Posted in Essays on November 13, 2020 17 min read
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Chinese society is plagued by a lack of trust. Local governments brim with corruption, while companies engage in dishonest business practices that endanger the safety of their consumers. To curb these behaviors and rebuild trust in society, Xi Jinping and his government have initiated a social credit system, that seeks to render visible those vicious citizens acting against the general welfare. The system has been initiated as pilot programs across the country since 2014. Importantly, it is not a concentrated system employed by a single entity, rather it is a myriad of private companies working with the central and local governments that share data with each other. By 2020 the Chinese government aims to implement this system for all its citizens and combine all data points (Mistreanu, 2018). The goal of the system is to “allow the trustworthy to roam everywhere under heaven while making it hard for the discredited to take a single step.” (Harris, 2018).
The Social credit system works on a simple premise: Citizens, businesses, and government officials are rated on their conduct, and then receive a score which reflects their trustworthiness to others. To elaborate, their social credit score is negatively impacted when committing acts such as the following: defaulting on loans, playing too many video games, or engaging in corrupt activities. Whereas helping one’s neighbors, cleaning up trash, donating, or being a good mother, increases one’s score. The credit score of a citizen or their relatives can determine their interest rate on loans, their ability to buy tickets for trains and planes, their rank on waitlists for healthcare, and their kids’ admission into higher education (Mistreanu, 2018).
Many Chinese embrace this system, as they believe it disincentivizes fraudsters and leads to a better community life (Mistreanu, 2018). The CCP[1] too welcomes the social credit system, because it allows them to educate citizens according to their moral ideals and punish dissenters that threaten the state’s stability, all the while surveying the performance of local governments. Therefore, many in Chinese society put high hopes into this system. In some pilot cases citizens took the systems consequences even farther than the government had intended (Mistreanu, 2018). Using the philosophical contributions of Thomas More and Baruch Spinoza, this essay explores the following questions surrounding the SCS[2]:
At the time Thomas More wrote Utopia, Europe was befallen by a false idea of justice. The nobility of a people was considered to be their wealth and seeking to become nobler they aimed at acquiring more money, which turned the essence of social life into greed. The greedy nobles enjoyed luxurious lives, whilst those that portrayed truly virtuous qualities were overlooked and lived a life of misery (Skinner, 2012, p. 233-234). Thomas More observed this development but felt that critique was ineffective as many merely defended the status quo and rejected criticism out of hand. To make the case that an alternative society was possible he wrote Utopia, a story that is neither completely fictional nor factual and therefore could not be discarded out of hand. In Utopia he imagined a society, that would reward the truly virtuous qualities of people and not be determined by the principles of greed, particular interests, and injustice but rather the self-less laboring for the common good (Skinner, 2012, p. 230).
The similarities to Chinese society are striking. China has seen an immense economic upswing in the past decades, on the backs of its farmers and production workers. However, for a country that considers itself communist, the distribution of wealth is becoming increasingly unequal, and many people feel made light of by their government (Xie & Zhou, 2014). Their worthiness and contributions to society are discounted. Hence, present China too is organized according to a false idea of justice and its people are hungering to be esteemed justly. However, until now they could not be satisfied, as negating the status quo remains futile, since the Chinese government suffocates all forms of social critique. Luckily for them, the government has come up with a new governance procedure. A system that measures and demonstrates the virtue of each citizen. While from the perspective of the government it is merely supposed to disincentivize fraud and immoral behavior, it can take on a utopian vision for citizens. Its promise is a fair comparable score demonstrating one’s virtue and contribution to the welfare of society. It introduces a new value system that subjectively devalues bills and gold, framing their accumulators in a new light of greed and egocentrism. The social credit system could fulfill the hunger for justice of the neglected. At last, the farmers and factory workers may be judged the way they perceive themselves to be.
Haven’t they learned from past Utopian projects? They all emerged as visions from singular entities or groups, that assumed they can shape a people, not willing to see that humans are willful agents. That do not conform but rather ply the vision as it suits them. National socialism, the Soviet Union, and finally Maoist China. All of them culminated in dystopias, as their visions sedimented through to reality (Introduction: Open Utopia, p. 9-12). Admittedly, this time could be different, for the citizens are consulted. Measures that were too harsh have been repealed after public outcries. Citizens have gained the means to rate their local governments. The destination of the social credit system is still unclear even to the government, but what we are left to question is its malleability and if the latter makes a difference, for the utopian vision in question. Already, in many instances, citizens have extended the rating system on their own accord and punished the vicious themselves. Several hundreds of government officials have been blacklisted and barred from services as retribution for their corruption (Mistreanu, 2018). The social credit system is the aspiration for which many in China are holding their breath until 2020.
Welcome to Xitopia.[3]
The residents of Xitopia will follow the commands of the state, for they fear the negative social credit score. However, can we then still consider them free citizens? A slave is without rights. Are they significantly different, when they yield to the sovereign at any whim and are pressured to present themselves more virtuous than they would like to be for fear of consequences through the SCS?
Spinoza considers, there to be no free will, as everything is but a chain of effect leading to other effects with only one origin, God (Israel, 2001, p. 231). Consequently, his conception of freedom rejects free will but embraces those acts that are in the interest of the agent as free (Pitts, 1986, p. 23). Importantly, only acts out of reason can certainly be in our interest, as those from appetite can be to our detriment (Spinoza, 1901, p.528)
According to Spinoza, in nature, the rights of man extend as far as their power does. Therefore, they have a right to everything that is in their capacity to do for any reason. However, the faculty of reason lets man see that it is in their advantage to join forces in their self-preservation, hence, they sign a social contract wherein they limit their rights and thereby their powers and yield them to the sovereign, be that a person, a group or all members of a state (Pitts, 1986, p. 24). However, they never transfer their rights completely for two causes: The faculty of reason commands to preserve themselves and therefore forbids them to put themselves completely at the mercy of another. Secondly, reason involves thought and even if they cede their rights to the state, they can never cede their thought, because the state is not able to control their thought (Pitts, 1986, p. 25). In conclusion, all rights concerning reason are inseparable from the individual. Those other rights they have transferred are in their capacity to take back as they wish at any moment (Spinoza, 1901, p.531). However, they will only do so when their reason determines it to be the lesser of two evils or the greater of two goods.
Consequently, the SCS promotes their self-interest, as the individual welfare is a part of the common welfare. Therefore, acting out of pressure to their social credit score does not infringe on their freedom. Hence, the Chinese should be grateful for the SCS for making it less attractive to follow their appetites that stand against the common good of society and enticing them to do what is good for the community. Should the state demand things of them, that are not in their self-interest, they can at any time revoke the rights they have transferred to the sovereign
The Chinese Communist Party will certainly use the social credit system to stifle dissent and critique. Can that be reconciled with the stability of the state?
Spinoza thinks that the resentment of men ‘is most aroused, when beliefs which they think to be true are treated as criminal’ (Spinoza, 2007, p. 296). This is because repressing freedom of speech goes against the command of reason and will lead to instability as citizens will only subordinate themselves to reason. However, he also believes that we must repress freedom of speech, because else centers of opposition with their own conceptions of justice may develop that threaten the sovereignty of the state. Bearing these two in mind, the state must find a sort of middle ground. That means yielding the largest possibledomain for the expression of individual opinions since these become assets that contribute to the strength of the state (potentia[4]) and constitute a part of its stability and power. Especially, since individuals that help in the construction of a state will consequently wish for its preservation and desire to be within its power. Therefore, the stable state should allow free speech to a certain extent but limit it in those spheres where it threatens its sovereignty (Balibar, 2003, p. 30-31).
If the SCS fits into this framework is ultimately questionable. It does allow for an incredibly immediate form of increasing the potentia of the state, as individual citizens can rate their government’s performance. On the other hand, depending on the implementation controversial opinions may be sanctioned leading to a society that will be mute on all matters politic, thereby reducing potentia.
Is the SCS a societal restructuring that originates from the individual wills to enlarge their common welfare and their preservation? Or is it a product of the state seeking to stabilize itself for its preservation and continued existence?
When the state restrains the individual appetites through laws or in this case the SCS, it simultaneously makes citizens act less on appetites and more reasonably and thereby it increases the common good. Assuming this process culminates in the state with the greatest achievable common good, then we are either left with the most reasonable government for the people by the people, or a self-preserving government of the people through reason.
To elaborate, when the state has maximized the welfare of its citizenship and thus become perfectly reasonable, citizens under no circumstances have an incentive to deviate from the social contract. Reason will only let them choose the greater of two goods, and therefore they cannot choose the worse which would be taking back their rights (Spinoza, 1901, p.528-529). Consequently, they become a mere function of the state. A “free” cog in the machine. Comparable, to how a fish has no more reasonable place to live than in the sea. Man has no more reasonable place to live than in the state with the greatest common good. Therefore, ultimately man would be determined by the state. But as my earlier analogy, should we consider the state an individual under these circumstances?
Spinoza states that ‘[T]he commonwealth is no more in greater danger of its citizens than from its enemies’ (Spinoza, 1925, TP Ch. 6 Section 6). However, this does not hold for the state with the greatest achievable common good, for we established that it effectively determines the individual, which is then by reason prohibited to exit the social contract. So, are we to make of this that this final form of state stops being a commonwealth? No, for only as a commonwealth does it have the power to bind its citizens absolutely to the social contract. However, I propose we would do better to simultaneously see it as an individual.
Spinoza states that an individual is a composite body whose parts “communicate their motion to each other in a certain fixed manner” (Spinoza, 1925, Ethics part 2 proposition 100) The state with the freest possible individuals has constrained all appetites and thereby homogenized the actions of its citizens. Meaning, they all act solely in accordance with reason, meaning their motion will always be in that certain fixed manner. Thus, whilst humans are attaining the greatest common good, simultaneously, the state is approaching individuality. Returning to the original question it remains unclear whether the people or the state want the SCS. Chronologically the will of the people towards the SCS arises before the state can reach individuality, however, Spinoza believes that both are but a product of one will, that originated from the primordial will that is god (Israel, 2001, p.231).
To Chinese citizens, the SCS has taken on the nature of a Utopia. Luckily according to Spinoza, even though the SCS is a means of surveillance and interference of the state in the life of its citizens it actually increases their freedom, for it is to their self-preservation. Furthermore, the SCS should improve the stability of the state since it, for now, allows for freedom of expression as long as it does not question the sovereignty of the state. As the SCS allows citizens to criticize the government and the state restrains their citizen’s appetites, the common good increases. Assuming that this is a teleological development that will culminate in the perfectly reasonable state where all appetites are muted, the state takes on a second nature as individual. Therein, it completely determines its citizens, as it has restrained all appetites. Further exploration, I believe, should scrutinize the state’s status as an individual and if from the state we can reach even higher order individuals. Finally, it remains to be seen if the Social Credit System, differs in its realization from previous Utopian visions.
References
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[1] Chinese Communist Party
[2] Social Credit System
[3] Referring to a China under the rule of Xi Jinping that has implemented the Social Credit System to achieve a more just society. A wordplay on ‘Utopia’
[4] ‘Active constitutive element of its power’ (Balibar, 2003, p.30)
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