Second: if Sun Yat-sen’s _min shêng_ ideology cannot be associated with capitalism, it can as little be affiliated with Marxism or the single-tax. What, then, in relation to Western socio-economic thought, is it? We have seen that the state it proposed was liberal-protective, and that the society from which it was derived and to which it was to lead back was one of extreme laissez-faire, bordering almost on anarchism. These political features are enough to distinguish it from the Western varieties of socialism, anarchism and syndicalism, since the ingredients of these ideologies of the West and that of Sun Yat-sen, while coincident on some points, cannot be fitted together.
Superficially, there is a certain resemblance between the ideology of the _San Min Chu I_ and that of Fascism. The resemblances may be found in the emphasis on the nation, the rejection of the class war and of Marxism, the upholding of tradition, and the inclusion of a doctrine of intellectual inequality. But Sun Yat-sen seeks to reconcile all this with democracy in a form even more republican than that of the United States. The scheme of _min ch’üan_, with its election, recall, initiative and referendum, and with its definite demands of intellectual freedom, is in contradiction to the teachings of Fascism. His condemnation of Caesarism is unequivocal: “Therefore, if the Chinese Revolution has not until now been crowned with success, it is because the ambitions for the throne have not been completely rooted out nor suppressed altogether.”(189) With these fundamental and irreconcilable distinctions, it is hard to find any possibility of agreement between the _San Min Chu I_ and the Fascist ideologies, although the transitional program of the _San Min Chu I_—in its advocacy of provisional party dictatorship, etc.—has something in common with Fascism as well as with Communism as applied in the Soviet Union.
A recent well-received work on modern political thought describes a category of Western thinkers whose ideas are much in accord with those contained in the _min shêng_ ideology.(190) Professor Francis W. Coker of Yale, after reviewing the leading types of socialist and liberal thought, describes a group who might be called “empirical collectivists.” The men to whom he applies this term reject socialist doctrines of economic determinism, labor-created value, and class war. They oppose, on the other hand, the making of a fetish of private ownership, and recognize that the vast mass of ordinary men in modern society do not always receive their just share of the produce of industry. They offer no single panacea for all economic troubles, and lay down no absolute and unchallengeable dogma concerning the rightness or wrongness of public or private ownership.(191) Professor Coker outlines their general point of view by examining their ideas with reference to several conspicuous economic problems of the present day: public ownership; labor legislation; regulation of prices; taxation; and land policies.(192)