The fate of small-scale peasant economy

For thousands of years in China, although the socio-economic form has been impacted by the primitive commodity economy, monetary economy and modern powerful capitalist economy, it has always been inseparable from the model of small-scale peasant economy. With the solidification of this economic model, society is stagnant. It can be said that the small-scale peasant economy has always been the decisive factor affecting China's economy and society, which is closely related to government ownership, totalitarian autocracy, loose poverty and so on. The characteristics of this small-scale peasant economy in China are: small and scattered plots of land; scattered means of production; private ownership of land and continuous merger and division; the mode of operation tends to be dispersed; heavy tax exploitation and super-economic oppression; fragile tenant farmers, self-farmers such as the vast sea; it is easy to emerge the tide of bankruptcy and exile; small-scale agriculture is supplemented by family handicrafts, and so on.

The annexation of land was an important factor leading to the downfall of successive dynasties, and the peasants who lost their land could easily respond to the call of "equalizing the land" and "fighting against the local tyrants", so as to establish a new dynasty and get some land. It can be said that Chinese history is such a history of land annexation and division. Land annexation is originally a process of concentration of land, which means the scale of operation. For example, the enclosure movement in Britain merged scattered land and gave birth to agricultural capitalists in industrial operation. But in China, on the contrary, because tenant farmers and small farmers endure heavy exploitation, the actual land rent rate is more than 1/2. In addition, there are a large number of exorbitant taxes and taxes, which make farmers so poor that they can only operate in small pieces at most. Maintain simple reproduction Tenant farmers are unable to rent more, nor dare to rent more land. Natural and man-made disasters and excessive expropriation may make him bleed in vain, making him even more deprived of food and clothing. The self-employed peasants have already bought all their land, coupled with the exploitation of the government, so they will not be able to expand the scale of their operation. On the contrary, many people are forced by life to sell all or split up the land they already have. In ancient China, there was also a system of equal distribution of inheritance by many sons, so that even if the land of some scale of the father's generation was divided by many sons, it would be even smaller; even if the landlords and bureaucrats had a lot of land, however, because of the harshness and unpredictable changes of feudal politics, they were easy to lose power and decline, and the land was inevitably transferred, sold, merged and divided. In this way, in China, with the fierce land merger, the scale of operation may become smaller and the mode of operation tends to be scattered.

As mentioned above, although the small-scale peasant economy has continued for a long time in China, its foundation is extremely fragile. Scattered land management, cruel exploitation and dependence on nature have made farmers generally fall into poverty and can only maintain a year-after-year simple reproduction. This small-scale mode of production itself is a powerful force hindering economic development, it excludes any advanced productive forces, there can be no social accumulation of capital, and there can be no socialized labor and cooperation. it is impossible to adopt advanced technology and promote the use of science and technology. Not only that, but when there is a famine or war, this simple reproduction will also be interrupted, resulting in a tragic situation of "starving thousands of miles" and "cannibalism between people". And China is also a country with frequent famines and wars. According to Sinologist Joseph Needham, in the past 2200 years, China has had more than 1600 major floods and 1300 major droughts, not including regional minor disasters. Therefore, some people in foreign countries call China a "country of famine." At the same time, China is also a "country of civil war" for uncomplicated reasons-totalitarian rule; power standard; the close relationship between power and wealth leads to the desire and competition for power; cruel exploitation and oppression led to the uprising of the peasants; the ruler's crazy and bloody crackdown. Wait, so that 1/3 of China's time is spent in blood and fire. These famines and wars often cause great social and economic retrogression, and sometimes it takes decades or hundreds of years to recover. In Chinese history, the national economic collapse of "thousands of miles in the red" and "covering the wild with white bones" occurred in the last years of the Eastern Han Dynasty, the Southern and Northern dynasties, the five dynasties and the Ten Kingdoms, and the late Song and Yuan dynasties. Moreover, the small-scale peasant economy is an important reason why it has become a "country of famine" and periodic economic collapse, its fragile basis of reproduction, poor production conditions, and powerlessness in front of nature. the inability of individual workers to unite, as well as farmers struggling on the line of poverty and death, lack of spare power to carry out irrigation and water conservancy infrastructure, and so on, make the social economy full of crises and dangers. As soon as it is hit by a disaster or war, it quickly disintegrates and slides into the abyss of disaster.

The small-scale peasant economy is also the main factor delaying the development of commodity money economy and hindering the transition from feudal society to capitalism in China. China's small-scale peasant economy is dominated by small-scale agriculture, supplemented by family small handicrafts, which is the so-called "complementary type of agriculture and industry" or "combination of family farming and weaving", and "male farming and female weaving", which is a typical form of small-scale peasant production. Precisely because of the close integration of agriculture and industry and self-sufficiency, there is neither the ability to produce commodities, nor the larger market, nor the desire for mass production and demand for commodities. Even if there is such a desire, there is no capital investment and no funds to buy. Therefore, the budding commodity economy and capitalist factors cannot develop normally and cannot develop to the stage of primitive capital accumulation. Because there is no vast demand market, in modern times, even cheap foreign goods are difficult to invade, unable to open up the Chinese market. It can be said that Western capitalism has been facing the most tenacious resistance in China.

In fact, the emergence of China's commodity currency economy is very early, but there has been no development, most of the time in a moribund state, even if the occasional prosperity, and the replacement of dynasties, it will be completely destroyed. During the Spring and Autumn and warring States period, the commodity economy was more developed, and the accumulation of commercial capital and the merchant class appeared. Sima Qian described this in detail in the Biography of goods in Historical Records.

However, by the end of the Qin Dynasty, the beginning of the Eastern Han Dynasty and the end of the Eastern Han Dynasty, the war and the policy of suppressing commerce tended to depressed commerce; to the Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern dynasties, 400 years of turmoil made "money and goods have no circulation", and the commodity economy was destroyed. In the early and middle period of the Tang Dynasty, with the prosperity of commerce, there were shops engaged in financial business and bills of exchange instead of metal currency-"flying money" and "easy exchange". Foreign trade also developed massively, but it declined day by day after the an-Shi Rebellion. After the Yellow Nest uprising and the cruel suppression of the rulers, prosperous commercial cities such as Guangzhou and Yangzhou were "burned out" in the past. Later, it was the five dynasties and Ten Kingdoms, which led to the "interruption of people" and "tens of thousands of hungry dead". During the Song Dynasty, commerce became prosperous and developed, when streets, shops, temple fairs, money and paper money also appeared. However, with the invasion of the Yuan people who plundered livestock and slaves, the commodity economy was seriously damaged again, and it was not until the situation stabilized that a certain degree of prosperity appeared, but compared with the Song Dynasty, the river was declining. The commodity economy was active again in the Ming Dynasty, and at the end of the Ming Dynasty, the merchants Jia Ruyun and Kangxi opened the sea ban in the Qing Dynasty, but in essence, the closure of the country was still the mainstream, and the commodity economy was still suppressed, until after the Opium War and the invasion of western capitalism. the small-scale peasant economy still strongly resisted the foreign market economy, and the backwardness and beating in modern times were inevitable.