Shouldn't capitalism be a system that existed in the modern West? Why did it appear in ancient Chinese society? With this question in mind, let's take a good look at it today.
First of all, I personally believe that this comes from cultural inconfidence, Chinese culture for five thousand years, basically belonged to the feudal dictatorship, and in modern times it is a living history of humiliation.
Therefore, many historians want to explore the advanced points in China's feudal system from the long river of China's thousand-year history, so this mentality itself has a big problem, so it has too strong subjective ideology in the study of the problem.
It is precisely on the basis of this mentality that in the history of Our country's research, there is also the doctrine of "five golden flowers", which are the problem of the periodization of ancient Chinese history, the problem of China's feudal land ownership, the problem of peasant war in China's feudal society, the problem of the budding of Chinese capitalism, and the problem of the formation of the Han nationality.
And these five doctrines were all influenced to a certain extent by the political form of the time, so I don't think it is too universal, and today I will mainly talk about this embryonic theory of capitalism, which is closely related to the title of our article.
First of all, the background of these doctrines occurred shortly after the founding of New China, because modern times were oppressed by Western countries, many scholars believe that the main differences come from the difference in systems, and at the same time, in the spirit of the establishment of the new dynasty, the condemnation of the feudal dynasty, many scholars began to think that in fact, as early as the Ming Dynasty, China already had the bud of capitalism.
It was only oppressed by the dictatorship at that time that it failed to take shape, and what I want to say here is that "soil" is the root of incubation of everything, and if there is no suitable environment, any germination will not break through the ground. (Therefore, there is a strong disagreement in the subconscious of many scholars)
Of course, the reason why these scholars say this is also their reason, first of all, they believe that a common relationship in capitalism existed during the Ming Dynasty, that is, the employment relationship. (Of course, there were also in the past, but before the Ming Dynasty, the scale was relatively small, and most of them were helpers, not employment in the true sense, and after the Ming Dynasty, the development of handicrafts, as well as the stability of the currency, and even the emergence of contractual relations, so many people think that the conditions are ripe)
But in my opinion, this is definitely not the case, because the most important form of capitalism is to promote the development of commerce, it is a form of profit-seeking, through the employment relationship, so that you can liberate yourself, let others create greater wealth for you, and then the state collects taxes from it, so the rich have a strong sense of autonomy, such a form is capitalism.
But obviously, the employment relationship of the Ming Dynasty did not have this form in it, because the upper echelons of the people at that time were all promoted by the landlord class, and all the talents who held a large amount of land resources in their hands could go to the career path and have greater power, so among them, everyone was trying to buy land.
Since ancient times, China has adopted a policy of emphasizing agriculture and suppressing business, because agriculture is the foundation of a country, and the status of merchants is very low, even if the money earned through business still needs to be attached to agriculture, because only by continuously purchasing land and letting themselves have a higher social status can they be valued by the state.
Therefore, this kind of small employment relationship cannot be explained as the germ of capitalism at all, not to mention that in it, the employer himself needs to participate in labor, and his own social status is low, there is no strong form of autonomy, so I think that in ancient China there was no soil for the germ of capitalism.
In addition, many people will also say that in the middle and late Ming Dynasty, some advanced private enterprises appeared at a higher level than state-owned manufacturing, so as to hire a large number of laborers to produce and create wealth for themselves.
It is true that this is a manifestation of progress, but in the society at that time, due to the policy of heavy peasantry, these were quickly suppressed by feudal rule, and many manufacturing industries continued to the Qing Dynasty, and he did not develop into capitalism, so ancient China did not have the soil to incubate the form of capitalism, which is very correct.
Now that this paragraph has been deleted from the latest national textbooks, I think it is indeed a manifestation of the current social progress, and we must uphold a realistic attitude when looking at the problem, and there can be no strong subjective form in it.