Huang Fenglin: An Introduction to the Theory of a Bipolar World
The Bipolar World Theory: Discovering the Path to Communism within the Evolutionary Structure of World History by Huang Fenglin was recently published by Central Compilation & Translation Press. This scholarly work inherits and develops the basic principles of Marxism, applying dialectical materialism to analyze the structure of world history to envision the direction of the socialist movement and the means of achieving communism.
To explore the inheritance and development of relevant theories within the Bipolar World theory, the author evaluates the Marxist historical materialist conception of history and mainstream International Relations (IR) theories in Chapter One. The author argues that while the static classification and sequences of social formations within Marxist theory deserve inheritance, the theory regarding the motive forces of transformation—the contradictory movement between productive forces and relations of production—requires further development. The author posits that the essence of the modern Western scientific and cultural tradition is reductionist. Based on the level of reduction applied to human social history by IR theories, the author provides a categorized review: theories reducing society to levels below the political category include "Economic Constructivism" (represented by Liberalism) and "Cultural Constructivism" (represented by Constructivism); theories reducing society to the political category include "State Constructivism" (represented by Statism and Balance of Power theory); and theories reducing society to international political-economic categories within specific historical periods include "International System Theories" (represented by Dependency Theory, Hegemonic Stability Theory, and Wallerstein’s World-Systems Theory).
In Chapter Two, based on an interpretation of the "Map of the Bipolar World Order" and the "Map of Bipolar World History," the author outlines the formative mechanisms and holistic characteristics of the bipolar world process. In the section on the formation of the bipolar world, the author reviews the global patterns of social and natural practice [1] prior to this formation and analyzes the motive forces of their transformation. The author argues that universal connectivity among human societies is not innate but emerged only after the formation of Central Asian nomadic peoples who linked Eastern and Western societies; this was a prerequisite for analyzing world history using the "bipolar paradigm" of dialectical materialism. Since the formation of the Central Asian nomads occurred simultaneously with the formation of the State of Qin [2]—the motive core of the first-generation bipolar world process—under nomadic pressure, the author marks the formation of Qin as the starting point of the bipolar world.
Subsequently, the author explores the periodization and criteria of the bipolar world process. The author divides world history following the emergence of nomadic peoples into three stages, termed the "three-generation processes." Each generation has a "motive core" (动力内核) produced under the pressure of the preceding process. A motive core earns its status by being the first globally to achieve a transformation in its social formation, thereby realizing development in economic or natural practice. Such economic strength allows it to export the impetus for transformation to other political-economic entities through military and economic pressure. Based on the nature of these cores, the author summarizes the essential characteristics of the three generations: the first process began with the rise of the feudal State of Qin (or China) and ended with the rise of capitalist Britain; its essential characteristic was "land tribute and tax" (土地贡税). The second process began with the rise of capitalist Britain and ended with the development of socialist China; its essential characteristic was "raw materials and markets." The third process began with the development of socialist China and will end with the realization of world communism; its essential characteristic is "property rights cooperation."
Following the periodization of the bipolar world, the author analyzes the general characteristics of the process. Globally, the level of advancement in natural practice determines the scope of unification in social practice. Within each generation and its macro-integration, the East and West promote each other’s social and natural practices interactively. At the micro-level of internal integration, a nation's social and natural transformations are determined by the overarching structure of that generation's bipolar world order. Social practices become increasingly advanced and the differences between them diminish until social practice itself withers away [3]; natural practices become more advanced and their differences decrease. The intermediary links in the bipolar process become fewer, cycles grow shorter, and geography becomes more integrated. The number of "order fault lines" decreases, the depth of rupture diminishes, and these fault lines gradually heal.
In Chapter Three, the author analyzes the characteristics of the first-generation bipolar world, noting its "quadripartite" (四化) political-geographic character: consisting of four relatively independent entities—China, Central Asia, the Islamic world, and Europe. In the process of the motive core (China) exporting pressure, the levels of advancement in social formation and natural practice formed a descending sequence from East to West. This era contained three fault lines, with ruptures occurring at the levels of political and economic institutions. The author then explores the formation of the State of Qin, arguing that pressure from the Xirong [4] caused its social formation to transform from a tribal system to a semi-tribal, semi-feudal manorial system. Subsequently, pressure from the eastern states (led by the State of Jin) caused a further transformation into a fully feudal manorial system, ultimately achieving advanced natural practice.
Chapter Four examines the formative links of the "Fourth Zone" (China) during the first-generation process. Section One analyzes the motive forces and criteria for the transformation of its social formation, arguing that social transformation precedes rather than follows natural practice transformation. The fundamental motive force and periodization criteria should be based on changes in the content of the Fourth Zone's connections with the external world. Section Two explores the laws of change in Chinese feudal social formations, positing that the fundamental motive force was the periodic change in the themes of external expansion and consolidation of border control, while the direct motive force was peasant uprisings. Section Three clarifies the reasons for the fall of the Zhou Dynasty and various Warring States; it notes that during the Warring States, Qin, and Han periods, the Guanzhong region [5] possessed a "scholar-official" (士族) political form and manorial economic form, the Central Plains possessed a "high official" (卿大夫) political form and a specialized labor/peasant (隶农) economic form, while the South remained in a primitive tribal state. Synthetically, China's overall social formation was characterized by the "high official" political form and specialized labor economic form. Sections Four and Five apply this analysis to the Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties, Sui, Tang, and through to the Qing Dynasty, tracing the evolution of political forms from "scholar-officials" to "commoner-landlords" (庶族地主) and economic forms from manorialism to tenant farming (佃农制).
Chapter Five analyzes the "Third Zone" (Central Asia). It explores how the motive core (China) used "estrangement diplomacy" (离间外交) and military pressure to influence Central Asian social formations. The analysis suggests that from the formation of the Xiongnu Empire (300 BC) to the fall of the Turks (AD 745), Central Asia transformed from a tribal system to a semi-tribal, semi-feudal manorial system; from AD 745 to the modern era, it achieved a full feudal manorial system.
Chapter Six discusses the "Second Zone" (the Islamic world) and "First Zone" (Europe). Pressure from China was transmitted through Central Asia to these regions. The author describes military pressures (such as the westward migration of the Xiongnu/Huns, barbarian invasions, and Mongol conquests) and estrangement diplomacy (such as the Byzantine-Western Turkic alliance). The author argues that the Islamic world reached a relatively unified feudal political form and manorial economic form. Regarding Europe, the author analyzes the hierarchical "Conservative International Order" of the Middle Ages, where Byzantium served as a bulwark against the East, enabling the Papacy’s religious control, which in turn allowed the Franks to unify Europe. Europe’s domestic social formation at this time is characterized as a fragmented "quasi-scholar-official" system (lower than the Second Zone) with a manorial economy.
Chapter Seven summarizes the second-generation bipolar world, characterized as "bipartite" (二化): an abstraction into capitalist and socialist entities. The original Second Zone (Islamic world) was absorbed into the capitalist colonial system led by the First Zone, while the Third and Fourth Zones (Central Asia and China) remained independent as a separate pole. In this era, only one basic fault line exists, occurring at the level of the economic system. The author traces the rise of capitalist Britain as the motive core, arguing that its location at the "bottom" of the first-generation order forced it toward capitalist wage-labor transformation under external pressure. The expansion of the capitalist world is divided into three stages: "land seizure" (up to the mid-19th century, resembling slavery), "land tribute and tax" (mid-19th century to WWII, resembling feudalism/serfdom), and "raw materials and markets" (post-WWII to the early 21st century, an economic colonial form based on the unequal international division of labor).
In the eighth chapter, the author summarizes the characteristics of the third-generation bipolar world process, arguing that it possesses the characteristic of "unification" [6] in terms of political geography. That is to say, although the third-generation process retains historical "traces" of the first and second-generation processes, judging by the final number of independent political and economic entities formed, it is a process in which the two entities of the second-generation process merge into one. The nature of dynamic social practice is "property rights cooperation," while static social practice consists of the continuous expansion of the socialist social formation and the continuous shrinking of the capitalist social formation, ultimately achieving a world-scale communist society without class distinctions. Regarding the fracture zones, this is a process wherein the basic fracture zones of the second-generation process gradually dissipate and the fractures at the level of the economic system from the second-generation process gradually heal. In the second section, the author reviews the formation and development of Socialist China—the power core of the third-generation process—under the pressure of the second-generation bipolar order. In the third section, the author predicts that the third-generation process, propelled by Socialist China through the continuous method of socialist external "property rights cooperation," will be a process of gradually eliminating class differences and finally realizing world communism. The author provides a periodic description of the third-generation process and makes theoretical predictions regarding the basic subjects and primary content of "property rights cooperation" at each stage. It is argued that the main characteristic of the first stage is cooperation between state-owned enterprises (SOEs) of the fourth-zone and third-zone countries; the main characteristic of the second stage, building on the first, is financial cooperation between the fourth, third, and second zones; and the main characteristic of the third stage, building on the second, is economic and political cooperation among the fourth, third, second, and first zones to realize world communism.
Following the completion of the first eight chapters, the author conducted an analysis in the first half of 2013 regarding the history and reality of the socialist movement, as well as the current international and domestic situations. The author explored the necessity and possibility of developing international SOE cooperative economies and domestic collective economies under these new circumstances; this content constitutes the ninth chapter of the book as an applied perspective of the third-generation process of bipolar world theory. In the first section of the ninth chapter, the author reviews socialist cooperative economic thought across three levels: the collective ownership economy, the state ownership economy, and cooperation between backward countries. In the second section, the author analyzes the reasons for the failure of the political cooperation model of traditional socialism and provides a realistic description of the transition toward a model of economic cooperation of a socialist nature. In the third section, based on an analysis of the imbalance in the global, international, and domestic political and economic orders following the 2008 international financial crisis, the fourth section analyzes the necessity and possibility of developing an international SOE cooperative economy. The fifth section analyzes the specific function of the collective economy in solving people's livelihood issues within socialist countries and proposes specific policy recommendations based on an analysis of the current status and deficiencies in the development of urban and rural collective economies.
(The author is a 2012 graduate of the Department of Marxism Studies at the Graduate School of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences)
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