历史本体论与政治的弹性:政治作用的历史政治学研究

Historical Ontology and the Resilience of Politics:Historical Politics Study of the Role of Politics

中国人关于政治作用的认识,主要是相对于经济而言的,耳熟能详的说法就是经济基础决定上层建筑,上层建筑具有反作用,但是中国共产党根据自己的历史经验,又提出不同于“反作用”意义的“乃至决定性作用”命题。这表明,中国人已经突破了传统的政治—经济关系的线性思维。从历史政治学的“历史本体论”出发研究政治的作用可知:(1)在欧美社会史的制度变迁中,政治是一种“因变量”,尽管历史上偶尔也有国家自主性现象;(2)在中国这样的政治史国家,政治是一种“自变量”;(3)“政治弹性”都是一种普遍存在,这一发现是对习以为常的思维方式的重大挑战,试图以政治变革而一劳永逸地解决生活中的种种问题,是不符合一般性历史经验的;(4)“政治弹性”源自政治是百代人经久实践的自然演化的“时间容器”;(5)研究还发现政治经济关系的多层次性、非线性关系,存在不容忽视的“组织化悖论”,它是国家治理现代化征程中必须直面的大课题。

The Chinese people’s understanding of the role of politics is mainly relative to the economy,and widespread saying is that the economic base determines the superstructure,and the superstructure has a counterproductive effect;however,the CPC,based on its own historical experience,puts forward the proposition of“and even the decisive role”,which is different from the meaning of“counterproductive effect”.This shows that the Chinese have broken through the traditional linear thinking of political-economic relations.Studying the role of politics from the“historical ontology”of historical-political science,we conclude:(1)Politics is a“dependent variable”in the social history of institutional change in Europe and the United States,although there are occasional phenomena of state autonomy in history;(2)Politics is an independent variable in a country with a political history such as China;(3)“Political elasticity”is a universal phenomenon,a finding that represents a major challenge to the conventional way of thinking,and that attempts to solve life’s problems once and for all by political change are inconsistent with general historical experience;(4)Political resilience stems from the fact that politics is a“container of time”for natural evolution that has been practiced for hundreds of generations;(5)The multilayered and nonlinear nature of political-economic relations and the“paradox of organization”cannot be ignored,and that it is a major issue that is difficult to avoid in the modernization of the country’s governance.