The first time you read the original text of “The Internationale,” it is easy to feel a strange sense of déjà vu.
Land. The gap between rich and poor. The fruits of labor seized by a few. Rights and obligations out of balance. Opposition to a parasitic class. A demand to rearrange society’s resources.
Set against Chinese history, these elements immediately call up one name: Wang Mang.
You could even make a joke of it:
Was Pottier just Wang Mang, time-travelled?
On the surface the joke makes sense, because both men ran into the same kind of social problem: wealth concentrated, land annexed, status made unequal, ordinary people’s room to survive squeezed — a few holding vast resources while bearing none of the responsibility that should come with them.
Looked at only as policy, the two do share a distant resemblance. Wang Mang tried to limit land annexation, rewrote the land system, restricted the trade in bonded servants, and tightened state intervention in the economic order. He was facing the same question: why do the few grow ever stronger while the many grow ever weaker?
Seen this way, Wang Mang and Pottier were asking the same thing:
Why does a society’s wealth and power keep concentrating into the hands of a few?
But go one layer deeper, and the two split apart immediately.
What Wang Mang truly believed in was still: the sage-king.
In his world, social disorder did not, first of all, mean “everyone should possess inalienable rights as a subject.” It meant that the order had broken, ritual propriety had broken, the naming of roles had broken, the powerful had overstepped their bounds, and the correct order once embodied by the ancient sage-kings had not been restored.
So the solution remained: find someone who truly understood the Way of Heaven, ritual, and the ancient institutions, place him at the very top, and let him correct the realm from that position.
In other words, Wang Mang never abolished the highest seat itself. What he was really saying was: the person who used to sit there was the wrong person — now let me reset it according to the truly correct order. This was still the classic sage-king model. The realm’s problems were still to be solved by the right person standing at the very top.
So even if Wang Mang sincerely wanted to reduce land annexation, restrain the powerful, and redistribute resources, he never actually left that ancient structure:
As long as someone sufficiently correct, sufficiently virtuous, and sufficiently versed in the realm holds sufficient power, society can be set right again.
With Pottier, the most important shift was not, in the end, about land and wealth. It was that most famous line in “The Internationale”:
There has never been any savior, nor God, nor Caesar, nor tribune.
And then: workers, arise and save yourselves.
If you set the political stance aside for a moment and look only at the structure, this is an extremely deep cut. It dismantles three seats in a single stroke: God, the highest external authority of religion; Caesar, the highest ruling authority of politics; the tribune, the delegated authority that speaks for the people and solves their problems on their behalf. What remains after that is only:
Save yourselves.
This is an almost inverse structure to Wang Mang’s. Wang Mang’s answer was: the realm is in chaos because the true sage-king has not yet appeared. Pottier’s answer was:
Stop waiting for that sage-king.
So Pottier is not simply “Wang Mang, reappeared.” If we insist on carrying the joke further, the more accurate line might be:
Pottier is like someone who, after living through countless Wang Mangs, has finally stopped believing in Wang Mang.
But the story does not end here. Because “no more saviors,” by itself, cannot guarantee that a savior will never return. This is the point at which every revolutionary idea most needs to stay on guard.
Once the old savior is dismantled, a new ultimate seat can still appear. It used to be said that the Emperor knows the realm. Later this could become: the Class knows history. Later still: some organization represents the Class. Later still: some vanguard organization best understands the Class’s true interests. And in the end it can even become: some leader best understands the laws of history.
And so a very familiar cycle occurs: the old sage is toppled, a new sage is produced; the old God-seat is torn down, the new God-seat comes back under a different name.
So the real difficulty in “there has never been any savior” is not driving one specific savior from the stage. It is:
Stopping the manufacture of that seat itself.
This is also where Matrix Philosophy can push the question one step further.
What Wang Mang was really asking was:
Who is the true sage-king?
What Pottier was really asking was:
Stop waiting for the sage-king — liberate yourself.
Matrix Philosophy has to ask one more question:
Once we begin liberating ourselves, will we end up pushing “the People,” “the Class,” “the Organization,” “the Experts,” “the Leader,” or even AI, back up into the ultimate observation chamber?
This step matters enormously, because any role can, in principle, be deified. The People can become a role. The Class can become a role. The vanguard can become a role. Experts can become a role. AI can become a role too.
The moment any role begins to declare — I naturally represent the whole, I naturally know the direction of history, I naturally hold the standing to judge on everyone’s behalf — the sage-seat has already reappeared.
So a truly thorough “no savior” is not swapping in a different savior, nor is it transferring the savior’s seat from one class to another. It is:
No longer allowing any role — whatever power, knowledge, historical authority, or popular support it holds — to be upgraded into an unauditable, ultimate observer.
Seen this way, Wang Mang, Pottier, and Matrix Philosophy form exactly three steps.
Wang Mang: find the correct sage-king. Pottier: no savior — save yourself. Matrix Philosophy: having saved yourself, do not manufacture a new savior either.
Across these three steps, what actually changes is not merely the political system. It is the permission to observe.
Step one believed someone ought to hold the highest seat. Step two began to refuse handing your entire fate over to that highest seat. Step three goes on to prevent any new role from impersonating that highest seat again.
So what is most worth keeping from “The Internationale” may not be its full political conclusion. It is that single, forceful strike of a line:
Do not wait for a savior.
This one line comes, in fact, from the same very old question as “Stop Waiting for the Sage”: why do human beings always hope someone else will see the whole elephant for them?
What is truly difficult was never toppling one particular idol. It is learning:
Never to reserve that seat for the next idol.
(Supplement · End)