commentary on xunzi's "enriching the state"

class hierarchy, human nature, and good government

autumn (four seasons), liu songnian

In contrast to many of the ancients from various cultures, Xunzi's principles and methods are largely in line with our¹ modern sensibilities. That is, his writings contain none of the mystical superstitions, antiquated folk reasonings, or ignorant prejudices that must be excused and explained away in most pre-Enlightenment thinkers.

He sees his culture as superior to others, but asserts anyone brought up in it can be of it. Likewise, he sees nothing natural in caste or noble birth. He treats tradition as guidance, to be valued for the results it achieves rather than its mere antiquity, and to be created from scratch if inadequate or absent. His view on ritual is strictly metarational: it doesn't have supernatural effect, but it shouldn't be discarded in favor of rigid rationality, because it serves the purpose of expressing feeling and form, bringing people together and satisfying their hearts.

He believes utterly in meritocracy and takes learning and self-cultivation to be the highest goods because of how they transform man. He admits the necessity of law and punishment, but he considers these to be tools, best used sparingly, rather than an ultimate organizing principle of society. He sees the mission of the state to be enriching and protecting the people, but he sees this as a positive-sum game of engineering abundance rather than a zero-sum game of redistributing wealth.

The Xunist system does not need to be contorted to bring it into accord with techno-capitalist industry and consequentialist statecraft. Most of the project of articulating a Neo-Xunism is in expanding on Xunzi's fundamental insights to cover novel modern circumstances such as rapid technological progress, instant global communication, low-cost global trade, and postmodern disaffection and cultural malaise. Usually when people find fault in Xunzi, it is with "human nature is bad" (人之性惡, 23.1), but he follows this statement immediately with "their goodness is a matter of deliberate effort" (其善者偽也, ibid). His view is not nihilism or cynicism: it is an exhortation to overcome selfishness through virtue and self-cultivation.²

However, there is one point in Xunzi's system that does offend the sensibilities of many moderns: the absolute necessity of a hierarchical class system.

Xunzi is opposed to a class system defined by birth or wealth. He believes strongly that the worthy should be promoted and unworthy demoted:

Even the sons and grandsons of kings, dukes, gentry, and grand ministers, if they cannot submit to ritual and yi, should be assigned the status of commoners. Even the sons and grandsons of commoners, if they accumulate culture and learning, correct their person and conduct, and can submit to ritual and yi, should be assigned the status of prime minister, gentry, or grand ministers (9.7).

He also—unlike many of today's meritocratic bent—does not equate talent with virtue:

If the gentleman is talented, then with broad-minded patience and easygoing uprightness he educates and guides other people. If he is untalented, then with respect and modesty he carefully serves other people. If the petty man is talented, then with arrogance and perversity he takes pride in surpassing other people. If he is untalented, then with jealousy and slanderous complaints he tries to ruin other people. [...] This is the difference between the gentleman and the petty man (3.34).

What must be explained and defended is Xunzi's view that a class system is essential to an orderly and harmonious society. On this point, he is uncompromising: one of the fundamental tasks of government, after promoting the worthy and eliminating evildoers, is to "take control of illuminating the proper bonds [...] if social divisions are not yet set" (9.6).

Indeed, he takes this idea far beyond a practical principle of good government, seeing it as a fundamental precondition for orderly human society. "What is that by which humans are human? I say: it is because they have distinctions" (5.104).

In "Enriching the State," Xunzi builds, from base axioms, his argument why this is true. This essay is our subject today.³

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When I say Master Xun starts from base axioms, I am not exaggerating. "Enriching the State" opens by defining his cosmology:

The myriad things share the same cosmos and have different bodies. They have no intrinsic fittingness but are useful for humans. This is simply the arrangement of the world (萬物同宇而異體，無宜而有用為人，數也, 10.1).

As described in the commentary on "Discourse on Heaven," Xunzi breaks from both Confucius and the Daoists in his conception of Heaven. Confucius sees Heaven as a moral force that humans must understand and emulate to guide their good conduct. Daoists reject this "personal" character and see Heaven as an impersonal, natural force, and believe humans must abandon their artificial pretensions to live in harmony with its singular Way. Xunzi adheres to the Daoist idea of what Heaven is, but he believes that Heaven has its Way, Earth has its Way, and humans also have their own.

While all things inhabit the "same cosmos," that does not mean, as the Daoists would argue, they are all a continuous, undifferentiated whole. Distinctions exist and can be drawn between different objects and concepts.

When he says that things have "no intrinsic fittingness," he rejects the Master's idea that Heaven and Earth are naturally aligned with the human Way. But when he says they are "useful for humans," he again argues contra the Daoists: humans, following their own Way, decide what things are, and what they are good for. Nebulosity is real, but pattern remains useful.⁴

Various grades of people live together. They share the same pursuits but have different ways. They share the same desires but have different understandings. This is simply the way they are born (人倫並處，同求而異道，同欲而異知，生也, 10.3).

"Various grades of people" is a fairly limited translation of 人倫, which encompasses all the kinds of mutual social relationships people have with each other. His point is people are not atomic units: they exist within the context of their personal relationships, and these overlapping and interlocking relations which "coexist" (並處) constitute the fabric of society.

By people sharing the same "pursuits" and "desires," Master Xun refers to all the human wants and needs. Food, water, and shelter, to simply survive. Pleasures of eye, ear, and skin, to satisfy the body. Belonging, status, and purpose, to sate the yearnings of the heart. All people require the means of survival and satisfaction, but what differs between people is how they go about securing them.

This is essential to Xunzi's human universalism. People grow up in different cultures or under different upbringings that teach different values and behaviors. They have different levels of education or self-cultivation that inform their awareness and understanding of the world. But on the most basic level, humans share the same nature.

Everyone approves (可) of something, and in this the wise and the stupid are the same. Yet, what they approve of differs, and this is what divides the wise from the stupid (10.7).

可 here is a difficult word to translate because it can refer to any kind of ability or volition. In distinguishing the wise from the foolish, it most likely refers to one's values, determined by upbringing, inclination, and self-cultivation. The wise approve of wise things, and their values align with morals, and that makes those people sages.⁵

If people’s authority (埶) is equal but they understand (知) things differently, if they act for selfish gain and do not fear disaster, if they let their desires run wild without end, then the people’s hearts will be stirred up and cannot be appeased (10.8).

The ideal Xunist form of government is one in which the wise secure power and then recognize and promote the worthy. This takes precedence over nearly all other concerns.

This is a quintessentially Confucian view: while the Legalists place mechanism design above all else, treating bureaucrats as replaceable cogs in the machine of state, Confucians absolutely believe that finding the right people is the crucial task. While Xunzi's essays on cosmology, ritual, and statecraft are the most important to understanding his worldview, over a third of the core essays are devoted to how to attract the right people or how to be the right person.

Under a good ruler, men of virtue and talent will serve eagerly and do the right things mostly on their own. Under the rule of a perfect sage-king, the ruler is so adept in selecting the right people, and so manifestly virtuous, that he doesn't have to do anything at all.

If the situation is [chaotic], then the wise will not get controlling power. If the wise do not get controlling power, then no recognition of merit will be made (10.12).

There is something to debate in whether "the wise" can or cannot get "controlling power" in a chaotic environment. Chaos creates opportunity. A hot gas contains more motion, a hot solution reacts more readily.

Key to his perspective is that, while Confucius lived in the Spring and Autumn, Xunzi lived in the Warring States. For Confucius, there were well-established lords, and ritual was practiced and respected, even if it had degraded. Whereas Xunzi lived in a time that was much more violent and perilous, when all state resources were plunged into existential, total war. The old nobility lost their role in war to professional generals, and a new gentry of scholar-officials was emerging to take over as the ruling class. The old models lost their usefulness, and brilliant men in all the states were designing new ruling ideologies from first principles, trying to discover something that would work.

While Xunzi did not live to see Qin extinguish the last states and establish the first empire, the state was mighty and feared already at his time of birth, a few decades after the draconian reforms of Shang Yang. Xunzi was middle-aged when Qin wiped out the Zhou domain itself, an unthinkable act centuries earlier, and the future Qin Shi Huang was on his way to total domination by the time of Xunzi's death. The then-contemporary School of Diplomats made its central issue the question of whether the rest of the states should ally to oppose Qin and reestablish a balance of power, or submit to its hegemony in hopes they could preserve some of their rights. Xunzi himself argued in "A Debate on Military Affairs" that, while Qin may triumph on the battlefield, its tyrannical practices would ultimately result in revolt and collapse, and he was proven right a few decades after his death. In this light, his view on chaos is very clear.

In our own Spring and Autumn, we can take a more balanced view. Some amount of chaos, which we might euphemistically call dynamism, is good.

Xunzi would probably not make that argument himself. But if he lived in a time of rigidity and stagnation giving way to a slackening of restraints, rather than in the ongoing aftermath of generations of horrific turmoil, I believe he would agree. If he saw the late Han, when courtly intrigue and fawning ministers arrested the advancement of the worthy and ultimately led to brutal warlordism and strife, he would surely argue for limited upheaval to prevent what came after.

No heat, and any solution becomes a solid. Too much, and the liquid boils off. There is an optimal range that allows favorable chemistry.

If no recognition of merit is made, then there will be no distinction among the masses. If there is no distinction among the masses, then the positions of lord and minister will not be established. If there is no lord to regulate ministers, no superior to regulate inferiors, then all under Heaven will suffer harm from letting their desires run wild (10.14).

Establishing distinctions among the masses is the crucial first step for the new state to take.⁶ He goes on in the next part to make his case why.

This first section merited an especially close reading because it is so important to understanding Xunzi's philosophy. To summarize point-by-point:

• The world exists as it is, but we can make use of it.

• Human nature is universal, but different people have different practices.

• The wise and the foolish have different standards.

• If everyone had equal authority, they would contend with each other, and there would be endless chaos.

• In such an environment, the wise cannot gain controlling power.

• If the wise come to power, they must recognize and elevate those of merit.

• Merit is the ideal basis of formal distinctions between the people.

• When these distinctions are made, a government can be organized, and that government can establish order.

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Xunzi argues for distinctions, but why are distinctions necessary?

People all desire the same things and all hate the same things. But while their desires are many, the things to satisfy them are few, and since they are few, people are sure to struggle over them (10.20).

Xunzi takes it for granted that resources are more scarce than people's demand for them. Thus, in the absence of a strong power capable of preventing violence and apportioning resources as needed, people will necessarily fight to take what they can from others.

While he adheres to a typically Confucian suspicion of the merchant class, I don't believe this point is repudiated by the modern market economy. Again, there is a balance to be struck: overwhelming state interference in markets surely disrupts the free flow of good and distorts the pricing mechanism, leading to pathological outcomes. But in a true free-for-all, the situation is far worse.

Without order, banditry and piracy destroy the ability to trade without mercenaries, convoys, expensive insurance, and extreme risk. Contracts become worthless: the only way to avoid being cheated is strong relationship networks and the ability to retaliate with force. Transaction costs skyrocket, which necessarily inhibits routine trade and forces more localized, robust, and simple economies, or else makes trade a daring, quasi-military enterprise. This has occurred time and again in history, from the Crisis of the Third Century, to the manor-economies of the early middle ages, the perennially warring Italian merchant-republics, the Golden Age of Piracy, and the Anglo-Dutch wars.

Conversely, Pax Romana made the Mediterranean a safe, internal sea, and the swiftness of water transport meant it was faster and cheaper to supply the capital with products from Egypt and Andalusia than Gaul or Britain. Pax Mongolica enabled smooth, routine overland Eurasian trade on a scale never before seen, with post offices and waystations for merchants and diplomats traveling well-trod roads. The greatest realization of this principle is USA-backed freedom of navigation of the high seas: far more important than the invention of the boxship and the container is the presumption that they will not ever be sunk.

Xunzi correctly sees that complex economies flourish in times of peace but degrade to simple ones in times of strife:

Thus, the products of the hundred crafts are means to nurture a person, but even the most capable cannot engage in every craft, nor can people each fill every official post. If they live apart and do not help each other, then they will be impoverished. If they live together but have no social divisions, then they will struggle with each other. Poverty is a catastrophe, and struggle is a disaster. If you wish to save them from catastrophe and eliminate disaster, then nothing is better than to make clear social divisions and so employ the masses (10.22).

Whether the government imposes it, or merely creates the safe conditions that allow it to naturally happen, one of the most basic distinctions between people is specialization and thus division of labor. This is necessary to any complex economy. If chaos makes people fearful of living together and forces them to scrape and scrabble for subsistence, everyone is worse off.⁷

This is a crucial difference between Xunzi, who values distinctions, and Mozi, who abhors them. The purpose of these social divisions is to make things better for everyone. In Mozi's society, people are reduced to the bare necessities to sustain life; in the name of equality, they are equal in their misery. Xunzi relies on distinctions to allow the masses to have things they would never have at all in such a state.

Following from employing the masses in the myriad tasks, Xunzi continues, decrying that in a disorderly and undifferentiated society, might makes right. This is, to him, a travesty. A world in which "the strong threaten the weak [and] the wise terrorize the stupid" (10.30) is a catastrophe. The purpose of elevating some and not others is not to anoint the powerful with sanction to do as they please. Rather, the superior have a duty to provide for those under them, while the weak must be protected from the strong.

If there is no division of occupations, then people will face the catastrophe of trying to complete their work by themselves and the calamity of struggling over merit. If the concord between male and female and the division between husband and wife are without rituals for introduction, betrothal, and marriage, then people will face the worry of losing concord and the disaster of struggling over mates. And so, the wise person makes divisions for these things (10.36).

Distinctions do not only cover the difference between the professions, but they organize and harmonize all the relationships between people: father and son, husband and wife, lord and minister, elder brother and younger brother, friend and friend. These relationships are inherently mutual obligations, where each party has a duty to the other, although they may or may not be balanced in power. But as with his view of the strong and weak, or the wise and stupid, the more powerful party has a greater duty to the lesser.

There are finer points we may depart from Xunzi on: his view of husband-wife was surely hierarchical like father-son, though we would probably consider it balanced like friend-friend. But nevertheless a distinction exists, because to be human is to have distinctions. "The birds and beasts have fathers and sons but not the intimate relationship of father and son. They have the male sex and the female sex but no differentiation between male and female" (5.115).

I don't believe, when he says the wise person "makes divisions for these things," he means the state should intervene or set laws that strictly control personal relationships. The human relationships are governed by ritual, and one of the roles of the ruling class is to lay out proper forms. The ruler sets a standard for virtue, creates order and abundance, and harmony should follow.

I do believe this is true. The standards set by our recent and present rulers speak well enough for themselves. But as for abundance: we live in a time of increasing strife, and the cause of much of that strife is scarcity. More precisely, fear about the future and declining living standards. People will suffer under misery if they expect no different. But when they presume things will get better and they suddenly get worse, everyone loses their minds.

In periods of abundance, where everyone is doing better across the board, it is easy for the whole of society to coexist. It's when this goes wrong that the knives come out. The majority looks for who to blame, relationships between groups and individuals break down, and people revert to struggling for limited resources.

Appropriately, in the next section Xunzi argues how to engineer that abundance:⁸

The way to ensure sufficiency for the state is to keep expenditures frugal, to enrich the people, and to store up well any surplus. One keeps expenditures frugal through ritual, and one enriches the people through government. When one enriches the people, then there will be great surplus. For when one enriches the people, then the people will be wealthy. When the people are wealthy, then the fields will be fat and well maintained. When the fields are fat and well maintained, then their yield will be a hundred times greater. Those above take from this according to the proper model, and those below keep their expenditures of it frugal according to ritual. The surplus will then pile up like hills and mountains. If one does not occasionally burn some of it up, one will have no place to store it (10.44).

In Xunzi's view, a state which extracts little and allows the people to make their own living will find itself richer than one which extracts all it can. While Legalists favor maximal extraction and centralized control, and Mohists favor aggressive, leveling intervention, Xunzi prefers some level of state involvement, but not much. Aside from defense and public works, the state carefully accumulates a surplus in times of plenty and uses it to save the people from hardship in times of difficulty. For the most part, it is the people who produce wealth; the state creates favorable conditions for them to do so.

Xunzi continues with the inverse of the previous passage, that overspending and over-extraction impoverish the people and leave the state depleted. He then goes on to a rather different topic:

In ritual, noble and lowly have their proper ranking, elder and youth have their proper distance, poor and rich, humble and eminent, each have their proper weights. Thus, the Son of Heaven wears a red dragon-robe and a high ceremonial cap. The feudal lords wear black dragon-robes and high ceremonial caps. The grand officers wear lesser robes and high ceremonial caps. The regular officers wear fur caps and plain robes. One’s virtue must have a matching position, one’s position must have a matching salary, and one’s salary must have matching uses (10.76).

In other words, sumptuary laws.

Sumptuary laws, in our society, are viewed as a backwards and medieval practice. They infringe on personal freedom, entrench inequality, and go against the spirit of the free market. In Europe, they were a tool used by the nobility to repress the ambitions of the rising merchant class who would go on to overturn them. It is quite natural to believe this, given that we live in a merchant society. But sumptuary laws—that is, legally enforced rank-based standards of dress—served several important purposes and are worth revisiting.

The reasons for sumptuary laws are threefold:

• To visually distinguish rank within the established social hierarchy. Elizabethan sumptuary laws, for instance, specifically defined which colors and materials the different levels of nobility and royalty could wear. This made it trivial to determine a person's station at a glance.

• To mark who is in, and not in, the formal hierarchy. In particular, to prevent upstart burghers with riches but no title from outshining their notional social betters. No matter how rich they may be, they were not members of the ruling class.

• To prevent red queen races. In theory, one's rank within the nobility was meant to correspond roughly to one's landholdings, and thus one's income. Conspicuous consumption is ruinous to those who can't afford it. Sumptuary laws protected lesser nobles from feeling compelled to spend beyond their means on fashion to accrue status, and stopped extravagance arms races among the richest nobles seeking to outdo each other. Once the laws were abolished, that's exactly what happened.

In other words, sumptuary laws were not really intended to prevent merchants from having riches and fineries. The primary purpose was to enforce a uniform, to make the ruling class legible.

From a Xunist lens, the first two points have obvious deficiencies, but they are unrelated to dress itself. European noble hierarchy was defined by birth rather than merit. The nobility was intended to rule, but by the early modern period, more of them were useless layabouts than true men of military or state. The social hierarchy was also frozen: you could not enter, leave, rise, or fall based on your personal character, owned power, contributions to the state, or manifest virtue. The only way in was to get rich and then marry well or buy an empty title.

Unearned, impotent, and static: these are all abhorrent to the Xunist worldview. The purpose of distinguishing rank, for Xunzi, is not to entrench inequalities, but to mark out lords and ministers relative to their responsibilities to the people and contributions to the state.⁹ From this perspective, I can find little fault.

Thus, [the former kings] created carving and inlay, insignias and patterns. They caused them to be sufficient to distinguish noble and lowly, and that is all. They did not seek to make them eye-catching. They created percussion instruments, stringed instruments, and wind instruments. They caused them to be sufficient to distinguish auspicious and inauspicious, to bring people together in joy, and establish harmony, and that is all. They did not seek anything more. They created palaces and homes, terraces and pavilions. They caused them to be sufficient to give shelter from dry heat and wetness, to nurture people’s virtue, and to distinguish humble and eminent, and that is all. They did not seek anything beyond this (10.121).

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Xunzi goes on to explain the officers and masses should be regulated through ritual and law, and the people should be fit to their tasks and have all they need. In this way, "In the court, no one obtains their position through luck. Among the people, no one obtains a livelihood through luck" (10.97).

Lighten taxes, lessen tariffs, control the number of merchants,¹⁰ and don't extract forced labor from the people unless absolutely necessary. "If one does these things, then the state will be rich. This is called enriching the people through government" (10.102).

In order for people to live, they cannot be without community. If they form communities but lack social divisions then they will struggle with each other. If they struggle with each other then there will be chaos, and if there is chaos they will be impoverished. Thus, to lack social divisions is the greatest harm to people, and to have social divisions is the root benefit for the whole world. And the lord of men is the pivot and crucial point in controlling social divisions (10.105).

It has long been a point of debate among anthropologists whether true classless societies ever existed in history or prehistory, but it seems likely they were rare and short-lived. There are two points to consider in support of this:

• Seemingly egalitarian societies that lack a formal social hierarchy nevertheless have rank. It may be informal or illegible, and there may not be organized command-control systems in place. But whether it stems from clan, age, wealth, gift-giving, religious role, or simple brute strength, there is always a pecking order. Even in a society with no social roles and no commercial activity at all, rank would exist: those who have accomplished feats, those who speak well and know how to persuade, those with the glow of inevitability that causes others to follow.

• Rank is an element of distinction, and distinction is fundamental to complex society. Division of labor necessitates this because no society that does not specialize tasks can be called complex. More broadly, distinction is necessary for coordination, and the most perfect measure of societal complexity, even beyond its economic output, is its ability to coordinate.

The maximum manageable size of a society has grown from hundreds to thousands to millions in lockstep with better communications technologies and social coordination mechanisms like kingship, republicanism, the corporation, and bureaucracy. In decades at best, or centuries at worst, we will be able to coordinate billions, as new social organizing principles are invented that make proper use of digital computing and computer networks. The only plausible limits on coordination are set by human nature and the speed of light. The rituals and forms that can coordinate billions will make more, not fewer, distinctions.

For Hobbes, the base case of human existence is endless conflict between isolated individuals, solved by investing absolute power in an almighty sovereign. Xunzi does not think this way, and neither do I.

People form social structures and coordinate no matter what the conditions are, if not to accomplish great things, then merely to eke out their survival and protect themselves from eradication by others. It does not matter whether the "root for the whole world" (10.112) is a sovereign king, a feared prophet, a governing council, or a faceless computer system. Bonds of family, sworn oaths, shared tradition. Converging business interests, the lure of plunder, or simple inescapable peril that must be overcome. Some of these scale better than others, but any can bind the hearts of men.

But truly mutual bonds can only exist within very small groups, and often even the bonds between two individuals are unequal. Attempting to scale true mutualism beyond its limit invariably results in factionalism, collapse, or a serious reform effort that formalizes the social structure to make it robust and legible. Every utopian commune reaches a fork in the road where it succumbs to interpersonal strife and free-ridership or reorganizes itself into a quasi-monastic order.

What distinguishes a true community from a mere social clique is stakes: shared duty, shared fortune. To have community, there must be rank.

As for being able to wear clothes of many colors, to eat foods of many flavors, to control many resources and goods, to bring together everyone under Heaven and be lord over them—one has these things not so that one can engage in perversity and arrogance, but rather they are originally for the purpose of reigning as a true king over everyone under Heaven. [His] wisdom and deliberations are sufficient to order people, his generosity is sufficient to comfort them, and his virtuous reputation is sufficient to transform them. If you obtain him, then there will be order. If you lose him, then there will be chaos. The common people truly rely on his wisdom. Thus, they lead each other in toiling laboriously so they can give him ease, in order to nurture his wisdom. They truly admire his generosity. Thus, they will march out to die so that they can protect and save him, in order to nurture his generosity (10.138).

My model of history is broadly cyclical, because human nature does not change, and human societies tend to wax and wane in a pattern vaguely resembling a lifecycle. The great exception to this pattern is technology, and that is why technological development is so deeply important. Technology changes the definition of what is possible to do. With technology held constant, we would be trapped on the merry-go-round of human whim. But every new invention and discovery allows us to broaden our circle or soften our trajectory, or whatever analogy you prefer.

In formulating a system of Neo-Xunism, I like to take the approach that Xunzi contains a wealth of timeless moral principles and insights into the broad social structures that are feasible and good given the affordances of human nature. When he errs, it is because he fails to appreciate the constraint-breaking effects of technologies both material and social. Human nature is not changed, but with new options available, it can be sated in different ways.

In other words, I don't agree we should seek out the right person to lounge on the throne and inspire others by doing nothing.

But there does need to be something like this. As Napoleon said, "A man does not have himself killed for a half pence a day or for a petty distinction. You must speak to the soul in order to electrify him." Since the time of the Warring States, we have invented many forms that can substitute for such a figure and inspire awe and sacrifice. Romantic nationalism, ideological fervor, republican virtue and love of ancient freedoms, to name a few. Of course inspiration through a charismatic leader is timeless, but it does not need to be engineered in an idle figure to give people something to "honor [like] Shang Di [and love] like their own parents" (10.158).

I believe the deeper insight Xunzi has here is explained well by Weber's forms of authority: charismatic, traditional, and legal-rational. Xunzi saw the deficiencies of strictly traditional authority and hoped, through lavish adornments and mystical beneficence, to imbue it with charisma. When he speaks of using "spirit-like power" (神) to "transform things" (3.122), I believe what he refers to is that magic.

At the root of it, charismatic authority exploits the same human feelings that govern personal, individual relationships, and traditional authority the feelings connected to social-group relationships. Legal-rational authority appeals to the organized mind, making itself comprehensible, open to scrutiny, and intellectually satisfying.

There certainly exists a fourth kind of authority in the metarational mode, though we have yet to invent it. I believe it will feel like a majestic flow, imbuing a comprehensible system with the magic of charisma. Much like we can study, and yet marvel at, the tangle of the global communications network, or the weave of molecular biology. Imperfect, messy, yet robust and self-correcting, of such a scale and scope that improving one's knowledge only increases one's wonder. Understanding and grandeur united as one; the awe of systems of systems.

To close, Xunzi describes the harmony and ease that the people experience thanks to the efforts of the gentleman. He then reflects on the world he lives in, and in his estimation, "the current age is not like that" (10.183):

The superiors make hefty collections of money and so snatch away the people’s wealth. They impose heavy taxes on the fields and so snatch away the people’s food. They charge severe tariffs at passes and markets and so make difficulties for the people’s affairs. And that is not all. They also engage in practicing entrapment, relying on deception, scheming after power, and plotting overthrows in order to completely delude and topple each other. The common people all clearly recognize that they are corrupt, arrogant, and violent and will be greatly endangered and perish. Thus, some ministers assassinate their lords, and some subordinates kill their superiors; they sell out their cities, betray their superior’s regulations, and refuse to die in their service. These things happen for no other reason than that the ruler of men brings it upon himself (10.185).

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For an overview of Xunzi and why I think his writing is a valuable starting point for a modern governing ideology, see:

1. At least, by "our," I mean the modal reader of this publication. There are various Legalisms, Daoisms, and Mohisms we must contend with in the present day. I'm sure I have some readers from all camps, especially the first two, which are popular alternate strains in tech in recent years. But I adhere to Xunzi's view that members of these schools overly fixate on one aspect of the Way and neglect others. To the extent they are driven by the good underlying values of those schools (respectively: order and stability, fluidity and emotional freedom, impartial caring and benevolence) I believe their errors can be corrected. Those driven by selfishness and vindictiveness are unlikely to be convinced.

2. This stance effectively places him on the more idealistic end of the realist school of international relations. He would agree with Morgenthau that human nature ultimately governs state relations but that there is a place for morality to temper or rise above these base tendencies. He would disagree with many classical realists on this point and would vehemently denounce Mearsheimer's offensive realism as a path to utter ruin.

3. I only cover the first half of the essay, in large part because the first few sections are extremely dense and must be read closely. This part of the essay can stand alone: it builds up the Xunist worldview from first principles, defines a model of human nature, describes the essential purpose of the state, and justifies the necessity of a class system. This, along with "Discourse on Heaven" previously covered, provides the shared context necessary to understand other essays by Master Xun, particularly the absolutely crucial "Discourse on Ritual" and "Correct Naming." The rest of "Enriching the State" is an extended refutation of Mozi, which we may cover separately, followed by a broader look at the nature of a healthy state.

4. This also connects to Xunzi's understanding of the rectification of names (正名). While the Master saw rectification of names as bringing language into agreement with base reality, Xunzi grappled with the Daoist argument that language fundamentally cannot accurately describe the real world. He takes a similar approach to this problem as the problem of Heaven: language is a tool for human communication and coordination, so while names approximate rather than correspond directly to underlying reality, their fittingness can be judged by their comprehensibility and utility. This point will be expanded on in a future commentary on "Correct Naming."

5. The wise and foolish have different standards ipso facto. As he argues in other essays, anyone can become a sage. The foolish would become wise if they cultivated themselves to have wise standards.

6. There is seemingly a circular dependency here: if the wise elevate the meritorious, and the meritorious establish distinctions, and then those distinctions establish the lord and ministers, who are the wise if not the lords? I believe the idea here is that, if there is no formal power structure, it falls to the venerable who hold informal authority to establish the forms guided by ritual. From there, informal authority (埶) can give way to a designed system of lords and ministers (君臣). In other words, one can begin with auctoritas and use it to bestow imperium. Given that he opens his essay with cosmology and human nature, it makes sense to think in terms of bootstrapping a state from folkways or anarchy, but it is easy to extrapolate from this how to reform an existing benighted state.

7. He expands on the value, both economic and human, of this in "The Rule of a True King" quite eloquently: "People in the marshes are provided sufficiently with wood, and people in the mountains are provided sufficiently with fish. The farmers neither carve wood nor craft ceramics, but they are provided sufficiently with tools. The craftsmen and merchants do not plow fields, but they are provided sufficiently with vegetables and grains. And so, although the tiger and leopard are ferocious animals, the gentleman nevertheless has them skinned and makes use of them. Thus, all the areas covered by Heaven and all the areas supported by Earth produce their finest goods and contribute them for use. Above, they decorate good and worthy men. Below, they nourish the common people and bring them comfort and joy. This is called great spirit-like power" (9.269).

8. "Enriching the State" speaks about governance in generalities, but "The Rule of a True King" goes into detail about specifics. A future commentary on that essay will have many concrete policies to analyze and debate.

9. This habit has been abandoned by the bureaucracy but lives on in the military, where dress uniforms are acceptable formalwear, and the knick-knacks on them tell a learned eye exactly where the wearers sits in the chain of command and what skills and achievements they'ves earned and accomplished. Sumptuary laws defined by color and material are obviously anachronistic considering clothing is dirt cheap compared to pre-industrial times, but ritual symbols of rank and merit aren't a bad idea. Personally I would rather we reclaim our traditional American norms of independence and ungovernability, but if we are to be ruled by a grande bureaucracy, it could be nice to at least elevate it. We should let the wise elevate the meritorious before we start fussing over how to dress them up, but it's a thought. Maybe it won't matter if we're all wearing AR glasses with facial recognition someday.

10. I haven't made up my mind on the Confucian attitude toward merchants. On the one hand, it's likely true that hostility toward the merchant class made it harder for trade and capital markets to flourish in China, and their robustness in medieval Italy and the early modern Dutch republics and England were necessary preconditions for industrialization. It's also true that the European nobility was decadent and backwards and absolutely had to be overthrown. On the other hand, from the Gilded Age to the postwar conglomerates through the neoliberal consensus and the tech giants, we have ceded more and more authority to the merchant class, such that they (we? are we mechants?) are effectively now the ruling class. This has some notable downsides and may not be the best arrangement, not only because business interests effectively control the levers of state. Business also consumes virtually all top-flight talent who could form an effective scholar-bureaucracy, and instead aims them at creating returns for shareholders, leaving petty men behind to serve as ministers of state. Few people of merit are willing to spend decades climbing the ranks in a system that obstructs their honest efforts when they could have much greater impact (to say nothing of compensation and prestige) in the corporate world or tech startup ecosystem. The best path to political power now is to make one's fortune first and then enter politics directly at the highest levels. So I'm not sure what the right stance there is.