Political power is a category relative to the public domain; Under the existing system, right is a concept relative to the private sphere. The clarity of the concepts of power and rights and the division of boundaries are important prerequisites for ensuring a good social order. The birth of corruption is the result of mixed power and rights. Power owners extend their power to public interests or other people's private fields, and use public power to satisfy their own private interests; Power corrupts because there is no supervision from members of society. In addition to the abuse of public power, corruption must also have another condition, that is, to establish the legality of private property. For example, the disappearance of the primitive capitalist society and the rise of the slave society is that the productive forces of the primitive capitalist public ownership society developed to the point where their leaders could control a certain amount of surplus means of subsistence, and the tribal leaders used the mastered public power to embezzle the wealth of all members, thus generating private property and establishing the legitimacy of private property rights by force. They also used it to wage wars against other tribes, plunder their property and enslave prisoners of war. Until finally established the world's first private ownership society, namely the slave society.
Soviet-Eastern socialism was originally public ownership. Because legislators were not directly elected by the people, indirectly elected representatives represented the people in theory. When the revolutionary leader was alive, people's nature was the guiding principle for government officials, and corruption and greed were suppressed. The hidden disadvantages of legislators not being directly elected by the people have not been recognized by people. With the decline of successors' revolutionary ideals (since Khrushchev), the wind of seeking enjoyment has gradually prevailed, and the disadvantages of indirect election of representatives have become increasingly apparent. In the process of implementation, these people's representatives are often only responsible to their superiors and forget to be responsible to the people. Gradually, the people can't control the legislative power in essence. In practice, it is difficult for the people to exercise their due democratic rights. The people can't supervise and stop those in power from acting against the people's interests, and even lose the power to directly dismiss officials. From sovereignty to the people, it has evolved into an elite governance model. This is obviously different from the democratic model of Paris Commune's "unity of deliberation and action" sovereignty among the people. When those in power abuse their power to grab people's wealth, a privileged group is formed, until private ownership is established, which leads to the demise of public ownership in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, and the death of the party and the country becomes inevitable.
Rousseau, a famous French enlightenment thinker, thinks that "private ownership is based on inequality, and the order established by social contract is distorted. "They give new shackles to the weak and new strength to the rich; They destroy the natural freedom forever, so that freedom can never be restored; They set down the laws to protect private property and admit inequality forever, and turned extortion into an irrevocable right; Since then, it has driven the whole mankind to endure labor, slavery and poverty for the benefit of a few careerists. " From this point of view, private ownership is one of the sources of corruption. The earliest western banks, such as the Bank of Amsterdam and the Bank of England, started from war money. Under the condition of European nation-state hegemony, the basic function of western private banks is to provide war loans for the country, and the country in turn gives private banks the right to issue money with tax as collateral. As a creditor of the country, financial capital thus has "absolute power" and is above the country. Therefore, Lord acton said that power leads to corruption, and absolute power leads to absolute corruption-not only for state power, but also for financial capital, that is, private banks. What western financial institutions have done in other colonies and semi-colonies in the past 12 years is to gradually expand and master the world market through investment wars. On the one hand, it provides loans to countries that started wars, on the other hand, it provides "compensation" loan services to defeated countries, and at the same time requires the country's taxes, especially customs taxes, as collateral. It is in this way that western private banks gradually control the tax and trade rights of various countries, thus becoming a transnational and monopolistic financial bourgeoisie. The global outbreak of this financial crisis is caused by the fact that American financial capital has absolute rights and is not restricted. The United States is the locomotive of the world economy, not only the world military hegemon, but also the world financial hegemonic position, thus attracting money from all countries in the world to flow into the American stock market and bond market, gradually making the virtual economy replace the real economy as the main economic pillar of the United States, and using the money of other countries to support the high-quality life of Americans. Once the virtual economy bubble burst and the capital chain broke, the financial crisis came. The Federal Reserve, a private financial kingdom, is the real master of the United States and has unlimited power. The method adopted by the Federal Reserve to pass on the crisis is to keep the domestic benchmark interest rate unchanged, so as to maintain the stability of the domestic credit money market and give American depositors a reassurance. A large number of US dollar currencies were printed, and 3 billion US treasury bonds were purchased with this money, which made the US dollar depreciate rapidly and greatly, and the losses were passed on to the creditor countries of treasury bonds, so as to pass on the crisis to foreign countries. Marx has discussed this for a long time. He once pointed out sharply that "when there is a crisis in capitalism, one of the ways to save the market is to export the crisis. In the past, it was to export capital to all countries in the world, and now it is an export crisis. " The root of the financial crisis is here. In the advanced stage of capitalism, credit currency has been highly developed, and monetary capital has been separated from commodity production and has become a special profiteering commodity. In order to obtain excess profits, financial capitalists constantly blow up the virtual economy, and at the same time print a lot of paper money to meet the market demand for money. Once the paper money exceeds the actual production and the total amount of goods, the economic bubble will blow bigger and bigger, and one day it will burst, and the financial crisis will come. This also shows that absolute economic power leads to absolute corruption.
Power (whether political or economic) will bring temptation to individuals: when a person is not a power, many people have "great" ambitions, to improve the world we live in, to eliminate inequality, and to eradicate corruption and privilege; Once they have power, it may be another matter completely, and power has become a tool for them to seize wealth and higher power. And if this power is absolute, it will almost undoubtedly corrode the mind. This leads to corruption.
history has proved that it is almost impossible to prevent power corruption by relying on personal moral consciousness. Since ancient Greece, people naturally thought of distributing power to many different people, that is, adopting democracy to resist power corruption; In modern times, John Locke (1632-174), a British philosopher and politician, put forward the famous idea of separation of powers and divided power into legislative power, administrative power and diplomatic power, which was a great leap forward in political philosophy and a great progress in human civilization. Later, Montesquieu (1689-1755), an enlightenment thinker, formally put forward the theory of separation of executive, legislative and judicial powers based on Locke's theory. Through the practice of the United States, power has been well restricted (although it is impossible to eradicate the corruption of political power, especially the corruption of powerful capital power, which is almost impossible). -The theory of "separation of powers" (or separation of powers and checks and balances) is undoubtedly the theory that guides the modern government to best resist corruption under the private ownership system so far (as for the reference function for the public ownership society, we need to explore and practice). This is also the need for powerful capital forces to get rid of the shackles for their own development. The separation of the three powers restricts the power of the government, and at the same time makes the capital power expand unprecedentedly, making it the supreme force of capitalism. Government officials are just slaves of capital power. Since then, economic power has been above all social forces.
Rousseau divided the ruling forms into three categories: democratic politics, aristocratic politics and monarchical politics. Democratic politics regards sovereignty as "entrusting the responsibility of the government to all or most people, so that most people can become officials;" Aristocratic politics is sovereignty "entrusting the government to a few people, making ordinary people more than officials"; Monarchical politics is sovereignty. "The whole government is entrusted to one official, and other people have to get power from him." Rousseau thinks that democracy has never existed. Rousseau also divides the aristocratic regime into three types: "natural, elected and hereditary", and thinks that "the first type is only suitable for simple people, the third type is the worst regime, and the second type is the best, which is the real so-called aristocratic regime". The "elected aristocratic regime" is that a few elected people become officials to manage the country. Rousseau said, "Therefore, there are loyalty, understanding, experience, and other qualities that are respected and respected as many guarantees for improving the government." Therefore, democratic elections and separation of the three powers have put on a beautiful coat for capitalism. However, this kind of political democracy can not only restrict the infinite economic power owned by capital at all, but also cover up its bloodthirsty nature with free competition.
according to Rousseau's explanation, we can know that this kind of elected aristocratic regime is actually a democratic system. It is also a constitutional democracy advocated by the west today. It can be seen that the essence of constitutional democracy is a minority elite democracy based on private ownership. It restricts the political power of officials and is beneficial to the development of capitalist economy. But it can't restrict the proletariat from abusing its economic power, and can't eliminate and narrow the gap between the rich and the poor. It is even more impossible to eliminate poverty. As a * * * capitalist, this kind of democracy is not perfect. Only a society with both political democracy and economic democracy and equality is the goal pursued by the * * * producers.
From a macro point of view, the separation of powers can play a certain role in restricting officials. From a micro point of view, the smaller the department, the closer its contact with the private sector, and the more corruption of "thieves". The "separation of powers" seems to have no effect at such a grassroots level. Especially when the people's awareness of democracy and freedom in this country is not strong, it creates a "good environment" for these small officials to corrupt their power. If the cost of these behaviors is not high, then the hand of power will sink deeper and deeper.
Rousseau, the ideological pioneer of the 18th century French Revolution, was one of the most outstanding representatives of the Enlightenment. He believes that all rights belong to the people, the government and officials are appointed by the people, and the people have the right to appoint them and to replace them until the rulers who enslave and oppress the people are eliminated. The Paris Commune is the first attempt of the proletarian revolution. The Paris Commune is a new type of people's political power to get rid of the bourgeois parliamentary system. It is a "working organ" that implements universal suffrage, the system of replacing people's deputies at any time, and the unification of legislation and administration. That is, the management system of "integration of deliberation and administration", Rousseau is considered as the first expositor of the thought of "integration of deliberation and administration". Rousseau opposed the separation of powers and thought that the best legislator was the people themselves, and legislators knew better than anyone how the law should be enforced. Therefore, under the democratic system, all the people are not only legislators, but also executives. Rousseau believes that "'sovereignty' is the exercise of the will of the public, so it can never be transferred." * * * will (GENERALWILL) "only consider the interests of the public * * *. Therefore, in Rousseau's view, sovereignty (public will) is specifically legislative power. Moreover, the formulation of laws must involve all the people, and representatives cannot be appointed. "Sovereignty can't be represented, just as sovereignty is non-transferable, its main point lies in the will of the public, and will can't be represented." The executive power of the government is only the power entrusted by sovereignty. "Sovereignty can restrict, modify or withdraw this power at will." Its essence is that the whole people are in charge of a few officials. Rousseau thus said that there is no real and pure democracy so far, and asserted that there will never be. Although he showed pessimism about the realization of real democracy, he proposed that sovereignty belongs to the people, but inspired the people to pursue this real form of democracy. Therefore, it played an important role in the first practice of proletarian revolution and Paris commune democracy.
The formulation of laws must involve all the people, not a few representatives, in order to reflect the people's will. Officials can only perform their duties and exercise the powers conferred by law within the legal framework. Otherwise, it will be removed by the law representing the people's will. Rousseau's important viewpoints are also enlightening for us to realize socialist people's mass democracy, which is also in common with Chairman Mao's people's mass democracy thought. The socialist people's mass democracy can learn from the beneficial thoughts of our predecessors, but can we learn from it? How can we learn from the essence of democracy in capitalist democracy and get rid of its dross for our use? It is also worth discussing. The question is not whether we can learn from the democratic way of separation of powers and checks and balances. The key is that this kind of democracy should be reflected not only at the political level, but also at the economic level.
Many times, the bottom-up approach will play a great role, and it is also a guarantee for the thorough implementation of the political system and legal system. Power supervision, in the end, should return to the ordinary people, so that the people at the bottom also have the power to supervise the people at the top, forming a cycle of power, which is the real supervision. In the Paris Commune, ordinary working people not only participate in political elections, but also serve as civil servants, directly participating in the governance of political life and supervising the power of the commune. Marx praised: this is the real "national government", which represents the "development direction of the people's governance system realized by the people themselves", and finally realized the real goal of democratic politics of "returning government to the people": "This is the society regaining state power and turning it from the power of ruling society and suppressing society into the vitality of society itself; This is the people's regaining state power, and they form their own forces to replace the organized forces that oppress them; This is a political form for the people to gain social liberation "[Selected Works of Marx and Engels, 2nd Edition, Volume 3, page 95 ]
The socialist political system and its laws have played a positive role in preventing corruption, but it is also very important that the people should have democratic power and have a strong sense of upholding democracy and resisting power corruption.
political power is always formed by the people ceding part of their rights in the public domain, and it can only be used to realize people's interests in the end, and the publicity of economic power is one of the guarantees to realize real political democracy. These two powers will never allow anyone to abuse and trample on them. The key is how to achieve this goal.
those who think that "keeping political power in a cage" can eliminate corruption lack a deep understanding of the nature of the marriage between political power and capital. I just want to "keep political power in the cage" and not put capital in the cage at the same time. The result is "keep political power in the cage" but "hold the key to open the cage in the hands of capital". This makes capital in