Reflections on the Peasants’ Subjectivity in the Development of Rural Deliberative Democracy

Pan Kun，Huang Jie

(Marxism College Sichuan Agriculture University ,Yaan Sichuan 625014)

Ⅰ.Problem Statement

As a kind of widely used forms of democracy in today’s world, deliberative democracy in western countries resembles that of Chinese political life but differs from each other in the soul. And the essential difference is mainly reflected in the subject attribute of public power. Once Marx had summed up the democratic experience in Paris Commune and pointed out “they form their own power to replace the organized the forces that oppress them, which is a kind of political form that people fight for social emancipation and this political form substituted the ostensible social forces that the enemies used to oppress the people.”〔1〕People’s subjectivity of the public power in socialist country determines the same value rationality of deliberative democracy and political forms that people are the masters of China, which essentially differentiates it from Western deliberative democracy. To be more specific, although capitalism deliberative democracy is designed delicately and meticulously in instrumental rationality, and in practice it can effectively dredge information, ease the public mood and play the role of “shock absorber”, And in fact it is still a kind of innovative political form to achieve and maintain the interests appeal of capital as a new “prerequisite” or “means” to realize capital growth. However, capitalism deliberative democracy can not get rid of the country and become “the power that comes from society but go beyond society and finally will be different from society”.〔2〕Instead, it is just a fig leaf of Western capital power to conceal the capitalization of power. Based on these above, in the vast political life of Chinese agricultural country, especially in the rising of new agricultural business model and entities like “company+farmer”, highlighting peasants’ subjectivity, preventing and containing political alienation should be the fundamental principles to ensure the healthy development of socialist rural deliberative democracy under the condition that rural capital injection increases continuously. These principles are not only conducive to building a strong institutional system of deliberative democracy and setting up a “firewall” to prevent government from stepping into wrong path, but also helpful to avoid the formation of rural deliberative democracy as “special form” and “unique advantages” and the disadvantegous set of “immune system”.

Ⅱ.Peasants subjectivity: the essential attribute of rural deliberative democracy

Rural deliberative democracy in China refers to the democratic politics with Chinese characteristics that takes the peasants as the main subject, involves vital interests of peasants on various practical problem, carries out extensive, equal and rational deliberative and then finally achieves consensus and determination. As mentioned earlier, socialist deliberative democracy has the essential attribute of people’s subjectivity, and the people’s subjectivity naturally manifests as peasant’s subjectivity in the deliberative democracy in rural areas, i.e. peasants take initiative to participate in extensive deliberation, give full play to their wisdom and creativity, and ultimately become the main beneficiary of deliberation. In the strategical practice to promote the extensive, multilayer, and institutional development of deliberative democracy, “advice on strengthening the deliberation in urban and rural community”(abbreviated as advice in the follows) makes a plan for growing rural deliberative democracy based on the national condition that China is a great agriculture country. From the perspective of socialist formation property of deliberative democracy, the spirit of advice and the state regulations, it is not difficult to find out that the peasants’ subjectivity in the whole process of the practice of deliberative democracy in rural areas manifests sequentially as the participation of a wide range of equality, the integrity of the program and the final results of the benefits ,etc.

1. The broad equality of participation: ensuring equal participation of every stakeholder peasant.

According to the spirit of third Plenary Session of the 18th CPC Central Committee, in the field of rural deliberative democracy, “major issues of economic and social development” and “practical problems related to the vital interests of the masses” must be regarded as the goal of deliberation and “principle for extensive deliberation on the basis of the practical development in local economy.” In other words, rural deliberative democracy should be widely exists in various implementation issues and all aspects of peasant groups interests related to rural economic and social development of the major issues. Besides, it should be kept in mind that “people’s issues are discussed by themselves ” and everything involved interests need to be thought thoroughly. However, in logic and reality, rural deliberations can achieve equality in the process of peasants’ inner deliberation concerning the generalization on peasants group and deliberation issue. This equality can be seen as the participation of every peasant in the farmer’s group regardless of their fortune, gender, ethnic and social status. Only in this way can power elitism politics stereotype of power play owned by the minority be abolish and the drawbacks that the mass cannot express demand and get involved be overcome successfully,〔3〕thus peasants can be the master of themselves via managing their owe issues. In addition to the equality among the peasant groups, the peasants’ groups must maintain equal relations with other deliberative subjectivity, such as the elementary government, the villagers autonomous organizations, the rural non-governmental organizations and the rural capital representatives, because fundamentally the township government is public authority serving for the peasant, and the villagers autonomous organizations as well as the rural non-governmental organizations is organized for peasants’ own interests. Due to the profit attribute of enterprises, rural management in fact possessed their own appeal in the deliberations. However, based on the attribute of socialism deliberative democracy, rural management interests must be realized in the condition of compliance and compromise. Therefore, it is a significant principle that rural deliberative democracy be achieved by establishing equal relation with rural group in face of great disparity between township government and rural management regarding power and fortune. To be specific, the relation among township government, rural management representatives and peasants cannot evolve into host and guest in deliberation practice but two-way equivalence subjectivity. In other words, rural deliberative democracy can never be decision making briefings, message-ordering office for peasant group after the deliberation of the township government rural management. Peasants participant deliberation with equal right means they can’t be determined and accept reality passively. Instead, they should be active participants and decision maker in deliberation.

2. The completeness and standardization of procedure: The peasants’ interests should be covered in every segment.

The academic consensus argues that deliberative democracy is a kind of political form that emphasizes program and process, and its rationality and legality directly determine the scientificity of the final deliberative result. The smooth connection and coordination between each segment is the crucial part in the development of deliberative democracy.〔4〕Therefore, rural deliberative democracy must cover legal standardization program design and peasant interests appeal in the whole process of deliberation, which is the fundamental principle of judging normation in deliberative procedure and requirement of procedural design to highlight peasant subjectivity. Specifically, before the deliberation, “advice” requires that deliberation issue and subject be raised and confirmed on the basis of full comment,〔5〕which demands local organization and public power institution to filter deliberation issues that fit legal stipulation and public character with full respect of peasant interests appeal before the official initiation of rural deliberation.In addition, according to the spirit of “advice”, deliberative content need to be released for the peasant in time, ensuring them to make full preparation for deliberation on the premise of good production and life. Only on that condition can peasants be the deliberative subject in the deliberation process so that their rights can be guaranteed,〔6〕which is the precondition of full expression of deliberation. Besides, organizing deliberation, ensuring full expression and shaping deliberation advice mean that rural deliberative democracy should be open, orderly and mild in the whole process so that peasant interests appeal can be heard and final consensus can be realized. In the end, after deliberation, implementation situation should be reported to deliberative subjectivity, stakeholders and residents,〔7〕which equals that related information is open to public timely and exactly. That is the necessary requirement to ensure effective implementation of deliberation fruit and program completeness of rural deliberative democracy. At present, it is a normal mode for rural politics life that government, village and party affair is open to public, which will be the main pattern and channel for information feedback in rural deliberative democracy.Peasants can supervise the implementation of deliberation result as subjectivity, and the inaction of policy-making department is corrected and prevented as well as unscientific and irrational issues through information feedback.In brief, information reported accurately is the middle segment between deliberation and redeliberation, and it is also the trigger of latter process. This will make certain that rural deliberative democracy cannot conclude in the form of conference, and complete deliberation procedure will be shaped as the mode of “deliberation——feedback——redeliberation”

3. The benefits of the final outcome: The outcome of the deliberation must be implemented to maximize the interests of peasants.

Compared with electoral democracy, the rural deliberative democracy, which aims to coordinate the preferences of each party, reach consensus, and gather public interests, is able to get rational agreements more effectively among all parties and make decisions that are conducive to public interests. Specifically, all deliberative parties, with peasants as their main components, present their preferences and reasons, arguments against different preferences in democratic consultation dialogue platform so that peasants’ concerns relating to their interests can be expressed reasonably. During the process, each deliberative party can gradually get rid of its one-sided point of view, deepen the understanding of public issues, reach a consensus on multiple aspects through self-reflection, and finally make decisions that can both balance all parties and get the “common denominator”. But as Marx said, “all the people strive for, with their interests”.〔8〕The advice comments that the deliberative democracy “can help get the’ common denominator’ in line with the wishes and requirements of peasants”,〔9〕which implicitly indicates that although the interests of all parties should be taken into consideration, the “common denominator” should meet the demands of peasants. That means, in deliberative democracy, the realization of the final outcome should obviously be the “common denominator” that peasants have required. In other words, peasants should be the judges in determining whether the “common denominator” is valid. Compared with other deliberative parties, if deliberative democracy can’t guarantee the maximization of peasants’ interests, the “common denominator” will not be accepted.

Ⅲ.The hidden worries of alienation in the practice of deliberative democracy in rural areas.

In recent years, with the development economy and society and the promotion of comprehensive deepening reform, peasants in China have made great progress in the ability and consciousness of deliberative democracy engagement. But in view of practice situation of deliberative democracy in rural areas, peasants still lack subjectivity to varying degrees, and their subjective status hasn’t been well established. Here are the details: firstly, capital authorization of political life in rural areas is becoming riskier. According to statistics of the Ministry of Agriculture, “up to the end of 2015, the transferred household contracting farmland had covered an area of more than 447 billion mu, accounting for 33.3% of all the household farmland, and 67.8% of contracts had been signed.”〔10〕The substantial growth in transferred farmland and the emergence of new agriculture management models like “company + peasants” have continuously brought capital to rural areas, as well as advanced technology and management styles, which has played a significant role in solving the “San Nong” issue (agriculture, rural development and farmers). But in the practical application of these management models, confronting with the companies that have markets, information, technology and other resources, peasants tend to stay in a passive position; when farmlands are transferred to the hands of capitalists and peasants are employed, peasants become workers of nonpublic ownership instead of individual production operators. Above all, apart from legitimate economic profits, capitalist have also sought capital authorization, which makes peasants’ subjectivity more likely to be compromised. Secondly, the comprehensive ability of peasants to participate in deliberative democracy needs to be improved urgently, which can be illustrated in three aspects as follows: (1) the overall education background of peasants is worrying. In a survey carried out by National Bureau of Statistics on education background, of all rural workers, illiterates account for 5.30%, and those who attend primary school, junior high school, senior high school, and technical secondary school, for 26.7, 53.03, 10.01, 5.59, respectively.〔11〕So illiterates and higher-educated workers take a small portion, while most workers are in the middle. Hence, the overall education level of workers in rural areas is still low, which makes it hard for rural deliberative parties to think reasonably and express their demands clearly. Because peasants have difficult in information acquisition, analysis and understanding, and they can’t do well in deliberative performance. (2) many peasants still lack modern citizen consciousness. Affected by traditional culture and political convention, peasants in rural areas tend to take political participation the business of “meet-eating” officials, unwilling to join in it. In addition, traditional political participation has long been confined in a certain family line or a certain district, and the expansion of public space of modern citizen is too slow, which contributes to the lack of citizen consciousness and the recognition of values like freedom, equality, reason and so on. Many citizens still hold the old concept of obedience to the senior. (3) peasants are poorly organized. Nowadays, most traditional organizations in rural areas have died away, while modern social organizations are in slow development, which puts organizations in rural areas in a “vacuum” situation. Scattered peasants tend to stay in passive position in the deliberative process, unable to have fair deliberation with constitutionalized parties. Finally, the current deliberative democracy system is imperfect, with construction lagging behind, which to a great extent has prevented the long-term, orderly, and systematic operation of deliberative democracy, inhibiting the growth of peasants’ subjectivity. All above is reflected in the current deliberative system, where peasants’ consciousness and competence are not effectively improved.

Based on generalizations trouble of peasants’ subjectivity mentioned above, if you can’t effectively get out of the trouble, there will be alienation during the practice of rural deliberative democracy at the level of logic and reality. According to Marx’s theory of alienation, the so-called alienation emerges among laborers and labor products, labor activities, human nature and human. Since productive labor also belongs to the human practice of political life and peasants acting as the subject in the deliberative democracy, the following four aspects of alienation can be derived:

1. The hidden worries of alienation between peasants and the deliberation results.

According to the real situation in some rural areas, deliberation with the demands of the peasants consensus often results from relevant local decision-making departments of negligence, or refuses to comply or explain away, making the outcome of deliberation was shelved or become empty; what is more, deliberation already presupposes the deliberation results, which only reflected the intention of the leaders. The deliberation results can be put aside or manipulated not only by the power but also by the rural capital which can be used to buy power or place economic pressure on peasants so that to coerce them. As a result, the more energy the peasants put into the rural democratic deliberation, the more the tangible or intangible cost will be, and the heavier the loss will be. The deliberation showing favor to the capital and power makes the deliberation results more influential and the enforcement is more strong, so the peasants’ situation will become more difficult, leading peasants become more vulnerable. However, the fact that the deliberation results produced by the deliberative democracy in rural areas has become the “independent power” and “alien”. The result of the deliberation, which is independent of the peasants and alienated from the peasants, is the ultimate occupation of capital and power.

Peasants painfully discovered that the generation of the deliberation results immediately changed into the loss of the deliberation results, making the hope of their own demands turn into being controlled or plundered by deliberation results. Therefore, if the peasants’ subjectivity is not highlighted and the trouble that deliberation result is occupied by capital and power can not be dealt with, peasants -participation deliberation will inevitably lead to getting no benefits from it.

2. The hidden worries of alienation between peasants and deliberation activities.

The alienation of deliberation results, after all, is due to the alienation of deliberation activities. A few leaders take advantages of the legitimacy of rural deliberative democracy activity to add political achievements for the village they govern. Actually, such deliberation activity is just a political show that seems to be democratic. And the response and integration of peasants’ public opinions drawn from rural deliberative democracy are used as a basic tool by the government to keep stable. When the power abandon public political spirit of the deliberative democracy and merely use deliberative democracy “shell” to perform an extensive and equal deliberation in rural political field and reach a so-called consensus, rural deliberative democracy activities will be alienated from the subjectivity of peasants, which becomes a drama that “consensus” suppresses public opinions so that to obtain a stable political status.

When it comes to the rural areas, such as peasants and other major political issues, the deliberation activities may also become the tool for “developing” the rural infrastructure under the public power or the operation of rural capital. Thus, such kind of deliberation activities no longer belong to the peasants themselves but for the peasants “external things.” In the deliberation process, the peasants do not affirm themselves but denies themselves, do not feel content but unhappy, do not freely exert their physical and mental energy but damage their body and ruin their minds”.〔12〕The deliberation activities that peasants participate in do not belong to their own activities but belong to the capital and power, even the peasants themselves also belong to capital and power. In other words, if the dilemma of subjectivity can’t be gotten rid of and there will be no guarantee that deliberation activities whose initial purpose is to protect peasants’ rights will alienate as heavy obligations to serve capital and power.

3. The hidden worries of alienation between peasants and other negotiators.

Alienation between peasants and other negotiators manifests in the alienation between peasants and town governments, rural employers’ representatives and other subjects of the negotiation. Peasants and other deliberative bodies should have been equal. However, because of their low literacy，low awareness of political participation and capacity, low level of organization dilemma of subjectivity, weak sense of organization and other problems, actually peasants are often in weak position in the face of other highly organized and professional negotiators. What’s more, the political and economic pressures make equal deliberations change into a jungle competition where only the strong can survive. In this process, a few peasants may be reduced from the deliberation subject to the object, becoming vassals of capital and power.

Deliberative democracy itself should seek rational deliberation to maximize the public interests, but when the capital and power are in an advantageous position and just pursuit individual or special interests, the relationship between peasants and negotiators will turn from the cooperation into conflict, or even directly induce in the quarrel and physical fights.

Once peasants’ subjectivity cannot be consciously highlighted and peasants are subject to interests and power, peasants internal relations, originally sharing the same fundamental interests, will also alienate. This typically reflects on land acquisition, land transfer and other matters. The majority of peasants often initiate imperious or disguised imperious elimination mechanism to the minority under “ The minority is subordinate to the majority,” forcing all peasants reaching the so-called consensus.

4. The hidden worries of the self alienation of peasants as the subject of deliberation.

The hidden worries mentioned above will finally lead to the hidden worries of the self alienation of peasants as the subject of deliberation. Marx once said, “Man, even as Aristotle said, is a natural animal, in any case is born social animals”.〔13〕Sociality undoubtedly covers the political nature. Social peasants should consciously take political life as an important part of their practical activities and experience their own political nature in this process. Besides, peasants should confirm their own dominant position in the political life so that they can realize the unity of “actors” and “directors”. But when deliberating, the peasants’ subjectivity dilemma often hinders them from being themselves. So we must be vigilant, especially those concentrated alienation which could leads to the tragedy, Western political alienation in the context of capital becoming power, happening in China’s rural political arena. Specifically, that is to actively seek solution to get rid of such dilemma and prevent such alienation happening. As Marx said in the discussion of the political state, “State is the power that emerges in society but itself resides above society and increasingly alienates from society”.〔14〕Similarly, we must be alert to rural deliberative democracy that emerges in peasants but itself resides above peasants and increasingly alienates from them.

Ⅳ.Highlighting the subjectivity of peasants and developing institutional rural deliberative democracy.

Institutionalized refers to standardization, routinization, and long-acting effects of the institution, which could not be seen as a static system settings but a dynamic complete process including “design, practice, evaluation and improvement of the institution.”O(jiān)n the other hand, “ as political machinery is made by men, it cannot run itself. So, it has to be operated by men, even by ordinary men”.〔15〕There is no doubt that the entire dynamic process of institution cannot be detached from men, the subject, who is the creator and executor of the institution. In addition, men are the purpose of institutionalization itself and institutionalization construction must be combined with human subjectivity. Accordingly, subjectivity guides the institutionalization and in turn institutionalization guarantees the subjectivity. Only in this way can rural deliberative democracy is sure to sustainable and healthy development. In the specific practice, it is required to do the following:

1. Fully learning from the ideological resources of the mass line and its practical experience in rural areas.

Deliberative democracy is the “important embodiment of the party’s mass line in the political field”. The tradition, rural deliberative democracy and the mass line of party in the rural political field intertwining and intermixing with each other in the rural political field, has long been in the history of our party. At present, the construction of China’s rural deliberative democracy system is still in the initial stage and the relevant theoretical research and practical experience are relatively scarce.On the one hand, we should “cross the river by feeling the stones”, continue to practice the mass line and fully respect the status of creators. We should also put peasants’ wisdom and innovation into full play and constantly sum up experience.On the other hand, we also need to learn all the excellent political resources including mass line’s thought resources to promote institutionalized development. Actually, we can learn a lot from adhering to the mass line to promote the institutionalization of rural deliberative democracy.

This requires that we should adhere to the party’s leading position in rural areas in the process of deliberative democracy practice and firmly concrete the implementation of the party’s mass line. So that we can prevent deliberative democracy from prevent rural deliberative democracy going into the astray of capitalism deliberative democracy and maintain the socialist nature and advantages of consultative system. At the same time, as the main part of the rural masses, peasants should ensure their subject position in construction of the deliberation system, so that they can actively participate in the construction to highlight the characteristics of mass line. In a word, we must combine with the party’s mass line to prevent the political alienation, which rural deliberative democracy transforms into capital power.

2. Making the peasants’ subjectivity throughout the construction of rural deliberative democracy.

The system construction of the rural democratic deliberation must be implemented. And pressing matter of the moment is to focus on the overall situation through out peasants’ subjectivity so as to design a complete set of guidelines, the point of which lies in strictly safeguarding the intervene of capital on power and deliberation with the target of various alien worries existed in the practice of rural deliberation and ensuring the dominant role of peasants in deliberation. Specifically, first of all, special attention should be paid to exclude the distractions of rural deliberative democracy in system design, in particular, to do a good job of confining power and capital. On the one hand, the power of township government should be kept in the cage of system in case of it gets out of cage and capital gets in so that power can not act nothing, nor can it make chaos; and the design of legal system should be given full play to its role of guiding and serving in the deliberative democracy. On the other hand, while the legitimate demands in the rural areas in the field of political capital are fully affirmed , we must be resolute to put an end to the capital power and prevent the peasants’ subjectivity is replaced by the subjectivity of capital. Secondly, we should examine the peasants’ subjectivity in the design of the rural deliberative democracy system with a complete formal procedural perspective. In the process of building a procedure-reasonable and process-completed rural deliberative democracy, we must ensure that the peasants’ subjectivity will be protected effectively before, during and after the deliberation. Finally, it must be combined with the grassroots practice and great efforts must be made in pilot system. It is important to view farmers as the participant and creator of system construction in the rural grass-roots pilot of deliberative system construction. Among all pilots in the construction of rural deliberative democracy , we should pay attention to select some villages with proper condition as pilot, try to carry out some deliberative democratic guidelines and procedures which are clear and easy to understand in context, simple and convenient in procedure and highly operated in process in order to adapt to the current status quo that peasants generally share the faint deliberative consciousness and low level of it, which make it possible for peasants to be familiar with the deliberative procedure and upgrade their self-consciousness and ability, giving its full play to their wisdom and innovative spirits. Not only do it conclude the successful experience, but it also promote the results timely.

3. Establishing and improving the system evaluation mechanism based on the peasants’ subjectivity

In the process of institutionalization, it is a key step to promote the establishment of the evaluation mechanism with unified standard and methods. Among them, the evaluation standard is the core of the evaluation mechanism and the point is the establishment of the evaluation with rationality, legitimacy and reality. From the perspective of the mass history, building the evaluation standard oriented on peasants’ subjectivity in rural areas is reasonable because it represents advancing force of history and accords with the trend of socialism with Chinese characteristics. What’s more, it also has legitimacy for it can reflect social equality and justice so as to obtain political assents of mass peasants. At the same time, it aims at putting the deliberative democracy system into sunlight, from which we can see whether peasants can satisfy and and fully participate or not, whether their self-interests can get maximum protection and realization or not. That undoubtedly embodies the reality of the evaluation mechanism. And specifically, the purpose of building the evaluation standard of rural deliberative democracy institution is to see whether peasants can finally get rid of the traditional identity as vulgar people and common people, whether they can become the masters and assert their power, whether they can get rid of the title of political vase that they are excluded from politics, whether they can get out of the dilemma in which they are being fooled by deliberation, muzzled by the deliberation results and thus become the main beneficiary of it. To sum up, the realization degree of peasants’ subjectivity must be regarded as the oriented basis for evaluating the quality of rural deliberative democracy. Meanwhile, in addition to the construction of the evaluation standard, we should go further with the establishment of the evaluation mechanism on the basis of peasants’ subjectivity, scientific evaluation methods as well as comprehensive evaluation procedure.

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〔15〕John Stuart Mill, Representative Government, The Commercial Press, (1984) p.7.