Wang Anshi and Sima Guang who said it was more reasonable

Wu hook

Wang Anshi and Sima Guang have many things in common in their private lives. The Song people said: "Jing Gong and Wen Gong are not good at sound, do not love official positions, and do not breed goods and profits." However, there were almost all-out differences in their political views: Sima Guang maintained the ancestral system, and Wang Anshi emphasized changing the law; Sima Guang agreed with "hiding the rich from the people"; Wang Anshi attached importance to "rich countries and strong soldiers"; Sima Guang advocated "throttling"; Wang Anshi advocated "open source"; Sima Guang believed that "open source" meant that the government should increase the amount of harsh taxes and miscellaneous taxes, "the goods and goods produced by heaven and earth, if there is only this number, if they are not in the people, they are in the public household." Wang Anshi believes that it is completely possible to achieve "the people do not add endowments and the country uses forgiveness."

Leaving aside the factors of emotion and value preference, is it reasonable for Wang Anshi's "the people do not add endowments but the country to spare", or Sima Guang's "the goods and goods and things produced by heaven and earth, there are only this number, not in the people, then in the public"?

If what Sima Guang said is more reasonable, then obviously, the material civilization of human society will not have any progress, because "the heavens and the earth are born, and the goods and treasures are all things, and there is only this number." But the visible fact with the naked eye is that modern society has increased its goods and goods by tens of millions of times compared with ancient societies. Therefore, even the scholars who defended Sima Guang had to admit that Sima Guang's judgment was not in line with modern society. However, those who are in favor of Sima Guang and oppose Wang Anshi's transformation of the law often add that although Sima Guang's judgment is not in line with modern society, it is applicable to ancient society, for example, some scholars believe that "where did the driving force for wealth growth in the past forty years of reform and opening up come from?" Institutional innovation, scientific development, technological progress". "None of this happened when Sima Guang and Wang Anshi were discussing 'the goods and treasures of heaven and earth'. Without these revolutionary factors, how can there be a revolutionary increase in social wealth? If the total amount of wealth does not grow, then, in the final analysis, the problem of financial management is still a distribution problem, not in the public, but in the private sector, it is a question of which 'rich country' and 'rich people' come first and how to coordinate. What Sima Guang said is true. ”

A similar view can be traced back to Lin Yutang, who wrote the biography of Su Dongpo: "You don't have to be an economist to be confident that the two important factors in a country's wealth are only production and distribution. To increase the wealth of the state, it is necessary to increase production or to distribute it more appropriately. In Wang Anshi's time, it was impossible to increase production, because there was no way to industrialize at that time, so the only thing a financial genius could do was in terms of distribution. Because Wang Anshi is concerned with enriching the national treasury, and increasing the wealth of the country means increasing the government's tax revenue. However, even in the time of Wang Anshi, financial management could only be a distribution problem, and goods and goods were not necessarily "not in the private sector, but in the public". The Southern Song Dynasty Lu You once elaborated on this: "Sima Cheng Xiang said: 'The goods and goods and goods produced by heaven and earth are only counted, and those who are not in the people are in the officials.'" It is not as good as it is. Since the ancient goods are not in the people and are not in the officials, how can they be counted? Or in the power of the courtiers, or in the noble relatives close to the xi, or in the strong generals, or in the merger, or in the old shi. Fang is the time, the upper house is poor, the lower is poor, the self-rule is not the world, what generation is not? ”

The Zhao and Song dynasties founded the country, did not establish a field system, and did not suppress annexation. Therefore, there is a huge disparity between the rich and the poor, taxes are uneven, and the strangers in the field hide their land property to evade the land endowment. The purpose of the "Fangtian Equalization Tax Law" promoted by Wang Anshi is to "make the distribution more appropriate", let the annexation family bear more taxes, and the commoners relatively reduce the tax burden.

What's more, in Wang Anshi's time, was it really "impossible" to increase social wealth through the development of production? An obvious fact is that the Song Dynasty was not far from the Tang Dynasty, and the land area of the Song Dynasty was smaller than that of the Tang Dynasty, but the Song government greatly increased the area of cultivated land through methods such as reclamation, irrigation, intensive cultivation, the introduction and promotion of fine seeds of cantonese rice, and the protection of private property rights, so that the Song Dynasty had a large amount of surplus grain for winemaking, and the wine industry was unprecedentedly developed.

It is safe to say that the total social wealth and per capita income level of the Song Dynasty exceeded that of the Tang Dynasty, and at the same time maintained rapid population growth. Isn't this an increase in the total wealth of society?

Wang Anshi once proposed: "The rich family has the capital of the country, the rich of the country of the world, if you want to be rich in the world, then the capital of the world." In the Ming Dynasty, Li Yan had a paragraph criticizing Sima Guang, which can be used as a footnote to Wang Anshi's proposition: "(Sima Guang) knows that goods and goods are born of heaven and earth, and that he can count evil deeds. The treasure of the mountains and seas, the gold of Lishui, the bi of Kunshan, the copper, lead, silver and tin, and the five gold and treasures of the land, the daily merchant Jia's wanton, when full of greedy ink bags, I don't know how many of them. He who grows up the nation is born of the interests of heaven and earth. ”

Wang Anshi's transformation is both a process of redistribution — the so-called "suppression of mergers and acquisitions" is also a process of expanding production — the so-called "world of capital" is also, for example, some scholars have pointed out that during the implementation of the "Farmland Water Conservancy Law", "the central government built more than 11,000 irrigation and flood control projects." In addition to the construction of agricultural water conservancy projects, the Song government in the Shenzong era also mobilized a large number of manpower and material resources, invested in the construction of canals, docks, bridges, and water mills, invested in the development of copper mines, iron ore mines, and coal mines, and invested in the support and stimulation of industry and commerce.

Therefore, if I had to sum up, I would quote Huang Renyu's statement: "Wang Anshi can arouse the interest of Chinese and foreign scholars today, and his economic ideas are close to our vision." His so-called "new law" is nothing more than the large-scale commercialization of fiscal revenues. When he argued with Sima Guang, he put forward the theory of "the country uses enough without endowment", and its policy is to first stimulate the production and circulation of commodities with bureaucratic capital. If the amount of the economy expands, the tax rate will not change, and the total revenue of the treasury can still increase. This is also a principle that is commonly believed by the modern state's financial managers, but it is unrealistic to implement it in the Northern Song Dynasty in the eleventh century. ”

(The author is a well-known scholar of literature and history)