The original concept of the farmer was that of a people who depended on the production of the field to survive, and was called a farmer in ancient times.
The once primitive well field system was the beginning of agriculture
Since the flourishing of agrarian civilization, farmers have in fact supported the functioning of the state, and all social changes have revolved around farmers.
In the old era, the peasants, as the majority of the social strata, bore the burden of maintaining the country's economic stability, military strength and social infrastructure, and in the long course of China's feudal society, many taxes were produced and many collection methods were also developed.
rustic
In ancient times, the taxes and fees collected on the heads of peasants consisted of land tax, Dingkou tax and consumption circulation tax, mainly including:
Field tax, because the feudal society land ownership system is the whole world can not be the royal land, so this should be a preliminary land state-owned policy, the original intention of taxation is good, but because of the ruling class tax avoidance factors, a large amount of field tax is transferred to the peasants, the field tax in the early Han Dynasty is thirty taxes one, the Tang Dynasty is forty taxes one, the Ming Dynasty is also forty taxes one (twenty taxes in the late Ming Dynasty), the Qing Dynasty is almost ten taxes one, but because of land trading, in the late dynasty, a large amount of land circulated to the gentry and merchant class, and a large number of self-employed farmers went bankrupt. In addition to paying the landlord's rent, the sharecropper must also bear the state's rent, and the landlord's rent is half or four or six, that is, the landlord's six and the tenant farmers four, and the tenant farmer's quarter must also take out more than 10% and pay it to the state. At present, our country has completely eliminated agricultural taxes.
Great views of the countryside
Dingkou tax has household tax and Ding tax, can be regarded as the poll tax, in the prosperous Tang Dynasty household tax classification, the national household species is divided into 9 grades, the following household first class 50 yuan as the starting point, the upper household ninth class 450 yuan, Ding tax from the age of 12 years old, the amount of different dynasties is different, the ancient Ding tax is also an important source of tax for the country, is a means to curb population reproduction and alleviate the contradiction between man and land. Since the middle of the Qing Dynasty, the mainland has implemented the practice of dividing the land tax with the poll tax, and the poll tax for urban population, handicraftsmen and merchants has been basically abolished, and by the time of the Republic of China, the poll tax has been repeated, and the poll tax has been completely abolished after the establishment of the republic.
Beautiful countryside
There is also a kind of tax adjustment, which is actually a tax on local specialties or property, which is mainly levied on handicrafts and agricultural and sideline industries such as silkworms, cotton and linen, medicinal materials, and fisheries.
In addition, the peasants also have to bear the social maintenance costs of annual sacrifices, gifts, fire consumption, urban construction, farmland water conservancy, etc., which are fixed in all parts of each dynasty, but they are not within the national tax revenue, that is, the state does not know the collection, but it is still levied in various places, especially in the late dynasty. In addition to taxes and fees, peasants also have the obligation to undertake force labor (compulsory labor), military service and other obligations, these are collectively referred to as forced labor, the annual force service undertakes urban construction, public works, roads, the Great Wall side wall piers, farmland water conservancy, logging, etc., the time is generally one to two months, there are five or six months or even a year in the chaotic world, those who run hundreds of thousands of miles to complete the service have, but also have to bring their own dry food, force service illness death outside is common, under normal circumstances (in peacetime) can be used to offset the amount of money, force labor is fixed, adult Dingkou must complete the service. Under normal circumstances, military service is one or two years per Ding, similar to the current compulsory military service, but under abnormal circumstances, it is twenty or thirty to draw one, or even five draw one, and when it is the turn of anyone, they must go, and when social turmoil occurs, Zhuang Ding will be arrested.
Other dynasties had miscellaneous service, that is, compulsory labor other than servitude, and there was no time limit.
Some dynastic countries, such as the Song and Ming dynasties, exempted scholars from taxation. Before the middle of the Ming Dynasty, most dynasties basically collected fixed taxes in kind, wheat areas harvested wheat, rice areas harvested rice, silkworm mulberry harvested silk, which will cause a bumper harvest of grain cheap, green and yellow do not receive grain expensive phenomenon, at that time the business is actually warehousing, Ming Zhang Juzheng a whip law to convert the in-kind tax into a monetary tax, but the cool officials also added fire consumption to the head of the peasants.
There is a family in Baiyunsheng
Circulation tax is basically a toll, into the city, to a fixed market and even citizens sell vegetables in their own homes to collect taxes, these can basically be classified into the category of commercial taxes, here is not much to say.
Under the premise that the self-cultivating peasants in ancient society accounted for the majority, the self-cultivating peasants went bankrupt, the dynasty would perish, if the self-cultivating peasants produced normally, the uprising was just a small social fluctuation, the peasants, a stable group, was the favorite of the ruling class of the past generations, its taxes were stable, the collection cost was low, as long as the peasants had stuttering, as long as they could eat enough, they would not rebel, so heavy agriculture and light commerce were one of the basic national policies of feudal society.
Beautiful modern countryside
Since the transformation of industrialization, China has abolished all the shackles imposed on the peasants, the peasants are no longer the basis for undertaking the operation of society, the agricultural population has actually become the agricultural industrial workers in the social cycle, the peasant group has in fact disappeared from the social class, what we call the peasants, but only the population living in the vast rural areas.
The modern countryside heralded the disappearance of the peasantry