Cheng: Why does history cycle?

journey

China's ancient dynasty cycle has aroused many people's interest in research. Why has the history of China been going backwards since the Qin and Han Dynasties, and the chaos has been repeatedly corrected and committed endlessly? Historians have various explanations. Some people say that the unified cultural tradition from China lacks cultural flexibility. Some people say that because of the threat of foreign armed forces, the survival competition of "nomadic people-settled people" has brought the Chinese dynasty back to life again and again. Some people say that this is due to the traditional hierarchical rule mode in China, and the frequent conflicts between the rulers and the ruled make it impossible for each dynasty to maintain long-term stability. Undoubtedly, all the statements are reasonable and can explain some or even many facts, but this paper focuses on the economic point of view. From the perspective of economics, how to explain the cycle of the dynasty? What this paper wants to emphasize is that the powerful vested interests formed in the late dynasties brought huge losses to the national tax revenue, hollowed out the national public finance, and destroyed the ruling building of the dynasty. The tension between this vested interest class and the national public finance is the basic problem of traditional China society, and its influence is extremely far-reaching.

1, the decline law of yeomen and the shortage cycle of public finance.

From the perspective of economics, the understanding of American historian Stavri Anoos is particularly noteworthy. In his view, the fundamental reason why ancient dynasties and empires in China could not get out of the cycle of ups and downs was the cycle of economic management. "Every dynasty began to face financial difficulties about 65,438+000 years after its establishment" (Anoos, Stavri, P294), and the collapse of public finance directly led to the demise of the empire. History is fluent and vivid in the works of historians, and one or two words with rich summaries cover the success or failure of one dynasty after another.

However, as a process, history has never been so calm and dull. How do happiness and happiness come about, and how do sadness and pain grow? When it comes to specific and subtle people and things, all the clouds of the past will be saturated with confusion and uncertainty, especially today, when we observe history in a different time dimension from the past, we should connect the past with the present, and China with the outside. We are particularly uneasy because of the association drawn from observing history. How did the cycle of empire happen? How does history mysteriously and quietly connect the former dynasty with the later generations? And what possibilities can the past provide for the future? We should ask questions about history.

Generally speaking, the cycle of the dynasty and the decline of the empire are a comprehensive result. If politics, economy and culture wither in an all-round way, the ruling order will be unsustainable. But after all, any civilization is built on material things, so the cycle of dynasties, as Stavri and Anoos said, is obviously an economic process. However, this economic process is closely related to the political, cultural and social processes of a civilization, and they are mutually causal. There are social and political mechanisms in the economic process, and some economic processes born with social and political mechanisms will in turn strengthen some political mechanisms and produce some social results. Or from the lack of public finance, this is an inevitable disease of every dynasty after its later period. And why is there a shortage of public finance? Excluding natural factors, let's take a look at some scenes caused by human factors.

Looking back at the economic signs of past dynasties, it is not difficult to find the following points: * * * *: there is a large shortage of tax revenue. At the beginning of each dynasty's establishment, there was a period of peace and prosperity, such as "the rule of literary scene" and "the prosperity of martial arts" in the Han Dynasty, "the rule of Zhenguan" and "the prosperity of Kaiyuan" in the Tang Dynasty, and "the prosperity of Kang Gan" in the Qing Dynasty. The Song and Ming Dynasties also witnessed a harmonious situation of recuperation, political clarity, abundant national finance and people's well-being. However, the good times did not last long. After the emperors before each dynasty, due to the lack of effective monetary system and commercial laws, taxes began to encounter many difficulties in the amount of extraction and the maintenance of its existing system, and even in the late dynasty, they were faced with the difficult situation that expenditures exceeded taxes. Self-employed individuals have fallen sharply.

The basic driving force for the replacement of Chinese dynasties is the peasant uprising. The idea of equal land ownership called for by the peasant uprising has a shocking influence on every dynasty. Because of this, at the beginning of the establishment of each dynasty, "land to the tiller" was carried out by overthrowing the original owners of large real estate and redistributing the land, and the land was basically distributed equally according to the population. The result of averaging land is the formation of the yeoman peasant class in the whole country, which accounts for the majority of farmers. However, this is also temporary. With the passage of the rest period and the increase of taxes, the yeoman gradually could not bear the pressure of survival, so he had to give up his land to the big landlord and become a tenant farmer himself. This process usually doesn't take long. By the end of the empire, tenant farmers and serfs gradually occupied the majority of farmers, and yeomen gradually became a minority. The land is seriously concentrated. The average land ownership is only the landscape at the beginning of each dynasty. Due to the lack of corresponding commercial and monetary systems as support and legal system constraints, the wealth of the empire has always followed Matthew's law that the poor are getting poorer and the rich are getting richer. In an agricultural society, the main symbol of wealth is the amount of land. After several generations of emperors, the big landlords who colluded with the regime generally accumulated a lot of real estate by exploiting the high-profit goods of the yeomen. On the contrary, under the double oppression of increasing corvee tax and unredeemable high-profit goods, yeomen gradually lost their land sovereignty and became vassals of big landlords. Even in the later period of the empire, most of the country's land was divided up by landlords who occupied an absolute minority of the population.

The above three points are actually closely related. The concentration of land will inevitably lead to the decrease of farmers, which will inevitably lead to poor taxation and lack of public finance. Among the three, the reduction of yeomen is particularly noteworthy. Looking back on the history of the imperial system for two thousand years, it is not difficult to find that the reduction of yeomen farmers has become an iron law accompanying the process of the dynasty from prosperity to decline. Why did the decline of yeomen inevitably lead to the shortage of dynasty tax revenue? This is related to the economic reality that traditional China is an agricultural society. The main economic source of the government and people in agricultural society can only be land, while the majority of the population in agricultural society are farmers. Under normal circumstances, the taxes of the dynasty were borne by farmers. If the land is not concentrated and the yeomen account for the main part of the peasants, there will be no big shortage of tax revenue in the empire, especially when the government implements the poll tax system, the state can usually maintain a balance of payments. But in fact, this is often just an "ideal type". Due to the failure to achieve "number management", on the one hand, the imperial tax revenue is not smooth, and it is difficult to ensure that all taxes can be implemented. On the other hand, it is difficult to manage the land dignitaries who are entangled with political power, especially when the yeomen can't bear the burden of long-distance service, lose their land rights and concentrate their land. The decentralized, self-sufficient and comprehensive agricultural economy, under the protection of the big landlords, often leads to the government. In the traditional China society, the proportion of farmers to the population has actually become a touchstone to measure whether the social and economic life is good or not. However, the law of the decline and fall of the yeomen carried on the rise and fall of each dynasty without exception. What's the reason? Of course, this is closely related to the simplification of Chinese traditional agricultural economy (lack of commercial and market mechanisms) and the rigidity of political system. It should be said that not every generation of kings is groggy and incompetent. On the contrary, we find that many supreme rulers have seen the basic problems existing in China society, and emperors of all dynasties have tried to solve these problems, but due to the political and economic reality of agricultural society, all their efforts failed without exception.

Corresponding to the law of decreasing farmers' speed and the shortage cycle of public finance, we also observed a periodic state governance model in the rulers, that is, every dynasty made great efforts to solve the land problem at the beginning, trying to balance the land, prevent land concentration and vigorously safeguard farmers' dominant position in the population structure. The most conspicuous is the Ming emperor Zhu Yuanzhang. The buildings of the Ming Empire have just been built. Just like Mao Zedong's suppression of "land, wealth, opposition and power", Emperor Hongwu, that is, "connecting with big stars", cracked down on bureaucrats, gentry, local and other high-ranking people, ranging from high-ranking officials in the imperial court to well-off households among the people. According to some historians' estimates, more than100000 people died. Confiscation of criminals' property, redistribution of land in it, and a large number of immigrants have settled down to open up wasteland since the founding of the People's Republic of China, making the whole country an agricultural society based on yeomen. "(Huang Renyu, P 150) Not only that, Zhu Yuanzhang added a lot of extra service obligations to the landlords who still own more than 700 acres of real estate in China, in order to prevent their property from expanding indefinitely." This service has various names and is distributed according to the principle of progressive tax, that is, the richer the family, the heavier the burden. For example, horses, boats, carriages and grain needed by post stations all over the country are completely supplied by large households, and the supply is unlimited within one year. The more officials travel, the heavier the burden. (Huang Renyu, 15 1) Because of this land policy, at the beginning of each dynasty, yeomen accounted for the majority of the national population, and the tax revenue of the empire was temporarily enriched because of the growth of population and land. Although almost every dynasty tried to maintain the average number of land and farmers at the beginning, the subsequent results were still land concentration, sharp decline of farmers and insufficient public finance, and so on. This is the typical feature of the society arranged by social stratum in the "three social systems" put forward by Zhang Wuchang, an economist of institutional school. The political and economic system is not open, which makes an economic policy that seems to benefit the country and the people not last long.

Take the Ming Dynasty as an example. Although Zhu Yuanzhang, the Ming emperor, solved the land problem for a period of time, what happened later was inevitably caught in the cycle of history. Therefore, although a great and upright official like Hai Rui appeared when the Ming Empire was in danger, Huang Renyu pointed out very accurately that Hai Rui's efforts to restore the teachings of his ancestors were doomed to be a tragedy. What he can't understand is that the economic and political system of the empire has problems from the beginning. The land policy in the early Ming Dynasty was completely maintained by the personal charm of Emperor Hongwu, and the loss of charm would also mean the failure of this economic arrangement. But after the death of Zhu Yuanzhang, the first emperor, you asked the later emperors where to find the authority similar to that of the founding emperor. Their power only comes from tradition, and traditional rule naturally means submission to past current affairs, including submission to specific people who formulate and explain these traditions. Therefore, the authority of the emperor is no longer absolute, and the old ministers of the former dynasty and the bureaucratic groups of the present world may be challenged. When the legitimacy of later emperors' rule was greatly weakened, it was impossible to effectively maintain the economic arrangement based on charismatic rule.

In a closed agricultural society with land as the main economic source, national peace and stability are closely related to the average land. Only in this way can we maintain a strong contingent of farmers and rely on state taxes. However, the hierarchical political system (which is the paradox of agricultural society: hierarchy is the only way to maintain the rule of a huge empire) is doomed to fail to implement the economic arrangement of equal land rights from beginning to end. What kind of outcome will the empire face in the case of sharp drop in tax revenue and empty national finance? Historians have long concluded that the two forces that maintain imperial rule-bureaucracy and army-will be unable to maintain because of lack of financial support, so the empire will first collapse from its own system; At the same time, farmers who can't stand exploitation are also uniting to raise the banner of justice for their own survival. At this time, foreigners often take advantage of the internal turmoil of the dynasty to attack by force. The empire had to fall apart under the attack of internal and external troubles.

2, another privatization, another ending.

The decrease in the number of yeomen farmers led to financial difficulties in the later period of each dynasty. However, the lack of public finance does not mean the reduction of the country's total wealth. On the contrary, we can find other facts. For example, in the Tang dynasty, although its rulers did not strictly average land rights as in the Ming dynasty, they opened up new land and distributed it to free farmers by other means without depriving the extended family of land. This "land equalization" measure once stopped semi-feudalism. However, after hundreds of years of establishment, each dynasty inevitably overstretched and its finances were stretched, even when the country's total wealth increased. Who caused the yeoman farmers to drop sharply and hollowed out the public finances of the empire?

The problem lies in the private ownership of land in past dynasties. We have always been used to thinking that there has never been a problem of private ownership in China society, and privatization has been suppressed in every dynasty for five thousand years. If this is a contrast with the clear property rights system in modern Western Europe, it can't be said that this statement is totally unreasonable. The private property rights system, which is restricted by legal protection rights and tax obligations, has never grown effectively in China. However, if "the whole leopard" is used to exclude "one spot", it is inconsistent with historical reality to think that China society only has excessive control of economic resources by the government and a large number of selfless people's possession of property. In fact, the annexation of land by big landlords and powerful people in ancient China also created a kind of private ownership of land. Although this kind of private ownership is not strictly guaranteed by law in the modern sense, the land title deed of the land owner and the political power obtained in collusion with the ruler generally maintain the private ownership of the land and avoid the intrusion of the political power. However, China's past social problems are also here. Land is centralized and privately owned by big landlords and powerful people. If there is a perfect fiscal and taxation system to ensure that people who own large real estate also pay corresponding taxes, private ownership of land will not cause great harm to the country and society. The irrationality of China's traditional social and political system lies in the extreme imbalance between the rights and obligations of property owners. On the one hand, imperial rule is not based on technology. Similar to the "high-level institutions" and "low-level institutions" mentioned by Mr. Huang Renyu, they are lacking in China society, so the tax revenue of the empire can only be very large and cannot be accurately quantified, which gives big real estate developers the opportunity to evade taxes; On the other hand, more importantly, the owners of large real estate generally enjoy privileges. The rule of traditional China society is based on the cooperation between the bureaucratic class and local gentry. Big landlords can use their influence on the government to effectively avoid the large amount of taxes they have to pay. In modern terms, as a vested interest class, the big real estate developers in the traditional China society really have the suspicion of "belittling Yao but neglecting Fu". This separation of property possession and due obligations has led to the lack of public finance, and it has also become the basic reason for the rise and fall of China's historical dynasties.

The inevitable result of the de facto private ownership of land is that political power is applied to land possession, which further strengthens the intensity of private ownership of land. Under the background that land is the main wealth of society, of course, the most and most frequent economic benefit that can be obtained by using political resources will be land. The concentration of land has created a group of vested interests, and the usual model of this class is bureaucracy+real estate. It is closely related to the family and family concept in China traditional society. On the surface, the imperial examination system implemented after Sui and Tang Dynasties created "equal opportunities" in China society, which opened the door for children from poor families to enter the gentry class. In fact, the idiom "Three generations produce one aristocrat" tells the secret of the imperial examination: without sufficient financial resources as the basis for years of study and preparation, there is no possibility of taking the imperial examination, even if it is for the sake of study. Therefore, the family and the family's financial resources must be behind the promotion, and political power will naturally return to the direction of economic power, which will facilitate the family and the family's wealth and status to jump. Bureaucrats and real estate are thus combined. Although this does not include all types of collusion between political power and economic interests, this kind of collusion is the most obvious, plain and popular, which is roughly the case in various dynasties.

Let's take the Ming Dynasty as an example. After retirement, Ming officials became squires, but according to government regulations, they still enjoyed various political and economic preferential treatments similar to those when they were in office (in this respect, we once again felt the striking similarity between history and reality), which in itself meant that they stood in a higher position than the average person in terms of possessing social wealth. Not only that, they are also linked by rural friendship, annual friendship, marriage friendship and so on. They are inextricably linked with other dignitaries who directly or indirectly control the political power. Therefore, it is very natural and natural for them to transform their acquired political resources into economic resources. For example, Jeff, a college student in Wenyuange, retired to Nanzhili, and there were thousands of people in his family. It is said that 400,000 mu of real estate was occupied by various means such as usury. (Huang Renyu, P 146) Power and money have been linked since ancient times. Officials in the Ming Dynasty generally accumulated certain assets by intercepting "fire consumption" and collecting "routine cases". These assets can be directly used to buy land, or they can seize land through usury. It is common sense that an official collects money when he is in office and turns it into land and becomes a land aristocrat after retirement. When a dynasty was established, it overthrew a group of gentry. However, "wildfire never quite consumes them, the spring breeze is blowing high". After a new round of political reconstruction, economic resources will be rearranged decades after the establishment of the dynasty. From the Ming Dynasty to the Wanli period, a new land aristocracy has emerged. "The14,000 rich households sent to the imperial court for the second time have been replaced by new rich households. Most of these newly rich households belong to bureaucrats, gentry or students, and they can enjoy "preferential exemption" and no longer bear the responsibility of "service." Government officials also have more and more opportunities to cheat. Because cash and physical objects are not always collected and distributed nationwide, the financial system cannot pass the strict accounting system, and the money leaked from the cracks falls into the hands of these people. " (Ren Huang in P 153) Similar phenomena and processes can be found in all generations.

Another example is the Tang Dynasty, when the People's Republic of China was founded, the "land equalization system" was implemented, but in fact, the "land equalization system" was not thorough from the beginning. The huge, self-sufficient and tax-free local family property formed in the former dynasty was not deprived, but opened up other ways, such as reclaiming land abandoned in the war and giving farmers land. The state tax was borne by the vast number of small farmers, and the big landlords who held political power did not need to pay taxes. This was especially true in the last dynasty, the Qing Dynasty. "Three years in the Qing dynasty, a hundred thousand snowflakes and silver" is a vivid portrayal.

At this point, we can see that in the last generation, all the subjects surrounding taxation were actually divided into two categories: one was the vested interests who held political and economic power, that is, the land nobles, who did not pay taxes or paid less taxes and exploited farmers through usury; The other is farmers (yeomen, sharecroppers, serfs), who bear the taxes of the government and the exploitation of the land nobles. This distinction between the rich and the poor has told people where the wealth of the empire has flowed and how the society has experienced differentiation. In fact, this distinction shows the realistic pertinence of China's traditional social class analysis. What are the social consequences of the existence of vested interests with a minority population and exploited people with an absolute majority population?

In the final analysis, economic problems are interests. The interest problem mainly lies in two aspects: first, production, that is, the creation of wealth; The first is distribution, which means the use of wealth. These two aspects are mutually dominant, and if one of them fails, it will have a negative impact on the other, often with certain social consequences. The emergence of exclusive vested interests and unfair distribution of interests (not equal to inequality) are precisely the fuse that triggered the social crisis. Of course, if there is a breakthrough in wealth production at this time, even the poor and weak can get a share in the case of unfair distribution, just as the Tang Dynasty did, and the social crisis may be temporarily alleviated. But in a certain period of time, land resources are limited after all, and the surplus of one party must be based on the loss of the other party. From remote ancient times to the first half of the 20th century, the economic and financial sources of traditional China society mostly came from land, and the economic sources of ordinary people were also very single. Without land, they can only rely on people and have no other opportunities to obtain means of subsistence. Therefore, the opposition between the poor and the rich is not only the opposition of the amount of wealth, but also the opposition of whether there are opportunities to seek wealth. Simple inequality between the rich and the poor is not the most urgent problem on the whole, but if the opportunities to get rich at the same time are unequal, the weak have actually been forced to find no way out and no hope. If they can resist "being rich and heartless", so be it. Because of this, the traditional China society presents a turbulent cycle.