This Chinese philosopher reformed politics in one generation

Mòzǐ replaced his corrupt government with a humanist one.

In the fifth century BCE, around the same time that Socrates was preaching in Greece and the Buddha was practicing in India, Chinese rulers warred against one another in an endless battle for power and territory. They pursued military fame and glory, placed family members over vassal states, taxed constituents exorbitantly for their benefit, and razed surrounding states to the ground for their own plundering.

“Entering the state’s borders, they mow down its crops, fell its trees, raze its city walls, filling its moats with the rubble, burn its ancestral shrines, and slaughter its sacrificial animals,” Mòzǐ said of the time. “People who resist are beheaded; those who don’t resist are brought back in chains, the men to labor in stables and on chain gangs, the women to thresh grain.”¹

The rest were the collateral damage of their power struggles and feuding, forced to spend their lives at battle, losing their property to warmongers, having their wealth stolen out from under them and their lives reduced to slavery without much they could do about it.

Until Mòzǐ.

Mòzǐ believed this behavior was the result of rampant self-interest. “The high officials each care about their clan and don’t care about other clans, so they disorder other clans to benefit their own,” he said. “The various lords each care about their state and don’t care about other states, so they attack other states to benefit their own.”

This had a trickle-down effect on society. “Now people know only to care about themselves and don’t care about others, and hence they don’t hesitate to deploy themselves to injure others’ selves,” he said. “The strong inevitably oppress the weak, the wealthy inevitably humiliate the poor, the noble are inevitably contemptuous of the common, and the cunning inevitably deceive the ignorant.”

According to legend, Mòzǐ was born the same year his predecessor, Confucius, died. Followers of the old philosopher wore elaborate robes and hats, spent their time studying scrolls and practicing elaborate rituals, and publicly engaged in chanting and prayer. Despite their tedious obsession with “virtue,” Mòzǐ believed the Confucians did nothing to improve things—except for themselves.

As he saw it, all these problems had one root cause: “They all arise from not caring about each other.”²

And caring only for oneself.

So Mòzǐ started a reform movement founded on the idea that people should not act in their own self-interest, but the interest of the community at large. He called their founding doctrine “welfare” or “inclusive care” (jiān ài 兼愛) and their moral objective was to act for “the benefit of the world.”

“The task of the benevolent is surely to diligently seek to promote the benefit of the world and eliminate harm to the world and to take this model throughout the world,” Mòzǐ said. “Does it benefit people? Then do it. Does it not benefit people? Then stop.”³

This movement grew among the middle class, a community of artisans and merchants who came together to take care of the poor and the sick, educate the uneducated, and work in the best interest of all people, not just themselves and their families. They spent their days working on economic development, coming up with engineering advancements, and strategizing defensive warfare tactics that would protect small states from large aggressors.

These initiatives were funded collectively—if one of their members was to come into riches, they weren’t to use it for their own excesses but for the benefit of the community at large. Eventually, the organization grew so large that they split into independent groups led by their own grandmasters.

The ultimate goal of these organizations? Come up with ideas that would better society, and install politicians who would enact them.

Unlike Confucius, who thought morally upright individuals should abscond from government altogether, Mòzǐ believed there was no place more in need of individuals out for the collective good than within government leadership. His schools educated individuals to be placed as civil servants, and his founding text, The Mòzǐ, wasn’t addressed to individuals for personal enlightenment, but to “kings, dukes, great men, officers, and gentlemen.” In other words: bureaucrats who had the power and influence to shape society for the better.

“The Mohists’ basic project was social and political reform, not inquiry for inquiry’s sake,” Chris Fraser says in his book The Philosophy of the Mòzǐ. “They were interested primarily in social and political problems. Their theories emerged from a reasoned attempt to solve those problems and to persuade others to adopt their solutions.”

With this aim, Fraser says “[Mòzǐ] traveled from state to state trying to persuade rulers and officials to adopt a platform of policies intended to end warfare, alleviate poverty, and promote the welfare of all,” and they listened! “A magnetic leader, he attracted a following that grew into one of the most influential social and intellectual movements in preimperial China.”

Mòzǐ’s was a social reform movement meant to displace bad politics with better ones. His goal was “changing people within a generation.”⁴

And he did!

Over time, governments became less corrupt and filled with more community-minded leaders. Though they never displaced the highest office, they successfully filled middle and low posts most important to local lives, and rulers adopted the policies most popular to the Mohist movement. “By the Hàn, their most compelling ethical and political ideas—such as inclusive care and benefit for ‘all under Heaven,’ the need for unified norms and a merit-based bureaucracy, and the importance of meeting the basic economic needs of all—had been widely adopted even by their opponents,” Fraser says.

Mohists reformed their political system by creating their own—a welfare state operating within various totalitarian states. They made and enforced their own laws, elevated politicians into positions of leadership, and even formed a militia that would protect their movement against oppressive forces and come to the aid of neighboring cities under threat of attack. The last 21 chapters of the Mòzǐ are a series of defense techniques to be used in case of invasion.

The Mohists were not conquerors—the Mòzǐ is clear that militias were only to be used for defense and the only exception to that rule was humanitarian intervention. If a tyrant was torturing people or murdering children, an offensive campaign could remove the chaotic despot and restore peace and order to a region, but they could never go out and claim new territory on their own.

Mòzǐ traveled from state to state, dissuading leaders from attacking neighboring states. One story says he walked for 10 days to persuade the leader of Chǔ not to attack the neighboring Sòng. Another says he advised a king under threat of invasion to befriend neighboring states as allies while subjugating himself to the enemy to avoid war. Mòzǐ argued that the cost of war was too high and the cost of subjugation much less. Wars disrupted planting seasons, wasted weapons and livestock, and killed off their population. Worse, wars tended to beget other wars in retaliation, resulting in neverending war cycles as the two clans spar over territories for centuries.

That the Mohists had their own militias who could help neighboring states was a huge draw. “The militias were probably crucial in winning influence for the Mohists, since rulers of small city-states and fiefs would have been keen to befriend them and enlist their support,” Fraser says. “Remarks throughout the middle and later strata of the Mòzǐ indicate that they considered a strong defense force crucial to state welfare.”

Mohism had a lasting impact during the “Hundred Schools of Thought” period of preimperial China, but like most movements it eventually petered out. When Emperor Qin conquered all the states and created China in 221 BCE, he threw out all philosophical movements in favor of a more authoritarian “legalism.” When the Han Dynasty eventually replaced it in 206 BCE they resurrected Confucianism for their uses. Confucianism emphasized social harmony through hierarchical relationships (ruler-subject, parent-child, husband-wife) which aligned well with the needs of centralized states and reinforced obedience to authority.

Confucianism remains the more dominant philosophy in China to this day. Many have wondered what might have happened if Mohism had been the more influential movement instead, but a humanist movement that acted for the benefit of all and sought a government that did the same was always incompatible with power-hungry individuals who sought their own interests. Grassroots movements to displace the powerful would surface time and time again, not just Mohism in China, but also Democracy in Athens, and Christian movements during the Roman Empire. Protestant and abolitionist and suffrage and cooperatist movements fought for the same.

The cycle continues.

Humanists continue to work in the interest of all against the self-interested motivations of a few.

We can only continue Mòzǐ’s work today.

Comments are open to all subscribers on this one. Thanks for participating in further literary salon discussion!

Elle Griffin

1. Mz 28/46-55

2. Mz 14/4–12

3. Mz 32/1-2

4. Mz 16/74