Queercommie Girl
15th September 2010, 23:55
I feel that many Western socialists are rather ignorant of Chinese history, while Chinese socialists generally are not ignorant of Western history. This surely is an objective manifestation of the Eurocentric domination of recent centuries. (An analogy is that while many people from non-English speaking countries are fluent in English, the majority of English-speaking natives do not know another language, and this is a manifestation of the fact that English is the dominant language in the world today)
While I do not blame Western socialists for this, I'd really hope socialists can become more knowledgable about world history as a whole, rather than just about Western history. Indeed, for me the primary reason why the book A People's History of the World by Chris Harman of the British SWP is so good is because it overcame the Eurocentric perspective and really examined global history from a truly global perspective. As both Lenin and Mao said, there is much to be learned from the history of feudal and capitalist civilisations around the entire world.
In light of this, and the recent multiple threads on the topic of debate around "religion", I feel an analysis of the evolution of religious and atheist thought during China's classical period, (the so-called "Axial Age") what most Chinese Marxists consider to be the great transition from slavery to feudalism, when most of China's indigenous philosophical traditions, such as Confucianism and Daoism, were first created, would positively contribute to this debate.
The essential reactionary nature of religion is clearly seen in the fact that during classical China's slavery-feudalism transition, religious superstition was largely associated with the old and relatively reactionary slave-lord class, while rational atheism was largely associated with the new and relatively progressive feudal landlord class.
Here are excerpts from The History of Chinese Philosophy, a philosophy textbook written from a Marxist perspective first published in 1970s China by Beijing University Press, which illustrates this quite clearly: (translation by me)
Chapter One: The First Emergence of Chinese Philosophy
Section 1: Religious Thought during the Shang and Zhou Dynasties
The establishment of the Xia dynasty (circa 2000 BCE) was the formal beginning of Chinese slavery society. As society develops a slavery system, classes have clearly emerged, and the relationship between people has fundamentally transformed. In order to consolidate and defend their own political rule, the slave-lord aristocracy further developed and advanced the primitive religions of the tribal era. By this time, religion is no longer just "natural", but became a reflection of the class oppression that exists in society.
At the end of the 17th century BCE, king Tang of Shang destroyed the Xia dynasty, and established the Shang dynasty under slave-lord rule. As a slave-lord king that ruled over an united territory emerged, official religion must also create a new kind of Supreme God that would fit in with these new political characteristics. As Engels correctly pointed out, without an absolutist leader on earth, there can never be an absolutist god in heaven. The absolutist god in heaven is a manifestation of oriental despotism. In order to justify its own political rule, the slave-lord aristocracy of the Shang dynasty created a supreme ruler of everything in both heaven and earth, and in both nature and society, called Di or Shangdi. The ruling slave-lord aristocrats of the Shang stated: "Shangdi established a son who then gave birth to the Shang clan." (Shijing/Shangsong) That is to say, the ancestors of the ruling Shang clan is the son of Shangdi, and therefore the Shang royal family is the direct descendant of the Supreme God, and the most powerful slave-lord in Shang civilisation, wang or "king", became the official spokesperson on earth for Shangdi. The political reign of the Shang dynasty was granted by God himself, and therefore it is absolutely eternal; Every single command and statement issued by the Shang ruling clan are directly endorsed by God, and protected by the divine spirits. Anyone who dares to go against the will of the ruling Shang slave-lords is to disobey the Supreme God of heaven and earth, as well as the ancestral spirits, and therefore great disaster would surely fall upon them. According to ancient Chinese religious texts, during the era of high antiquity, the legendary rulers of China commanded the mythical figure Zhongli to block all direct access between earth and heaven (Shangshu/Luxing). What this means is that spiritual access between God and the human realm has now been limited and monopolised into the hands of the various officials of the ruling court, and the slave-lord king is the supreme leader of all of these officials. People during the Shang dynasty not only constantly made religious sacrifices to Heaven and the ancestors, in order to pray for good fortune and avert natural disasters, but before they do almost everything, including warfare, city construction, irrigation and agriculture, they would use divination to predict the outcome. Turtle shells and animal bones were burned, and the lines that formed during the burning process would be carefully observed by the diviner, in order to establish what the course of action should be.
Not only did the Shang rulers create this "supreme god" Shangdi, but they also theologically monopolised all spiritual access between God, the king, and the rest of the human realm. This way, the Shang slave-lord aristocracy became morally free to do whatever they wished. For their own private hedonistic enjoyment, not only do the Shang slave-lord aristocracy use a large number of slaves before their death, but even after they die, dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of slaves would also be used as human sacrifice for them. The slave-lords literally saw all of this as a part of their divine mandate from Shangdi the Supreme God. In their views, the sole purpose for the slaves' existence on earth is to guarantee the hedonistic enjoyment of their slave-lord masters by any means necessary. If the slaves ever dare to rebel against them even by a little bit, the slave-lords would loudly proclaim: "We only continue your existence based on our mandate of Heaven". (Shangshu/Pangengzhong) That is to say, the lives of the slaves are solely in existence due to the mandate of Heaven the slave-lords possess, and therefore if the slaves dare to disobey their masters, then God and the royal ancestral spirits in heaven would greatly punish them from on high, and then the slaves would be massacred and their entire clans exterminated without any mercy.
At the end of the 12th century BCE, the Zhou tribe began to emerge as a major local power in the frontier regions of Shang civilisation, in what is now the Wei River valley in Shaanxi province. First they destroyed the various Rong "barbarians" around their home area, and then they emerged as one of Shang dynasty's most powerful vassal states. Later as king Wu the Martial of the Zhou state marched eastwards, and with the help of the forcefully conscripted Shang slaves on the frontlines who completely rebelled and joined the Zhou army, the Shang dynasty was conquered by the Zhou and the Zhou dynasty was established in central China. The establishment of the Zhou dynasty signaled the highest degree of development of slavery civilisation in ancient China. The Zhou slave-lord aristocrats inherited the superstitious religious beliefs of their Shang predecessors based on making sacrifices to Heaven and the ancestors, revering the spirits, and the divine rights of kings. But on the basis of the official Shang religion, the Zhou made its theology more theoretically developed and more systematic. In order to consolidate its political rule over the conquered Shang subject peoples, the Zhou slave-lords first intrinsically separated God from the ancestral spirits in their official theology, and further strengthened the absolute theological authority of Shangdi the Supreme God. The Zhou formulated a political theology based on the Mandate of Heaven to justify their own political rule.
The destruction of the Shang polity by the Zhou is clearly a fatal blow to the absolutist and eternally unchanging "divine rights of kings for a particular ruling clan" promoted by the Shang slave-lord aristocracy to justify their own rule. In order to consolidate their own rule and to conquer their Shang subjects philosophically, the Zhou slave-lord aristocracy created the moralistic concept of "virtue" and the theological concept of "a ruler must have the necessary virtue to be fit to receive the Mandate of Heaven". In the classical Chinese text Shangshu (The Book of Ancient History) it is stated: "Only if the king carefully respects Virtue and utilises Virtue can the Mandate of Heaven be kept with us forever." That is to say, a king must be morally conscientious, keep his conduct to the standards of Virtue, does everything in a virtuous way, only this way can the king become worthy to receive and keep the heavenly mandate from God. The "virtue" promoted by the Zhou slave-lord aristocrats is in the concrete sense still based on the ideas of "obeying Heaven to conduct human affairs". This way Zhou theology has formulated a clear theoretical explanation for the fall of the once mighty Shang dynasty: the Shang dynasty fell because the descendants of the early Shang kings could not keep their virtue and follow the commands of Heaven. And since the ancestors of the Zhou ruling clan were able to increase its moral virtue in accordance with the Heavenly mandate, so God decided to change his "crown prince" on earth from the Shang to the Zhou. The famous Duke of Zhou, Dan, once spoke to the conquered Shang aristocrats: "It is not that our little state dares to offend the great Shang, but we are doing nothing more than following the Will of Heaven." (Shangshu/Duoshi)
The Duke Dan of Zhou, whom many later Chinese philosophers referred to as a "great sage", was the most famous and prominent politician and thinker of the early Western Zhou era. He was the younger brother of king Wu the Martial, and the uncle of king Cheng. In order to consolidate Zhou dynasty's rule, he initiated a series of policies and established an entire system of political theory. Not only did he elaborate on the concept of "virtue", but he also talked about "filial piety", and established many rules and rites of courtesy and music. The so-called "rites" were originally just basic rules for marriages, funerals, dress codes, eating habits, and the codes for travelling and staying at home, but through the systematic elaboration of the Duke of Zhou and later philosophers, they became an entire official system of ranks and titles in Chinese slavery society, and indeed "music" also became a tool for servicing this official slavery ranking system. Since the Duke of Zhou personally participated in the initial military march led by king Wu to conquer the Shang, and later also joined in the military campaigns to pacify the rebellions of the remanent Shang aristocrats, he clearly witnessed the major part rebelling slaves on the frontlines played in the downfall of the Shang dynasty. The Duke of Zhou learned something from this, and recognised the great power of the masses to some extent, so his theological understanding of "Heaven" became more developed. He established the doctrines of "The Way of Heaven is never constant" (Shijing/Daya/Wenwang) and "Heaven sees through the eyes of the people; Heaven hears through the ears of the people." (Shangshu/Taishi and Mengzi) On the basis of these concepts, he also introduced the political idea that a king must "protect his people" in order to "continue to enjoy the Mandate of Heaven" (Shangshu/Duofang). What this actually means is that the ruling slave-lords must work conscientiously and use good political management strategies, so that slaves can be protected and do not escape or become lost, and only this way can the political rule of the slave-lords be continuously kept.
The religious superstitions of the Shang and Zhou dynasties are essentially ideological weapons that exist to defend the political rule of the slave-lord aristocracy class. As slavery society itself emerges, develops and declines, these religions constantly change their form, but the essence, which is based on the "divine rights of kings", never shifts. The political dictatorship of the slave-lord aristocracy cannot exist without God protecting it, and indeed the later political dictatorship of the feudal landlord class cannot exist without God protecting it either, so the political theology based on the "divine rights of kings" also further developed to become one of the main ideological pillars of the subsequent 2000 years of Chinese feudal dictatorship.
... ...
Section 4: The Rise of Atheism
After the establishment of the Zhou dynasty (circa 1000 BCE) it soon encountered a major period of decline after a short period of prosperity under the reign of the kings Cheng and Kang. The slave-lord aristocracy's brutal plundering of ordinary freemen and slaves soon made class antagonisms increasingly intense. Ideologically, slaves and freemen first criticised the fact that the slave-lord aristocracy can acquire so much wealth without doing any work. They said: "You don't plant and you don't harvest, so how come your granaries are filled with three hundred tons of grains? You don't hunt and you don't fish, so how come your courts are decorated with so many animal skins?" (Shijing/Weifeng/Fahuan) The common people began to curse the kings and slave-lord aristocrats on earth first, then they began to criticise Heaven too. They began to say, oh Heaven, why do you not even provide us with enough food to eat? Why force us into such desperation? As criticisms of Heaven developed further, it became skepticism towards the official theology. The people began to realise that disasters in the human realm are never the result of "heavenly punishments", but are solely the result of human actions. Ideological liberation is usually the prelude to revolutionary action. The slaves could no longer bear the oppression and exploitation of the slave-lord aristocracy, at first they simply escaped away, later on they began to actively rebel by joining the rebellions of the ordinary freemen (the "middling layers" of Zhou society). In 841 BCE, the common freemen of the Zhou capital, the Guoren, used the widespread discontent among the slave population, and by politically uniting with the rebelling slaves, the Guoren freemen forced king Li of Zhou to abdicate and then exiled him, and thereby established a "republic" lasting for 14 years, the so-called "Gonghe republic" (from the reign year title of those 14 years, "Gonghe") or "Zhou-Zhao republic".
During the transition from the old slavery society to the new feudal society in the Spring and Autumn Period, the rise of atheism was a historical necessity. The minister Jiliang of the Sui state said: "The people are the roots of the gods. Therefore a sage-king must first satisfy the people and put religious matters second." (Zuozhuan/The Sixth Year of Duke Huan) That is to say, gods only have concrete power because of the people. So an ideal ruler must primarily focus on earthly rather than heavenly matters. The court historian of the Bao state also said: "I once heard: When a state is about to rise, it listens to its people; when a state is about to fall, it listens to the gods. Those gods that are truly good and wise always listen to the masses." (Zuozhuan/The Thirty-Second Year of Duke Zhuang) Although these people did not directly state that the gods simply don't exist, but they clearly emphasised the primary importance of humans as opposed to the gods, and recognised that people are the "roots" of the gods. In 645 BCE, shooting stars from heaven were observed in the State of Song, and there appeared strange natural phenomena such as birds flying backwards. Some superstitious people claimed that these are evil omens. But the court historian Shuxing countered: "These phenomena are simply the results of natural Yin-Yang interactions, they are not evil omens. Only people can create evil omens." (Zuozhuan/The Sixteenth Year of Duke Xi) Shuxing clearly recognised here that natural phenomena are no more than the occurrances of nature, there is absolutely no correlation with "good or bad omen" in the human realm. "Good" and "evil" are always human-created, they have absolutely nothing to do with the rewards or punishments of the gods. On the issue of how to build a city-wall, the representatives of the two states of Song and Xue had a major debate. The Song officials used divination as evidence, while the Xue officials used human affairs as evidence. Commenting on this debate, the official Mimuo stated: "The Xue depend on humans, while the Song depend on the gods, surely the Song are in the wrong." (Zuozhuan/The First Year of Duke Ding) From these commentaries, we can clearly see that the primitive materialists of those days not only recognised that in the relationship between humans and gods, humans are central and more important, but they even began to suggest that in the relationship between humans and nature, there is no place for gods at all. This way the status of humans have been further improved.
There is another Chinese philosopher of the Spring and Autumn Period who had atheist tendencies, he is Zichan from the State of Zheng. He was also one of the first people in China to publish a clear code of laws, and therefore he can be considered as a forerunner of the Legalist school of thought. Zichan once rebuked another official for claiming that the State of Zheng will face a major fire disaster due to astrological observations. He said: "The Way of Heaven is distant; While the Way of Man is near, since we cannot even reach Heaven, how can we claim to know so much about it? What do you know about the real Way of Heaven that you can say so much about it? How can people ever believe you?" (Zuozhuan/The Eighteenth Year of Duke Zhao) Zichan compared the "Way of Heaven" with the "Way of Man". He says that the Way of Heaven is illusory and distant, while the Way of Man is concrete and near, so the only rational way to analyse good and evil omens is to base it on human affairs. Zichan also opposed the religious ritual to offer sacrifices to Chinese dragons. He said: "We have nothing to do with the dragons, and the dragons have nothing to do with us." (Zuozhuan/The Nineteenth Year of Duke Zhao) There is simply no correlation between humans and dragons at all, so what is the point of offering sacrifices to it?
Among the atheist philosophers that operated during the end of the Spring and Autumn Period, many were thinkers representing relatively progressive political forces, such as Zichan of the Zheng state mentioned above. During this period of radical transition in society, they claimed that the roots of all good and evil lie not with Heaven, but with Man, this demonstrates their skeptical attitudes towards the gods. To a certain extent they have correctly observed that all the problems of human society are essentially problems between man and man, not the problems between Heaven and man or the gods and man. This corresponds with their own political and socio-economic positions at the time, as representatives of the newly emerging feudal landlord class that tries to win over people's hearts in order to politically struggle against the ruling slave-lord aristocracy. Objectively, this had the effects of liberating the masses to some extent from the authority of Heaven and the gods.
While I do not blame Western socialists for this, I'd really hope socialists can become more knowledgable about world history as a whole, rather than just about Western history. Indeed, for me the primary reason why the book A People's History of the World by Chris Harman of the British SWP is so good is because it overcame the Eurocentric perspective and really examined global history from a truly global perspective. As both Lenin and Mao said, there is much to be learned from the history of feudal and capitalist civilisations around the entire world.
In light of this, and the recent multiple threads on the topic of debate around "religion", I feel an analysis of the evolution of religious and atheist thought during China's classical period, (the so-called "Axial Age") what most Chinese Marxists consider to be the great transition from slavery to feudalism, when most of China's indigenous philosophical traditions, such as Confucianism and Daoism, were first created, would positively contribute to this debate.
The essential reactionary nature of religion is clearly seen in the fact that during classical China's slavery-feudalism transition, religious superstition was largely associated with the old and relatively reactionary slave-lord class, while rational atheism was largely associated with the new and relatively progressive feudal landlord class.
Here are excerpts from The History of Chinese Philosophy, a philosophy textbook written from a Marxist perspective first published in 1970s China by Beijing University Press, which illustrates this quite clearly: (translation by me)
Chapter One: The First Emergence of Chinese Philosophy
Section 1: Religious Thought during the Shang and Zhou Dynasties
The establishment of the Xia dynasty (circa 2000 BCE) was the formal beginning of Chinese slavery society. As society develops a slavery system, classes have clearly emerged, and the relationship between people has fundamentally transformed. In order to consolidate and defend their own political rule, the slave-lord aristocracy further developed and advanced the primitive religions of the tribal era. By this time, religion is no longer just "natural", but became a reflection of the class oppression that exists in society.
At the end of the 17th century BCE, king Tang of Shang destroyed the Xia dynasty, and established the Shang dynasty under slave-lord rule. As a slave-lord king that ruled over an united territory emerged, official religion must also create a new kind of Supreme God that would fit in with these new political characteristics. As Engels correctly pointed out, without an absolutist leader on earth, there can never be an absolutist god in heaven. The absolutist god in heaven is a manifestation of oriental despotism. In order to justify its own political rule, the slave-lord aristocracy of the Shang dynasty created a supreme ruler of everything in both heaven and earth, and in both nature and society, called Di or Shangdi. The ruling slave-lord aristocrats of the Shang stated: "Shangdi established a son who then gave birth to the Shang clan." (Shijing/Shangsong) That is to say, the ancestors of the ruling Shang clan is the son of Shangdi, and therefore the Shang royal family is the direct descendant of the Supreme God, and the most powerful slave-lord in Shang civilisation, wang or "king", became the official spokesperson on earth for Shangdi. The political reign of the Shang dynasty was granted by God himself, and therefore it is absolutely eternal; Every single command and statement issued by the Shang ruling clan are directly endorsed by God, and protected by the divine spirits. Anyone who dares to go against the will of the ruling Shang slave-lords is to disobey the Supreme God of heaven and earth, as well as the ancestral spirits, and therefore great disaster would surely fall upon them. According to ancient Chinese religious texts, during the era of high antiquity, the legendary rulers of China commanded the mythical figure Zhongli to block all direct access between earth and heaven (Shangshu/Luxing). What this means is that spiritual access between God and the human realm has now been limited and monopolised into the hands of the various officials of the ruling court, and the slave-lord king is the supreme leader of all of these officials. People during the Shang dynasty not only constantly made religious sacrifices to Heaven and the ancestors, in order to pray for good fortune and avert natural disasters, but before they do almost everything, including warfare, city construction, irrigation and agriculture, they would use divination to predict the outcome. Turtle shells and animal bones were burned, and the lines that formed during the burning process would be carefully observed by the diviner, in order to establish what the course of action should be.
Not only did the Shang rulers create this "supreme god" Shangdi, but they also theologically monopolised all spiritual access between God, the king, and the rest of the human realm. This way, the Shang slave-lord aristocracy became morally free to do whatever they wished. For their own private hedonistic enjoyment, not only do the Shang slave-lord aristocracy use a large number of slaves before their death, but even after they die, dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of slaves would also be used as human sacrifice for them. The slave-lords literally saw all of this as a part of their divine mandate from Shangdi the Supreme God. In their views, the sole purpose for the slaves' existence on earth is to guarantee the hedonistic enjoyment of their slave-lord masters by any means necessary. If the slaves ever dare to rebel against them even by a little bit, the slave-lords would loudly proclaim: "We only continue your existence based on our mandate of Heaven". (Shangshu/Pangengzhong) That is to say, the lives of the slaves are solely in existence due to the mandate of Heaven the slave-lords possess, and therefore if the slaves dare to disobey their masters, then God and the royal ancestral spirits in heaven would greatly punish them from on high, and then the slaves would be massacred and their entire clans exterminated without any mercy.
At the end of the 12th century BCE, the Zhou tribe began to emerge as a major local power in the frontier regions of Shang civilisation, in what is now the Wei River valley in Shaanxi province. First they destroyed the various Rong "barbarians" around their home area, and then they emerged as one of Shang dynasty's most powerful vassal states. Later as king Wu the Martial of the Zhou state marched eastwards, and with the help of the forcefully conscripted Shang slaves on the frontlines who completely rebelled and joined the Zhou army, the Shang dynasty was conquered by the Zhou and the Zhou dynasty was established in central China. The establishment of the Zhou dynasty signaled the highest degree of development of slavery civilisation in ancient China. The Zhou slave-lord aristocrats inherited the superstitious religious beliefs of their Shang predecessors based on making sacrifices to Heaven and the ancestors, revering the spirits, and the divine rights of kings. But on the basis of the official Shang religion, the Zhou made its theology more theoretically developed and more systematic. In order to consolidate its political rule over the conquered Shang subject peoples, the Zhou slave-lords first intrinsically separated God from the ancestral spirits in their official theology, and further strengthened the absolute theological authority of Shangdi the Supreme God. The Zhou formulated a political theology based on the Mandate of Heaven to justify their own political rule.
The destruction of the Shang polity by the Zhou is clearly a fatal blow to the absolutist and eternally unchanging "divine rights of kings for a particular ruling clan" promoted by the Shang slave-lord aristocracy to justify their own rule. In order to consolidate their own rule and to conquer their Shang subjects philosophically, the Zhou slave-lord aristocracy created the moralistic concept of "virtue" and the theological concept of "a ruler must have the necessary virtue to be fit to receive the Mandate of Heaven". In the classical Chinese text Shangshu (The Book of Ancient History) it is stated: "Only if the king carefully respects Virtue and utilises Virtue can the Mandate of Heaven be kept with us forever." That is to say, a king must be morally conscientious, keep his conduct to the standards of Virtue, does everything in a virtuous way, only this way can the king become worthy to receive and keep the heavenly mandate from God. The "virtue" promoted by the Zhou slave-lord aristocrats is in the concrete sense still based on the ideas of "obeying Heaven to conduct human affairs". This way Zhou theology has formulated a clear theoretical explanation for the fall of the once mighty Shang dynasty: the Shang dynasty fell because the descendants of the early Shang kings could not keep their virtue and follow the commands of Heaven. And since the ancestors of the Zhou ruling clan were able to increase its moral virtue in accordance with the Heavenly mandate, so God decided to change his "crown prince" on earth from the Shang to the Zhou. The famous Duke of Zhou, Dan, once spoke to the conquered Shang aristocrats: "It is not that our little state dares to offend the great Shang, but we are doing nothing more than following the Will of Heaven." (Shangshu/Duoshi)
The Duke Dan of Zhou, whom many later Chinese philosophers referred to as a "great sage", was the most famous and prominent politician and thinker of the early Western Zhou era. He was the younger brother of king Wu the Martial, and the uncle of king Cheng. In order to consolidate Zhou dynasty's rule, he initiated a series of policies and established an entire system of political theory. Not only did he elaborate on the concept of "virtue", but he also talked about "filial piety", and established many rules and rites of courtesy and music. The so-called "rites" were originally just basic rules for marriages, funerals, dress codes, eating habits, and the codes for travelling and staying at home, but through the systematic elaboration of the Duke of Zhou and later philosophers, they became an entire official system of ranks and titles in Chinese slavery society, and indeed "music" also became a tool for servicing this official slavery ranking system. Since the Duke of Zhou personally participated in the initial military march led by king Wu to conquer the Shang, and later also joined in the military campaigns to pacify the rebellions of the remanent Shang aristocrats, he clearly witnessed the major part rebelling slaves on the frontlines played in the downfall of the Shang dynasty. The Duke of Zhou learned something from this, and recognised the great power of the masses to some extent, so his theological understanding of "Heaven" became more developed. He established the doctrines of "The Way of Heaven is never constant" (Shijing/Daya/Wenwang) and "Heaven sees through the eyes of the people; Heaven hears through the ears of the people." (Shangshu/Taishi and Mengzi) On the basis of these concepts, he also introduced the political idea that a king must "protect his people" in order to "continue to enjoy the Mandate of Heaven" (Shangshu/Duofang). What this actually means is that the ruling slave-lords must work conscientiously and use good political management strategies, so that slaves can be protected and do not escape or become lost, and only this way can the political rule of the slave-lords be continuously kept.
The religious superstitions of the Shang and Zhou dynasties are essentially ideological weapons that exist to defend the political rule of the slave-lord aristocracy class. As slavery society itself emerges, develops and declines, these religions constantly change their form, but the essence, which is based on the "divine rights of kings", never shifts. The political dictatorship of the slave-lord aristocracy cannot exist without God protecting it, and indeed the later political dictatorship of the feudal landlord class cannot exist without God protecting it either, so the political theology based on the "divine rights of kings" also further developed to become one of the main ideological pillars of the subsequent 2000 years of Chinese feudal dictatorship.
... ...
Section 4: The Rise of Atheism
After the establishment of the Zhou dynasty (circa 1000 BCE) it soon encountered a major period of decline after a short period of prosperity under the reign of the kings Cheng and Kang. The slave-lord aristocracy's brutal plundering of ordinary freemen and slaves soon made class antagonisms increasingly intense. Ideologically, slaves and freemen first criticised the fact that the slave-lord aristocracy can acquire so much wealth without doing any work. They said: "You don't plant and you don't harvest, so how come your granaries are filled with three hundred tons of grains? You don't hunt and you don't fish, so how come your courts are decorated with so many animal skins?" (Shijing/Weifeng/Fahuan) The common people began to curse the kings and slave-lord aristocrats on earth first, then they began to criticise Heaven too. They began to say, oh Heaven, why do you not even provide us with enough food to eat? Why force us into such desperation? As criticisms of Heaven developed further, it became skepticism towards the official theology. The people began to realise that disasters in the human realm are never the result of "heavenly punishments", but are solely the result of human actions. Ideological liberation is usually the prelude to revolutionary action. The slaves could no longer bear the oppression and exploitation of the slave-lord aristocracy, at first they simply escaped away, later on they began to actively rebel by joining the rebellions of the ordinary freemen (the "middling layers" of Zhou society). In 841 BCE, the common freemen of the Zhou capital, the Guoren, used the widespread discontent among the slave population, and by politically uniting with the rebelling slaves, the Guoren freemen forced king Li of Zhou to abdicate and then exiled him, and thereby established a "republic" lasting for 14 years, the so-called "Gonghe republic" (from the reign year title of those 14 years, "Gonghe") or "Zhou-Zhao republic".
During the transition from the old slavery society to the new feudal society in the Spring and Autumn Period, the rise of atheism was a historical necessity. The minister Jiliang of the Sui state said: "The people are the roots of the gods. Therefore a sage-king must first satisfy the people and put religious matters second." (Zuozhuan/The Sixth Year of Duke Huan) That is to say, gods only have concrete power because of the people. So an ideal ruler must primarily focus on earthly rather than heavenly matters. The court historian of the Bao state also said: "I once heard: When a state is about to rise, it listens to its people; when a state is about to fall, it listens to the gods. Those gods that are truly good and wise always listen to the masses." (Zuozhuan/The Thirty-Second Year of Duke Zhuang) Although these people did not directly state that the gods simply don't exist, but they clearly emphasised the primary importance of humans as opposed to the gods, and recognised that people are the "roots" of the gods. In 645 BCE, shooting stars from heaven were observed in the State of Song, and there appeared strange natural phenomena such as birds flying backwards. Some superstitious people claimed that these are evil omens. But the court historian Shuxing countered: "These phenomena are simply the results of natural Yin-Yang interactions, they are not evil omens. Only people can create evil omens." (Zuozhuan/The Sixteenth Year of Duke Xi) Shuxing clearly recognised here that natural phenomena are no more than the occurrances of nature, there is absolutely no correlation with "good or bad omen" in the human realm. "Good" and "evil" are always human-created, they have absolutely nothing to do with the rewards or punishments of the gods. On the issue of how to build a city-wall, the representatives of the two states of Song and Xue had a major debate. The Song officials used divination as evidence, while the Xue officials used human affairs as evidence. Commenting on this debate, the official Mimuo stated: "The Xue depend on humans, while the Song depend on the gods, surely the Song are in the wrong." (Zuozhuan/The First Year of Duke Ding) From these commentaries, we can clearly see that the primitive materialists of those days not only recognised that in the relationship between humans and gods, humans are central and more important, but they even began to suggest that in the relationship between humans and nature, there is no place for gods at all. This way the status of humans have been further improved.
There is another Chinese philosopher of the Spring and Autumn Period who had atheist tendencies, he is Zichan from the State of Zheng. He was also one of the first people in China to publish a clear code of laws, and therefore he can be considered as a forerunner of the Legalist school of thought. Zichan once rebuked another official for claiming that the State of Zheng will face a major fire disaster due to astrological observations. He said: "The Way of Heaven is distant; While the Way of Man is near, since we cannot even reach Heaven, how can we claim to know so much about it? What do you know about the real Way of Heaven that you can say so much about it? How can people ever believe you?" (Zuozhuan/The Eighteenth Year of Duke Zhao) Zichan compared the "Way of Heaven" with the "Way of Man". He says that the Way of Heaven is illusory and distant, while the Way of Man is concrete and near, so the only rational way to analyse good and evil omens is to base it on human affairs. Zichan also opposed the religious ritual to offer sacrifices to Chinese dragons. He said: "We have nothing to do with the dragons, and the dragons have nothing to do with us." (Zuozhuan/The Nineteenth Year of Duke Zhao) There is simply no correlation between humans and dragons at all, so what is the point of offering sacrifices to it?
Among the atheist philosophers that operated during the end of the Spring and Autumn Period, many were thinkers representing relatively progressive political forces, such as Zichan of the Zheng state mentioned above. During this period of radical transition in society, they claimed that the roots of all good and evil lie not with Heaven, but with Man, this demonstrates their skeptical attitudes towards the gods. To a certain extent they have correctly observed that all the problems of human society are essentially problems between man and man, not the problems between Heaven and man or the gods and man. This corresponds with their own political and socio-economic positions at the time, as representatives of the newly emerging feudal landlord class that tries to win over people's hearts in order to politically struggle against the ruling slave-lord aristocracy. Objectively, this had the effects of liberating the masses to some extent from the authority of Heaven and the gods.