"Money is born equal", which solved the problem of bloodline inequality that could not be solved in the Middle Ages, and replaced the inequality based on different origins with "property inequality". This is a great historical progress, which laid the foundation for the rise of modern western countries.
Its institutional guarantee is to transform the power resources that need bloodshed into wealth resources that don't need bloodshed. The specific institutional form began in Italy, which is characterized by the fact that commercial and financial wealth groups hold political power, make decisions together with representative institutions, and entrust the chief executive to directly manage them. ?
2. The promotion of western system to human equality determines that it can get great development after stepping out of the Middle Ages.
But the above disadvantages mean that it only provides a very narrow space for human equality, and the development of history will soon break the upper limit that the western system can bear, and the socialist movement in the19th century is a challenge to this upper limit.
Extended data:
Reasons for the decline of Europe:
Western civilization has never been self-sufficient for a long time. On the one hand, the rise of capitalism makes up for the shortcomings of the self-sufficiency of western civilization, so that it can draw resources from the world, but on the other hand, it also makes it more difficult to be self-sufficient by relying on the outside world at a higher level and in a wider scope.
Therefore, whether it is a single western country or a modern western civilization as a whole, its rise and fall depends on the success or failure of its dominant world system.
From World War II to 1990s, the United States gradually stepped onto the hegemony of this world system, and the second echelon, such as Europe and Japan, also enjoyed some dividends under the American system, which is a necessary condition for the survival of modern western civilization. But now the international system is also showing signs of disintegration.
People's Network —— The Root of Western Crisis: System, State Construction and World System