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Title: The Book of Lord Shang: A Classic of the Chinese School of Law by Yang Shang, J. J. L. Duyvendak ISBN: 1-58477-241-7 Publisher: The Lawbook Exchange, Ltd. Pub. Date: May, 2003 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $80.00

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Average Customer Rating: 1 (1 review)

Rating: 1
Summary: Lord Shang must be quoted to believe it...
Comment: "A country grows prosperious by farming and by war" ...(snip)... "There are 6 parasitic functions: care for old age, living on others, beauty, love, ambition and virtuous conduct. If these 6 parasites find an attachement, the state will be dismembered." ...(snip)... "To abolish law by the means of law means strength. To establish law by the means of law means dismemberment of the country." ...(snip)... "If a country is strong and war is not waged, it will be poisoned. Rights and music and the parasitic functions will arise and dismemberment will be inevitable. But if the country, being strong, wages war, the poison will be carried to the enemy, and not suffering from rights and music and the parasitic function, the state will be strong." ... (etc. etc.)

Lord Shang's concept of ideal state, a dictatorship where everybody is forced into farming between murderous wars, kept free of "parasitic poisons" like music or thinking were tried verbatim during the Cambodian genocide, one of the saddest periods of human history. I cannot imagine how could any ruler take Lord Shang's advice seriously even in 300 BC. Even with the historic hindsight blanked out, reading a few lines about the lethality of music to the survival of the state alone is enough to convince the reader that Lord Shang is... to put mildly... an idiot.

The only thing that one should really learn from Lord Shang is, how he managed to palm off this incredibly stupid piece of fiction on the emperor of one of the world's biggest empires as a wisdom of higest rank. There must have been some awesome sales trick to it, definitely worthy of learning. As far as the Book itself, though - don't bother.