Chapter 18 Section 3 Labor service and its transition to currency tax after the middle of Tang Dynasty

In 780 AD, Yang Yan implemented the reform of the two tax laws.In the Two Taxes Law, both "yong" and "tiao" in rent and adjustment were changed to be paid in currency.Yong originally used silk and cloth instead of labor, and used real objects instead of labor.Now that it is changed to pay in currency, it is actually changing the labor tax into a currency tax.This reform was a reflection of the development of commodity-currency relations in the Tang Dynasty.The living labor needed by the country is not as good as hired labor in terms of efficiency or popularity.Liu Yan, a famous financier at that time, had already begun to use hired labor to replace corvee labor in his water transportation reform.It was already possible at that time to change labor service into payment of currency, and the state used the currency obtained to hire people to serve.Due to the development of land annexation, many farmers lost their land and became refugees, and the employment relationship in society has developed considerably.The change of the labor tax into a monetary tax in the Two Tax Law is just a manifestation of adapting to this objective situation.

Although the Two Taxes Law included servitude, the collection of corvee has not been abolished in the future. For their own interests, the rulers have never hesitated to double exploit the people. In the Song Dynasty, the two taxes and corvee were officially separated.The two taxes in the Song Dynasty were only land taxes, excluding dingqian and corvee.In addition to the two taxes, the people also had to pay corvee.There were two types of corvee in the Song Dynasty: one was official service and the other was miscellaneous corvee.The tasks of the servants are to be local lower-level officials, mainly including Yaqian who is in charge of the government's property; Talisman, manpower, hand strength, San Congguan; and the county Cao Si to Alu, the state Cao Si to Kongmu, county miscellaneous duties, Yu Hou, picking, pinching, etc., who are in charge of miscellaneous affairs in prefectures and counties.Miscellaneous corvettes are temporary servants, called "husband servants".Such as building roads, water control, building government private buildings, etc. in the local area.Those recruited in spring are called "tiaochunfu"; those recruited to meet urgent needs are called "tiaojifu".In the Song Dynasty, households were divided into nine grades according to their family assets, and the first, second, third, and fourth households took turns to undertake various duties and services.The lower fifth-class households are poor households and exempted from service; official households (also known as bureaucratic households, including nobles and bureaucrats) are also exempt from service.The assignments were determined by households and others, and labor labor was dispatched. This was the official service system in the Song Dynasty.The corvée in the Song Dynasty was the heaviest in Yaqian.Yaqian originated in the Tang Dynasty. At that time, there were the Yanei Army and the Yaqian Army in the Imperial Army and the Fanzhen Army. The Yanei Army was the personal guard of the emperor and the generals. In the future, the Yaqian Army will only serve as guards for warehouse transportation.In the Song Dynasty, Yaqianjun still managed the warehouses of the prefectures and counties, moved official belongings, greeted and sent off officials, etc.The management of official property not only has to bear the necessary expenses, but also compensates for any loss, and Yaqian households often go bankrupt because of this.Rich households often bribed the government, and resorted to various means to push the yamen to the third-, fourth- and even fifth-class poor households.Miscellaneous corvees are also mostly dispatched to the poor.Heavy corvee not only affects agricultural production, but also aggravates social conflicts.The poor have abandoned their fields and fled to avoid heavy labor.It has gradually become a common requirement to change official labor into employment.As early as the end of Song Zhenzong (1022 A.D.), some people discussed the disadvantages of the official service system.By the time of Emperor Shenzong of the Song Dynasty, there was a louder call for changing from poor servants to recruited servants.An important content of Wang Anshi's reform was the implementation of the exemption law in the fourth year of Xining (AD 1071), that is, changing the slave labor into hired labor.The main content of the Exemption Law (also known as the Service Recruitment Law) is: the households that originally undertook public service, waited for the exemption money for each household, and no longer served.The government uses the income from the exemption money to hire people to serve as slaves.Households in the bureaucratic situation, women's households, single households, underage households, monks and priests, and the upper fifth-class households in cities that did not bear corvee in the past also paid "labor assistance money" in half according to the amount of their land assets.The amount of exempt money collected is determined according to the employment value required by each state and county, and an additional 20% is charged, which is called "exemption money", which is used for employment in famine years.In the tenth year of Xining (AD 1077), miscellaneous corvees were also converted to employment. Those who applied for the service could fill in the service or pay for exemption. It was called "nafu money" or "free husband money". 400 texts.

Because the exemption law violated the interests of the bureaucrats, the big bureaucrats who had enjoyed the privilege of exemption now also had to pay "service money", which aroused their fierce opposition to the exemption law.After Song Shenzong's death, Song Zhezong succeeded to the throne, and Sima Guang was in power as prime minister. In the first year of Yuanyou (1086 AD), the law of exemption from service was abolished and the law of official service was restored.Due to the unpopularity of the restoration of the servitor law, at that time "everyone in the world wanted to hire servitors but hated errands" (Su Zhe: "Luancheng Collection·Three Discussions on the Separation of Evil and Righteous Zhazi").In the first year of Zhezong Shaosheng (1094 A.D.), the Reform Party came to power again and restored the employment law.In the future, the employment of servants and servants will be promoted one after another, or they will be employed in parallel, depending on the changes in the situation of conflicts and struggles between various classes and classes in society.This situation continued until the Southern Song Dynasty, and the situation of the common people "every time they served as a slave, even if they broke their homes" ("Song History·Shihuo Zhi No. 6") has not changed.It can be seen that the transformation from labor tax to currency tax depends not only on economic conditions, but also on the influence of class struggle.

Corvée in the Yuan Dynasty included military service, professional service and miscellaneous general service.The military service in the Yuan Dynasty implemented the military household system, and the family of soldiers was called military households, and they were soldiers from generation to generation.Military households may be determined according to wealth or poverty. For example, it is stipulated that each rich household sends one soldier as a soldier, and two or three poor households send one soldier as a soldier; or it is determined by the number of males. The number is determined, such as sending a soldier from 20 households.Military households have the right to be exempted from service for four hectares of land and miscellaneous service.However, all the equipment, food, and travel expenses of the soldiers are borne by the military households themselves, and the exemption from tax and service is far from covering the required expenses.Poor military households had to pawn their land and even sell their sons and daughters to serve as slaves.Military households serve in the military for life, and some are stationed far away in frontier towns, and are not allowed to return for many years, until they die of old age and serve in the army.Some families sent out three or four soldiers, resulting in no family members and no farmland.The service of the Yuan Dynasty is the inheritance and development of the service of the Song Dynasty.The main duties include various "station servants" serving the country's postal services; "artisan servants" who manufacture military weapons and handicrafts for the country; , the head of the capital, the president of the company, and Kuzi who manages the warehouse; the miscellaneous duties in the road, government, state, county and other government offices, such as waiting for the court, guarding the prison, etc.The official service in the Yuan Dynasty was also a heavy burden for the common people. For example, the station service households who undertake the station service, although they also have the right to be exempted from four hectares of land, are responsible for the supply of food, horses, postal delivery, and past officials and envoys. Expenses such as vehicles, boats, and transportation are often ruined.Miscellaneous official labor in the Yuan Dynasty refers to the temporary collection of labor such as building roads, repairing cities, building government offices, and transporting grain and grass, or paying money such as silver, banknotes, carts, and horses.In the Yuan Dynasty, there was also an employment system, which meant that the conscripts paid their own money to hire someone to serve on their behalf. Military households were limited to single-member households, while households with sufficient financial resources could hire someone to serve on their behalf.The employment of official servants was only carried out in the right area of ​​Zhejiang during the Zhizheng period (AD 1341-1368), and its scope of action was extremely limited.

The Ming Dynasty stipulated that the age of 16 became a Ding, and he began to serve in the military, and he was exempted from military service at the age of 60.There are three kinds of corvee: one is the battle of Lijia, which is collected on a household basis.In Ming Dynasty, 110 households were regarded as a mile, and the 10 households with the most rations were selected as the head of the mile. For the remaining 100 households, every 10 households were considered a jia, and the first person was selected as the leader.Every year, one person from the village head and one person from the head of Jia will lead a household of Jia to serve, and they will take turns once every 10 years.The second is the battle of uniform corvee, which is calculated by Ding.According to the thickness of Dingli's assets, Yulijia is divided into grades to determine the severity of the duties, so it is called "equal corvee".The average corvette is mainly for the official servants. Those who serve in person or hire people to fill the service are called force poor; those provided by private households or transported in currency, such as year-old tribute, horses, vehicles, boats, fodder and other public goods, are called silver difference. .Afterwards, the power gap was mostly replaced by silver, so the range of silver gap became wider and wider.The third is miscellaneous services, also known as miscellaneous servants, which are temporarily dispatched corvees, such as building water conservancy, building cities, palaces, and serving as various miscellaneous labor for local governments.

In the middle of the Ming Dynasty, due to land annexation, uneven taxes and servitude, intensified class conflicts, and a decrease in national fiscal revenue, the reform of the tax and servitude system was promoted.In the ninth year of Wanli Emperor Shenzong of the Ming Dynasty (1581 A.D.), Zhang Juzheng implemented a whip method, implementing the integration of tax and service, and collecting all kinds of corvee along with the land tax.According to the field and Ding Quo, it will be shared equally, and all silver will be levied.This merged the corvee into the land tax, and turned the corvee tax into a currency tax levied on the basis of acres of land.This completes the process of transforming labor tax into currency tax that has been developing throughout Chinese history, and ends the 2,000-year-old system of labor tax, tax in kind, and currency tax in parallel, and the labor system has since disappeared.

In the fifty-fifth year of Emperor Kangxi of the Qing Dynasty (1716 A.D.), on the basis of the one-whip law, the reform of allocating Dingyin to the land was implemented, and Dingyin was completely abolished, and all Dingyin, that is, Rentouyin, was allocated to the field.Dingyin was originally the discounted money provided by the common people (16-60 years old) to the state for corvee. Dingyin was divided into three classes based on the difference between the rich and the poor.In addition to Ding Yin, there is also the sign of "poor corvee", that is, forced labor.The land was distributed into the land, and the small silver was collected by the land. From then on, it was clearly stipulated that the people who received the small silver would no longer serve corvee in name, and "the official has a job, and he knows how to recruit", thus completely abolishing the thousands of years of labor. Forced corvee over the people.From then on, peasants no longer performed hard labor, and the feudal state further weakened the personal control of laborers, and laborers had greater personal freedom.All of these have objectively positive significance in promoting the budding development of capitalism.

However, the exploitation of the people by the feudal rulers will never be satisfied with one form.Although the vassals are already in service in the Fu, the phenomenon of free recruitment of civilian husbands by local governments still exists after the vassals enter the land.Taxes other than taxes and servitude other than servitude are still imposed on the working people from time to time, and the masses of the people have not completely escaped the suffering of corvee.