Introduction: Shangmartin's rule of law was extremely successful, making the Qin state strong and prosperous and unifying the world, why was it criticized by posterity? The rule of law promoted by the Shang martingale was actually a tool in the hands of the monarch and a weapon to squeeze the people, which was resisted by Confucians and Taoists
In the Warring States period, the chaotic world was strife, the princes competed for hegemony, and the various princely states carried out various changes in order to survive in the chaotic world for the sake of rich countries and strong soldiers, and unified the world, including the Wei state Li Wu change method, the Wu Qi change method, the Zhao state's Hufu riding shooting, the Yan guo Leyi reform, the Korean Shen bu harmful change law, the Qi guo Zou ji reform, and so on.
Not only in the Warring States period, throughout history, Shang Martin was a person who achieved great success and achievements in changing the law, and his achievements can be described as very brilliant, at that time, almost no one's achievements in changing the law could be compared with the Shang martingale.
However, the evaluation of Shang Martin in the later life is not as good as people think, many people are more critical of him, and they are also scornful of his changes, so what kind of success has Shang Martin achieved? Is such a success worth the expectations of future generations? Or, what methods and methods does martingale use on the road to success? Why did people in later generations criticize him so much? Today, we will mainly analyze this problem, to see how ShangMartin became successful, and what results did he achieve? What did he go through after his success?
Shang Martin brought the rule of law into Qin society
First of all, let's look at shang martingale's achievements in changing the law, Shang martingale is undoubtedly a figure of the law, all his measures to change the law, we can all be attributed to the mainstream scholarship of the law, and the law is also a core idea of the martingale in the process of changing the law, relying on the rule of law Shang martingale in the Qin state to plan a huge blueprint, and successfully let the Qin state embark on the road he planned, his successful use of the qin state to plan the future of the qin state, so that the monarchs and civilians of the Qin state live under a specific framework, At the same time, in such a chaotic and complicated war era, Shang Martin adopted a policy of rewarding military merit, which greatly enhanced the combat strength of the Qin army.
After all, in such a chaotic world, people's greatest wish is to be able to stabilize their families and survive in such a chaotic world, and Shang Martin has captured people's psychology, so they have taken measures to reward farming.
The State of Qin included rewarding farming wars in the scope of the rule of law
In the battle, to behead the number of enemies as a criterion for recording war merits, the rewards received after the war have been clearly stipulated by law, at the same time, most of this reward is reflected in the title and land, and even this title and the wind on the land can be inherited by their own descendants, which makes people at that time abandon their own worries, let people no longer worry about their own will be in vain, even if they can not enjoy these feats, but also to leave a little life security for future generations, so, At that time, the soldiers of the Qin army were very belligerent.
The prosperity of the agricultural economy is directly related to the economic prosperity of the country, and the Qin state has eight hundred miles of Wei horizontal river, itself is a country with good conditions for the development of the agricultural economy, on this basis, Shangmartin implemented the economic development policy of heavy agriculture and suppressing business, while encouraging people to work, rewarding people who have made outstanding contributions to the development of the agricultural economy, and the previous rewards for military merit, the specific provisions of this reward for farming are also incorporated into the law. Let people's lives have a huge guarantee.
The rule of law in the Qin state is advanced, which greatly improves the fault tolerance rate of monarchy decision-making
Therefore, there is a virtuous circle in the military development and economic development of the Qin state. Not only that, his laws are open and transparent, relative to the national rule of law in Korea at that time, it is quite advanced, after the Shang Martingale Transformation Law, the national strength of the Qin State has become stronger step by step, its political court has also become very strong and powerful, and he has formulated a set of specific and clear measures for the monarch to rule the world, so that the monarch does not need to rely on his own decision to judge everything, which greatly improves the fault tolerance rate of the monarch's decision-making. Let the development of a country be greatly reduced by the influence of the monarch, this measure directly guarantees that the two generations of incompetent monarchs who appeared in the Qin Kingdom later appeared in the Qin Kingdom, qin Xiaowen Wang, Qin ZhuangXiang Wang, and still be able to shine on the development.
Therefore, whether from the economic point of view, or from the military and administrative aspects, Shang Martin's contribution to the Qin State is very huge, and even we can say that he directly influenced the development of the Qin State in later generations, and it was also helpful to the Qin King's government to unify the world, which is why we often say that Qin Wang Yingzheng is not a kind of monarch who starts from the grassroots, his merits are absolutely inseparable from the efforts of several generations of monarchs before the Qin State, and at the same time, it is inseparable from the efforts of ministers like Shang Martin.
The Shang martingale transformation method made great contributions to the Qin state, but it was criticized by later generations
After seeing Shang Martin's achievements in changing the law, perhaps everyone is even more incomprehensible about the fact that Shang Martin will be criticized, such a person has promoted the development of Chinese history and brought great benefits to the country he serves, so why is it still criticized by future generations? In fact, this reason is also multifaceted.
The first point is that although the law implemented by Shang Martingale relatively restricts the monarch's faint decision-making, his law is indeed a means of implementing it to protect the power of the monarch, which is popularly speaking, that is, the reason why Shang Martin implemented the rule of law is not to restrain the monarch's behavior, but to ensure the power in the hands of military dependents through the rule of law.
With the law as a weapon, the monarch's judgment of some events will have a basis for the appointment of some people, and these people can only rely on the clear provisions of the law to do their own things, and absolutely cannot cross the law, so that the power in the hands of various ministers has a constraint, and to a certain extent, the power in the hands of the monarch is guaranteed.
This is a very important transitional stage for China's historical society to change from a slave society to a feudal society, and it can be said that Shang Martin's practice ensures that the policy of monarchical dictatorship can be implemented in later generations, which is why we will mention above that the Qin King's rule of the world and the Shang martingale are also inseparable.
The rule of law of the Shang martingale was a weapon in the hands of the monarch and a tool for squeezing the people
In the understanding of many people, Shang Martingale is nothing more than the rule of law implemented to suppress the resistance of the low-level civilians, and his rule of law is only a weapon in the hands of the monarch, just a weapon used by the monarch to suppress the common people, not the kind of rule of law we now understand in the true sense. Therefore, in the understanding of many people, Shang Martin is not a real reformer, he is just an ordinary subject of the monarch on the road to protecting his rights.
The second point is based on the later development of the Qin state. We all know that after the Qin state became a dynasty, its national laws were very strict, and his requirements for the people were also very high, so that the behavior of the people in that era was greatly constrained, their speech was also greatly constrained, and even later under the policy guidance of Qin Shi Huang, there were also incidents of book burning and pit Confucianism.
It is precisely because these harsh decrees make people miserable, so that the ordinary people who have been quiet after hundreds of years of chaos have once again lived in the depths of the water, and it is precisely because of these harsh policies that make people unhappy about life that there is a later law of cutting down the road and tyrannizing Qin, so later the law of the Qin State has reached a very strict level, its harshness has made people unbearable, and the huge pressure it gives people has shifted to oppression with the change of time. We all know that where there is oppression, there is resistance, so in the environment of long-term suffering from this oppression, people gradually developed a kind of resentment towards the Qin Dynasty.
It is precisely because of this that there will be the later Chen Sheng Wu Guangzexiang uprising, will get the support of many people after their uprising, the world will also rise up, and later the rule of law of the Qin State has become a tool and means to squeeze the common people, the people are not eager to live under the suppression of this law, this harsh law has made their lives have been greatly affected, so that the development of the whole society has become deformed, under this situation, The first person to propose the rule of law in the Qin Kingdom is bound to be impacted, and this person is Shang Martin.
The harsh laws have exposed the martingale to the brunt of the attack
We all know that Shang Martin was the first person to propose the rule of law in the Qin State, and he was also the first to implement the change of law in the Qin State, and it was precisely because of his change of law that the Qin State moved toward the road of the rule of law, and it was precisely because of its rule of law that the Qin State became a princely state that governed the country according to the rule of law, and it was precisely because of its rule of law that the Qin State became a dynasty and then had a very strict rule, so as the first person to propose the rule of law in the Qin State, he must bear the brunt of it.
In fact, this understanding is very unfair, because the period of time that Shang Martin came out was the weakest stage of the Qin State, and at that time the development was very slow and there was no clear development system, and even after many generations of wars, and after many years of attack and encroachment by the Wei State, the Qin State had gradually changed from a princely state to an agricultural tribe that was half-agricultural and half-pastoral.
During the Qin Xiangong period, the Qin state implemented the policy of raising war with war, although the Qin state was slightly restored, but the country really did not have much vitality, so such a country was not suitable for practicing the so-called Confucian royal way, or the Taoist rule of inaction, he himself was the fish on the knife, if there was nothing to do, it could only be slaughtered.
Therefore, the law of shang martingale was the most practical in the qin xiaogong period, but later the qin state changed from a princely state to a dynasty, which accommodated people from many countries in the six countries of Shandong, and these peoples were transitioned from different political systems to the rule of a new political system because of the demise of the state, and the change of the system would inevitably affect their daily lives.
The law of the Qin State itself is a ruling policy that requires extremely high demands on people's behavior, so the sudden implementation of the rule of law in a large area of the country will inevitably have the vast majority of people who are not adapted, and there will be a large number of people who feel the pressure, and in the long run, the pressure will become oppression, and oppression will inevitably lead to resistance. Therefore, although people have a lot of criticism of Shang martingale in combination with the development history of the later Qin Dynasty, this criticism is not something that Shang Martin should bear to some extent.
The legalists who promoted the harsh punishment and cruel law were resisted by the Confucian royal and Taoist masters
The last reason is actually a result of the inevitable development of history. That's because Shang Martin was a figure of the Fa, and the kind of harsh punishment he advocated to govern the world was contrary to the mainstream Doctrine of Taoism, and we all know that during the period of Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty, the policy of deposing the Hundred Schools of Confucianism was implemented, that is, from that time on, Confucianism began to rule the ideological aspects of the ancient Chinese people for more than two thousand years.
Under the social status quo of Confucianism, the Taoist kind of inaction has become a passive and world-avoiding idea, and the use of laws and regulations by the Lawyers has also been criticized to varying degrees, which is actually a collision between ideas and ideas, and it is also an extension of the controversy between the sons and hundreds of schools in the Warring States period, after all, different doctrines have their own different ideas, and after the school is pushed onto the stage of historical orthodoxy, the other school naturally fades.
Therefore, Shang Martin, who is the mainstream figure of the Legalists, and even Han Fei, who is the master of the Fa, have been criticized to varying degrees in later history, and this is actually a result of the inevitable development of history, and many later generations are powerless.
Summary:
We can see that the rule of law realized by Shang Martingale is indeed incomplete, and it is very imperfect, and it is very different from the rule of law as we understand it now, in that historical period, he was indeed a weapon for the monarch to guarantee the power in his hands, but we cannot deny its own significance and value because of these problems, because this policy of domination of such a historical event is the most suitable for the historical development of Central China, and he is also the most able to promote the trend of history. When we decide or judge a historical event, we cannot judge simply by its purpose.
Because many times people's understanding and application of some events is to be combined with history, and many of the claims that seem perfect and very useful in the present are not necessarily appropriate in ancient times, and more than two thousand years ago was a transitional stage from a slave society to a feudal society, and it is a choice of historical development to guarantee the power in the hands of the monarch in such a historical period.
Therefore, Shang Martin actually did something that conformed to the development of the trend of history, and later people's various criticisms of him were actually only one-sidedly viewed by the eyes of later generations, and if we really understood the law of historical development, we would see that in the process of historical development, the emergence of every thing and the finalization of every decision have their own meaning.
References: Warring States Policy, Book of the Later Han Dynasty, Zizhi Tongjian, Theory of Passing the Qin, History of History, Zuo Zhuan, etc