Perfecting social assistance and promoting social harmony
Hong Dayong
Expression of opinions:
At present, the gap between the rich and the poor is an important factor threatening social harmony, and social assistance is an important mechanism to narrow the gap and promote social harmony. Therefore, it is necessary to further adjust and change the concept, correctly understand social assistance, actively promote urban and rural overall planning of social assistance, make social assistance more targeted, attach importance to the capacity building of recipients, and actively promote the organic integration of social assistance system, so as to accelerate the improvement of social assistance system.
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It is an important task put forward by the 16th National Congress of the Communist Party of China and the 3rd, 4th and 5th Plenary Sessions of the 16th CPC Central Committee to improve the ability of building a harmonious socialist society as an important content of strengthening the construction of the Party's ruling ability. Perfecting social assistance is an important mechanism to ease social tension, enhance social unity and promote social harmony, and it is also an extremely important task to build a harmonious socialist society.
The gap between the rich and the poor-a demon threatening social harmony
If we say that before the reform and opening up, the income distribution of residents in China was low and the members of society were still in a certain state of poverty as a whole, then after more than 20 years of economic growth since the reform, the lives of most members of society have been greatly improved and they have obviously got rid of poverty. However, at the same time, the gap between the rich and the poor among members of society has widened rapidly. The existence and expansion of the gap between the rich and the poor has become the focus of various interests contradictions and conflicts, which has aroused widespread public concern.
The rapidly expanding gap between the rich and the poor is doing more and more harm to the social and economic development of China, which directly poses a major threat to social harmony.
First of all, the gap between the rich and the poor continues to widen, aggravating the poverty problem and worsening the social conditions of the poor. Secondly, the excessive gap between the rich and the poor restricts the expansion of domestic demand, which leads to insufficient effective demand in the domestic market and restricts economic development. Third, the excessive gap between the rich and the poor is weakening the legitimacy of economic growth, weakening the recognition of economic growth by members of society, thus hindering healthy and sustained economic growth. Fourth, the gap between the rich and the poor is too large, which will easily lead to social disorder and ultimately endanger everyone's interests. Finally, the widening gap between the rich and the poor goes against the goal of socialist construction.
Social assistance-a lucky star to promote social harmony
Under the condition of developing the socialist market economy, in order to narrow the gap between the rich and the poor and promote social harmony, we should devote ourselves to constantly improving the market economic system, maintaining the fairness and justice of market competition, and giving better play to the primary distribution function of the market mechanism. However, it is equally important to improve the institutional arrangement of redistribution, especially to strengthen the redistribution function of the government and improve the social assistance system. In a sense, it is cheaper and more effective.
Social assistance helps to narrow the gap between the rich and the poor, which is easy to understand, because it is an institutional arrangement that directly transfers payments to the poor. Because the gap between the rich and the poor constitutes a threat to social harmony, we can say that social assistance that helps to narrow the gap between the rich and the poor will also help to achieve social harmony. However, we can further look at the relationship between social assistance and social harmony.
First of all, social assistance reflects the concern of the government and society for the disadvantaged groups and helps to promote social identity. Secondly, social assistance helps to narrow the gap between social members in the starting point of competition, thus helping to promote social justice, which is obviously the premise of social harmony. What needs to be emphasized in particular is that improving social assistance in China at this stage will also help to promote social justice in another sense, that is, the development process of China is accompanied by institutional reform and transition. In this process, some people related to the original system suffered severe relative deprivation, such as laid-off workers from state-owned and collective enterprises. Giving assistance to those unemployed laid-off workers whose lives are in trouble can be said to be a form of paying the reform cost to promote social justice. This kind of assistance is very important for alleviating social injustice and even social contradictions and conflicts. Finally, social assistance reflects the respect and maintenance of citizens' basic rights in modern society.
In a society where the gap between the rich and the poor is widening rapidly and poverty still exists, it is an important guarantee, even a basic premise, to improve social assistance and improve its institutionalized level.
Perfecting the social assistance system-the only way to build a harmonious society
Since the reform and opening up, especially since the 1990s, the reform and construction of China's urban and rural social assistance system have made certain achievements. At present, a social assistance framework based on social assistance such as the minimum living security system for urban residents, the minimum living security system for rural residents, the rural five-guarantee system, the natural disaster relief system, the urban vagrants and beggars relief system, and the rural poor households relief system has been initially formed. Generally speaking, China's social assistance system has played a certain role in ensuring the basic livelihood of the needy people and promoting social harmony. However, there are still some outstanding problems in current social assistance, which need to be improved and perfected urgently.
First, further adjust and change ideas and correctly understand social assistance.
First of all, to change the view and attitude towards the poor, we can't simply attribute the poverty of the poor to personal reasons. In the contemporary society of structural transformation and system transition, the poverty of many people is not caused by personal reasons, but more by social reasons. The government and society should bear the responsibility of helping the poor and pay the cost of social change.
Secondly, poverty alleviation can not be simply regarded as increasing the burden on the government and society, but the responsibility of the government and society and the objective need to protect citizens' basic right to subsistence. Compared with social insurance and social welfare, people talk too much about the negative color of social assistance. In fact, social assistance, social insurance and social welfare are completely consistent in promoting labor reproduction, ensuring basic people's livelihood and maintaining social stability.
Third, we should deeply understand the connotation of social assistance and clearly distinguish the difference between modern social assistance and traditional social assistance. Social assistance is a complicated process of transferring various resources to the needy, not just a one-time cash relief. Social assistance does not aim at ensuring the survival of the rescued person, but regards it as the foundation. On this basis, through various supporting assistance and social work, the rescued people can get rid of poverty through self-help and integrate into the mainstream society. Therefore, modern social assistance is far more complicated than traditional social assistance. It is a highly professional work, and it is a work that truly embodies people-oriented.
Finally, we should correctly view the position of social assistance in China's social security system. A popular view is that China's social security system should focus on social insurance. However, the current practice of social insurance is not ideal, which makes employers, employees and the government dissatisfied to a great extent. A question that must be seriously considered is: How much room does the social insurance system, which originated from the early industrialization and marketization practice in the West, have for application and development in contemporary China society? Based on the characteristics of social assistance in China, such as pay-as-you-go, open procedures, low operating cost, obvious effect and easy acceptance by the public, we believe that we must attach great importance to the role of social assistance system and even seriously consider building a social security system with China characteristics as its core.
Second, actively promote social assistance in urban and rural areas.
Gradually narrowing and eliminating the gap between urban and rural areas is an important goal of socialist modernization, and it is also an objective need to build a well-off society in an all-round way, promote social harmony and promote healthy and sustainable economic development. All social and economic policies should not deviate from this important goal. As an important social policy, social assistance should promote the coordination between urban and rural areas, instead of further strengthening the division and widening the gap between urban and rural areas.
In order to promote the overall planning of urban and rural social assistance, it needs to be emphasized that governments at all levels have an unshirkable responsibility in ensuring the basic livelihood of urban and rural residents, and it is necessary to break through the misconception that farmers have land to protect and accelerate the minimum living security system for urban and rural residents. In fact, due to the continuous decline of agricultural comparative income, the continuous marketization of rural social economy and the widening gap between urban and rural areas, the protective role of land and families for farmers has obviously declined, and it is urgent to provide institutionalized social assistance for rural poor residents. The pilot projects in some areas show that it is completely feasible to establish the minimum living security system for rural residents, and it will not increase too much financial pressure. The urgent task is to sum up experience and implement it widely.
Third, social assistance should be more targeted.
First of all, it is necessary to further identify and distinguish the needs of recipients, reform the average relief method, and promote classified relief and differential relief. Research shows that different types and sizes of families have different needs for living resources. For example, families with minors, the elderly, the sick or the disabled may need more and more living resources than families without these members; Because of the scale effect, families with large population can share many resources, so they need less living resources than families with small population. In view of this, if we simply calculate and allocate assistance according to the difference between the per capita income of the family and the government assistance standard, it will reduce the pertinence of assistance, which can also be said to be inefficient. In fact, some areas have tried classified assistance and differential assistance, which should be vigorously promoted on the basis of norms in the near future.
Secondly, it is necessary to properly distinguish between basic living assistance and other special assistance, and the objects of assistance in these two aspects cannot completely overlap. In fact, people who need basic living assistance may not all need special assistance such as education and medical care, although the proportion of people who need these special assistance may be higher. If the target group of special assistance is targeted at the people who need life assistance, it may not only cause idle or waste of assistance resources, but also cause relative unfairness, so that people whose basic living standards are slightly higher than the government assistance standards cannot enjoy the much-needed special assistance. Therefore, in order to make special assistance more targeted and efficient, the scope of assistance should be larger than those who need basic living assistance, that is to say, people whose income is slightly higher than the poverty line should also be included in the scope of special assistance.
Fourth, we should pay attention to the capacity building of the recipients.
The ultimate goal of social assistance is not to maintain or "create" a lowest income class, but to help recipients get rid of poverty with external help. Therefore, we must change the traditional concept of assistance, from passive assistance to active assistance, from simple cash assistance to comprehensive service provision, from objective assistance to participatory assistance, from extreme poverty to promoting asset accumulation, and finally enhance the ability of recipients to get rid of poverty.
Specific to practical work, it is mainly reflected in the following five points: First, it is necessary to change the objective attitude of rescue workers towards recipients, strengthen the interaction between rescuers and recipients, and promote the social participation of recipients; Second, it is necessary to appropriately enrich relief projects, not just providing cash or material support, but expanding service projects that will help recipients improve their social participation and social competitiveness; Third, the recipients should be allowed to accumulate assets within a certain range, and they should not simply take extreme poverty as the premise of receiving assistance, and they should not face the income tax of 100% and lose the motivation to increase their income; Fourth, improve the quality of social assistance workers and enhance the professional level of social assistance; Fifth, encourage professional social workers and non-governmental organizations to intervene in social assistance affairs.
Fifth, actively promote the organic integration of the social assistance system.
The current social assistance system was gradually established by different departments in different periods to meet different social needs. Therefore, the lack of organic integration and fragmentation between systems is understandable. However, this situation hinders the social assistance system from playing its due role, which is not commensurate with improving China's social security system, effectively safeguarding people's livelihood and promoting social harmony. In a certain sense, whether we can speed up the construction of a more perfect social assistance system under the new situation is a test of the ruling party's ruling ability.
We believe that an urgent task in the near future is to promote social assistance legislation, which is an important basis for promoting the integration of social assistance. From the experience of foreign countries, social assistance legislation takes precedence over social security legislation. At present, social assistance in China is still based on various regulations, decisions, notices and measures, and there is no clear and unified law. We suggest that the Law on Social Assistance be promulgated as soon as possible, which clearly stipulates the significance and status, concept and principle, subject, object, category, standard, procedure, organization, personnel, management and source of funds of social assistance.
In addition, we believe that the integration of social assistance system should be based on the national minimum living security system, with a view to continuously improving this system. On this basis, efforts should be made to combine general assistance with special assistance and cash assistance with service provision; In terms of rescue methods, conventional rescue and temporary rescue are combined; In the rescue management, the combination of departmental leadership and departmental linkage is implemented; In terms of the main body of assistance, the government is responsible for combining with social mutual assistance. (The author is a professor and doctoral supervisor in the Department of Sociology, Renmin University of China.)
China Education News, Third Edition, June 65438+1October 65438+August 2005.
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The speed of economic growth, the ability of independent innovation and the alleviation of personal income gap are the key issues in the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China's proposal to formulate the Eleventh Five-Year Plan for national economic and social development, and they are also important issues that people are generally concerned about at present.
Growth rate, independent innovation and income gap
Guo Fei
The Fifth Plenary Session of the 16th CPC Central Committee runs through Scientific Outlook on Development, and determines the guiding principles, objectives, main tasks and major measures for national economic and social development during the 11th Five-Year Plan period, guiding the whole party and people to continue to stride forward towards the grand goal of building a well-off society in an all-round way at a new starting point.
Maintain the speed of economic growth
According to the communique of the Fifth Plenary Session of the 16th CPC Central Committee, during the 11th Five-Year Plan period, on the basis of optimizing the structure, improving efficiency and reducing consumption, the per capita GDP in 20 10 will double that in 2000. This is actually based on the report of the 16th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, which further clarified and improved the speed requirement of China's economic growth in the first decade of the 2/kloc-0 century.
The report of the 16th National Congress of the Communist Party of China puts forward that on the basis of optimizing the structure and improving the efficiency, the gross domestic product will quadruple that of 2000 by 2020. This is based on the estimation of China's average annual economic growth rate of 7. 18% in the first 20 years of 2/kloc-0 century. During the Tenth Five-Year Plan period, China's economy grew rapidly. According to preliminary estimation, the average annual economic growth rate in this period is about 8.8%, which obviously exceeds the original speed requirement of 7. 18%. Accordingly, the 11th Five-Year Plan proposes that China should double its per capita GDP (not GDP) compared with 2000 in the first decade of this century. In fact, the adjustment of this quantitative index takes into account the factors of population increase 1 100 million in the first decade of this century. On the one hand, it is equivalent to increasing the quantitative index of China's GDP by about 1.4 trillion yuan on the basis of the original plan; On the other hand, it also laid a good foundation for China to successfully complete or complete the task of quadrupling GDP in 2020 ahead of schedule.
Of course, while clarifying and raising the requirements for the economic growth rate of China in the first decade of this century, the communique emphasized the importance and urgency of changing the mode of economic growth. Based on China's national conditions of resource bottleneck, especially energy shortage, and the current situation of low economic benefits, the communique clearly puts forward that during the Eleventh Five-Year Plan period, China's resource utilization efficiency should be significantly improved, and the energy consumption per unit of GDP should be reduced by about 20% compared with the end of the Tenth Five-Year Plan period, which requires us to speed up the pace of changing the economic growth mode and take the road of rejuvenating the country with benefits and recycling economy.
Enhance the ability of independent innovation
The "Communiqué" also proposed: strengthening the independent innovation capability should be regarded as the central link in adjusting the industrial structure and transforming the growth mode, speeding up the construction of a national innovation system, constantly enhancing the innovation capability of enterprises, and forming a group of advantageous enterprises with independent intellectual property rights and well-known brands and strong international competitiveness. This policy measure has strong practical pertinence and great significance.
At present, although China has become the third largest trading country in the world, it is not yet a strong trading country. Competitive foreign trade structure comes from competitive industrial structure, competitive industrial structure comes from competitive enterprises and brand-name products, and competitive enterprises and brand-name products depend on the independent innovation ability of a country and enterprises in the final analysis. Since the reform and opening up, on the whole, we have paid more attention to introduction than innovation. Relevant data show that at present, China spends 1 yuan to introduce technology, and the innovation of digestion and absorption is only 0.07 yuan; In the industrialization period, Japan and South Korea used 1 yuan to introduce technology and 5 yuan to 8 yuan to digest and absorb innovation. At the same time, although the amount of financial appropriation for science and technology in China is increasing, its proportion in financial expenditure has obviously decreased compared with the past.
Lack of independent innovation ability will lead to endless troubles. As a developing socialist country, the fundamental purpose of China's technology introduction is to enhance its independent innovation ability. Developed countries can transfer general advanced technologies at higher prices, but refuse to transfer core technologies. To obtain these core technologies, we must rely on the efforts of domestic scientific and technological personnel. We must not repeat the mistakes of some developing countries that rely on economy and technology.
Fundamentally speaking, to enhance the ability of independent innovation is to cultivate and train a large number of innovative party and government talents, enterprise management talents and professional and technical talents. To cultivate and bring up innovative talents, we need not only innovative education system, curriculum system, teaching content and teaching methods, but also innovative teachers. Teachers in colleges and universities should strive to innovate teaching contents, teaching methods and teaching modes, fully implement quality education, effectively improve teaching quality, and constantly enhance students' innovative spirit and practical ability.
Alleviate the personal income gap
The communique also put forward: improve the distribution system with distribution according to work as the main body and multiple modes of distribution coexisting, adhere to the participation of various production factors in distribution according to their contributions, pay more attention to social equity, increase the adjustment of income distribution, and strive to alleviate the trend of widening income distribution gap between regions and some members of society. Alleviating or narrowing the excessive personal income gap in China is a focus problem that the broad masses of people are very concerned about and need to be solved urgently in recent years.
Since the reform and opening up, although China has made remarkable progress in the reform of income distribution system, the personal income gap has been unreasonably widening for a long time. According to the data provided by the National Bureau of Statistics, in the first half of 2002, the basic situation of the urban family property gap in China was: 10% of the lowest-income family property accounted for10.4% of the total family property, 10% of the highest-income family property accounted for 45% of the total family property, and 80% of the total family property accounted for 53. The Gini coefficient of urban residents' family property is 0.5 1. In real economic life, income gap and property gap are intertwined and mutually causal. If left unchecked, some aspects of income inequality in China may hinder China's future growth and stability.
In recent years, the income gap among some members of our society is not only caused by the differences in labor contribution and ownership of production factors, but also to a great extent by power rent-seeking, illegal operation and system loopholes, that is, various illegal and unreasonable factors.
To fundamentally straighten out the personal income distribution relationship in China, besides strictly enforcing the law, punishing corruption and cracking down on illegal business and smuggling activities, we should also vigorously develop the economy and education, continue to deepen the reform of the income distribution system, further improve and perfect the tax system, and constantly improve the social security system. (The writer is an economics professor and doctoral supervisor at university of international business and economics Institute of International Economics and Trade. )
China Education News, Third Edition, June 65438+1October 65438+August 2005.
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Multi-dimensional discussion leads the study of Marxist philosophy to a deeper level and higher dimensions-
The Innovative Essence of Marxist Philosophy
Monomer flat
On September 25th, an academic seminar was jointly held by the 2 1 Century Philosophy Innovation Forum of the Department of Philosophy of Peking University and the research group "Persistence, Development and Innovation of Marxist Philosophy System". Experts and scholars from Peking University, Tsinghua University, the Party School of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, the Social Science Center of the Ministry of Education and many other institutions have discussed some fundamental problems in the research process of Marxist philosophy around the theme of "the essence of Marxist philosophy innovation".
"World": Determination of Research Object
Different understandings of the "world" in article 11 of the famous Outline on Feuerbach constitute different orientations of scholars on the research object of Marxist philosophy.
Professor Huang Nansen insists that the meaning of "world" in the context of Marxist philosophy should be equal to the infinite universe, and the way of thinking of philosophy lies in grasping the infinite universe with limited individuals. In this sense, Marxist philosophy can also be called the theory of "world outlook". Professor Wang Dong believes that to understand the meaning of "world", we must grasp it from four levels: the history of philosophy, the history of science, the history of cognition and the history of practice, seek its general laws, and finally answer the relationship, basic connection and basic trend between man and the world. If we abandon the dimension of exploring nature, that is, science, the value discussion of Marxist philosophy will face practical danger. Some scholars have pointed out that the meaning of "world" here, from the perspective of understanding Marxist philosophy, can not be promoted to the whole world in the general sense, but should refer to capitalist society. It is Marx's lifelong pursuit and goal to change the alienated capitalist society.
Scholars attending the meeting agreed that no matter how to understand the position of "world" in Marxist philosophy and change the real world is the historical mission put forward by Marxist philosophy, and it is necessary to deeply discuss and analyze the position and role of practice in Marxist philosophy.
Practice: The role of identity needs to be defined.
The concept of practice plays an important role in the system of Marxist philosophy. Over the past 20 years, the academic circles have set off an upsurge of practical research and achieved phased results, but there are still differences and difficulties in practical research at present. The basic consensus reached by academic circles is that the viewpoint of practice is the basic viewpoint of Marxist philosophy, but there are still different opinions on the position and function of practice.
Professor Huang Nansen pointed out that at present, the academic circles understand practice as the primary viewpoint of Marxist philosophy, which has been widely recognized, but this viewpoint is debatable. Its deficiency lies in that it is difficult to raise it from the level of epistemology to the level of cosmology in the field of practice. As far as philosophical reform is concerned, this category certainly embodies the characteristics of Marxist philosophical revolution, but taking it as the primary point of view will cut off the inheritance of materialism.
Professor Zhao Jiaxiang believes that practice is the basic viewpoint of Marxist philosophy and should be its primary viewpoint. Marxist philosophy expounds the view of nature, history, epistemology and axiology from the perspective of practice. However, we should not only overcome the tendency of pragmatism, but also oppose practical ontology; We should also overcome the tendency of pan-pragmatism, that is, the tendency to attribute all activities to practice.
Some scholars believe that practice can be understood as a way of thinking. The revolutionary change of Marxist philosophy, in a certain sense, can be said to be a change from modern thinking mode to modern thinking mode, and its significance has far-reaching influence not only on the philosophical level, but also on the social level.
Inheritance and Innovation: Building a New Form in the New Century
Marxist philosophy has the theoretical quality of keeping pace with the times. In today's socialist modernization, it is the task and challenge given by the times to build a new philosophy of the times, grasp the spirit of the times, and participate in and guide the great practice of socialist construction.
Professor Huang Nansen pointed out that the key to the construction of a new form of philosophy lies in innovation, but the basic point lies in inheritance. Breaking through the old "Soviet model" textbook system is the meaning of constructing a new form of philosophy in the new century. It is the premise of innovation to put forward a pertinent evaluation of the old teaching material system. Huang Nansen further emphasized that the old textbook system can be called "Soviet system", but it can never be called "Stalin system", because from the perspective of historical research, the former appeared earlier; Second, the traditional textbook system certainly needs development and innovation, but it also contains some fundamental viewpoints of the founders of Marxism, which needs to be adhered to, developed and improved.
Professor Wang Dong believes that to build a new form of Marxist philosophy, the first thing is to clarify the formation of its innovative elements, and among these innovative elements, the most important thing is the formation of the concept of practice. 1844 Manuscript of Economics and Philosophy is the starting point for the formation of Marx's view of practice. In the Manuscript, the concept of practice contains four levels of rich connotations, namely, the theory of humanized nature premise, the theory of objectified activity, the theory of alienated labor and the theory of humanized nature. This breakthrough will be of brand-new significance to the construction of a new form of contemporary Marxist philosophy.
Scholars attending the meeting emphasized that the tendency of attaching importance to history but neglecting history did make some arguments superficial in the process of building a new philosophical form, but the multi-directional discussion did lead the study of Marxist philosophy to a deeper level and a higher dimension. It can be predicted that a rigorous review of the history of philosophy, reference to the methods of western scholars and the practice of socialist modernization will create a new era and new form of new philosophy. (Author: Department of Philosophy, Peking University)
China Education News, Third Edition, June 65438+1October 65438+August 2005.