One great tradition of anti-oligarchical thought in world culture stems from the influence of Confucius (551–479 BC). Confucianism can perhaps best be understood as a movement to save Chinese civilization from oligarchical depredations. Confucius began from a standpoint very much like that of Plato (428–348 BC): the need to secure good government capable of promoting the general welfare. He recognized that most governments in the divided and balkanized China of his time were unacceptable.
The central political problem was the incessant private warfare among the military nobility of the Zhou dynasty, which served no useful purpose but kept the country weak and divided, without an effective central government. According to Confucius, bad government derived from the fact that rulers and high officials lacked the character and qualifications necessary to serve the common good. Confucius thought the main reason for this incompetence was the status of the rulers and the hereditary aristocrats around them. He regarded most of them as parasites and wrote in his Analects:
» It is difficult to expect anything from men who stuff themselves with food the whole day while never using
their minds in any way at all. Even gamblers do something, and to that degree are better than these idlers. «
» Of the people, by the people, for the people. «
Sun Yat-sen, quoting Abraham Lincoln's famous formula to explain
his own core ideology, the Three Principles of the People (Sanmin Zhuyi).
Like Plato, he argued that government needs to be in the hands of the most capable and competent. Ability has nothing to do with birth, nobility, or wealth, but depends solely on character and knowledge, which in turn are the products of education. Confucius called for careers open to talent, in which appointment and advancement would be based on ability rather than property, hereditary rank, or title. In contrast, oligarchy represents an irrational principle based on domination and repression, justified neither by merit and ability nor by the results achieved.