Liuism
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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. The theoretical framework of Liuism is primarily attributed to the historian and philosopher Liu Du, although several other figures such as Song Xiaojin and Weng Weizhi made important contributions to the ideology as well.
Theories
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- [Wilsonian] world:
- [Hobbesian] world:
- [Darwinian] world:
Monogenesis of civilization
Corrections
Under the influences of Hierosophy, as well as more traditional Ochran religious concepts such as karma, early Liuists believed that the unrighteousness of large communities meant that they would eventually be struck with a catastrophic societal collapse known as a Correction, a divine punishment, driven by the supernatural forces and dynamics that underlied the world. Less pious and more academic developments instead analysed the Correction as the inevitable downfall of large communities due to their political, social, and economic inadequacies. In a historiographic point of view the Correction was considered part of a cycle of civilizations, an element of the same analysis that underlied Liuism's 'three-worlds' theory.
Corrections were acknowledged even by Liu Du herself to be extremely catastrophic and devastating. The 'mechanization' of the population under a large community made them largely incapable of acting appropriately and effectively as their overbearing oppressor collapsed, resulting in these events taking a heavy toll on them as well. Their inevitable and cyclic properties were used to explain the rise and fall of bureaucratic imperial dynasties in Ochran, as well as the destructive nature of the interludes between these periods. To a significant extent for Liu Du and other thinkers the Corrections, as natural and irresistible phenomena, were the very reason for the praxis Liuism espoused; the small community was to be consciously restored to provide a 'refuge' that preserves culture and secures people from the 'great deluges of history', owing to its superior properties.
An elaborate culture revolving around the idea of the Correction emerged in Liuist circles known as 'forecasting', where its intellectuals constantly analysed and predicted the collapse of empires and other imperialist societies.
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.
Variants
Liuism has several variants, most of which developed to answer the question of the ideology's praxis by proposing a model for the realization of Liuist goals, although some more divergent variants evolved from further developments on existing Liuist theories.
Liuism-Songism
Liuism-Songism is a doctrine, which, on the basis of accepting Liuism's worldview and basic prescriptions as laid out by Liu Du, adds onto it a political praxis mainly developed by Song Xiaojin, Puphanian revolutionary and Liu Du's disciple. Liuism-Songism proposes the concentration of power under a one-party state, comprised of the most fervent of national revolutionaries, and capable of representing all genuine national interests, who use their powers to ensure the security and independence of the new nation-state after the success of national revolution.
Liuism-Songism evolved out of the martial law revolutionaries during the Blossom of Nations implemented in liberated areas and into a systematic form of authoritarian rule; during the Sinhaysian period, it was the state ideology of nearly all national republics, and likewise predominated their politics.
Fanism
Hongism
Niuism
Jieism
Jieism, developed by Jie Minsheng, bases itself on Liuism's analysis of societies as distinguished between small and large communities. However, it takes a more capitalist view of the underlying dynamics, focusing on the efficiency and capability of small-community entities as their advantage rather than their social cohesion. Jieism believes the focus of history and politics should be to develop the means of production and optimize the accumulation of capital, while also making sure that it is managed correctly for maximum efficiency and security. Rather than the nation, the focus of Jieism is on the city, which it identifies as the 'main society' and primary base of technological development and capital accumulation throughout history, as well as the main economic benefactor of people.
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.
National revolutions
Instability was widespread in Taizhou by the 1850s and it reached a breaking point with Lu Gui-ying's rebellion that would destroy the Jiang dynasty. As chaos unravelled across the country, Liuist revolutionaries and conspirators, long planning takeovers, seized cities and towns with militias. National republics were rapidly established across southern Taizhou as local military garrisons defected or surrendered. Puphania, Loenhae, and Hsiangley first saw the beginnings of their independence wars in 1854 before the revolutionary wave spread to other parts of the country. These uprisings are collectively known as the Blossom of Nations.
It became clear by 1856 that although the situation in the north, where contests for the imperial throne had largely concluded with Lu's victory, had stabilized, the new government emerging from Nucen was unable and unlikely to reimpose its will over the southern breakaway states. Liuist revolutions in the north were unsuccessful, and were suppressed and eliminated by 1859. This provoked the consolidated national republics in the south to launch a coalition invasion of northern Taizhou in the event known as the Torrent War. The expedition failed however preserving the imperial rump state in the north. However, by this time, the state of a plethora of nation-states existing in southern Taizhou was set in stone, inaugurating the Sinhaysian period.
The disturbance in Taizhou was a huge shock to the order in Ochran, which was previously comprised of imperial, centralized autocracies as the norm. Liuist thought had already made its way to neighbouring states such as Uluujol, Chagadalai, Rustonia, and Tsurushima, where it captured the support and sparked the enthusiasm of repressed local land-owning groups, as well as culturally distinct tribes. Liuist or Liuist-inspired uprisings occurred in these areas too though with little success compared to the Blossom of Nations, although the threat of rebellious local gentry caused more or less compromising reforms to be introduced in these countries.