ancient Chinese secret
I'm experiencing some sort of Chinese history synchronicity. This just showed up in my inbox: Where did modern economics originate? History shows that concepts of inflation, regulation and the free market can all be traced to ancient China, whose ideas were later refined by the Enlightenment thinkers.
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What is more, the concept of the 'free market' we are so proud of in the West is very strongly influenced by classical Chinese philosophy. It was the impact of Chinese ideas, especially Daoism (Taoism), on the scholars of the European Enlightenment that enabled the Europeans to break down the old restrictive mercantilist system and come to a coherent vision of the free market.
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From wu-wei to laissez-faire
While the Confucians believed that virtue could best be achieved through regulation and control, the other great philosophical school of ancient China, the Daoists, argued the opposite. One of the key principles of Daoism is that true achievement comes not through action but rather through its opposite, wu-wei, or 'non-action'. The Daoist view was that the best way of achieving a desired result is through stillness, causing things to happen without intervening. In economic terms, this means letting nature take its course.
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By the early 18th Century, Jesuit missionaries in China had translated many Chinese works of philosophy into French. These translations were widely read and admired by French Enlightenment philosophers such as Voltaire and Montesquieu, and also by the Physiocrats, the new school of economists who argued for the application of Enlightenment ideas to economics. One of these latter, François de Quesnay, became a great admirer of Daoist ideas. He was particularly attracted to the idea of wu-wei. The perfect monarch, he argued in his Le despotisme de Chine (1764), "should do nothing, but let the laws rule", an almost exact translation of a passage in the Daodejing. Famously, Quesnay translated wu-wei as laissez-faire, and the concept went on to become the foundation stone of free-market capitalism down to this day. Adam Smith did not use the term laissez-faire in The Wealth of Nations, but used instead the phrase 'invisible hand', which is clearly taken from laissez-faire and is in some ways an even more accurate rendition of the Daoist original.
Wow. Thanks to Murray Rothbard, whom I'll quote in a moment, I already knew about Taoism as early radical libertarianism, but I didn't realize that there was a traceable historical connection between Taoist thought and classical liberalism. That blows my mind. What it implies is that an ideology of individual freedom first evolved where political reality kept it from shaping economic reality -- see my recent posts (1, 2) on the Mandarinate -- but then the meme travelled to the more receptive host of a politically decentralized western Europe.
Western liberals may owe as much to the East as we do to the West.
Of course, the other lesson is that ideology is not enough.
In "Concepts of the Role of Intellectuals in Social Change Toward Laissez Faire," Rothbard wrote:
The first libertarian intellectual was Lao-tzu, the founder of Taoism. Little is known about his life, but apparently he was a personal acquaintance of Confucius in the late sixth century B.C. and like the latter came from the state of Sung and was descended from the lower aristocracy of the Yin dynasty. Unlike the notable apologist for the rule of philosopher-bureaucrats, however, Lao-tzu developed a radical libertarian creed.
Why are people starving?
Because the rulers eat up the money in taxes.
Therefore the people are starving.
[...]
Why are the people rebellious?
Because the rulers interfere too much.
Therefore they are rebellious.
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The more prohibitions there are, the poorer the people will be.
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The more rules and regulations, The more thieves and robbers.
PS Just as the pieces start to make sense, I find Roderick Long's dissenting revisionist history:
(Why the real Chinese libertarians were the Confucians, not the Taoists)
PPS Professor Long, I prefer your first section title:
"Confucianism: The Unknown Ideal"
6 Comments:
Well... er... I would be very reluctant to ascribe much intellectual progress in the West to borrowings from China, not least because absolutely all of those supposed teachings were forgotten, in terms of practical usage, later-on in China. It's kind of like having some ideal little book over in a corner, singing its praises, then doing entirely the opposite, but then holding up the book whenever you're reproached.
Sinophiles try to ascribe all kinds of thigs such as paper-making, the printing press, etc. in the West to Chinese imports, but there's really next to zero actual evidence and lots going against it. On this point I would contrast Greek philosophy of the same period with the Chinese, and the Chinese stuff just doesn't really compare or provide a basis to advance further.
Morgan, I think yours is an excellent point. It's such an excellent point, in fact, that it used to be my point. Knowing that laissez-faire philosophy may have originated in China doesn't really tell us anything about Chinese culture or civilization, by itself.
But this is what I didn't know before yesterday: "By the early 18th Century, Jesuit missionaries in China had translated many Chinese works of philosophy into French[, which] were widely read and admired by French Enlightenment philosophers such as Voltaire and Montesquieu, and also by [...] François de Quesnay, [who] translated wu-wei as laissez-faire, and the concept went on to become the foundation stone of free-market capitalism down to this day."
That direct a connection seems to me to be a major claim, and if it's true, it strikes me as profoundly significant.
We don't have to love or apologize for an authoritarian culture to recognize that an ancient minority position may have influenced our own anti-authoritarian tradition.
You might want to look at the great French polymath (and libertarian), Diderot, as one who may have been strongly influenced by Chinese thought as well. Much of his dialectical approach is quite consistent with Chinese philosophy.
Another great book to check out in terms of the trade in knowledge between China and the rest of the world is "The Sextants of Beijing"
There's a significant section on the Jesuit missionaries in China.
A shorter and otherwise slightly different version of my Confucianism article was published in the JLS two years ago; link here.
To Roderick T. Long:
After reading excerpts of Murray Rothbard's Economic Thought Before Adam Smith, I did some searching about ancient economies. That's when I stumbled on to your article.
Excellent stuff. I learned more about ancient China reading your article than most kids do in 12 years of schooling. Nice job. Thank you.
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