Socialist Marketing Economy Needs Safeguards of Laws

Chen Ting(North University of China,Taiyuan　Shanxi　030051)



Socialist Marketing Economy Needs Safeguards of Laws

Chen Ting
(North University of China,TaiyuanShanxi030051)

In the context of national economy,the social relationship adjustments rested on the morality and ethics,patriarchal relations,and blood relationship and affinity connections;in the era of planned economy,the readjustment of social relations depended on the government administrative regulations,while on the rule of law over the overall process of the modern marketing economy.In the practice level,when the socialist marketing economy moves towards the rule of law,it’s pressing to classify the boundary of the regulatory manipulation and market control,restrain power into the cage of system,legalize the proprietary protection system,and strike a balance among the policy makers,market,entities,and the general public.

marketing economy;rule-of-law economy;socialist marketing economy;proprietary protection system

Ⅰ.The rule-of-law spirit of socialist marketing economy and the rule-of-law system

1.The concept of the rule-of-law system

The rule-of-law system consists of democracy and constitutionalism,among which democratic system refers to the economic democracy and freedom in a narrow sense,the basis of marketing economy for “freedom of management,investment and competition”.〔1〕The democratic system can not only bring the initiatives of market entities into full play and oversight corporations to effectively respond to the signal information of market prices,as ways to maximize company profits and achieve optimal distribution of social resources.When their contracts expire,employees can enjoy their rights to decide on employment by negotiating with their employers and taking working environment,payrolls,and promotion prospects into account.Above all,a significant feature of economic democracy is that public rights should be executed within the sphere permitted by law,while protecting private property.In addition,constitutional and democratic systems serve as the two wings of the rule-of-law system.The constitutional system,a decentralization system based on the constitutions and laws,focuses on popular sovereignty,democratic centralism,and power intensivism.In particular popular sovereignty is the fundamental principle of the constitutions,and an important prerequisite and the value pursuit of the constitutional system as well,indicating the legitimacy of people’s empowerment,power supervision,supervisory authority,and exercise of power.The democratic centralism and restraint of power are the specific way to realize the constitutional system.In the exercise of constitutions,a transparent and open information platform,the involvement of the general public to participate in the public policy-making,and the improvement in authority supervision mechanism are important ways to achieve social benefit balance and prevent rampant power rent-seeking practices by build unblocked bottom-up and top-down information channels.

2.The inherent logic of marketing economy and rule-of-law economy

The marketing economy comes with the rule of law along the way.In the advanced marketing economic society,the rule-of-law has even more solid foundation in the modern marketing economic environment,even though legal systems existed in different forms in the natural economy,feudal economy,and commodity economy.Marx believed that laws and the rule of law gradually improved along with the consistent development of commodity exchanges and the marketing economy,and “After appearing,dealings evolved into legal institution。… The actual relations emerging from the commodity exchanges evolved into the legal form of contracts”,〔2〕afterwards,Engels elaborated on the point of view and pointed out that “in the initial stage of the social development,as commodity production and exchanges increased,the commodity production,distribution and exchanges required to be summarize by a common rule,which public orders and good customs developed into laws.”〔3〕

Under planning economic circumstances,market entities were lack of independent market trading rights,but the authorities maintained economic orders by exercising administrative powers to keep the maximum distribution rights under control.As the market economy develops,and trading scopes,entities and risks increase and get more complex,traditional morality and ethnics,consanguinity and blood relationship,and administrative rights could not make ends meet in dealing with complicated economic and social issues,thereby,laws with more social sanctions were readily to come out.Although the rule-of-law aims to ensure the justice and freedom of market entities to compete in the market,the extent market disorders inevitably require the government to properly intervene in maintaining economic orders.In comparison with traditional planning economic system,the government regulations in the modern marketing economy have to fully comply with its legal system.Taking laws as a cage for systems,governments have to follow the guideline of “doing with the authorization of laws” to ensure the implementation of “doing under the restraints of laws”,to tap market potentials and vitalities so as to achieve the Pareto improvement of total social utilities.

Ⅱ.Legal guaranties and practical requirements for socialist marketing economic performance

1.Cage power within the restrain of systems

With the clarification of boundary between government and marketing regulations at the center,the rule-of-law economy restrains the administrative intervention in marketing by caging powers within the framework of systems.As China’s president Xi Jinping said,“China should center on the inherent logic of comprehensively building a moderately prosperous society,comprehensively driving reform to a deeper level,and comprehensively governing the country in accordance with the law,and their integral requirement for the rule of law.” The recognition of various “cages” for system constraint is the prerequisite of power restraint to determine what kinds of system is favorable or limitative for the exercise of administrative powers so as to maintain stable operation of the marketing economy.The primary purpose of restraining administrative power is to demand the governments to withdraw their intervention in micro-economy,bring the decisive role of market in resource distribution into full play,and to contain local government entrepreneurialism.In China,local governments show great tendency of entrepreneurialism in officer performance evaluation and incentives system and get involved in the activities of investment promotion,land management,and real estate dealings,severely restricting the full play of powers of marketing economic entities.The excess intervenes of the authorities directly lead to the rising of crony capitalism,and every possible obstruct of vested interest groups in the reform of marketing legalization,causing inefficient system arrangement for a long period.

“Doing within the authorization of laws” has been an important criteria for restraining administrative power.It requires that the administrative organs shall not make any detrimental impacts on the lawful interests and rights of legal person,citizens and other economic organizations,and encourage the government to carry out a power list to diminish power rent-seeking.The restraints of administrative power do not mean the regulators govern by non-interference.Because the inadequate of external factors,public products,information,and monopoly can lead to market failures,the government will be required to stand out to ensure the supply of public products,establish transparent and open information platform,transform government functions,so as to transit from traditional pre-approval to in- and post-management to solve the problem related to administrative monopoly.Furthermore,the government should strengthen social regulation,improve the threshold for corporation entrants,improve environmental technique standards,and oversight on food safety and cleaning production,to increase the overall social well-beings.

2.Legalization of property protection system

The central task of socialist marketing economy is,on the basis of freedom and equity,to establish a complete property protection system.The economics of law works to explore the means of logic self-consistency of Property Law and Contract Law in terms of process setting,forms and objectives.In the economics of law,the purpose of the Property Law is to achieve the optimal mix of economic activity entities and social resources,while the Contract Law aims to improve transaction efficiency by reducing trading costs.From the perspectives of theoretical framework,the rule-of-law economy encompasses the delimitation and protection of property rights,among which the clear delimitation of property rights is the premise of reducing trading costs and maximizing trading efficiency,while property rights protection is the basic requirement for fuel innovation and secure social justice and fairness.

China’s basic economic system is featured by public ownership as the main form and the mutual development of economy with different types of ownership,providing ample resources of multiple distribution of property rights.From the angle of economics,although public ownership is able to give full play of the utilization value of public resources,it is incompatible in organization incentives,due to unclear property rights in the mixed ownership reform.As the shared property rights,amid the mixed ownership economy in the SOE reform faces the severe interest conflicts within the organization,it is imperative to delimit the property rights of owners to coordinate and balance the interests of multiple entities.When China is deepening reform comprehensively,the legalization of property rights system gives priority to the reform of rural land use system,state-owned enterprise reform,and the reform of mixed ownership,manages to establish laws related to property rights protection,to meet the rule-of-law requirements of “one property one right” and “the principle of numerus clausus”.The principle of one property one right,that one right can only exist on one subject,can effectively prevent the increase of trading costs by avoiding the indefinite property rights,while “the principle of statutory property rights” requesting statutory conditions property rights,is conducive to developing stable psychological anticipation in the society,and reducing the market breakdown risks caused by information unsymmetry.Particularly,in the course of the rural land reform,the information related to the confirmation of rural land rights,land mortgage,and land circulation should be open,detailed,to achieve the effective unification of property rights entities,determinant parties,and responsibility subjects,to clearly delimit property rights.

3.Getting relations of government,market,enterprises,and society right

Properly dealing with the relations of government,market,enterprises,and the society is at the center of the rule-of-law marketing economic practices.Firstly,the government and market are inseparably interconnected.While market fully exercises its determination in resource distribution,the government should try to create a favorable competitive environment,and secure stable economic order,and put more efforts to ensure the adequate public goods supply and macro-economic control.On the other hand,the government should further the program of the power list,and create an equal,free,and rule-of-law environment for the market by establishing accountability system,administrative decision-making legal procedures,and administrative power constraints.Secondly,separate administration from management.In the planning economy,the mixed functions of the government and enterprises,gave rise to excess intervenes of the government in the market,and inefficient resource distribution and soft budget constraints.As opposition to the planned economy,the rule-of-law economy relies on the clear delimitation and protection of property,and removes the excess intervenes of the authorities in company affairs,and fosters enterprises to management,improvement,and innovation capabilities to achieve financial independence.The government should orientate to transit from doing and managing everything to precise management that is to conduct fully scientific verification,respect market rules,and conduct appropriate intervenes and management within the legal framework.Thirdly,release the social space for citizens.The relations of the government and the society center to release the pressed citizen society by the planned economic system.That means,developing the socialist rule-of-law economy with Chinese characteristics requires actively coordinating social forces,adjusting social relations,standardizing social activities and balancing social benefits so as to create a pluralistic society involving citizens participation;at last,resort to the capacity of participating in and discussing the state affairs of citizen groups,accomplish the stable development of the socialist rule-of-law economy.

References:

〔1〕沈明：《法治和市场经济的契合与互动——以人性为视角的考察》，《清华法治论衡》2001年第1期，第70页。

〔2〕《马克思恩格斯全集》第3卷，人民出版社，1960年，第412页。

〔3〕《共产党宣言》单行本，人民出版社，1997年，第44页。

About the author：Chen Ting,MA,School of Humanities and Social Sciences,North University of China,research field:research on the ideological and political education and management of College students.