。
第二，和这一点相关的，很重要的，由于福利是一项国家的责任，而且这是国家向公民承担的，因此这种福利必须是正调节。当然，即使是正调节也是有争议的。我当然知道有人说即使正调节也不应该，但这是另一个问题。首先这种调节都是调节不平等的，增加平等的，反映在数值上就是初次分配的基尼系数经过二次分配以后都会有下降。如果是高福利，下降得很明显；如果是低福利，下降一点，但是绝不会不变，更不会上升。也就是说这个福利就是照顾弱势者的，就是照顾穷人的，是减少不平等的。但是皇恩国家就不一样，皇恩国家因为所谓的福利是皇恩浩荡，皇上给的，当然是对他有用的人，所以任何这种皇恩国家，皇上的恩典从来都是首先给那些权贵，老百姓要么就没有，要有就是最后的。这一点其实大家看看《明夷待访录》，300年前的黄宗羲就有一句名言，他说什么叫福利，就是“利不欲其遗于下，福必欲其敛于上”。那么像这样的福利，其实它在干净分配以后，这个不平等不仅不会减少，反而会增加。它是一种增加不平等的调节，或者我们说是一种反向调节。这种调节我给它起了一个名字，叫做负福利。因为假如这个调节对收入分配的不平等没有任何作用，那么我就把它叫做零福利。大家知道，在民主国家搞的这些福利中，情况有很大的不一样。
在很多的高福利国家，像北欧的挪威、瑞典、芬兰这些国家，他们初始分配的基尼系数，经过二次分配以后往往要有明显的下降，有的甚至下降一半左右。还有一些国家，像美国，历来都是偏向自由放任的，二次分配以前是0.34，二次分配以后是0.324，这个变化很小，但是它也是下降的，只不过是下降多少的问题。可是另外的一些国家就很不一样。当然我们国家没有这么明显的统计数字，但是从逻辑上我们可以很容易推出来。比如说1978年，改革之初，中国被认为是很平均主义的一个时代，那时候城市内部的工资分配的基尼系数，这里我要讲的只是指工资，而当时大家的不平等并不表现在工资上，而是表现在所谓的待遇上。但是如果就工资而言，当时城里面的基尼系数很小，只有0.164。农村因为工资不是固定的，论工分，所以差别大一点，要大到0.227，也是很小的。但是有人就说，如果把城乡居民的收入加在一起在全国范围内统计，仅仅由于城乡差别这一项，城乡差别大家知道主要就是一种待遇的差别，由于这个待遇的差别，城乡合计加在一起，全国的基尼系数在1978年这个号称是平均主义的时代，就已经达到0.331。我们知道，那个时候的美国，二次分配以后，也不过只有0.324，也就是在1978年，号称中国最平均主义时代，如果考虑到二次分配，那么中国当时已经是一个比美国还要不平等的国家。但是阿尔曼德做的统计还是用一次收入来做的，只不过他这里加上了城乡的差别。实际上城市内部的负福利也是很厉害的。大家知道，毛泽东当年就说过我们的整个系统就是为老爷办的，说是城市卫生部、老爷卫生部或者是城市老爷卫生部。那么毛主席就是因为这个，要搞赤脚医生。但是我们也知道，赤脚医生根本不是一项国家福利。国家基本上一毛不拔的，其实就是老百姓自己救自己的一种主张，而且这个也不是70年代才有的，其实和中国古代这种社区救助功能类似，一向就有的，只不过土改以后曾经有一段时间被破坏得很厉害，70年代又开始恢复而已。毛说了这句话以后，其实我们的卫生部仍然是城市老爷卫生部，没有什么大的变化。
实际上，真正的变化是改革以后，尤其是2005年以后，我们国家强调所谓的民生，然后就开始搞“新农合”，这个所谓的新型农村合作医疗和原来的合作医疗最大的不同就在于，原来的合作医疗是国家不承担责任的，就是国家行使权利，逼老百姓掏钱，但是它自己并不用拿钱出来，但是新型合作医疗，主要是国家拿大头的。那么拿大头以后，这种新农合就和原来的合作医疗不同，带有国家提供的福利的特征。但是新农合条件下的医疗福利是一种什么样的分配格局呢？
2005年提出新农合以后，2007年当时中央开会，表彰了做得好的省。其中，第一名就是江苏省。江苏省是当时新农合的排头兵，2007年的时候，它的参合率达到95%，居全国首位，各项农村卫生指标也都名列前茅。但是这一年的新农合在江苏是一个什么情况呢？这一年的新农合覆盖了4300万农民，人均筹资，也就是福利性医疗资源的分配对于农民来讲是人均76元。这里我要讲，这个76元不完全是福利，但是大部分是。按照当时的规定是农民交10元钱，政府补助40元，全国的标准是50元，但是江苏省超额了，江苏省搞到了76元，所以江苏省受到表扬。江苏省的确是搞得不错。他人均投资76元，其中有66元是福利的，是属于转移支付的。还有10元等于是一种强制储蓄。这个已经超过国家规定很多了，但是就这个省份，仍然有700万人没有覆盖，也就是说他们分配到的福利资源为零。而另一方面，该省有另外一个层次的医疗覆盖，比如说当时的城里人，如果是家属，有工项城镇居民的医疗保险制度，覆盖了1088万人，人均筹资150到550元；如果是在岗职工，又享受报销标准比较高，叫职工基本医疗保险制度，覆盖了1434万人，人均筹资1200到1500元。而最高的一档，就是所谓的公费医疗。这个公费医疗，特指那种可以无限报销的，也就是说不管你花多少钱，国家都给你报销，那基本上是有一定级别的干部。这些人在江苏这样一个有8000万人的省份中只有14万人，但是这些人中，人均筹资达到4200到6000元，也就是说一个享受全额公费医疗的人，他占有的福利性医疗资源相当于90个农民。但是他的初始分配的收入绝达不到农民的90倍。如果按照这个数字统计一个基尼系数，可以画出一个洛伦兹曲线，统计这个福利性医疗资源分配的洛伦兹曲线。计算这个基尼系数大概是0.7左右。而江苏省当年初始分配的基尼系数只有0.4，也就是说这个福利性医疗资源的分配，其实不平等的程度比初始分配还要大，而且它的分布也是一样的。福利性医疗资源本来是不应该平均分配的，它本来是应该照顾穷人的，所以正常情况下应该是这样一种状态，就是如果我们把初始分配的分配者都是按照由穷到富的顺序排列，大家知道基尼系数是怎样计算的人都很熟悉这种计算的方式，从一无所有的到最富的，把它列出来。那么如果这样列出来以后，初始分配的洛伦兹曲线是一条向下弯的曲线，但是福利分配应该是相反的，因为是穷的人得的多，所以应该是倒过来的，在完全平等线之上的一条曲线。但是我刚才讲的这个江苏省的福利性医疗分配中，它仍然是一个向下弯的，而且弯得比初始分配还厉害。这也就是说，假如我们把江苏省2007年的收入分配，二次分配以后再做一个基尼系数的话，它肯定比原来高，而不是比原来低。但是尽管这样，我仍然要说，江苏省的新农合的确搞得不错，而且中国的新农合也的确是很有成就。
有成就在什么地方呢？其实说穿了，虽然新农合仍然是负福利，但是我要说，它的进步就在于它的负的程度没有原来那么大了，也就是说我们原来的制度，农民是一点也没有的，所有的公共福利性医疗资源都给了城市人和老爷了。那么这样一算的话，当时的福利性医疗资源分配的基尼系数可能就不是0.7了，可能是0.8、0.9，那么搞了新农合以后降到0.7，尽管没有改变它的负福利性质，但是它负的程度减少了，就是作为一个负数，它的绝对值在下降，下降到正在向零福利靠近。也就是说中国福利制度现在的进步表现在什么地方呢？如果从数值角度讲的话，就是中国在逐渐改变负福利的状态，趋向于零福利。
在这个过程中，它可以产生所谓的福利国家和自由放任的对立吗？我认为是不可能的。因为在一种负福利的条件下，假如要向零福利推进，那么无论是福利国家论者还是自由放任论者，其实都是可以做出努力的。假如你是自由放任论者，你应该呼吁制止那种特权的福利，你要想减福利，你就减那些当官的。假如你是一个左派，是一个福利国家论者，那么你要讲的福利肯定就是只指弱势者的福利，就是只给这些弱势者要福利。那么如果弱势者的福利增加，特权者的福利下降，实际上在一定的时间段内，它就是在向零福利靠拢。而这个靠拢实际上是福利国家和自由放任两种压力的一种共同结果。
从逻辑上讲，这个过程发展到一定程度，中国就会进入零福利。所谓零福利不是没有福利，而是指这个福利对收入分配的不平等不起任何作用。它既没有增加不平等，也没有减少不平等。到了这种状态以后，我觉得西方意义上的那种问题就突显了。到了这个时期，我们是进一步地把这个过程往前推，进入了正福利，把正福利搞得多一点呢，还是搞得少一点呢？这个时候就有了所谓的高福利和低福利的争论，有了所谓自由放任和福利国家的争论。而在到达零福利这个临界点之前，中国的福利是一个正负的问题，不是一个高低的问题。而改变负福利状况，其实是社会民主主义者，还是自由主义者都是有用武之地的，而且事实上，在任何一个国家，这种状态的改变也是这两种势力共同作用的结果。这是我讲的第二点，就是皇恩国家必定是负福利国家。因为皇恩国家，它的福利不是老百姓要求的，而是统治者的恩典。统治者的恩典肯定是有倾向的。我们国家如果不讲负福利的话，那么我们国家可以说自古以来就是福利国家。
大家知道中国的皇帝领多少工资？没有人知道他领多少工资，而且通常认为中国的皇帝是不领工资的，他就是全部实行供给制的生活，从摇篮到坟墓都有国家包，而且国家还包了他的三千佳丽，包了他的万顷陵园，百里苑囿，九重宫室，这全都是国家的福利。如果要说的话，这个皇帝的初始分配是多少呢？我们谁也不知道，也许就是零。在这个意义上，中国自古以来就很平等，皇上和一个乞丐是一样的，他们的工资都是零。区别就在于，这个乞丐饿死了，国家是不会管他的，而这个皇上是什么都由国家开支了，他根本就用不着开支。所以如果我们不引入负福利这个概念，我们就无法讨论像中国这样一类国家的分配状况。在这个问题上，我觉得当今的很多西方学者是非常无知的，因为他们考虑这种福利的时候，他们从来都是只考虑高福利、低福利这种问题，他们从来只讲高福利有什么缺点，低福利有什么缺点，或者有什么优点，他们从来不会去讨论这个负福利问题。而且由于这种趋势，就使得这些人似乎形成了一种思维定势，也就是说，只要国家不管老百姓的死活，那就是高度的自由；只要国家对老百姓实行暴政，那肯定是为了平等。所谓的专制和福利，被认为是有某种关系。有一些人说，为了要福利，我们就必须有专制。另外一些人说，为了反专制，我们就不能要福利。这两说法可能出自不同的人嘴里，但是实际上都造成了这样一种共同的结果。这是我讲的第二点，就是福利国家的福利必须是正福利，而不是负福利。至于高低那是另外一回事。我觉得高低是量的区别，正负是质的区别，这是不能混淆的。
第三，由于我刚才讲的这两点，任何一个福利国家的福利必须是公民的权利、国家的责任，而不能反过来是政府的权利、公民的责任。讲得通俗一点，所谓的福利，指的是老百姓要求政府提供的，老百姓要求政府怎么做，而不是政府要求老百姓怎么做。具体地讲，很多事情，如果是政府要求老百姓做的，那就不是福利；几乎同样的事情，如果是老百姓要求政府的，那就是。比如说劳动，在很多福利国家中，劳动被认为是一种权利，国家要予以保障，于是国家就出台了很多保障就业的政策，包括就业前培训、用凯恩斯主义刺激经济等，关于这种做法，利弊当然有各种各样的说法，但是毫无疑问，这种做法是老百姓要求而政府不得不做的行为，但是如果反过来，不是老百姓要求政府保障他的就业，而是政府抓老百姓去劳教或劳改，古拉格，这能说是福利吗？当然不是。这就是负福利。商鞅就明确讲过的，说国家不需要救老百姓，但是那些穷人我们可以把他们抓去修长城。这当然就不是福利。比如说，西方社会有很多住在贫民窟的人，他们要求政府给他们盖廉租房，使他们能够离开贫民窟，政府如果这样做了，当然就是一项福利。但是我们国家，不是住在贫民窟的人要求政府给他们改善生活，而是政府指责这些人住的是违章建筑，派城一帮城管把他们打一顿，再赶走。而且政府这样做的时候，报纸公开讲，“不补偿，不安置，否则后患无穷”，就是无条件地把他们赶走。用这种办法来消灭贫民窟，这当然就不是。
又如教育，老百姓要求政府给予免费教育，这当然是福利。所谓的义务教育其实指的就是这个。我们知道，在国际范围内讲的义务教育，主要是指国家的义务，当然其中也包含了老百姓的义务，也就是说父母也有义务送孩子上学，但主要是说国家要为老百姓提供这种教育。如果不提供，老百姓就要问责。但是在中国，大家在80年代就有了《义务教育法》，但是一直没有执行，国家一直没有承担相应的义务，所以还要需要有希望工程那样的事。但是也不能说《义务教育法》没有实行。在很长一个时期，这个《义务教育法》被我们的政府当作是家长的义务。在90年代的时候，广东、福建很多地方都出现农村集市上政府把一些家长拉出来游街，说他违反了《义务教育法》，没有掏钱送孩子上学。实际上是那些家长都掏不起这个钱，然后政府说你违反了《义务教育法》，没有掏钱接受政府指定的教育，到现在还是这样。大家都知道，我们现在对户籍地的教育服务还是改善了很多，但是流动人口的教育现在还是一个非常大的问题。我们在这个问题上，一方面政府是不能问责的，农民工是不能向政府要免费医疗的，但是政府有权利取缔民工学校，政府经常是把农民工很简陋的学校强行取缔。这个是福利吗？这当然也不是。
最有意思的是所谓的养老。国家提供养老保险，这当然是一种福利。但是我们现在对福利的一种解释，大家知道，是把它和农民禁止持有土地相联系的。我们说农民不能拥有自己的土地，农民土地必须控制在国家手里，理由是农民需要耕田养老，说我们没有社会保障，但是有所谓的土地保障。而所谓的土地保障的意思就是剥夺农民的产权。我这里并不是要为土地私有制做论证，土地私有制也许有某些值得指出的缺点，但是土地私有制的废除，无论如何是和福利没有关系的。因为道理很简单，所谓的农民耕田养老，实际上是政府一毛不拔，让农民自己解决自己的养老或医疗问题。政府做的只是强迫他，不许这样，不许那样而已，而这样做真的能给农民提供保障吗？我早就讲过，比如说假如一个农民没有公费医疗，他生病了，实在没有办法，他可以卖地救命，但是你现在的所谓土地福利就意味着他生了病就只能等死，他自己看不起病，国家也不给他公费医疗，国家还禁止他卖地救命。那你不是逼他死吗？要说福利的话，那这是标准的负福利了。
我们有一个朋友甚至还有这样一个逻辑，他说我们现在不能搞土地私有制，原因是我们的社会保障还没有覆盖农民。如果将来我们的社会保障覆盖农民了，我们倒是可以考虑给农民土地私有制了。我觉得这个逻辑怎么那么相反呢？其实在我看来，正好相反，如果你给农民提供了很多社会保障，你倒是可以要求农民作为代价，可以限制一下他对土地的权利，因为我已经给你包了嘛。现在你的逻辑是，我不管他死活的时候，我就不准他解决自己的死活，那就是逼他死嘛，这个道理就这么简单。你不允许他公费医疗，又不许他卖地救命，那你不是让他死吗？如果要我说的话，你给他提供了高福利，你当然就有理由相应地限制一下他的权利。所以我觉得现在在中国，福利这个词已经完全颠倒过来了。
实际上最明显的例子就是关于强制收容。我们过去一见流浪汉、乞丐就抓，甚至不是流浪汉、乞丐，就像孙志刚那样的深圳青年，也有正式工作，只不过是疑似农民工，就给抓起来，打死了，然后大家都很愤怒。据说就改了，改了以后很多地方就出台了新的救济政策，其中天津市民政局的说法，我觉得最通俗。天津市民政局说我们现在改成了一种新的求助方式，就是八个字“想来就来，想走就走”。讲得简单点，就是如果这个流浪汉要你救济，你不能把他推出去；但是如果他要走，你不能把他扣在那儿。这个就是我刚才讲的，就是说到底是政府要流浪汉怎么样，还是游流浪要政府怎么样。后者主是正福利，后者就是负福利。
老实说，不仅中国存在这个问题，就是西方也存在这个问题，这就是所谓的旧《济贫法》和新《济贫法》的区别。大家知道，在1601年的《伊丽莎白济贫法》中是实行把穷人强制抓到济贫院里的，那时候主张自由的人骂得很厉害，主张社会主义的人也骂得很厉害，大家看看《资本论》就知道，马克思是把这种法叫做血腥立法的。马克思从来没有赞成过这种福利国家，尽管马克思毫无疑问是个大左派。但是后来，新《济贫法》就确立了两点，第一点是政府不能抓流浪汉的，所以我们现在说，美国那么富的国家还有流浪汉。当然有了，像我们这样当然没有了，一有流浪汉就抓起来，那当然就没有了。林子大了，什么鸟都有嘛，在美国也肯定有一些人喜欢到处逛来逛去。但是一旦到了10月，这些人就受不了了，然后马上要求政府你给我安排一个住处。然后政府就会把他们送到一个地方，而且有时候要搞选举秀的时候，像有一次，克林顿就跑到收容所，去跟流浪汉一起吃圣诞节火鸡去了。那么天气一暖，这些人又跑掉了。跑掉就跑掉了，你也不能把他扣起来。所以我说，我们现在的民政局懂得对流浪汉“想来就来，想走就走”，这就说明他们也懂得什么叫做福利了，原来搞的那一套当然就不是。也就是说，福利一定要是公民的权利，政府的责任，而不能反过来，是政府的权利，公民的责任。我们现在当然是没有这种概念的，像政府说的“我们不准有贫民窟，所有的贫民窟都必须拆掉”，而且是所谓的“不补偿，不安置，否则后患无穷”。
我刚才讲的以上三个标准，归根结底就是，一个福利国家必须首先是民主国家。福利国家必须首先是民主国家，但是民主国家是不是就一定是福利国家？当然不一定。我这里讲的民主当然是宪政民主。民主国家的一个特征，或者我甚至可以说，不是民主而是宪政的一个特征，就是政府和它的被统治者之间是一种契约的关系。
其实所谓的宪政无非就是，政府的权力要建立在和老百姓的契约基础上。老百姓把一部分权利让渡给政府，要的就是政府的服务。那么因此老百姓需要政府尽多一点责任，就必须多让渡一点权利。如果老百姓嫌政府的权力太大，妨碍自由，当然就不能指望政府承担太大的责任。那么这种权责对应的状态就是所谓的宪政。这种权责对应可以有两种选择，有些人认为政府承担的责任应该大一点，提供的服务应该多一点，他们就愿意给政府授予比较大的权力，表现在经济上就是让政府多征点税。相反，有些人认为，政府权力大了很危险，他们就会认为，我们不能给政府那么大的权力，要限制政府的权力，但是同时你不能既要马儿跑，又要马儿不吃草。当然就要相应地减少对政府的问责。所谓的宪政其实就是这个意思。在这个逻辑上就产生了所谓的大政府、小政府的概念。
这里我要讲，今天西方的人讨论大政府、小政府，一般他是不做区分的，他不区分是大权利政府还是大责任政府，他也不区分是小责任政府还是小权利政府。因为在他们的宪政条件下的逻辑就是权利和责任天生是合一的。只要是大政府，肯定是权利和责任都大；只要是小政府，肯定是权利和责任都小。但是实际上，其实这个逻辑并不是在任何时候都管用。比如说我们现在看到西方发生的危机。
西方发生的危机是什么性质的危机呢？大家知道，现在西方左、右派争得很厉害，有的说是因为自由过分，尤其是银行自由太多了。那是左派的说法。有的说是因为福利搞得太多，尤其是欧洲出问题以后，这种说法就更多，说那是福利国家造成的。其实在我看来，福利国家和自由放任都有优缺点。其实福利国家的缺点，我知道的一点都不比那些批评福利国家的人少，所谓福利国家使人没有进取心等等，我们都可以说得出来。但是西方现在碰到的这个问题，我觉得并不是这种意义上的问题，因为道理很简单，无论福利国家还是自由放任，两者各自确实都有什么问题，理论上讲它都可以建立在财政平衡的基础上的。福利国家就是高税收，高福利。自由放任国家或者低福利国家就是低税收，低福利。理论上讲，没有一个福利国家的主张者是主张福利是凭空产生的。即使凯恩斯主义者他是赞成一定程度的赤字预算的，但是，没有一个凯恩斯主义者是主张无限制赤字的。但是现在西方出现的问题就是这个债务窟窿越来越大。高税收、高福利当然有它的缺点，这个当然是谁都知道的，但是这并不会造成这样的债务窟窿。什么情况下才会造成这样的债务窟窿呢？道理很简单。我觉得这是和民主制度有关，因为民主制度下，西方的左、右派，他的政策都只能有一半比较容易实行，另一半就很难实行。老百姓选择右派是要减税，但是不希望它减福利。老百姓选择左派是要它增福利，但是不希望它增税。所以右派一上台，政府的权利就减少，但是责任你推卸不掉。而左派一上台，政府的责任就增加，但是它的权利增加不了。这就造成，我们中国人一般讲的，叫做既要马儿跑，又要马儿不吃草。那当然就会造成一个很大的债务窟窿。
至于以前为什么没有这样大的债务窟窿，以前同样是宪政民主制度，为什么没有造成这样的窟窿？我这里就不能详细讲了。我认为这和全球化有关。在全球化以前是没有这种现象的，有了全球化就有了强大的透支功能，然后就使这种现象变得非常严重。因此我们可以这样讲，像希腊出现的这种问题，老实说我们不知道它是大政府还是小政府。它提供的福利很多，你可以说是一个大政府。但是说实在的，希腊收的税很少，希腊人是不太纳税的，所以从某种意义上讲，你又可以说它是小政府。你的确可以说它犯了一个既要马儿跑又要马儿不吃草的毛病。
关于这个毛病怎样解决，我们可以再讲。但是问题是，事实上还有另外一种可能。这种现象老实说，还是比较少的，而且也是一种最近才有的现象。全球化以后，这个现象就变得很普通。但是在以前，更常见的是另外一种现象，那就是这匹马山珍海味都要吃，但是它就不跑。讲得简单一点，这不是人骑马，而是马骑人，这个马是要骑在人的头上的。它要人给它提供种种的山珍海味，但是人要它跑那是不行的。它如果跑了一步，你就得皇恩浩荡，就得痛哭流涕。它如果不跑，那也是自然灾害，你也奈何它不得。所以我觉得我们现在有些朋友最大的问题就在于，他们一谈到大国家就好像和福利挂钩。
瑞典是全世界最专制的国家，按照他们的观点的话，秦始皇时代的中国是最自由的。因为秦始皇从来没有搞过什么福利，既没有公共医疗，也没有搞过义务教育，但他可以随便把人抓来杀头，诛连九族，“以古非今者族”，把孟姜女老公之类的人送到工地去劳累而死。这都不算，为什么呢？因为他不搞福利。只要他不搞福利，他就是自由放任。我们现在很多人，尤其是西方经济学家，都有这种两极思维，最明显的就是奈斯比特。
奈斯比特在十多年前来过中国，写了一本书，叫做《亚洲大趋势》，然后就说中国是全世界自由主义的楷模，说现在全世界都被社会主义腐蚀坏了，连日本都不行了。日本原来还可以的，结果现在也变得染上福利病。他说，只有中国是最伟大的，中国绝对是全世界自由主义最经典的国家，因为中国的政府是不管老百姓死活的，所以老百姓只能玩着命地干，于是就创造了奇迹等等。这就是最大的问题，就是说如果没有福利，那就意味着你的自由很多。当然不是这样的。所以我觉得，有人说杰弗逊讲过一句话，叫做最好的政府是最不管事的政府。然后又有人说杰弗逊其实真正的思想是另外一种，说最好的政府是能够提供服务最多的政府。1937年罗斯福第二次当选的时候，他的一个朋友，也是美国一个很有名的政论家，我们搞新闻史的人很多人都知道他，他是号称非常直言不讳的，他就把这两句话结合起来说，他说最好的政府是管制最少的政府，绝对正确。但同样正确的是，最好的政府也是能够提供服务最多的政府。这个逻辑也是我这里要讲的最好政府的概念，就是权利要最小，责任要最大。这样的政府可能有吗？这样的政府毫无疑问是最好的，政府的权利小，老百姓的自由就多；政府的责任大，老百姓的福利也多，这两者同样多的结果就是政府既不征税，又给你从摇篮到坟墓的福利，这样的政府可能是最好的政府，但绝不可能是现在中可能存在的政府。但是如果相反呢？就是如果这个政府既会横征暴敛，但是又什么福利都不搞，那么这样的政府我们当然不会认为它是好政府，但这样的政府是不可能有的吗？当然不是的，这样的政府不仅是可能有的，而且通常讲，前宪政条件下的政府都是这样的政府。
我这里要讲的不仅是中国，因为大家知道，前宪政时代西方也是没有福利国家的，所谓的福利国家也是宪政以后才有的。而所谓的旧《济贫法》，国家不救济穷人，但是可以把穷人抓起来，以前西方17世纪的时候也是这样。所以我要讲，我们所谓的宪政其实就是要解决最坏政府的问题，也就是解决政府的责任太小，权利太大，主要是权利不可限，政府责任不可问的问题，就是你既不能对它问责，也不能对它限制权利。在解决这种问题的过程中，我觉得需要两方面的努力，一方面要限制它的权利，另一方面要追问它的责任。
我觉得中国人在这方面的确是有进步的，比如说在最近的这次721大暴雨中，其实老实说，当时北京政府准备了很多材料要宣传北京的各级父母官对政府如何有恩，但是马上就被网上的舆论顶回去了，死了那么多人你还讲什么恩？结果当时政府的这一轮宣传就胎死腹中了，最后就变成政府一再辩护说这个雨下得太大。而且最后把这个雨下得太大也收回去了。他不是说有400毫米，最后北京气象局局长就跑出来说，其实这是不可比的，因为60年代的观测点只有多少个，现在有多少个，这两者不能比大小。
我的家乡有一个原来住在棚户区的退休工人，然后他分到了一套廉租房。我曾经问他，我说你好不容易得到这么一套房子，是不是觉得很不错啊，很感谢啊？他说感谢个屁，我一辈子领低工资，把我剥削到这种地步，弄了半天，等到现在老了，快死了他才给我这么一套小小的房子，你看当官的有多少房子，这个本来就是他欠我的，早就该给了。我觉得这就是中国人的进步，中国宪政的希望就体现在这儿。
我们现在通常讲，宪政和自由主义有关。关于这个问题，我讲我跟两个朋友的商量。有一些朋友说，我们无论如何是要反对福利的。我说，其实如果在宪政条件下，至少按照自由主义经济学的理论，当然自由主义经济学本身也是可以置疑的，这个当然是另外一回事。但是假定按照这个自由放任经济学的理论，那么在宪政条件下，的确是可以主张反对福利的。因为我觉得宪政条件下的国家就相当于一个家庭，这个家庭的主人，两口子一个是左的，一个是右的，我把他们叫做左公右婆。这个老公很左，他主张多给仆人一点钱，让她多买一点菜，就是多给政府授权，让它多搞点服务；而这个老婆很右，她主张少给仆人钱，让她少买点菜。于是这两口子就争吵起来，我觉得这是很正常的，而且这种争吵是有意义的。因为到底给仆人多少钱，买多少菜，这的确是一个真问题，不是一个假问题。至于这个仆人，其实很简单，就等他们两口子吵出个结果来。吵出个结果来，给多少钱我就买多少菜，这就完了。当然现在有点不一样的，两口子达成一个共识，既不给钱，又要买很多菜回来，让她到世界上去借钱。这个当然就有点问题了，但一般情况下不会有这样的问题。
但我们现在的情况不是这样，这个政府不是仆人，而是主人。这个主人有一个长工，这个长工很左，又有一个佃户，这个佃户很右。左派这个长工就老要求主人给他改善伙食，而这个右派佃户就老要他降低地租，你不能收那么多的税，你要降低地租。这两种诉求有没有道理呢？我觉得是各有道理，而且老实说，在这种背景下，这两个人的诉求根本就不会有任何矛盾。如果这两个人合作起来，那是最好，这两个人即使不能合作，也不妨各自向主人要求。但是现在一个滑稽的现象发生了，左佣右佃自以为成了左公右婆，然后互相指责起来。左佣指责说，右佃，你为什么要求降低地租，主人就是应该扩大提取能力嘛。我们现在很多的左派朋友都是主张政府应该横征暴敛的。然后右佃就指责说，左佣，你为什么要求主人给你改善伙食呢？主人就是不应该惯你福利病，就是应该给你吃草根、树皮就行了，你为什么要求改善什么……老实说，这样的争论有什么意义吗？而且发生这样的争论，最高兴的是什么人呢？我觉得现在中国，就是出现了一个很大的问题，就是这些左佣右佃自以为成了左公右婆。这是一个非常大的问题。
又有一次，有一个朋友也是讲这个。我就说，其实我们都看过《通往奴役之路》，意思就是说如果你对政府的服务寄予很大的希望，你往往就走入陷阱了。假如你现在在自由状态下，你为了防止通往奴役之路，你提出反福利，即使这样也是可以商榷的，毕竟还是有他的一定的逻辑。但是如果你现在就在奴役之中呢？
比如说一个最极端的假定，假如你现在在奥斯维辛集中营里面，那么奥斯维辛集中营的囚犯向狱方要求改善伙食，这是一种违背自由的诉求吗？如果说奥斯维辛集中营中的囚犯向狱方要求改善伙食是违背自由的，而他要求，政府就把他枪毙了，那就是正义的，那这个奥斯维辛是一种什么状况呢？到底是支持这些囚犯要求改善伙食，更有利于他们的自由，还是打压他们的这种要求更有利于他们的自由呢？这位朋友马上就反问了我一句，他说，你这个说法很对，但是有一个前提，那就是要求改善伙食的钱是从哪里来的？他说如果是要求狱方掏钱，那当然可以，比如说要求希特勒掏钱，那当然可以。但是如果这个钱是囚犯自己产生的，那这种要求不是导致对你自己的压榨增加吗？我说，其实这再简单不过了，第一，奥斯维辛的实际状况就是，当然奥斯维辛的开支是囚犯创造的，奥斯维辛不是一个慈善工程，绝不是希特勒掏钱办的，也不是党卫军掏钱办的，它就是奴役囚犯的场所，不管伙食高还是低，那当然都是囚犯劳动的结果。但是这样你就可以说，因此把囚犯饿死那就是应该的，囚犯要求改善伙食就不对的？当然不能这样讲。如果要求改善伙食，会不会导致对囚犯的奴役增加呢？我觉得道理很简单，要求改善伙食是正义的，怠工、罢工也是正义的，囚犯完全可以同时怠工、罢工，这两种诉求有什么矛盾呢？在奥斯维辛的条件下，这两者是不矛盾的。如果你要求他减税，我觉得那是对的，如果你要求他增加福利，那也是对的。这两者根本就没有矛盾的。这位朋友就说了，他说我们现在怎么能和奥斯维辛相比呢？我们虽然不自由，但是完全不至于这样嘛。我说，你算对了，正因为我们不是这样，如果真的是在奥斯维辛，谁敢要求改善伙食呢？不马上把你送到焚尸炉里面就算不错了。
在奥斯维辛，囚犯既不可能要求罢工、怠工，更不可能要求改善伙食的。但是也正因为这样，奥斯维辛的问题就不能和平解决。奥斯维辛要么由盟军解放，要么发动暴动。但是恰恰是因为有一些场境，它虽然不自由，但是并没有严重到奥斯维辛的程度，这些囚犯是可以要求改善伙食的，同时他们也可以玩小花招，搞怠工、搞罢工，那么我觉得这样的奥斯维辛就有和平改良、和平过渡的可能了。怎么可能呢？道理很简单，一方面，我拼命要求吃好的，另一方面，我就不给你干。结果一定会造成这个奥斯维辛亏损，亏损到一定程度，狱方就主动要给你们自由了。不是你们要自由的问题，而是这个狱方本身就有了搞宪政的动力。如果它不解散也可以，它就要跟你谈判，你到底你给我干多少活，我给你付多少报酬。这其实就变成一种自由雇佣契约了。这个道理其实很简单，所以我说为什么这两种努力不可以同时存在呢？当然可以的，而且我还要说，恰恰在这些国家，这种诉求还是最有可能提出的。因为大家知道，在这种国家，他有个意识形态，这个意识形态说，我不能搞这样，不能搞那样，我们委员长曾经讲了，不能搞多党制，不能搞那个，不能搞三权分立，不能……但是由于它的意识形态，它没有说我可以不搞福利，老百姓不准向我要福利，它也没有公开讲老百姓必须要对我感恩。正是因为在这一点上，其实空间特别大，所以这一类国家的宪政，其实我们看到的实际例子，都是和福利问责有非常密切的关系。
现在我们很多人都把渐进民主的第一步放在财政公开、预算透明这一点上。可是我现在想问大家，不仅是中国政府，世界有一个政府是无条件愿意财政公开的吗？没有人愿意的，政府为什么会有这样的动力呢？除了寄希望于政府的善良以外，真正的动力很简单，如果这个政府既可以随意地向你横征暴敛，然后横征暴敛上来的钱它可以用于自我服务，它就是不给你，或者它给了你，你就要感恩戴德，它不给你你也不能向它要，它既可以不为你花钱，又可以向你征钱，那它凭什么要向你亮账本呢？它大量的钱可以用于自我服务，它为什么要向你亮账本呢？但是在很多情况下，有很多政府的确是主动亮账本的。为什么呢？就是因为它受到这两方面的挤压，一方面它要向你要钱，你就怨声载道，软磨硬抗不交，然后你又拼命逼它花钱，你必须办教育，暖气太冷了不行，肉价太贵了不行，肉价便宜了买不到还不行。你不断地这样逼它，逼到后来，说实在的，这个预算公开，你不要它主动就会给你了，它就会向你亮出账本，说你看这个账上只有这么点钱，你要的这些服务我做不到的，现在你来商量商量吧，到底是你给我多交一点呢，还是少让我办一点，就像那个仆人一样，要么你多给我一点钱，要么让我少买一点菜，否则你的要求我实现不了。到了这个时候，预算公开，财政透明，你不要它主动就会给你，而且它追着要向你公开。因为它不公开就没有办法卸责。
其实我们要想起来，这个世界上的宪政过程，从最早的英国、法国，到后来东欧最早走上宪政的两个国家，就是匈牙利和波兰，东德的情况比较特殊，那么匈牙利和波兰是东欧宪政的两个带头羊。这两个国家都有一个共同点，就是这两个国家是当时所有东欧国家中财政赤字最高的国家，而且都是政府困于老百姓的问责。当年英国、法国也是这样，英国、法国为什么会有宪政呢？其实老实说，和启蒙思想家写了多少文章，是不是有很密切的关系，我不知道，但是直接的关系就是政府的赤字累累，它必须开国会公开筹款。如果政府没有赤字，根本就不会有这样的事。所以我说，现在我们中国最大的问题就是，中国的财政状况是走向宪政的一个非常大的障碍。在这个问题上，我们的一些朋友非常得糊涂。2003年发生非典，有些人要求政府必须对非典病人承担这样那样的责任。当时就有一位自由主义的朋友，马上跑出来说，你想干什么？你想制造财政赤字吗？你想搞垮中国财政吗？而且说你这是违反自由主义的，因为你给政府施加责任的同时，你就向政府授权了。我说我既使一点责任都不追问它，它的权利少一分吗？它即使不管我死活，它照样可以把我抓去枪毙的，这和我向它问责有什么关系呢？而且这位朋友极端到什么地步，他就认为非典状态下被隔离的病人的医疗费也应该他自己掏的，国家不应该给他搞公费医疗的。国家把他抓起来隔离了都不给他提供医疗费，居然就推卸责任到这种地步。
我当然不想反过来证明巨额赤字就一定有利于宪政，更不是说为了推进宪政就应该人为制造赤字，但是那种左派、右派共同促进低自由、低福利条件下形成的一种病态盈余，而政府的自我服务愈演愈烈的情况，的确应该是反思的。如果有这种情况，是没有可能有宪政的。那么这里我要讲，波兰、匈牙利这一类的国家，包括很多东欧国家，当时的情况就是这样。当然，你说自由主义就政治自由主义而言，它和宪政的关系是非常明显的，因为政治自由主义他的诉求就是宪政民主，但是这个政治自由主义在当时的东欧，说实在的，言论空间是很小的。当时的东欧和我们的委员长一样，也是讲什么“五不准”的。但是东欧国家的意识形态不可能防止老百姓对他进行福利问责，而且东欧国家的老百姓受社会主义的影响的确很大。这里讲的社会主义指的是民主社会主义，因为你看看东欧这些国家的历史，很多东欧国家在二战以前就经历过社会党执政，像波兰的毕苏斯基，捷克的贝奈斯，这些人都是社会民主党人，他们在以前就搞过这些事儿。而民主社会主义就是福利国家，它的特征就是我刚才讲的，就是政府干了，老百姓是不会感谢的。但是如果政府没干，老百姓就要问责。由于有了这个传统，所以到了四、五年以后建立起来的这个斯大林体制，老百姓也是这样。说实在的，这些东欧国家为老百姓做的事，可比我们中国做的多得太多的，可是东欧的老百姓就是比中国的老百姓，我不知道是进步还是落后，反正他不懂得感恩的，而且政府做的，他认为都是应该的，其实也是应该的，政府又不是慈善家。
这里我要讲，只有在两种情况下我们应该感谢政府。第一种情况是政府的官员因公殉职，这个我觉得是应该感谢的，就像你作为一个公民，你不应该逃避服兵役，但是让你死并不是公民的义务。如果你是个烈士，那大家还是应该要感谢你的。第二种情况是，如果政府的官员自己掏自己的钱出来办公益，那我们也应该感谢它。在这种情况下，政府就扮演一个慈善家的角色了或者官员扮演一个慈善家的角色了。如果它是用纳税人的钱办的，用公共财政的收入办的这些事，那当然就是理所当然的。那么东欧的老百姓也就是知道这一点，因此他们就不停地问责。而苏式体制虽然专制，但它的意识形态至少口头上是声称政府是要为人民服务的。它也不能公然否定劳动人民有要求福利的权利，因此虽然政治上要求多党制之类是被禁止的，经济上限权问责的制度也是绝无的，但是具体到每一件事，民间限权问责的压力空间都是有的。当然那个时候社会主义制度下，是没有征税这一说的，因为都是国营企业。但是当时政府横征暴敛的一个表现，就是所谓的增加劳动定额。比如说德国好几次工潮都是因为这个引起的。政府宣布增加劳动定额是工人阶级义不容辞的责任，一下子把劳动定额提高10%，但是又不增加工人工资，马上工人就上街了，这相当于反抗横征暴敛。但是其实，说实在的，他们主要做的还不是这，他们主要做的就是赚政府提供的服务不够。我们知道在波兰和匈牙利这两个国家都是这样。
匈牙利是因为1956年有这样的一次镇压，因此1956年以后的政府为了建立它的合法性就搞了好多高福利的东西，而且这个高福利其实因为是它对1956年事件的一个赎买，所以就变得它不能不搞的，结果就借了一屁股的债。大家知道，这个事情后来甚至一直影响到匈牙利私有化的进程，因为它要靠卖国有资产还债。波兰就是当时老百姓直接要求的了。
波兰1956年的波兹南事件和1970年以后的历次抗争，都是进行福利问责。福利问责的结果就导致波兰的赤字压力越来越大，因此当时是波兰政府千方百计地想推卸责任。这里我要讲，我们搞市场经济的一个口号，我觉得就是当年的波兰政府千方百计想实现的，那就是要求老百姓不找市长找市场。当时波兰政府千方百计地要让老百姓在市场上自生自灭，说我们政府不应该搞这事。但是它每一次这样的做法都被老百姓顶回去了，老百姓就是要找市长，绝不找市场。
这里我要讲，市场经济本来的意义是要限制政府的权利，市场经济的一个原则应该是市长不找市场找才对，也就是说市长不能随便找老百姓的麻烦，但是老百姓是可以找市长的。但是我们现在正好相反，我们限权很危险，所以不敢讲，但是推卸责任我们讲得是比较多的。所以我们说，搞计划经济，政府多累啊，老百姓的生老病死你都要管，现在搞市场经济好了，老百姓自生自灭，你就可以吃喝嫖赌了，老百姓都不找你了。当时的波兰政府其实想方设法就是要干这个，它不断地讲，我们的价格补贴要减少，我们的暖气不能烧得那么热……但是老百姓就是不依不饶，结果就导致赤字越来越厉害。后来，1981年9月到10月，团结工会第一次代表大会通过的宣言基本上也是这个东西。到了1988年的时候，波兰政府是非常想搞市场经济的，而且尤其想搞私有化。为什么呢？因为它发现，国有工厂的工会，当然一般来讲都是官办工会，但是这个官办工会在适当的时机，如果一发生变化它马上就冲着政府了。因为道理很简单，一般来讲，工会都是针对企业方面的，但是由于你是国营企业，国家就是老板，所以在国营企业，这个工会就是冲着政府来的。所以当时的波兰政府是想方设法把企业变成老板的，这样的话，工会就不会冲着它了，而且它就可以站在工人和资方之上，当双方的共主。当时不叫私有化，叫国有企业商业化，赋予企业领导某种意义上的产权，而且赋予他们开除工人的自由，但这些都被顶回去了。1988年他们又出台了一个“市场经济一揽子计划”，说政府要放开物价等等，结果又被顶回去了。那次投票，好像只有7%的人赞成这个主张，然后总理当不下去了，就辞职了。其实波兰到了后来，很多体制内的官员已经觉得非常没有意思了。你无论做了什么，老百姓都不会感谢；你无论怎样做，老百姓都埋怨多得不得了。于是就造成一种现象，从1980年到1990年，这9年间，波兰先后换了7个总理。每一个总理都是上台以后，应付不了这种问责，最后就被迫辞职的。所以你就可以理解，为什么后来到了1989年会开圆桌会议。
我们都知道，圆桌会议之前，当时双方是有一个协议的，团结工会说，我肯定在这次大选上让你有多数票，我只占少数票，我只当建设性反对派，我绝不会掌权的，方式就是这次选举只有35%的选票是自由竞选的，其它的65%都分配给你，全是你的。但是有一个前提，就是你的候选人要有一次无竞争的投票，就是说只有你是候选人，但是你还是要大家投一次票的。这样的话，很明显是不会造成政权更迭的。因为即使这35%的竞选票政府一票不得，它还是有65%的分配票的，还是可以控制国会的。但是它没有想到，在后来的选举过程中，的确这35%的票它就没有得，65%的分配票第一轮投票也全部被选民否定掉了，只有两个人通过了。后来是团结工会跑出来说，大家还是投他们的票吧，否则这个圆桌会议协议没办法履行。最后他们才当选了。当选了以后，这些人都觉得很没面子，当选了以后不久他们就宣布退党，结果这个65%就泡汤了。虽然泡汤了，但是圆桌会议没有说在这个情况下共产党就要交权，并没有这样的说法的。但是最后一任的共产党的总理，他就主动说，我不做了，我反正也没法做，你们谁来做吧。这个更迭就这样完成了。所以这个过程，你要说开明，的确他们的政府要比我们的开明。但是说实在的，这也不是个开明的问题，最关键的是，在最后的10年，他们已经感到，宪政对他们是有好处的。因为他们实在是被问责问得焦头烂额了。因此你只有在宪政条件才能要求大家不找市长找市场。如果在非宪政条件下，老百姓就是要找你这个市长，而且要把你这个市长找死为止。所以我觉得，这个宪政其实就和这个有很大的关系。
但是话到这里，大家又会说了，如果按照这个说法，这个团结工会，波兰、匈牙利这些国家的主张不是都是反市场经济的吗？如果是这样的话，那么他们怎么还搞经济改革呢？而且假如这些人要福利要惯了，那么剧变以后，留给民主政府的不是一个希腊式的局面吗？的确可以这样讲，如果剧变以后，波兰老百姓还是要求这种无限制的福利问责，那波兰早就变成今天希腊这样子了。可是非常奇怪的就是，波兰在宪政以前，老百姓是无限地福利问责，宪政以后老百姓很快就变得遵守契约了。道理很简单，原来是没有这个契约的，那么在圆桌会议协定的过程中，就有了契约了，而且这个契约是有选择的。比如说在圆桌会议以后的选举中，各种各样的诉求都会有。比如就有一些斯大林主义政党说，我可以保证你们吃到便宜的肉，保证可以让你们暖气烧得热热的，条件是你让我扮古拉格，那么你愿不愿意？如果你签订了这种契约也行。大家当然不签。然后像维耶茨基那样的人就说，我上台肯定要涨物价，但是条件是我可以让你们有自由，可以让你们组织工会等等。大家都选了马佐维耶茨基。马佐维耶茨基上台后，当然就涨了物价。大家知道，1989年以前，波兰物价涨20%，工人就上街了，可是1989年到1990年，波兰的物价涨了7倍，波兰的老百姓基本是平平稳稳，一点都没有什么动静。这个我想其实也不奇怪，其实这和征税是一样的。
大家知道，当初英国、法国闹出革命就是因为国王要征税，大家不愿意。大家不愿意交税，结果就产生了国会和国王的冲突。但是宪政确立以后，由国会出面征税，在无代表不征税的体制下，虽然征税比国王要多得多，大家都是觉得宪政以后比以前征得更多了，而不是比以前更少了，但老百姓就是愿意交。为什么？就是因为有契约。这个福利也是一样，老百姓在宪政以前要无限问责，宪政以后就不无限问责了；老百姓在宪政以前不愿交税，宪政以后就愿交税了。因此我可以讲，政府与它的授权者只能签订一种权责对应的契约，让马多跑，就要给马多吃草。签订一个既要马儿跑，又要马儿不吃草的契约，根本是无法履行的，对谁都没有好处。如果你强求这样，那就会出现希腊式的那种局面。但是，在没有契约的情况下，促使双方走向谈判契约的过程实际上是一个什么过程呢？实际上是一个漫天要价以施压，就地还钱以成交的过程，任何一方如果事先就对对方实行零开价，对方怎么能有意愿和你讨价还价呢？所以我要说，对于那种骑在人头上的马，而不是被人骑的马，它们习惯了山珍海味，你必须任它狂吃，而它跑一步你都要千恩万谢，它不跑你也无可奈何，那么既要让它少吃，又要让它多跑，就是你的方向，而既要马儿跑又要马儿不吃草就成为一个合理的要价策略。你其实是实现不了既要马儿跑又要马儿不吃草的，但是它也无法狂吃山珍海味而不跑了，最后就可以在吃多少草，跑多少路的问题上达成契约。大家想想是不是这样一个过程？在达成契约之前当然是可以漫天要价的，这与契约达成之后的过分索取是两回事。这里我就要讲，今天的希腊人，糟就糟在他们在宪政完成38年以后，真的追求起既要马儿跑又要马儿不吃草这个不可能的结果。但是当年的波兰人，高就高在他们在宪政以前就进行了既要马儿跑又要马儿不吃草式的漫天要价，没有一个合理的要价策略，不提出这个要价就没有还价的空间，这完全是渐进的、和平的改革，和任何暴力没有关系，如果最后就吃多少草跑多少路的问题达成契约，那就是宪政大业成型的一天了。
我就讲到这里，谢谢！
来源：北京天则经济研究所
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秦晖：福利问责与宪政之路
——天则第464次双周讨论会
更新时间：2013-01-29 21:23:12
作者： 秦晖 (进入专栏)
又可以向你征钱，那它凭什么要向你亮账本呢？它大量的钱可以用于自我服务，它为什么要向你亮账本呢？但是在很多情况下，有很多政府的确是主动亮账本的。为什么呢？就是因为它受到这两方面的挤压，一方面它要向你要钱，你就怨声载道，软磨硬抗不交，然后你又拼命逼它花钱，你必须办教育，暖气太冷了不行，肉价太贵了不行，肉价便宜了买不到还不行。你不断地这样逼它，逼到后来，说实在的，这个预算公开，你不要它主动就会给你了，它就会向你亮出账本，说你看这个账上只有这么点钱，你要的这些服务我做不到的，现在你来商量商量吧，到底是你给我多交一点呢，还是少让我办一点，就像那个仆人一样，要么你多给我一点钱，要么让我少买一点菜，否则你的要求我实现不了。到了这个时候，预算公开，财政透明，你不要它主动就会给你，而且它追着要向你公开。因为它不公开就没有办法卸责。
其实我们要想起来，这个世界上的宪政过程，从最早的英国、法国，到后来东欧最早走上宪政的两个国家，就是匈牙利和波兰，东德的情况比较特殊，那么匈牙利和波兰是东欧宪政的两个带头羊。这两个国家都有一个共同点，就是这两个国家是当时所有东欧国家中财政赤字最高的国家，而且都是政府困于老百姓的问责。当年英国、法国也是这样，英国、法国为什么会有宪政呢？其实老实说，和启蒙思想家写了多少文章，是不是有很密切的关系，我不知道，但是直接的关系就是政府的赤字累累，它必须开国会公开筹款。如果政府没有赤字，根本就不会有这样的事。所以我说，现在我们中国最大的问题就是，中国的财政状况是走向宪政的一个非常大的障碍。在这个问题上，我们的一些朋友非常得糊涂。2003年发生非典，有些人要求政府必须对非典病人承担这样那样的责任。当时就有一位自由主义的朋友，马上跑出来说，你想干什么？你想制造财政赤字吗？你想搞垮中国财政吗？而且说你这是违反自由主义的，因为你给政府施加责任的同时，你就向政府授权了。我说我既使一点责任都不追问它，它的权利少一分吗？它即使不管我死活，它照样可以把我抓去枪毙的，这和我向它问责有什么关系呢？而且这位朋友极端到什么地步，他就认为非典状态下被隔离的病人的医疗费也应该他自己掏的，国家不应该给他搞公费医疗的。国家把他抓起来隔离了都不给他提供医疗费，居然就推卸责任到这种地步。
我当然不想反过来证明巨额赤字就一定有利于宪政，更不是说为了推进宪政就应该人为制造赤字，但是那种左派、右派共同促进低自由、低福利条件下形成的一种病态盈余，而政府的自我服务愈演愈烈的情况，的确应该是反思的。如果有这种情况，是没有可能有宪政的。那么这里我要讲，波兰、匈牙利这一类的国家，包括很多东欧国家，当时的情况就是这样。当然，你说自由主义就政治自由主义而言，它和宪政的关系是非常明显的，因为政治自由主义他的诉求就是宪政民主，但是这个政治自由主义在当时的东欧，说实在的，言论空间是很小的。当时的东欧和我们的委员长一样，也是讲什么“五不准”的。但是东欧国家的意识形态不可能防止老百姓对他进行福利问责，而且东欧国家的老百姓受社会主义的影响的确很大。这里讲的社会主义指的是民主社会主义，因为你看看东欧这些国家的历史，很多东欧国家在二战以前就经历过社会党执政，像波兰的毕苏斯基，捷克的贝奈斯，这些人都是社会民主党人，他们在以前就搞过这些事儿。而民主社会主义就是福利国家，它的特征就是我刚才讲的，就是政府干了，老百姓是不会感谢的。但是如果政府没干，老百姓就要问责。由于有了这个传统，所以到了四、五年以后建立起来的这个斯大林体制，老百姓也是这样。说实在的，这些东欧国家为老百姓做的事，可比我们中国做的多得太多的，可是东欧的老百姓就是比中国的老百姓，我不知道是进步还是落后，反正他不懂得感恩的，而且政府做的，他认为都是应该的，其实也是应该的，政府又不是慈善家。
这里我要讲，只有在两种情况下我们应该感谢政府。第一种情况是政府的官员因公殉职，这个我觉得是应该感谢的，就像你作为一个公民，你不应该逃避服兵役，但是让你死并不是公民的义务。如果你是个烈士，那大家还是应该要感谢你的。第二种情况是，如果政府的官员自己掏自己的钱出来办公益，那我们也应该感谢它。在这种情况下，政府就扮演一个慈善家的角色了或者官员扮演一个慈善家的角色了。如果它是用纳税人的钱办的，用公共财政的收入办的这些事，那当然就是理所当然的。那么东欧的老百姓也就是知道这一点，因此他们就不停地问责。而苏式体制虽然专制，但它的意识形态至少口头上是声称政府是要为人民服务的。它也不能公然否定劳动人民有要求福利的权利，因此虽然政治上要求多党制之类是被禁止的，经济上限权问责的制度也是绝无的，但是具体到每一件事，民间限权问责的压力空间都是有的。当然那个时候社会主义制度下，是没有征税这一说的，因为都是国营企业。但是当时政府横征暴敛的一个表现，就是所谓的增加劳动定额。比如说德国好几次工潮都是因为这个引起的。政府宣布增加劳动定额是工人阶级义不容辞的责任，一下子把劳动定额提高10%，但是又不增加工人工资，马上工人就上街了，这相当于反抗横征暴敛。但是其实，说实在的，他们主要做的还不是这，他们主要做的就是赚政府提供的服务不够。我们知道在波兰和匈牙利这两个国家都是这样。
匈牙利是因为1956年有这样的一次镇压，因此1956年以后的政府为了建立它的合法性就搞了好多高福利的东西，而且这个高福利其实因为是它对1956年事件的一个赎买，所以就变得它不能不搞的，结果就借了一屁股的债。大家知道，这个事情后来甚至一直影响到匈牙利私有化的进程，因为它要靠卖国有资产还债。波兰就是当时老百姓直接要求的了。
波兰1956年的波兹南事件和1970年以后的历次抗争，都是进行福利问责。福利问责的结果就导致波兰的赤字压力越来越大，因此当时是波兰政府千方百计地想推卸责任。这里我要讲，我们搞市场经济的一个口号，我觉得就是当年的波兰政府千方百计想实现的，那就是要求老百姓不找市长找市场。当时波兰政府千方百计地要让老百姓在市场上自生自灭，说我们政府不应该搞这事。但是它每一次这样的做法都被老百姓顶回去了，老百姓就是要找市长，绝不找市场。
这里我要讲，市场经济本来的意义是要限制政府的权利，市场经济的一个原则应该是市长不找市场找才对，也就是说市长不能随便找老百姓的麻烦，但是老百姓是可以找市长的。但是我们现在正好相反，我们限权很危险，所以不敢讲，但是推卸责任我们讲得是比较多的。所以我们说，搞计划经济，政府多累啊，老百姓的生老病死你都要管，现在搞市场经济好了，老百姓自生自灭，你就可以吃喝嫖赌了，老百姓都不找你了。当时的波兰政府其实想方设法就是要干这个，它不断地讲，我们的价格补贴要减少，我们的暖气不能烧得那么热……但是老百姓就是不依不饶，结果就导致赤字越来越厉害。后来，1981年9月到10月，团结工会第一次代表大会通过的宣言基本上也是这个东西。到了1988年的时候，波兰政府是非常想搞市场经济的，而且尤其想搞私有化。为什么呢？因为它发现，国有工厂的工会，当然一般来讲都是官办工会，但是这个官办工会在适当的时机，如果一发生变化它马上就冲着政府了。因为道理很简单，一般来讲，工会都是针对企业方面的，但是由于你是国营企业，国家就是老板，所以在国营企业，这个工会就是冲着政府来的。所以当时的波兰政府是想方设法把企业变成老板的，这样的话，工会就不会冲着它了，而且它就可以站在工人和资方之上，当双方的共主。当时不叫私有化，叫国有企业商业化，赋予企业领导某种意义上的产权，而且赋予他们开除工人的自由，但这些都被顶回去了。1988年他们又出台了一个“市场经济一揽子计划”，说政府要放开物价等等，结果又被顶回去了。那次投票，好像只有7%的人赞成这个主张，然后总理当不下去了，就辞职了。其实波兰到了后来，很多体制内的官员已经觉得非常没有意思了。你无论做了什么，老百姓都不会感谢；你无论怎样做，老百姓都埋怨多得不得了。于是就造成一种现象，从1980年到1990年，这9年间，波兰先后换了7个总理。每一个总理都是上台以后，应付不了这种问责，最后就被迫辞职的。所以你就可以理解，为什么后来到了1989年会开圆桌会议。
我们都知道，圆桌会议之前，当时双方是有一个协议的，团结工会说，我肯定在这次大选上让你有多数票，我只占少数票，我只当建设性反对派，我绝不会掌权的，方式就是这次选举只有35%的选票是自由竞选的，其它的65%都分配给你，全是你的。但是有一个前提，就是你的候选人要有一次无竞争的投票，就是说只有你是候选人，但是你还是要大家投一次票的。这样的话，很明显是不会造成政权更迭的。因为即使这35%的竞选票政府一票不得，它还是有65%的分配票的，还是可以控制国会的。但是它没有想到，在后来的选举过程中，的确这35%的票它就没有得，65%的分配票第一轮投票也全部被选民否定掉了，只有两个人通过了。后来是团结工会跑出来说，大家还是投他们的票吧，否则这个圆桌会议协议没办法履行。最后他们才当选了。当选了以后，这些人都觉得很没面子，当选了以后不久他们就宣布退党，结果这个65%就泡汤了。虽然泡汤了，但是圆桌会议没有说在这个情况下共产党就要交权，并没有这样的说法的。但是最后一任的共产党的总理，他就主动说，我不做了，我反正也没法做，你们谁来做吧。这个更迭就这样完成了。所以这个过程，你要说开明，的确他们的政府要比我们的开明。但是说实在的，这也不是个开明的问题，最关键的是，在最后的10年，他们已经感到，宪政对他们是有好处的。因为他们实在是被问责问得焦头烂额了。因此你只有在宪政条件才能要求大家不找市长找市场。如果在非宪政条件下，老百姓就是要找你这个市长，而且要把你这个市长找死为止。所以我觉得，这个宪政其实就和这个有很大的关系。
但是话到这里，大家又会说了，如果按照这个说法，这个团结工会，波兰、匈牙利这些国家的主张不是都是反市场经济的吗？如果是这样的话，那么他们怎么还搞经济改革呢？而且假如这些人要福利要惯了，那么剧变以后，留给民主政府的不是一个希腊式的局面吗？的确可以这样讲，如果剧变以后，波兰老百姓还是要求这种无限制的福利问责，那波兰早就变成今天希腊这样子了。可是非常奇怪的就是，波兰在宪政以前，老百姓是无限地福利问责，宪政以后老百姓很快就变得遵守契约了。道理很简单，原来是没有这个契约的，那么在圆桌会议协定的过程中，就有了契约了，而且这个契约是有选择的。比如说在圆桌会议以后的选举中，各种各样的诉求都会有。比如就有一些斯大林主义政党说，我可以保证你们吃到便宜的肉，保证可以让你们暖气烧得热热的，条件是你让我扮古拉格，那么你愿不愿意？如果你签订了这种契约也行。大家当然不签。然后像维耶茨基那样的人就说，我上台肯定要涨物价，但是条件是我可以让你们有自由，可以让你们组织工会等等。大家都选了马佐维耶茨基。马佐维耶茨基上台后，当然就涨了物价。大家知道，1989年以前，波兰物价涨20%，工人就上街了，可是1989年到1990年，波兰的物价涨了7倍，波兰的老百姓基本是平平稳稳，一点都没有什么动静。这个我想其实也不奇怪，其实这和征税是一样的。
大家知道，当初英国、法国闹出革命就是因为国王要征税，大家不愿意。大家不愿意交税，结果就产生了国会和国王的冲突。但是宪政确立以后，由国会出面征税，在无代表不征税的体制下，虽然征税比国王要多得多，大家都是觉得宪政以后比以前征得更多了，而不是比以前更少了，但老百姓就是愿意交。为什么？就是因为有契约。这个福利也是一样，老百姓在宪政以前要无限问责，宪政以后就不无限问责了；老百姓在宪政以前不愿交税，宪政以后就愿交税了。因此我可以讲，政府与它的授权者只能签订一种权责对应的契约，让马多跑，就要给马多吃草。签订一个既要马儿跑，又要马儿不吃草的契约，根本是无法履行的，对谁都没有好处。如果你强求这样，那就会出现希腊式的那种局面。但是，在没有契约的情况下，促使双方走向谈判契约的过程实际上是一个什么过程呢？实际上是一个漫天要价以施压，就地还钱以成交的过程，任何一方如果事先就对对方实行零开价，对方怎么能有意愿和你讨价还价呢？所以我要说，对于那种骑在人头上的马，而不是被人骑的马，它们习惯了山珍海味，你必须任它狂吃，而它跑一步你都要千恩万谢，它不跑你也无可奈何，那么既要让它少吃，又要让它多跑，就是你的方向，而既要马儿跑又要马儿不吃草就成为一个合理的要价策略。你其实是实现不了既要马儿跑又要马儿不吃草的，但是它也无法狂吃山珍海味而不跑了，最后就可以在吃多少草，跑多少路的问题上达成契约。大家想想是不是这样一个过程？在达成契约之前当然是可以漫天要价的，这与契约达成之后的过分索取是两回事。这里我就要讲，今天的希腊人，糟就糟在他们在宪政完成38年以后，真的追求起既要马儿跑又要马儿不吃草这个不可能的结果。但是当年的波兰人，高就高在他们在宪政以前就进行了既要马儿跑又要马儿不吃草式的漫天要价，没有一个合理的要价策略，不提出这个要价就没有还价的空间，这完全是渐进的、和平的改革，和任何暴力没有关系，如果最后就吃多少草跑多少路的问题达成契约，那就是宪政大业成型的一天了。
我就讲到这里，谢谢！
来源: 北京天则经济研究所
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