What Exactly Is the Fate of the Small Peasant Economy? An In-Depth Interpretation

For thousands of years in China, although the social and economic forms have been impacted by primitive commodity economy, monetary economy and the powerful modern capitalist economy, they have never been able to break free from the model of the small peasant economy. As this economic model became entrenched, society also stagnated. It can be said that the small peasant economy has always been the decisive factor affecting China's economy and society; state-run and state-owned enterprises, totalitarian autocracy, and the phenomenon of lax discipline and contentment with poverty are all closely related to it. The characteristics of this small peasant economy in China are: land parcels small and scattered; means of production dispersed; private land ownership with constant mergers and divisions; management methods tending toward dispersion; heavy rent and tax exploitation and extra-economic oppression; fragile tenant farmers and owner-cultivators like a vast ocean; highly prone to waves of bankruptcy, flight and leaving one's homeland; small-scale agriculture supplemented by household handicrafts, and so on.

Land consolidation was an important factor leading to the fall of dynasties throughout history. Farmers who lost their land could easily respond to the calls of "equalize the land" and "beat the local tyrants," rise up in rebellion, and thereby establish a new dynasty and obtain some land. Chinese history can be said to be just such a history of land consolidation and division. Land consolidation was originally a process of land concentration, meaning large-scale management. For example, the Enclosure Movement in England merged scattered land and gave birth to agricultural capitalists engaged in industrialized management. But in China, it was exactly the opposite: because tenant farmers and small owner-cultivators endured heavy exploitation, with actual land rent rates above one-half, plus large amounts of exorbitant taxes and levies, farmers were left utterly impoverished and could at most manage only tiny plots and maintain simple reproduction; tenant farmers lacked the ability to rent more and did not dare to rent more land, since natural disasters and human calamities, arbitrary taxation and extortion could make their hard-earned efforts come to nothing and leave them even more without food or clothing; owner-cultivators had already exhausted all they had to buy farmland, and with official exploitation on top of that, they had no ability to expand the scale of management. On the contrary, many people, driven by livelihood pressures, had to sell off all or part of the fields they already had. Ancient China also implemented a system of equal division of inherited farmland among multiple sons, so even if the father's generation had farmland of some scale, after division among many sons it became even more fragmented; even landlords and bureaucrats with considerable land could easily lose power and decline because of the harshness and unpredictability of feudal politics, and the land would inevitably be transferred, sold, consolidated and divided. Thus in China, as land consolidation proceeded fiercely, the scale of management might instead become smaller, and management methods tended toward dispersion.

As stated above, although the small peasant economy continued for a long time in China, its foundation was extremely fragile. Dispersed land management, cruel exploitation, and dependence on nature plunged farmers generally into poverty, allowing them only to maintain simple reproduction that was worse year after year. This small-scale mode of production itself was a powerful force hindering economic development. It rejected any advanced factors of productive forces, made social accumulation of capital impossible, made socialized labor and cooperation impossible, and made it impossible to adopt advanced technology and promote the application of science and technology. Moreover, when disasters or wars occurred, even this simple reproduction would be interrupted, leading to the tragic scenes of "starving bodies for a thousand li" and "people eating each other." And China is a country with frequent disasters and wars. According to statistics by the sinologist Joseph Needham, over the past more than 2,200 years, China experienced a total of more than 1,600 major floods and more than 1,300 major droughts, not including smaller regional disasters. Therefore, some abroad have called China "the land of famine." At the same time, China is also a "land of civil war." For reasons that are not complicated - totalitarian rule; power as the standard; the close connection between power and wealth leading to desire for and contention over power; cruel exploitation and oppression driving farmers to rise up; the rulers' frenzied and bloody suppression... and so on - China spent one-third of its time in blood and fire. These disasters and wars often caused major social and economic regression, sometimes requiring decades or even a hundred years to recover. In Chinese history, at the end of the Eastern Han, during the Northern and Southern Dynasties, during the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms, and at the end of the Song and during the Yuan, there all appeared nationwide economic collapses with "a thousand li of barren land" and "white bones covering the wilderness." Moreover, the small peasant economy was an important reason why it became a "land of famine" and why periodic economic collapse occurred. Its fragile foundation of reproduction, crude production conditions, powerlessness before nature, the inability of individual laborers to unite, and the farmers' struggle on the edge of poverty and death with no spare capacity for basic farmland and water conservancy construction, and so on, left the social economy full of crises and dangers, quickly collapsing once struck by disaster or war and sliding into an abyss of catastrophe.

The small peasant economy was also a major factor delaying the development of the commodity and monetary economy and hindering China's feudal society from transitioning to capitalism. China's small peasant economy was mainly based on small-scale agriculture, supplemented by household handicrafts, the so-called "agriculture-handicraft complementary type" or "family farming and weaving combined type." "Men plow and women weave" was the typical form of small peasant production. Precisely because agriculture and handicrafts were tightly combined and self-sufficient, there was neither the capacity for commodity production, nor a relatively large market, nor a strong desire for large-scale production of and demand for commodities. Even if such desire existed, there was even less capital to invest and no funds to purchase. Therefore, the commodity economy and capitalist factors that had already sprouted could not develop normally and could not reach the stage of primitive capital accumulation. Because there was no broad demand market, even in modern times foreign cheap goods found it difficult to penetrate and could not open up the Chinese market. It can be said that Western capitalism in China always encountered the most tenacious resistance it had ever seen.

In fact, China's commodity and monetary economy appeared very early, but it never really developed and remained on the verge of extinction for most periods. Even when it occasionally flourished, it would encounter a change of dynasty and be utterly destroyed. During the Spring and Autumn and Warring States periods, the commodity economy was relatively developed, and the accumulation of commercial capital and a merchant class appeared. Regarding this, Sima Qian described it in great detail in the "Biographies of the Money-Makers" in the Records of the Grand Historian...

But by the end of Qin and beginning of Han, the beginning of the Eastern Han, and the end of the Eastern Han, war and the policy of suppressing commerce both caused commerce to decline. By the Wei, Jin, Northern and Southern Dynasties, four hundred years of turmoil left "money and goods unable to circulate," and the commodity economy fell into destruction. In the early and middle Tang, commerce flourished, and there appeared inns that also handled financial business and bills of exchange replacing metal currency - "flying money" and "convenient exchange." Foreign trade also developed greatly, but after the An Lushan Rebellion it gradually declined. After the Huang Chao Uprising and the rulers' cruel suppression, formerly prosperous commercial cities such as Guangzhou and Yangzhou were "burned and swept away almost completely." Later came the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms, leading to "human habitation cut off" and "the starved dead numbering in the tens of millions." In the Song, commerce again became prosperous and developed somewhat. At that time, shops lined the streets and alleys, temple fairs arose, money houses flourished, and paper money appeared. However, with the invasion of the Yuan people who raided and enslaved, the commodity economy suffered severe destruction again. Only after the situation stabilized did a certain degree of prosperity reappear, but compared with the Song period, it was already declining. In the Ming, the commodity economy became active again, and by the late Ming merchants were as numerous as clouds. In the Qing, Kangxi lifted the maritime ban, but in essence closing the country to the outside world remained the mainstream, and the commodity economy was still suppressed. Only after the Opium War, with the invasion of Western capitalism, did the small peasant economy still strongly resist the external market economy, and modern backwardness and being beaten became unavoidable.