The Political Economy of Confucian Harmony: A Xunzian Vision

• Published date: 01 March 2019
• Date: 01 March 2019
• Author: Sungmoon Kim
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/ajes.12269

The Political Economy of Confucian

Harmony: A Xunzian Vision

By Sungmoon Kim*

AbStrAct. A global market economy of pure instrumental rationality

now poses a growing threat, jeopardizing common citizenship, the

capacity for human flourishing, and harmony between humans and

nature. Growing skepticism about the sustainability of market

capitalism and its moral legitimacy propels us to search for a new

economic model in which humans are no longer held hostage to the

unbridled pursuit of self-interest and limitless possession at the

expense of the well-being of others and nature and that attempts to

overcome the old conflict between capitalism and socialism. We can

call this alternative model “moral economy,” an economic system that

reconciles private interests with the public good broadly construed.

In this article I reconstruct the Confucian ideal of moral economy by

paying close attention to Xunzi’s ethical and political thought. Xunzi,

one of the key classical Confucians, stipulates the threshold of

sufficiency by extending the ruler’s care to the most destitute of

society as well as giving moral priority to their basic needs without

dismissing the foundational importance of individual merit and

contribution. Rejecting both pure economic meritocracy and dogmatic

egalitarianism, Xunzian Confucianism aims to create a political

economy of harmony where various distributive values (need,

equality, and merit, among other things) each have their own place.

Introduct ion

It is generally held among economists that the economy is categor-

ically independent of the ethico-religious tradition or moral system

American Jour nal of Economics and Sociology, Vol. 78, No. 2 (March , 2019).

DOI: 10 .1111/ajes.122 69

© 2019 American Journa l of Economics and Sociology, Inc.

*Professor of political theory and director of the Center for East Asian and Comparative

Philosophy, Department of Public Policy, City University of Hong Kong. PhD in political

science, University of Maryland, College Park. Author of three books.Current work in

progress: Theorizing Confucian Virtue Politics: The Political Philosophy of Mencius and

Xunzi. Email: sungmkim@cityu.edu.hk

494 The American Journal of Economics and Sociology

in which a political community is embedded. In fact, many econ-

omists strongly believe that economics is a value-neutral academic

discipline precisely in the sense that it is singularly concerned with

material interest, maximization of self-interest, rational choice, and

quantifiable human transactions in the market. Libertarian or neo-lib-

eral economists go even further. They claim that as the epitome of

instrumental rationality, the economy ought to be separated from

the ideational (cultural, religious, or ethical) aspect of human life,

which according to Weber (1958: 280) generates an interest of its

own called “ideal interest” as an authoritative determinant of material

interest. Those same economists also believe the economy should

be separated from state intervention as much as possible, based on

the belief that economic transactions are most effective as well as

fair when minimally regulated by the state. For them, the state is

frequently guided improperly by paternalistic purposes, distributive

aims, and political projects, all of which are at odds with an uninhib-

ited exercise of human rationality, rights, and freedoms (Hayek 2007;

Friedman 1962). Neither hinged by a moral system nor encumbered

by politics, the economy creates its own distinctive and purely mer-

it-based sphere of distribution outside of both the state and civil soci-

ety, namely, the market. Not surprisingly, little effort has been made in

contemporary economics and social sciences in general to investigate

the complex relationship between economy, morality, and politics, or

how the economy is nested in the inextricable nexus between moral-

ity and politics.

Traditionally, however, East Asian philosophical traditions were not

oriented toward a belief in self-interest, valorized in rationalist terms.

Nor did they uphold the moral autonomy of the market as the realm

of economic transaction as opposed to the state. Finally, and most

importantly, those traditions did not separate the economy from the

overarching ethical system in which both state and economy were

believed to be nested. Perhaps it is due to their strong tendency to

dismiss the moral value of self-interest or economic utility that East

Asians “failed” to produce a modern capitalist system. That is, they

did not create a system undergirded by pure economic rationality

that, in the West, resulted in possessive individualism, rights-based

liberalism, and liberal constitutionalism.1 Confucianism has been