Yu Keping: Socialist Democracy, Rule of Law, Fairness and Justice, Freedom and Equality  

Yu Keping is Deputy Director of the Translation and Translation Bureau of the CPC Central Committee, professor, and doctoral supervisor

Originally published in “Exploration and Contestation” Issue 2, 2015.

RULE OF LAW AND FAIRNESS AND JUSTICE

We are very familiar with fairness and justice. Why? Because we have always said that fairness and justice are the core values ​​of socialism and the primary value of socialism. This is undoubtedly true. If there is no fairness and justice, socialism will be impossible to talk about. Capitalism emphasizes freedom and efficiency. We also want freedom and efficiency, but in addition, we also place special emphasis on fairness and justice.

Some people may question that since the reform and opening up, we have implemented the principle of “efficiency first, taking into account fairness”. Deng Xiaoping also proposed that the essence of socialism is to liberate and develop productive forces, eliminate exploitation, eliminate polarization, and ultimately achieve common prosperity. Liberating and developing productive forces mainly emphasizes efficiency, while eliminating exploitation and achieving common prosperity puts more emphasis on fairness and justice. This puts efficiency and fairness and justice on the same footing, and does not give priority to fairness and justice.

In fact, freedom, democracy, equality, justice, efficiency, etc. are all basic human values ​​and are the common pursuit of mankind. However, the emphasis is different in different countries and under different conditions, and these basic values ​​sometimes exist in contraadicrion with each other. For example, freedom and equality will be contradictory at certain times. Specifically, if we emphasize freedom when the distribution of wealth is very unequal, and say that the primary value should be to maintain freedom, then people with more property and high social status will definitely have more freedom and more choices.

In this case, an emphasis on freedom would impede equality. But conversely, a special emphasis on equality can also hinder freedom. For example, when there is a large gap in wealth distribution, and equality is particularly emphasized, and the state uses coercive means to deprive some rich people of their wealth through taxation or other means, which will actually put some restrictions on the freedom of the rich. Therefore, freedom and equality sometimes conflict, so what should we do? At this time, the political wisdom of politicians and the ruling party is very important. They must be keenly aware of which one is more important to the interests of the majority of citizens under real political conditions.

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