Chapter 55 4. Public Enemy

Since the founding of Liu Bang, the Han Dynasty has been established for 215 years.The foundation of the country for more than two hundred years fell silently and inexplicably into the hands of Confucian practitioner Wang Mang. In the Confucian ideological group, Wang Mang is a typical radical.This poor boy who lost his father in the early years and was helpless, has endured humiliation and played power for decades, just for this day. His day is to glorify Confucianism and use his hands to complete the Utopia in the eyes of Confucianism.Perhaps in his view, the Han Dynasty is like a big ship that has been drifting on the sea for many years, but now it is stuck in the quagmire.As the new helmsman of the empire, Wang Mang first of all is to open up a new course and sail to the ideal shore.

Therefore, as soon as Wang Mang came to power, he embarked on social and political reforms. All careers in the world are thought first and actions follow.Therefore, to understand Wang Mang's reform actions, one must understand the Confucian beliefs that influenced his brain.In the pre-Qin period, a hundred schools of thought contended, and the first golden age of thought appeared in Chinese history.However, in that era of great collision of ideas, only four schools of thought finally became the mainstream of society.They are Confucianism, Taoism, Law, and Mohism. Among the four schools of thought, Taoists are hermits, who believe that the world is too chaotic and people's hearts are too bad. If people want to save the world, they must first save their own hearts.To save oneself, one must escape from the chaotic world, follow the footsteps of the ancients, and go to the rivers and lakes to enjoy himself.

Mohists believe that the world is too chaotic, mainly because of the lack of love, so everyone should love.For the sake of universal love, Mohist believers have always been strict with self-discipline and lenient with others, typical ascetics.Therefore, the Mohists always take Dayu, who works hard, as an example. In order to save the common people in the world, I have worked hard and thousands of families have been happy. Confucianism believes that the world is too chaotic, mainly due to the lack of two things.One is benevolence and the other is righteousness.If all the monarchs in the world practiced the politics of benevolence and righteousness, the Five Hegemons of the Spring and Autumn Period would not fight for territory; the Warring States Period would not try all the tricks in the world for fraud.So how can we realize benevolent government?Confucianism also believes that this should learn from the ancients, especially Yao and Shun.If you want to live a good life, of course it is better to go back to the Western Zhou Dynasty.

To sum up, we found that the three schools of Confucianism, Taoism, and Mohism are all proud of learning from the ancients and ashamed of learning from the present.Legalism, however, is quite different.Legalist thinkers, like a different kind of swordsman in the ideological arena, turned out to put forward ideas that are diametrically opposed to the above three schools. Legalists believe that each generation has its own politics and thoughts, and more importantly, its attitude towards life.If we want to live a happy life today, we have to look forward. How can there be any reason to look backward?This kind of positive and forward-looking thinking is called advancing with the times.The master of the thought of advancing with the times is Han Feizi.

But what happened to the lively and heroic Qin Shihuang, who took Legalism as the foundation of his country?It only lasted fifteen years.After the founding of the Han Dynasty, Liu Bang was not very interested in the Legalists.For the long-term stability of the country, Liu Bang decided to adopt eclecticism and adopt the concept of governing the country with Confucianism outside and law inside. Facts have proved that this concept is very reliable.The Han Dynasty persisted for more than two hundred years, much longer than Qin Shihuang's Qin Dynasty. Now, Wang Mang believes that the Han Dynasty collapsed after only persisting for two hundred years, which is too short a time.Because the Zhou Dynasty had a total of 800 years from its establishment to its collapse.Therefore, if you want to have a long-term destiny for the country, you have to learn from the Zhou Dynasty.Therefore, this kind of thinking of keeping up with Zhou gave Wang Mang a series of reforms with a retro color.

A country is like a person, who has to move forward. If you look back and walk forward with your feet, you will fall down one day.Unfortunately, during Wang Mang's retro reform movement, because he was too hurried, he fell very quickly in the end, plunged headlong into the cliff, and never returned. Wang Mang's New Deal mainly carried out the following aspects: The first is to change the name of the government agency.For example, Da Si Nong (Minister of Agriculture) was renamed Xihe, and later changed to Nayan; Shaofu (Minister of Supply of the Court) was renamed Gonggong—at first glance, I thought it was the Gonggong who hit the sky. up.This name change method basically refers to the Zhou Dynasty system.

After changing the official, then change the place name.Some place names have been called for hundreds of years, and everyone is familiar with them.But Wang Mang felt uncomfortable and said that it must be changed, so he changed it to the ancient name.The most frightening thing is that there are no rules for this name change. Wang Mang can change it wherever he thinks of it. The same place name may be called the same name today, but it may have to be changed tomorrow.So in the end, the common people didn't know what the name of the place they lived in was.In official documents issued by the state to a certain place, the old name must be annotated in brackets after the new name.

This name change is a small matter, but it is a big trouble.But Wang Mang had a great time changing it, so what can he do? The second is to carry out land reform.Wang Mang's land policy is to restore the ancient well field system.In the Han Dynasty, land could be bought and sold at will.As a result, many powerful and powerful enclosures became veritable landlords.But now Wang Mang issued an edict declaring that all land must be nationalized and redistributed.According to the new regulations, each adult man will be allocated 100 mu of land.If the family has no more than eight members and the land exceeds 900 mu, the excess should be automatically divided among clan members, neighbors or relatives and friends in the same village.

In the Han Dynasty, those who sold their land had nowhere to go, but sold themselves as slaves to make a living.However, Wang Mang issued a new regulation: slaves and maidservants, like state land, are not allowed to be bought and sold freely. Wang Mang's move was too ruthless.He offended the interests of most people.First of all, the interests of the big landowners.The ancestors of these people may have been poor many years ago. After several generations of struggle, they finally became landlords, and they lost everything overnight. Do you think they will get along with Wang Mang? Secondly, those slaves and handmaidens.In the Han Dynasty, it was not easy to be a farmer.One-thirtieth tax is paid a year.But in times of war, the country has no money, so it desperately extracts taxes from them, even as high as five tenths.Working hard, the crops grown are not enough to eat, and half of them will be taken away by others.What do you think is the future of doing this job?

Ever since, some people want to evade taxes.To evade taxes, you have to sell your land - you can make money, and then sell yourself into slavery.Mr. Lu Xun said that in ancient China, there have always been only two mentalities, one is the era when slaves are firmly established, and the other is the era when even slaves cannot be slaves.As everyone knows, people can't survive anymore, and it's better to survive with slaves than without slaves. However, Wang Mang said that slaves and maids should not be bought and sold casually. If someone in the family is sick and has no money to treat them, they will have to sell their property.But they have nothing, and they can't sell themselves as slaves. Doesn't it mean that they have blocked their only way of making a living?

The so-called barefoot is not afraid of wearing shoes.Wang Mang offended these barefoot people. They are jobless and homeless, wandering in society, which is very dangerous. Wang Mang didn't understand this truth at first.One year after the implementation of the policy, the society became more and more unstable, so Wang Mang had no choice but to announce the abolition of the regulations that slaves were not allowed to trade freely.But by then it was too late. Third, carry out currency reform.In the Han Dynasty, the generally popular currency was five baht coins.After Wang Mang implemented the currency reform, he traded the small for the big, and exchanged the light for the heavy.The big spring cast weighs no more than twelve baht, which is only 2.4 times that of five baht coins, but it has to be used as fifty pieces of five baht coins.Obviously, the currency ratio is unbalanced and unreasonable. Of course, many people do not accept it.Ever since, some people thought of stealing castings, and they were repeatedly banned. Even more terrifying is yet to come.Wang Mang has a lot of currencies, there are six kinds in total, namely gold coins, silver coins, turtle coins, shell coins, coins, and cloth coins.Among these currencies, ancient things like turtle coins and shellfish coins have not been used by the Chinese for many years.What makes the people of the Han Dynasty even more unbearable is that these six types of currency have a total of 28 types of cents, and the variety makes people dizzy.Even more annoying, the value of the currency fluctuated around, severely disrupting the financial markets. Wang Mang's new currency policy is just asking for trouble.Sure enough, people in the Han Dynasty missed the five baht coins they used to use, and used the old coins for transactions in private, ignoring Wang Mang's new monetary policy.Wang Mang had to abolish turtle coins, shell coins and cloth coins, but it still didn't work.The economy of the Han Dynasty has been messed up by him, and everything is out of control. Fourth, establish a market administrative agency to intervene in the market economy.Wang Mang set up material adjustment officials (Wujunsi City) and economic officials (Qianfu officials) in five major cities including Chang'an and Luoyang.In the second month of each quarter, that is, February, May, August, and November, the material adjustment officer will evaluate the prices and set the upper, middle, and lower prices to maintain market stability. In the private sector, if there are unsalable grains, cloth, etc., the state can buy them at the cost after investigation and verification by the material adjustment officer; once the price of goods rises to more than one-tenth of the market price, the material adjustment officer will sell them at the assessed price ; If the price is lower than the assessed price, the people can buy and sell freely; if the people lack funds, they can apply for a loan from the economic officer with a monthly interest of 3%. In addition, Wang Mang also introduced policies to ensure that laid-off workers enjoy state benefits and re-employment.As far as this point is concerned, Wang Mang's starting point is good.It's a pity that he used people improperly and the situation is very bad.Ever since, good things have become bad things. Two thousand years later, when we look at Wang Mang's reforms, we are not unfamiliar at all.Because of some of these policies, we still use them today.Ever since, some people put a high hat on Wang Mang, saying that the political ideal he implemented two thousand years ago was "Wang Mang-style socialist reform." However, what we see is a failed national blueprint master.Land and slaves were not allowed to be bought and sold freely, which offended big landlords and poor farmers with no way out; the failed monetary policy offended a large number of citizens; the state’s intervention in the market economy offended a large number of urban businessmen. From top to bottom, except for himself, he should have offended everyone.He had trouble with the system of the Han Dynasty, with the royal family, with officials at all levels, with businessmen, and even more so with the peasants.If we have to use one word to describe him, we can call him the Han Dynasty-an enemy of the whole people.