Liuism

Liuism (Zhou: 柳學, Cloelius-Arellius: leou shyue, literally "Liu-ology", alternatively 柳渡思想 "Liu Du Thought"), known in eastern Ochran as naturalism (自然主義), is a nationalist political and social ideology advancing the nation state as the primary if not the only constitution of all states, the unconditional dissolution of all empires and imperialistic entities, and the establishment of a virtuous society based upon the 'small community' which is built on various traditional local community organizations. The theoretical framework of Liuism is primarily attributed to late Jiang dynasty Zhou historian and philosopher Liu Du, although several other figures such as Song Xiaojin and Weng Weizhi made important contributions to the ideology as well. Liuism, formed from the collision of the eastern and western worlds of the 19th century, had very diverse philosophical inspirations, ranging from classical Confucianism to Belisarian thinking such as traditionalist conservatism and classical liberalism, though in Ochran it has usually been considered a revolutionary ideology.

Theories

Three worlds

The Liuist worldview first divides the world of human civilization into three spheres:

• Virtuous society, where the pure values of civilization (usually associated with those promoted by modern Belisarian philosophy) are upheld by principle by a network of actors and institutions that aim for and result in common good, creating a moral order, and is the most ideal;
• Realist society, where actors and institutions are not principally motivated by civilized values but still ensure a society operating on that basis through pragmatic maneuvering;
• Egoist society, where civilized values are absent in favor of uninhibited self-interest. In this sphere benefit to one comes at expense of others, thus causing unjust dominance of materially stronger actors over weaker ones.

While virtuous society is seen as the most desirable, many forces can cause it to degenerate into realist and egoist structures. However, Liuism is also not pessimistic with regards to the so-called 'involution' of society, and rather considers movement of societies to be bidirectional, with equal possibility of less virtuous societies moving to more desirable states. Liuist historiography holds that humans have, through progressive evolution, generally reached virtuous society starting from the egoist society of primitive hunting-gathering, but have also due to other factors either fell from this state or not reached ideality at all.

The 'civilized values' described in this worldview and acting as the metric for the classification of societies are universal values, equatable to natural order, and reflect a sense of providentialism. Although Liuists characterized it by the virtues described by Belisarian conservatism, they also hold its consistency with the original ideals of ancient eastern moralist philosophers, reflecting the 'natural' attribute of these values. Also influenced by hierosophy in Ochran, there were strong implications of the derivation of this ideality from the Absolute that the hierosophists called Taiheng, and links were often made with Christian ethics.

The egoist state of society, marked by its absence of high values, also was devoid of presence of the permanence that the natural order brought about. It is thus also chaotic and becoming, and identified with nothingness or void due to the absence of permanent institutions in these states. In contrast, virtuous society was identified with the permanence of being, and naturally associated with stability. Its 'present' nature was used to explain the cultural achievements supposedly only possible in the virtuous world.

This basic framework of world-analysis is very similar to traditionalists and conservatives of Belisaria; indeed, western, Christian philosophy of a more traditional variant was a significant influence on Liuism's foundations.

Small community

See also: wp:Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft

The small community is the basis of the virtuous society. It is principally tribalist and organicist, comprising the collaboration of willing people of a close identity and relationship in creating common good and public benefit based on civilized virtues. These manifest by natural processes, as a result of the corresponding natural order, and the presence of civilized values. Thus, small communities take form as 'original' and 'natural' relationships found in society. These include the family, the employer and employee, or the mentor and apprentice, which in their sum work to sustain the virtuous society. The small community is identified in typical analytical terms as the organizations from which all of these natural relationships emerge in, and thus can be equated to the foundation of society.

Although taking many forms across the world, small communities are all marked by their roots as the products of common identification, and a character as a successful creator of common good when working in optimal state. It is most commonly identified with extended familial organizations from zongzu clans in the Sinhai sphere to the gens of ancient Latium. Such organizations are also referred to as 'social corporations', and are evaluated as the most important link of society (rather than the individual). A significant actor of these social corporations are what are known as 'local gentry' in Liuist terminology, typically found as landed social elites; according to Liuists a sense of noblesse oblige, another manifestation of natural order and also of a kinly love for fellow small-community members, drives such gentries into socially beneficial acts, which in turn have sustained social cohesion. The small community is the optimal mode and most natural of social organizations, inevitably superior to all parallels and competitors.

Large community and the 'empire'

In opposition to the small community is the large community, which is a more expansive agglomeration of less naturally-connected people (if they share any identification at all). The large community is impersonal, and typically its subjects remain within it for reasons of interest, rather than the bonds seen in small communities. Likewise, it is mechanical as opposed to the organic properties of the small community, based on largely artificial organizations with little to do with each other, and relatively impermanent products of situations as opposed to the natural order and stability of the small community. A large community manifests as bureaucracy, use of brute force to ensure its dominance and existence, as well as egoist use of its structures by unconnected persons for personal greed. It is thus also associated with the egoist society described in the three-world thesis, while in a realist society it already begins to develop. Large communities inevitably tend towards social alienation because of their inorganicity, in response they increase force they use to remain in power, causing human welfare inside these structures to worsen as totalitarianism manifests.

Later, less hierosophy-influenced Liuist ideologues advanced the social cycle theory that civilizations begin as small communities and then decay into oppressive, mechanical large communities, and thus 'older' civilizations were more likely to be mechanical societies, as well as tend towards their collapse and destruction. However, this is not universal of Liuists, and the consensus rather seems to be at least that the occasional, random, and sophisticated process of a large community emerging is existent, and it always involves the destruction of the small community in order to empower the large. This places the large community as the ultimate antithesis of the small community.

The 'empire' in Liuist discourse is the 'peak stage of the large community' where a 'chaotic machine' expands across numerous lands and peoples, destroys their small communities, and appropriates their resources to sustain itself. This marks the point where the main actors in the large community have lost control of it. Empires are destined to collapse as they are founded upon a malignancy of an already heavily flawed form of community, but also are the most destructive of possible social organizations, inflicting upon its subjects the greatest possible oppression from all aspects. Its operation is sustained by a parasitic class of rulers who are the most temporarily powerful of this egoist society. Despite any attempts to uphold the contrary, in an empire all morality breaks down in favor of an impermanent order created by fear (from an unsustainable concentration of brute force), as that is the only way it continues to exist, and in turn the subjects of such empires become uncivilized as the environment of their society forces them into egoism.

Tenets

Nationalism and regionalism

Liuism believes in the natural division of peoples into nations based on cultural closeness and intimacy, fundamentally the same elements behind small communities. A nation is thus an assembly of small communities connected further by their culture and history, by nature still a small community (at least in the ideal state). Nationalism is thus simply the natural result of being inside such a community because it is the innate force in the individual propelling them to treat the small community cordially. It is thus optimal and natural to divide the world based on nations, and make the nation state the only constitution of any state. Nations should thus obtain a sovereign political presence with exercise of self determination, and any nation under the imperialist domination of other entities should break free unconditionally.

Accordingly, regionalism and localism also needs to be emphasized in the nation, as it is not to devolve into a large community through using national identity as a force of unification. The interests of regions and local communities must be considered and advanced to ensure the functionality of small communities and thus social cohesion. The Liuist vision of nation lies between integral nationalism and civic nationalism, believing in a cultural identity, but also self-declaredly inclusive and welcoming of aspiring nationals-to-be, though this is more in the context of such ideas being proposed in the Taizhou empire where meaningful local national identity was mostly destroyed according to Liuists.

Total anti-imperialism

Liuism prescribes a 'total, unconditional anti-imperialism', aiming to destroy completely any and all forms of imperialism and any and all instances of empire. Revolutionary Weng Weizhi listed out the 'three pillars of anti-imperialism' in 1858, which was intended to be adopted by all Liuists uncompromisingly as both doctrine and strategy:

• Secession and political dissolution: Oppressed nations should rise up and overthrow imperial rule in nationalist revolutions, establishing nation-states built upon self-determination and the small community. Any and all nations are to be emancipated into free, independent states without condition, and it is necessary for these entire peoples to achieve national awakening politically and culturally, to cohesively organize together in their struggles for freedom. The process of secessionist insurrection is strictly against any and all compromise. Not only should this be achieved, but insurrectionary efforts should crush the empire entirely, dissolving it, and measures are to be taken by the newborn community of freed nations to ensure that its re-emergence is not possible. Remaining institutions of the Empire should be without exception liquidated, and replaced by those that respect nations, small communities, and local interests. The elite classes of the large-community should also be removed of their prestige and privilege to be assimilated into an equal national community, or also face 'liquidation', which during the Zhou nationalist revolutions took place in the form of mass executions of officials, aristocrats, and pro-imperial intelligentsia.
• Confrontation: It is not enough for nations to simply free themselves, and assistance of other national struggles is important. Liuists espoused a geopolitical strategy similar to Prometheism, where successfully established nation-states support nationalist movements in other empires, to bring about the gradual global collapse of all empires and imperialism. In the meantime, Liuist states would combat these empires and para-imperial entities wherever encountered, through open warfare if possible, but more realistically through more protracted and subtle confrontation in areas such as commerce. Total war was to be expected as necessary in such cases. Ties with empires in any form were to be rejected and severed. Beginning in the 1890s Liuist thought incorporated ideas from revolutionary socialism and entertained the notion of a world revolution, hoping to spark a nationalist revolutionary wave across the world. However, the aggressive and uncomprising foreign policy this pillar entailed was heavily toned down for realistic reasons after the Blossom of Nations as the new states of Sinhaysia found it necessary to establish partnerships with nominal and functional empires to secure their status. In some aspects however, the policy constantly remained strong with regular opposition to the Taizhou rump state.
• Cultural dissolution: Cultural traces of the Empire, like its political traces, were to be eliminated. These included the forced erasure and suppression of imperial or large-community identity, historical revisionism to develop a pro-national and anti-imperial narrative, and the revitalization of traditional, local identity of the newly liberated nation. Liuism enthusiastically championed an iconoclastic approach to removing imperialist culture, destroying artifacts, banning customs, replacing vocabularies and writing systems, censoring topics, and even exterminating entire groups of people (typically intelligentsia). These coalesced in practice into phenomena such as desinhayization and debayarization, which resulted in the extreme enforced removal of numerous cultural customs and practices from the Sinhaysian states. The process of national culture revitalization also meant that many customs, not all of which were identified with 'pre-Zhou' local practices, were enforced into daily life. Iconoclastic cultural dissolution was seen as important, in the words of Weng Weizhi it 'prevented the formation of even soil for empire to be seeded in', and as Liu Du said 'an empty mind is better than a mind even only slightly tainted with evil'.

Construction of a small-community-centred society

The restitution of virtuous society required a shift back to the small community as the fundament of society, which in turn needed particular administrative structures and forms of government. Liuism championed a republic with representation of interests from across society, but the Liuist idea of republicanism became greatly different from Belisarian conceptions of it. For Liuists the best way to make sure that the small community remained important was to make it formally the unit of society, thus the Liuist state respects clans and other organizations of organic relationships. It is also with this that Liuism is anti-individualist, believing in the need of attachment of the individual to the small community and the path into large communities that individualism leads to due to its atomizing properties. Small communities, once formally respected, are recognized of their jurisdictions, and may exercise rule in these bounds however they wish to.

Liuism strongly advocates limited government, suggesting non-intervention in the matters of local communities whenever possible. However, the republic still served a purpose, owing to its nature as an agreement of similarly minded and conscious small communities. First, it guaranteed security, especially from the threat of imperialism and other large communities, because it was recognized that, one-for-one, large communities could rally more forces than small communities and triumph. Here the republic functioned as a mutual defense pact. Secondly, the republic also formed a reliable framework for disputes to be resolved between small communities. Thirdly, it also allowed for resource allocation to communities in need, and more generally collaboration.

Upon all these benefits a republic provides, Liuists regard such a republic's functions as optimally 'instantial', that is, they come into existence only when the need arises, and correspondingly fade once the need disappears.

History

Rise of localism in Taizhou

The Jiang dynasty of Taizhou's slow decline began in the 18th century. Economic crises due to corruption, outflow of bullion, mismanagement, and poor weather affecting agriculture, led to overtaxation and other forms of severe exploitation of the empire's commoners. This spawned numerous peasant rebellions, which in turn disrupted the economy further, worsening the condition and leading Taizhou into a vicious cycle. Huge rebellions and wars devastated much of the country in the 1740s and 1750s, leading to the breakdown of order in many areas. As the government failed to be able to impose itself in many regions, landed gentry assumed the power vacuum, using their connections based on clanship to win respect and influence of people, and their wealth to raise paramilitaries with which to keep order and repel bandits. Taizhou's temporary re-stabilization in the 1760s was at the cost of significant concessions to these local interests that established themselves, and most of the country gained some form of autonomy, especially in the south.

Jiang Taizhou's position took another turn to the worse in the 1790s with a new wave of famines, financial insolvencies, and rebellions. Regional identities eventually formed in this chaotic context. Secession was espoused by many local intellectuals and leaders, who believed that continued membership in a declining empire was not beneficial; the supremacy of Taizhou as a polity in Ochran was also being challenged by neighboring powers, which emboldened these figures. Underlying the opposition to centralized bureaucratic authority, there was also the long-standing cultural division between the Bayarid-influenced practices of the elite, and the more indigenously rooted local customs, further deepening feelings of disconnection from the empire, which still upheld a significant Bayarid legacy.

Liu Du, an intellectual from Hsiangley and historian at the local academy, developed the theoretical foundations of Liuism in a series of works published from 1822 to 1835. The most seminal of these works were The Science of the Nation, which detailed Liu's historiography and 'natiology' while attacking the very concept of Taizhou and of imperialism, On Many Orders, which criticized Taizhou's political system, On the Good-Minded, arguing for local-based governance, and On the Natural Constitution of Society, which expanded on her ideas previously. She had also written numerous shorter diary entries and newspaper-published editorials that also contributed the development of her ideas. Liu's thinking resonated very well with localist ideologues, and catalyzed their increasing drive towards secession and revolution.