In the 30s of the 20th century, academic circles discussed the nature of Chinese society and the periodization of ancient history, and debated whether there was an Asiatic mode of production, whether there were characteristics and differences between slavery and feudalism in Chinese society, and whether Chinese society entered capitalism. These discussions, which attempt to apply the European model to explain the periodization and social nature of ancient Chinese history, have led to a divergent view of views over the past century. Wealth is the purpose of power, power is the guarantee of wealth, the two complement each other, and one is indispensable. As the foundation of imperial rule in ancient China, "officials" were the basic bearers of state taxation and conscription.
Su Shi has a poem Yun: "Officials do not look at the chief, I am a literate cultivator"; "Although I am poor and inferior to others, I am also one of the people." It accurately shows the social identity attributes of middle- and lower-level officials who belong to the camp of officials and people.
Before reading this article, please click "Follow", which is convenient for you to discuss and share, and can bring you a different sense of participation, thank you for your support!
The people of Qin to Qing society were generally poor
Since the Qin Dynasty, successive imperial dynasties, even if individual monarchs slept at night, worked hard and cared for the people, no matter how heavy he claimed to be peasants, were nothing more than propaganda slogans, and could not change the basic fact that the vast number of officials were the creators of social wealth, and the emperor, the imperial family and a few high-ranking officials were the biggest possessors of wealth. Therefore, the substantive and crucial issue of the imperial autocratic political society is the proportion of the state and the people in the distribution of property after the people have created wealth. The common problem of China's imperial autocracy is the country's wealth and people's poverty.
At the beginning of the imperial dynasty, the economy was in ruins and everything was in ruins, so the ruler always adopted a policy of rest with the people, and after a period of rest and recuperation, the country's financial resources increased greatly and a prosperous era appeared.
So the policy was adjusted again, and the construction began to be carried out in luxury, or war was waged, and ordinary people were plunged into poverty and even struggled to die.
After nearly 70 years of rest and recuperation by Emperor Hui, Empress Gao, Emperor Wen, and Emperor Jing, by the time Emperor Wudi of Han came to the throne, the country had accumulated massive wealth.
However, due to Emperor Wudi of Han's excessive use of people's power, he quickly exhausted the social wealth he had accumulated before, so that "the sea was wasted and the household registration was halved." In fact, even during the heyday of the Han Wu, the living conditions of the vast number of officials did not reach true "prosperity". History records that the Han Dynasty was a homesteader, working day by day, but the bran was not tired of vegetables, and there were many poor people. In the event of natural disasters, it is impossible to resist, and death from freezing and starvation, disease and hunger often occur.
The population generally lacked food and clothing, and many people died of hunger. The tenant farmers are even more pitiful, Dong Zhongshu said, the tenant farmers or the rich people's fields, see the tax fifteen, the rations are seriously insufficient, the clothes of cattle and horses, and the food of dogs. Bao Xuan said: The poor people are not tired of food, their clothes are perforated, and the father and son cannot protect each other. The Han Wu dynasty was still like this, and other periods can be imagined.
The Sui Dynasty was known for its national wealth, and in the seventeenth year of the founding of the emperor (597), the household registration was prosperous, and the warehouses at home and abroad were all surplus, and each warehouse "stored tens of millions of stones for the large amount of rice and millet, and millions of stones for the few." The world is full of righteousness. Kyoto and Kubu each have tens of millions. And give Zhao Xunyong, and produce abundance, and Wei Jin has never descended. ”
However, the vast number of officials could not avoid hunger and cold, and when they encountered natural disasters, they were even more terrified. In the early years of Emperor Wen of Sui, there were floods and droughts in various places, and it was still possible to open warehouses for relief. For example, in the fifth year of the emperor's founding, he used more than 3 million stones of Guangtong Cangsu to relieve the flood and drought victims.
However, in the later years of his reign, when he encountered famine, despite the abundance of granaries and stocks in various places, the entire court refused to provide relief, such as the drought in the fourteenth year of the emperor's reign, "many people were hungry." When the warehouse was overflowing, it was not allowed to give it. ”
"The officials are afraid of the law, but Moken rescues them, because they are poor." The people can only eat the roots and leaves of trees, grass and leaves, and even cannibalism. Regarding Emperor Wen of Sui's warehousing policy, Emperor Taizong of Tang once criticized: "Sui Wen does not pity the people but cherishes the warehouse."
This criticism inadvertently and clearly reveals the fact that the imperial autocratic society is "rich and the people are poor", and while the rulers "indulge in this wealth and luxury", countless officials are hungry, hungry, and even starvation
The Kang Yongqian period of the Qing Dynasty was also known as a prosperous era, but in fact, most of the officials were still very poor. In the fifty-fifth year of Qianlong (1790), Cheng Zhangqian of the county said: "If you go to the peasants and rent twenty acres, the mouth will be more middle and lower." "If a person buys 100 acres of land, there must be seven or eight tenants, and those with a large working capital cannot exceed 20 acres. Those who can twelve-three acres are middle-households; But those who can four or five acres are the next household. "Twenty acres of farmland, two stones per acre, one stone for rent, and one stone for the remainder." Twenty acres and more than twenty stones. The annual ration is four stone per person and twenty stone for five people. The farmer worked hard for a year, and he only had to make ends meet, and there was no surplus food. Farmers invest 20,000 yuan a year, and they still need to borrow. Spring plowing urgently needs seeds, the price of rice must be expensive, and if the compromise is calculated, each stone is more than 1,000 expensive, and it is bound to borrow powerful families, and the rich have high interest rates, and the rate is calculated in eight months, "the rate is two stones to pay one stone." The peasant "can die, and there are no two or three out of ten rooms." ”
Only 20-30% of peasant households can barely feed themselves by planting 20 acres of land. The other 70-80% of farming households remain poor. In the 58th year of Qianlong (1793), the British delegation visited China, and John Barrow, a member of the mission, wrote "I Look at Qianlong's Prosperous Life." He wrote: "Neither in Zhoushan nor in the three days that he went up the White River to the capital, he did not see any proof that the people were abundant and well-fed, and the countryside was rich and prosperous..." Compared with Zhang Qian's discussion, it is very similar, revealing the fact that the ancient Chinese people were generally poor.
The excessive expropriation of imperial power led to the country's prosperity and people's poverty
Why was poverty widespread among the ancient Chinese people?
There may be more than one reason, but the fundamental and crucial reason lies in the excessive expropriation of imperial power. It is normal for the state to collect taxes and maintain government expenditure. However, the taxes levied by successive imperial dynasties were too heavy, especially in addition to the "zhengfu", there were some temporary levies, which further increased the tax burden of the vast number of officials. For example, the Qin Dynasty collected half of the gifts of Thailand, and exhausted the resources of the world to serve its government. In addition to the perennial taxes levied in the Han Dynasty, such as oral endowments, arithmetic endowments, money for money, rent from the customs market, fish tax, and salt and iron tax, there were also regular temporary levies, such as the sacrifices of ancestral temples and the repair of palaces and gardens, all of which may become reasons for temporary levies.
As for the new strange taxes that came out of the past dynasties, there are even more varied, such as the deed tax on housing transactions in the Eastern Jin Dynasty, the inter-house shelf tax levied during the Tang Dezong, and the Jiedu tax levied by the Jin and Song prefectures after the fifth dynasty, etc., these groundless and arbitrarily collected additional taxes further increased the economic burden of the officials and worsened their living conditions.
Taking the Jiangnan region as an example, since the implementation of the two tax laws in the middle of the Tang Dynasty, taxes have become heavier and heavier, which is the result of increasing layers, Wang Fuzhi pointed out that the two tax laws are extrajudicial levies, the Song Dynasty service law is extrajudicial service, and the Ming one whip law is an addition to two taxes, and three salaries are an additional levy in addition to one whip.
Huang Zongxi even hit the nail on the head and pointed out the key to the problem: taxes have the harm of accumulation, there is a household tax in addition to the land tax, and there is a ding tax in addition to the household tax. From the perspective of historical longitudinal comparison, the two taxes at the end of the Ming Dynasty increased more than ten times compared with the Han and Tang Dynasties. It can be seen from this that the fundamental cause of the widespread poverty of the ancient Chinese people was mainly due to the excessive collection of successive rulers; although they claimed to "control the gifts of the world by their use of the time," in fact they arbitrarily and unprovokedly imposed levies, resulting in the increasing amount of endowments: "I see that the talents of the world are increasing day by day, and then those who serve the people are trapped in the front." ”
The biggest drawback of the tax system throughout the ages has been extra-legal taxation, repeated collection of taxes, and unabated increases, and the serious consequences have led the people to be burdened by land and property, and the broad masses of officials have finally fallen into widespread poverty because of the ever-increasing taxation.
While the broad masses of officials and people fell into widespread poverty, the group of imperial rulers headed by the emperor possessed huge wealth, and this was because they controlled the land and population of the whole country by virtue of the political power they wielded; they regarded the world as their personal private property, insisted that the imperial throne was hereditary, power could not be transferred, and status could not be encroached upon, and hoped that the second and third kings would occupy power and wealth for all generations. For example, Ancestor Han Gao said to his father, "Lord Shi is often a scoundrel with a courtier, and he cannot govern industry, so he is not as good as Zhongli." Today's business, familiar as Zhongduo? "All the courtiers of the palace called long live, and laughed for fun. This record seems to be a joke, but it is the true thoughts of Liu Bangjunchen in his heart, and they really regard the world as their personal property, such as Liu Bang when he first entered the Qin palace and was attracted by the women of the palace drapery and wanted to stay there. Fan Yu advised: "Pei Gong wants to have evil in the world? Want to be a rich man? Pei Gong said: "I want to have the world."
His remarks such as Xiao He saying that "the Son of Heaven takes the four seas as his home", and that Dong Zhongshu, Dongfang Shuo, Ban Gu, and other sons of heaven were rich in the four seas, all showed that the monarchs at that time believed that the world was not a public world, but a world under the Son of Heaven. In other words, the land and people of the world were all the property of the ancestor Liu Bang of the Han Dynasty and his sons with the same surname and meritorious marquis. In the process of fighting for the world, Liu Bang won the Chu-Han War by dividing the land and the people and giving the sons and heroes of the Liu family; When the world was stable, he successively destroyed Han Xin, Peng Yue and other kings with different surnames, and conferred nine sons and sons with the same surname as kings, and 143 meritorious marquises. At that time, the meritorious heroes fought for merit day and night in order of division and the number of households, "fighting day and night without making a decision... The military officials are not enough to seal the whole world."
Obviously, in the eyes of Emperor Gaozu of Han and his courtiers, the land and people under heaven were their personal belongings, and they should have been used for their division in the first place. Under the political system of imperial autocracy, the land and people of the world were nothing more than private property that could be divided by the imperial ruling group, and the various rules and regulations formulated by the imperial court were only tools to ensure that the emperor monopolized or multiplied wealth, and the members of the aristocratic bureaucracy could get a piece of it.
For this reason, in a society ruled by imperial autocracy, not only the emperor has the idea of monopolizing wealth, but also the meritorious marquis. The reason why Zhao Gao was able to successfully make Li Si betray the Qin Dynasty was to lure him with permanent hereditary power: "The prince obeys the plan of the courtiers, that is, there are long marquises, and the world is called a lonely."
At the beginning of the Han Dynasty, Han Xin defeated the State of Qi and sent an envoy to the King of Han to tell the King of Han that to be a false king was to control the wealth of the State of Qi, and Liu Bang immediately cursed after hearing this. In the fifth year of the Han Dynasty, the Chu-Han War was raging, and the King of Han and the King of Qi Han Xin and Xiangguo Peng Yue dated to attack Chu together, but the Xin and Yue soldiers did not arrive, Zhang Liang said: "The king can share the world with him, and now he can also stand up." ”
So Liu Bang sent an emissary to Han Xin and Peng Yue: "And strike Chu." Chu Po, from Fu Hai and King of Qi east of Chen, north of Suiyang to Gucheng and Peng Xiangguo. ”
Claiming to share the world with the princes is also an expedient measure to tempt the princes with practical material benefits. In the sixth year of the Han Dynasty, Tian Ken of Qi saw Gaozu and said: "Qi, there is Langxi and Jimo in the east, Mount Tai in the south, the limit of the Zhuo River in the west, and the benefit of Bohai in the north." The place is two thousand li, the halberd is a million, and the county is thousands of miles away, and the whole is twelve. Therefore, the East and West Qin also. If you are not a parent-child disciple, you can't make Wang Qi. That is, the Eastern Qin must be in his own hands. In the eleventh year of the Han Dynasty, Empress Lü killed Han Xin, Peng Yue and other kings with different surnames, and Liu Bang then allocated important areas such as Qi and Liang to his sons.
Ancestor Gaozu of Han and the heroes divided the seals, and swore that the world would not be extinguished: "There are three people who are one hundred and forty in the line." It was when the people were scattered and died, and those who could be counted were only twelve or thirteen. It is that the big marquis does not exceed 10,000 households, and the small ones are no more than five or six hundred households. On the day of the knighthood, he vow: 'Let the Yellow River be like a belt, the Taishan like a tree, and the country be eternal, and the Miao descendants.' 'He also affirmed the letter of the Book of Dan, and regained the alliance of the white horse as the rank of eighty marquis. ”
The ancestors of Han Gaozu and the heroes vowed to share power and wealth (divided into ranks) for generations to come, and although this alliance oath could not stand the test of history, it had existed for more than a hundred years. It can be seen from this that the relationship between monarchs and subjects under imperial power is in essence nothing more than a relationship of mutual use and joint division of the world for their own personal interests.
Under the imperial autocratic political system, the rights and interests of the vast number of officials and people are not guaranteed at all, because they are only one of the many private properties of the imperial ruling clique in the imperial ruling clique, and it is natural and natural to collect taxes and levy conscription from them; as for whether their living conditions are embarrassing or whether their livelihoods can be maintained, these are not important, what is important is whether the interests of the imperial ruling clique can be unconditionally guaranteed. Under this political system that only seeks the benefit of the imperial power, can the vast number of officials and people not fall into a situation of widespread poverty?
epilogue
In the course of more than 2,000 years of history from the Qin to the Qing dynasty, the contradiction between the imperial power and the officials has always been the main contradiction in society. The excessive expropriation and exploitation of the imperial power led to a relatively poor state of the ancient Chinese people for most of the time, and due to the continuous intensification of this gap between the rich and the poor, periodic dynastic changes became a prominent feature of China's historical development.
Due to the rules of the platform, you will only be recognized as a fan if you have more interaction with me. If you like my article, you can click "Follow", and you can receive the article push as soon as you become an iron fan.