Chapter 159: On the Family, the State, and All Under Heaven

After Huang Shunfu was transferred into the Regional Commander's headquarters, the new County Magistrate of Luling was a man named Li Ke.

His scholarly credentials were not high — he was merely of child student background.

But he had followed Zhao Han very early on; he was an owner-peasant from Lijia Guai. In the early period he helped distribute land, afterward joined the propaganda corps, later was reassigned as a town chief, then transferred into the county yamen — succeeding as county magistrate was a matter of course.

"Greetings, Regional Commander!" Li Ke said, cupping his hands.

Zhao Han smiled and said, "Please, sit."

"Thank you, Regional Commander." Li Ke straightened his back and sat down.

"I've read the booklet you submitted," Zhao Han asked. "Regarding peasant marriages, how was it handled before?"

The land distribution across the three counties had produced a very large flaw.

So long as one had reached the age of twelve, both men and women were entitled to a share of land. But what was to be done when a woman married out? Should the land under her name belong to her natal family or to her husband's family?

According to the principle of equality between men and women, it would naturally belong to the woman herself — wherever she married, she could take it with her.

But how could the woman's family possibly agree to that!

Li Ke replied, "Exchange-land marriages. The two families both marry off a daughter and take in a daughter-in-law."

Zhao Han frowned. "What if a family has only daughters, or only sons — wouldn't that make it impossible to arrange a marriage?"

Li Ke said, "Very difficult."

Zhao Han immediately summoned Chen Maosheng. After explaining the situation, he asked, "Such a huge flaw has appeared in land policy — why did you not inform me?"

Chen Maosheng was equally astonished. He explained, "When land was first distributed, everyone was overjoyed, and no one mentioned that it would hinder marriages. After that I was transferred into the Regional Commander's headquarters and knew little of what went on below — and no one reported this situation upward either."

Zhao Han, for the moment at a loss for a solution, instructed, "Notify the propaganda corps and the peasant associations at once. Have them collect the peasants' opinions widely and see how this problem should be resolved."

This was a very large loophole. Households raising daughters would suffer a disadvantage, which might lead them to be unwilling to marry their daughters off — because the daughter would take the land away with her.

The land policy of New China took the village group as the unit and divided the total land equally among the villagers. The dead had their land reclaimed; newborns received land at once.

But Zhao Han could not do it that way!

The equal-field system of the Sui and Tang had already left a cautionary lesson. Given the ancient regime's degree of control over the grassroots, reclaiming the land of the dead was impossible — it practically amounted to redistributing the land anew every year. Under the Sui and Tang, public land was also reallocated to peasants annually, but to save themselves trouble, the grassroots officials simply kept everything unchanged year after year. The result was that the land of the dead could not be reclaimed, and newly come-of-age males could not receive their allotted land either — in the end, it wrecked the Tang dynasty's finances.

The peasant associations were only transitional products, without any official rank to speak of. Once official rank was granted, corruption was bound to follow, and their functions would overlap with the village and town institutions — the government could not produce that many salaries. Yet if no official rank was granted, as time passed, the peasant association cadres' motivation would also fade away.

Therefore, sooner or later the peasant associations would have to be abolished — or rather, they would die out naturally — and village affairs would ultimately all revert to the village chief.

What Zhao Han had considered at the time was: rather than let land distribution breed corruption in the future, it was better, while their degree of control was at its fullest, to distribute the land directly to the peasants as private property.

In this way, every peasant was guaranteed a few mu of land. Even if they had several more children, they could still scrape by. Once their territory expanded, the surplus population could be migrated northward to the war-torn lands.

This could secure several decades of rural stability. When the time came, the land conflict could be shifted overseas step by step.

Truly, a land policy that could be smoothly implemented and guarantee several decades of rural stability already counted as an extremely formidable policy.

From ancient times to the present, no regime had ever been able to sustain its land policy purely through agriculture.

When New China developed into the twenty-first century, it too used industry to dissolve the land conflict. Because the population kept increasing, in many villages newborns were already unable to receive land allotments.

But seventeenth-century industry could not do that. The early Industrial Revolution, far from alleviating the land conflict, actually accelerated land annexation!

In North America back then, with so much land, once the Industrial Revolution arose, it still caused large numbers of peasants to have no land to farm — because capital annexed land far too quickly. They could only rely on constant expansion, seizing Native American territory to shift the conflict.

England was the same. Before the Glorious Revolution, the king opposed the enclosure movement, because it was detrimental to the king's collection of agricultural taxes.

It was precisely England's great industrial development that drove the capitalists to annex land madly. The king was in the way — so overthrow the king. Thus the enclosure movement grew ever more intense. Had this been done in China, the peasants would have risen in revolt long ago. English peasants did revolt too, of course, but the population was too small and they were easily suppressed by the aristocracy.

The enclosure movement sent vast numbers of landless peasants flooding into the cities to work for a living. England's industrial scale could not bear the load either, so harsh laws had to be enacted — stealing a single loaf of bread could get one transported to Australia. In this way, the surplus urban population was cast overseas to fend for itself, which both reduced the pressure of maintaining domestic order and increased the population of the overseas colonies.

As for how many innocent commoners died because of the enclosure movement and the transportation policy — that was not a question the capitalists needed to consider.

One can only say, it was a history written in blood and tears.

Zhao Han too was going to develop industry. He could imagine that, after making their fortunes, the capitalists would certainly produce large sums of silver to buy up land. Therefore he had to distribute the land in advance and prohibit land sales. Even land rewarded for meritorious service had to have an upper limit — private land exceeding that limit would be invalid.

Force the capitalists to go exploit the lands overseas!

Yet the problem they now faced was utterly absurd — it was simply that women marrying out was causing disputes over land ownership.

Zhao Han deployed all his resources to collect every kind of opinion, and discovered that this problem… had no solution.

They could only resort to exchange-land marriages. If a household had no daughters, its sons would have great difficulty finding wives. If they still wanted wives, they could simply agree not to claim the wife's land — otherwise, to keep the land, the woman's family would absolutely never permit their daughter to marry out.

Zhao Han convened several meetings, and the final decision was preposterous: make no intervention whatsoever.

If your family has no daughters and you still want to find a wife for your son, you must agree that the woman's land stays with her natal family and does not come with her.

No policy is perfect. So long as no major problem arises, just muddle along with it.

…

White Egret Isle Academy.

More than four hundred officials, clerks, and scholars crowded together to hear Zhao Han lecture. Before each person lay a booklet that Zhao Han had just written.

On the Family, the State, and All Under Heaven!

Zhao Han stood on the lecture platform. Afraid the students in the back could not hear clearly, he simply picked up a paperboard megaphone to deliver his lecture.

"In the pre-Qin era, the land ruled by the Zhou Son of Heaven was All Under Heaven. The land enfeoffed to the feudal lords was the state. The land enfeoffed to the scholar-officials was the family."

"In the present age, the land passed down by our ancestors is All Under Heaven, and the land we have conquered is also All Under Heaven. What then is the state? The land ruled by the Emperor is the state — for example, our Great Ming State! As for the family — your family, my family, countless families great and small!"

Although the Ming Emperor still held the title Son of Heaven, the official usage had long since adopted the term "the Great Ming State."

These concepts were very easily accepted.

"To change the dynastic name and alter the reign title — that is called the fall of a state. When benevolence and righteousness are choked off, until it reaches the point of beasts devouring men and men turning to devour one another — that is called the fall of All Under Heaven. The fall of a state is not to be feared. If the Great Ming were to perish, that would be the fall of a state; you and I would simply establish another state. The fall of All Under Heaven is what is truly to be feared — whether common folk or gentry, not a single one can escape it!"

"The Great Ming State is composed of thousands upon thousands of families."

"Those thousands upon thousands of families pay taxes to the court, sustaining the continued existence of this state."

"As a state, as a court, what ought the Great Ming to do? It ought to use the taxes paid by the common folk to support the civil and military establishments."

"The civil officials and clerks maintain the functioning of the state: spreading culture and edification, encouraging agriculture and sericulture, building waterworks, constructing bridges and paving roads, rooting out the violent and giving peace to the good. The military officers and soldiers maintain the stability of the state: internally, they must purge bandits and outlaws; externally, they must resist the alien tribes."

"And what is the present state of affairs?"

"The civil officials and clerks are mostly corrupt and venal. The waterworks go unmaintained; in years of great disaster, the common people go unrelieved. Far from rooting out the violent and giving peace to the good, they instead wantonly fleece the common people."

"Military officers and soldiers — the officers lack courage and strategy, the troops lack the will to fight. Within the realm they cannot clear out the bandit rebels; beyond the borders defeat follows defeat, until all under heaven is plunged into misery and ruin."

"The reason I raised troops in revolt is that this Great Ming state no longer has the form a state and court ought to have."

"……"

Pang Chunlai, Li Banghua, Song Yingxing, Tian Younian, Wang Tiaoding, and the others were spoken to until a sudden clarity opened before them — especially the part about a fallen state and a fallen world.

"When the ruling surname changes and the reign title is altered, that is called a fallen state. When benevolence and righteousness are choked off, until it comes to beasts leading men to devour men, and men turning to devour one another, that is called a fallen world." These words came from Gu Yanwu; they have not yet appeared in this age, and they are enough to make a scholar grasp the principle.

They can also provide an extremely powerful theoretical basis for Zhao Han's rebellion.

Zhao Han continued:

"How did the Great Ming court fall to such a state?"

"The administration of officials, moral instruction, virtue — none of these is the key. In the time of the Founding Emperor, official administration was just as corrupt, because it was inherited from the Mongol Yuan officials. Yet why was the realm able to flourish then? In every case it was because the court's finances were kept within proper limits."

"The taxes of a state — I will divide them for now into two kinds: direct taxes and indirect taxes."

"Direct taxes are those paid per head or per unit of land. Indirect taxes — for example, the stall tax, the customs-passes tax, and so on — when the tax is levied heavily, goods are sold at high prices; the merchant in any case takes no loss, and can pass it on to the common people."

"For a state to keep its finances within proper limits, direct taxes must be stable."

"In the present age, direct taxes have already been wrecked. First, the land: a tiny handful of people hold the overwhelming majority of the land. They can evade assessment, they can dodge payment, and even when they cannot dodge it, they can shift it onto the tenant farmers, turning a direct tax into an indirect tax."

"Second, the head tax: ever since the Single Whip Law broke down, the head tax has been collected in utter chaos. Great numbers of common people place themselves under the protection of the gentry, hiding the population to escape the head tax. The result is that a minority of common people bear the entire head-tax burden of the whole state!"

"The court's finances are unstable, the common people suffer unbearably, and all the wealth and goods have been seized by those great clans."

"When the court's tax revenue falls short, it cannot afford to maintain troops. When soldiers do not get enough to eat, how can they go fight the Tartars? The more they lose to the Tartars, the more they must extort and levy wildly to support the troops."

"When the court extorts and levies wildly, the common people cannot survive, and so they rise in revolt. The northwestern roving bandits who rebelled first — every one of them was forced to take up arms. This forces the court to send yet more troops to suppress the revolts. The more troops it uses, the more its finances are drained dry, and so it extorts and levies without limit, stirring yet more common people to take up arms in revolt."

"It is drinking poison to quench thirst!"

"And so we have arrived at the present situation."

"Those who throw the state into chaos are not the Emperor alone, nor the imperial clan alone, nor the greedy and corrupt officials alone. The gentry and great clans of all under heaven — none can escape the blame!"

"Why do I redistribute the land? Because if the land is not redistributed, not only will the state fall, but the world will fall, and millions upon millions of households will fall! Go and look — wherever the northwestern roving bandits have passed, which great household has kept its life? Even in Yichun, Yongxin, and the other counties, they are killing landlords and rising in revolt. If you do not believe it, go to Yongxin County and see for yourselves!"

"You gentry here present — would you rather have me come and redistribute the land, or would you rather have all under heaven rise in revolt and take your lives and your family fortunes in their entirety?"

"Family, state, and world are in truth one body. If every man plans only for his own gate, caring only for his own single family, then the state will surely fall, and from that it will come to a fallen world. If the world falls, every small household perishes together, and not a single gate survives!"

"……"

Pang Chunlai, Li Banghua, and Song Yingxing had each believed they saw the situation of the Great Ming with penetrating clarity.

Yet Zhao Han's concepts of direct taxes and indirect taxes opened their eyes and ears to something new; views that had been vague before were now drawn together in theoretical summary.

Li Banghua sighed: "Family, state, and world — to be able to expound them in this way is like having fine liquor poured upon one's head!"

Pang Chunlai turned his head and said to Wang Tiaoding: "Bohe, your literary talent is outstanding. Polish this essay and have it distributed in Jiujiang, Nanchang, and the other cities."

(End of chapter)