Chapter 2 Section 1: The Tribute, Assistance and Thoroughness of Xia, Shang and Zhou Dynasties
Xia, Shang, and Western Zhou were the era of slavery in our country.The Xia Dynasty lasted from the 21st century BC to the 16th century BC, the Shang Dynasty from the 16th century BC to the 11th century BC, and the Western Zhou Dynasty from the 11th century BC to 771 BC, totaling about 1300 years.Due to the long history and underdeveloped culture at that time, there are very few original materials about the taxation system of Xia, Shang and Zhou Dynasties.However, in the literature since the Spring and Autumn Period, there are many legends about the Xia, Shang and Zhou dynasties.These legends, to a certain extent, reflect the situation of taxation and labor at that time.
The field tax of the Xia Dynasty was called "tribute".There are two kinds of tribute, one is the land tribute offered by the princes, and the other is the land tax paid by the people.
The Xia Dynasty was formed on the basis of the original tribal alliance. After the establishment of the Xia Dynasty, the original tribes became princes under the Xia court.These vassals are all slave-owner nobles transformed from the original tribal leaders.They still rule the areas where the original tribes lived, and each occupies a piece of land of different sizes. The land is nominally owned by King Xia. Labor, and undertake the obligation to offer native products to the Xia Dynasty, this is the "tribute" that the princes of the Xia Dynasty paid to the court.The tribute paid by the princes to the court is actually the tax they paid to the slave country.Tribute already has all the basic attributes of taxation.It is mandatory and free.There are clear regulations on the variety, quantity, delivery route and time of the items that the princes from all over the country will send to the imperial court.For example, the tributes in Yanzhou (to the east of Zhengzhou, north of the Yellow River, and south of Cangzhou) were silk and lacquer; in Qingzhou (between Mount Tai and Bohai Sea), the tributes were fish, salt and other marine products, as well as silk, hemp, tin and exotic pine. Strange rocks; Xuzhou (between the Yellow Sea, Mount Tai and the Huaihe River today) paid tribute to five-color soil, wild pheasants, tung trees and so on.If the princes did not pay tribute to the imperial court on time, they would be condemned and questioned by the imperial court, and even sent troops to crusade against them.
Commoners who cultivated the state's land also paid tribute to the state.Most of the land in the country was entrusted to the princes, while the area around the capital was directly controlled and occupied by King Xia.Some of these lands are public lands, cultivated by slaves directly owned by the state, and all the harvests are owned and controlled by the state, while some are granted to civilians for cultivation.It is said that "Xia Hou's family paid fifty tribute" ("Mencius Teng Wengong 1"), that is, each household of common people in the Xia Dynasty received 50 mu of land from the state (compared to more than 10 mu today), and then paid part of the harvest to the state .The tributes vary according to the distance of the common people from the royal city.The rules for paying tribute to the fields within a thousand miles of Wangcheng are as follows: people within 100 miles from Wangcheng must pay the whole crop including ears, leaves, and stalks; The stalks are paid within 300 miles, the hulled grains are handed over within 300 to 400 miles, and the hulled grains, namely rice, are paid within 400 to 500 miles.In this way, the state can collect various items from the hands of the people, including rice, grain, ears, and stalks.Rice is edible, while chaff and straw can be used to feed livestock, build houses, stables, etc.The tribute paid by commoners who farmed state-owned land was the land tax, or land tax.
Tribute is a fixed-rate tax. It is said that the average output of a year is obtained by comparing the output of the land received by the people for several years, and then 1/10 of this average output is set as the amount of tribute.After the amount of tribute is determined, the common people must pay the full amount no matter what the year or harvest will be like in the future.Therefore, in a harvest year, it is easier for the common people to pay tribute.But in a famine year, even if the grains are not harvested, the tribute must be paid in full. Therefore, when a famine occurs, the people cannot bear it.In the Shang Dynasty, the law of tribute was replaced by the law of assistance.
In the Shang Dynasty, for the convenience of irrigation and farming, the land was divided into well-shaped squares, and each piece of land was separated by water canals and roads.There are nine square pieces of land in a well.This is the well field system.In the Shang Dynasty, each piece of land in the well field was 70 mu (compared to more than 14 mu today), and the surrounding eight pieces were distributed to eight families for cultivation, with each family having 70 mu. The middle piece of 70 mu was the national public land, and the eight families jointly helped the country cultivate it. .The harvest of the public land is owned by the state, while the products of the private land are owned by the people themselves.The land tax only takes products from public land, not private land.In a good year, both the state's public land income and the people's private land income increase, and in a bad year, both decrease.In this way, the people's life will be guaranteed, and the situation that when the tribute method is implemented, the people will use up all they have and cannot complete the tax.This is the assisting method of "Yin people help at seventy" ("Mencius Teng Wengong 1"), also known as the method of borrowing, borrowing is borrowing, referring to borrowing people's power to cultivate public land.Obviously, the aid (registration) law is a labor tax system.It is said that the tax rate of the auxiliary law is also 1/10, that is, about 9/10 (actually 8/9) of the people's total working time is used for farming private fields, and 1/10 (actually 1/9) is used for farming Public land.
Under the condition of assisting the law, people's work for the country and work for themselves are separated both in space and time.Moreover, the private land is cultivated by the family alone, and the public land is cultivated by eight families.If there is no strict supervision, people will not work as hard on public land as they do on private land, which will inevitably affect the output of public land and the income of the country.This tax system cannot be sustained in the long run.The "Che" method of the Zhou Dynasty may be the product of overcoming the disadvantage of assisting the law.
In the well fields of the Zhou Dynasty, each piece of land was 100 mu (compared to more than 20 mu today), and a total of 900 mu per well was awarded to eight families for joint cultivation. Finally, 800 mu of harvest was distributed to eight families, and 100 mu of harvest was used as The land tax is paid to the state.This is the method of "Zhou people are thorough in a hundred acres" ("Mencius Teng Wengong 1").Since the public land is no longer designated separately in the well field, but is given to the people as private land for cultivation, the enthusiasm of the people for labor can be mobilized, and the public land will be intensively cultivated like the private field, thereby increasing the land tax income of the country.
In addition to the land tax, the rulers of the Shang and Zhou dynasties enfeoffed many vassals in various places, and they also had to pay "tribute" to the king of Shang and Zhou in accordance with the regulations, and pay the local specialties in the enfeoffed areas.According to the "Zhou Li Dazai" records, the tributes of the states in the Zhou Dynasty were divided into nine kinds, which are called "nine tributes": "One is the sacrificial tribute (the sacrificial bacon and all livestock in solid color), the second is the concubine tribute (skin and silk), The third is Qigong (vessels used in the ancestral temple), the fourth is coin tribute (embroidered silk), the fifth is material tribute (timber), the sixth is goods tribute (pearls, jade and tortoise shells), the seventh is Fu tribute (sacrificial clothing), and the eighth is 㖿〔you You〕Gong (feather), Jiuyue Wugong (local product)." Like the Xia Dynasty, tribute was still an important fiscal revenue of the Shang and Zhou countries.
Xia, Shang and Zhou all had special officials in charge of tax collection and management.According to the "Zhou Rituals", the state agencies in the Zhou Dynasty were divided into six officials, and the local official Situ was responsible for tax collection and management.Under the big Situ, there are junior Situ, Zaishi, Lvshi, county division, and Suishi, who are in charge of the land, property, people, livestock, and vehicles in the country, formulate local taxation levels, stipulate tax collection methods, and collect taxes on time .In addition, there are Neifu, Cangren, Linren, etc. to manage the storage revenue and expenditure of grain and materials in the treasury;Tax collection and management system has been quite strict.
The land tax burden in the slave society was quite heavy.The tax rate is called 1/10, but in fact both the auxiliary law and the thorough law are taxed at a rate of 1/9.The actual tax rate is even higher. The poem "Book of Songs July" describes the production and living conditions of farmers in detail.The rice they planted, the cloth weaved, and the animal skins they hunted all had to be handed over to the prince and grandson.The house they lived in was drafty, crickets chirped under the bed, and mice came and went in the house.What they ate were melons, gourds, pockmarks and bitter vegetables that the slave owners and nobles did not eat at all.They didn’t even have a piece of rough linen clothes, and they worried about how to spend the winter all day: “Without clothes and brown, how can I die?” When they passed the courtyard of slave owners and nobles, they couldn’t help asking angrily when they saw the slave owners’ luxurious life: These rulers neither farm nor hunt, but why can they get the crops of 300 households?Why are all kinds of precious beasts hanging in the courtyard?Isn't this a free meal? "No crops, no crops, three hundred grains? No hunting, no hunting, Hu Zhanerting has hanging scorpions? The gentleman is not vegetarian?" ("Book of Songs·Fat Tan") in "The Book of Songs·Master" In the poem "Rat", the farmer angrily compares the ruler to a big mouse. The farmer feeds them all year round, and they devour all the harvested grain.They are indifferent to the plight of the peasants, showing no mercy.Therefore, the farmer is determined to leave these greedy parasites and go to his ideal "paradise" and "paradise" without exploitation and oppression.These poems fully reflect the cruelty of tax expropriation in slavery countries, express the strong dissatisfaction and resistance of the people at the end of slavery society to such expropriation, and show that the exploitation system of slavery is about to collapse and collapse.
The land tax in the slavery society was based on the well field system. The state granted the land to the people for farming, and the people provided labor tax and tax in kind to the state.By the end of the Western Zhou Dynasty, with the disintegration of the well field system and the emergence of the feudal land system, the land tax system of slavery also collapsed and was replaced by the new feudal land tax system.
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