Wang Anshi's political reform began with financial management and gradually involved military affairs. Therefore, the new law has different and popular views on financial management, that is, "the people don't give money, and the country cherishes it" (Volume 42 of History of Song Dynasty), which is intended to increase government revenue and not increase farmers' tax burden. This is the same as Wang Anshi's idea before he came to power. "Those who are rich in their country will be rich in the world, and those who want to be rich in the world will be rich in the world" (Volume 75 of History of the Song Dynasty). He focused on increasing the government's fiscal revenue on the development of natural resources. But in fact, in the process of Wang Anshi's implementation of the new law, except that the farmland water conservancy law is directly related to "making money from the world", everything else is the content of tax reform. These measures, in addition to reducing some extra burdens for farmers to "save taxes on production" to some extent, have various disadvantages, whether it is the young crop law, the exemption law, the equal loss law, the market exchange law, etc. Because they aggravate the exploitation of people or hinder the development of commodity economy. These drawbacks not only gave the opposition an excuse to attack the new law, but also made the new law lose the support of the overwhelming majority of the people and eventually failed. Let's look at the shortcomings of the new law one by one:
1, young crop method. "Young crop protectors and walkers use Changping as young crop money and distribute it to all households, so that the infinite is divided into two, and the spring is scattered and the autumn harvest is scattered." (History of the Song Dynasty, Volume 327) was formulated and promulgated by Wang Anshi with reference to his experience of "lending money to the people in Yinxian County", focusing on Shen Li's experience of borrowing money to pay back the valley in Shaanxi (see History of the Song Dynasty, Volume 330, Biography of Shen Li). Its purpose, according to Wang Anshi, is that "whenever this is for the people, there is no income for the public, the former king thinks that it subsidizes farming, subsidizes it, is for the people, and inhibits the people from taking it" ("Vae Ji Ji Draft and Grain Goods", 4 16, 17). But it means that such a good law is said to be beneficial to the people, but it has produced serious disadvantages: first of all, the interest on young crops far exceeds the binary interest. According to the young crops law, it is no longer a small profit to get interest at an annual interest rate of four points. In some places, it is as high as three points and the annual interest rate is as high as six points. Second, timely food supply, high food prices, but also discounts, low food prices, virtually increased a lot of interest. Third, the government collects interest too quickly, and farmers suffer greatly. For example, in Shanyin County, "Summer grain is released in the first month, autumn grain is released in May, and the money collected is also in the same month. The people will lose money, which is really unprofitable." (History of the Song Dynasty, Volume 276)
2. Exemption law (also called recruitment law). It is a reform of the former military officer law, from the original first-class household to the government at all levels as an officer (also in charge), to the government hiring people to serve. Wang Anshi's original intention is to "raise everyone to fight for the world, and release an acre of farmland under the world", so that "the people's power will not be taken away in the farming season" (Deng Guangming: Wang Anshi, a political reformer in the Northern Song Dynasty, Volume 41). In the disaster year, people can be raised to build water conservancy projects, which is enough to relieve the people's food power and promote the cost of ponds and ditches "(Li Tao's). For example, the exemption law stipulates" servant households "and" no service times ". The former has to pay "servant money" because he has been exempted from all kinds of servants he had to bear before, while the latter should not have served in the army in the first place. It is unreasonable to pay money now, which has become their heavy tax burden. As for the "free service and saving money" of charging two points, it is called two points, which actually doubles or doubles. "General examination of literature. Service "said: saving money by exemption from service, and" counting the fourteenth five-year plan of the world ",which undoubtedly aggravated the exploitation of farmers.
3, the city is easy to law. "In the method of market exchange, when a person borrows a county official's financial loan on credit, he takes a farm house or gold silk as collateral, and promises to pay two tenths of a million yuan. After the expiration, he will not lose money, and he will be fined two percent per month" (Song History, volume 327). The method is that the government invests one million yuan to set up "e-commerce" in Kaifeng, Chengdu, Guangzhou, Yangzhou and other cities, buy unsalable goods at low prices and then sell them when the market is out of stock. At the same time, vendors can sell some goods in the official warehouse on credit as long as they hand over the collateral to the Eleventh Five-Year Plan. Failing to pay it back within the time limit will be fined 2% per month. Wang Anshi believes that "when the market changes, the goods will pass and the country will be exempted" (Li Daochang's History as a Mirror, Volume 346). However, in the two years since the implementation of this law, the government has received interest of 960,000 yuan, from which it has benefited a lot, while private vendors, large and small, have gone bankrupt, either unprofitable, losing money or even heavily in debt. There is even a situation that "the city is easy to set up dozens of forks in the east corridor of Yujie, accumulating fruits before and after, and sending officials to supervise the sale day by day, and paying back blows with blows" (Wen Yanbo's Luwen Official Documents Collection, Volume II O), directly intervening in business and monopolizing commercial activities will only inhibit the development of emerging commodity economy.
4. Equal loss method. "History of Song Dynasty" records that "the position of shipping is equal loss, and the goods are fake with money. The things offered are expensive and cheap, easy to use and near and far, and it is predicted that those who handle them in Beijing warehouse can save and buy cheaply "(Song History, Volume 327). According to Wang Anshi, this lending tool has changed "dajia, where wealthy businessmen make good use of public and private emergencies and make good use of the power of convergence and dispersion", and "the power of convergence and dispersion is slightly returned to the public" (Collected Works of Wang Anshi Linchuan, Volume 7 o). But in fact, it is the government that directly controls the wealth of Southeast Sixth Road and competes with businessmen for profits.
5. Garbo Law and Horse Protection Law. Garbo's law is to organize a family according to the fifteen-entry Garbo. "If Jiabao is established, the people will stick together, and there will be fewer traitors" (Li Tao Long Edition as a Mirror, Volume 246), which can maintain social order and consolidate the ruling foundation of the Song Dynasty. But Wang Anshi has another purpose, even if it is to be a bridge for the transition from the conscription system to the conscription system. In this way, the peasants joined the army and aroused their dissatisfaction. Because the mercenary system makes a large number of professional soldiers rise, and the peasants are freed from the pain of conquest and garrison. The Garbo Law restored officers in disguise, "learning martial arts" and "all bows and arrows are reserved except forbidden weapons" (Vae's Song Draft and Art of War No.2-6), which increased the burden on farmers. The Garbo Law also stipulates that "Bao Tong is guilty of theft, murder, arson, rape, neglect of human relations, spreading evil religion, making animal poison, knowing but not telling, and obeying the law of protecting martial arts". "After three days together with more than three robbers, Bao Tong's neighbors are unaware of it" (Xu Songji's Song Draft).
6. The new law makes bureaucracy overlap. In order to take the initiative of the political reform movement into his own hands, Wang Anshi set up many institutions to implement the new law, such as the establishment of the Third Division, the "Yellow River Dredging Division" and the implementation of municipal companies. This made the Northern Song government, which was already troubled by the "three redundancies" (redundant officials, redundant soldiers and redundant expenses), even more powerless.
Since there are so many drawbacks and problems in the implementation of the new law, it is inevitable that it will be attacked by the opposition, and more importantly, it will lose its broad mass base. So its failure can be imagined. At the same time, we can also see that some problems existing in the reformists have aggravated the shortcomings of the new law itself and accelerated the process of the failure of the reform movement.
Second, the internal problems of the reformists
According to the traditional view, Wang Anshi, Lv Huiqing and Ceng Bu are the main hosts and core members of the Reformists, but they often ignore the existence of one person-Song Shenzong. History shows that he "seeks truth, observes people's feelings, sympathizes with loneliness, nurtures the elderly and lacks incentives;" You are lucky if you don't die in the palace, and you will succeed if you try your best to cure the disease. "He is an emperor who wants to make great contributions" (History of Song Dynasty, Volume 16). Later, Song Shenzong met Wang Anshi and entrusted him with the important task of political reform, which set off this vigorous political reform. Therefore, Song Shenzong should naturally be classified as a reformer. But it is between them, or their own shortcomings, or their differences that undermine the political reform movement from the inside.
(A) Wang Anshi's shortcomings. Wang Anshi is undoubtedly a great reformer. He has the courage to face up to social problems and put forward his own solutions. I think he is worthy of Lenin's title of "China reformer in the 20th century". However, we can't deny that he also has shortcomings that cannot be ignored. These shortcomings exist in a reformer, and it is impossible not to affect his reform process and results. Now the author will analyze and demonstrate it.
1. Some of Wang Anshi's thoughts surpassed the social reality at that time. For example, he thinks: "Today, the public pays Lu (the author refers to the official), that is, it does not invade for the rest of the people, and does not bend the law to harm things to take bribes." (Li Daochang's History as a Mirror (Volume 233) holds that if all officials in the world are given enough salaries, they can stop bribing for help and perverting the law, which is of course impossible for feudal officials at that time. For another example, he advocated the reform of official management, with a view to "a studious person may be willing to be an official, and a studious person may be willing to be an official, so that the official and the official can be restored and integrated." Officials and scholars, soldiers and farmers are one, which is the business of my late king. "(Li Dao's" Long-term History as a Mirror "Volume 237) It is obviously impossible to try to restore the ancient system of official unity. Wang Anshi only saw that the political reform could bring Qiang Bing, a rich country, but ignored the cost of achieving this goal. He vigorously promoted political reform, trying to turn his theories and ideas into reality, regardless of the people's tolerance. So it harms the interests of farmers and will inevitably lose their strong support.
2. Wang Anshi is cronyism. In order to carry out the new law, Wang Anshi took extreme measures of employing people, that is, taking the new law as the standard, praising the new law and derogating it. As usual, Lu rebuked Taizhou for "inconvenience in discussing new laws" and "anger of an Shi", so as to learn from the sages and judge Cao Zhou (History of Song Dynasty, volume 319). Moderately adopting this method can crack down on the opposition and strengthen the reformists. However, Wang Anshi failed to grasp this degree and completely rejected the suggestions with different opinions, which led to the reformers being isolated or even alienated from Germany and trapped in the predicament of reform.
3. Wang Anshi is not only cronyism, but also tends to be arbitrary. Wang Anshi dismissed all objections as vulgarity, which made some well-intentioned people who criticized the new law leave the reformists. For example, Ouyang Xiu "stayed in Qingzhou and asked for money to stop the young crops, which was despised by Anshi, so he sought more in return." (History of the Song Dynasty, Volume 319) This obstinacy also led to many flaws and widespread abuses in the implementation of the new law.
(2) There are differences within the reformists. Within the reformists, such as Wang Anshi, Lv Huiqing, Ceng Bu, Song Shenzong and others, at the beginning, they could still unite to promote the new law. But later, with the deepening of the reform, they had various contradictions because of their differences in specific operations, which directly disintegrated the power of the reformists.
First of all, the most superficial and influential is the split between Wang Anshi and Lv Huiqing. At first, he was Wang Anshi's most effective assistant, but after Wang's first attack, the two gradually parted ways. After Wang Anshi's strike for the first time, Lv Huiqing implemented some new laws that did not exist when the king was in office, such as the Holding Law and the abel tamata Conscription Law. Wang Anshi disapproved of both methods after the resumption of the phase. Later, Lu and Wang argued about the rising water of Bianhe River. In terms of employing people, there are also great differences between the two. For example, Lv Huiqing wanted to reuse Zeng Lian, but Wang Anshi hated it and refused to hire him. The contradiction between Wang and Lu was intensified by the compilation of Three Classics and New Meanings, and a direct conflict broke out. The work of compiling New Meaning was originally presided over by Wang Anshi. After he stopped to learn about Jiangning House, Lv Huiqing took over the job. Lu's deletion and revision of Poems compiled by Wang Anshi's son aroused the dissatisfaction of Wang and his son. In June of the eighth year of Xining, Xinyi was completed and awarded to Wang Anshi's father and son and Lu brothers (the author called his younger brother Sheng Qing). Wang Anshi said: "I am attached to the minister in spite of illness and no longer associate with the classics." I don't work now, and there is no discipline. I don't know my name, and I am even more praised. " (Deng Guangming: Wang Anshi, a political reformer in the Northern Song Dynasty, Volume 5) In order to get his son promoted due to illness, he thought he could avoid being favored by illness and persuaded him to cancel the promotion, which deepened the resentment between Lu and Wang. In the end, when Cheng Dengwan was impeached, the contradiction between Lu and Wang evolved from political and academic differences to criminal proceedings. Until Wang Anshi struck twice, jiangning house was sentenced to our time by Zhennan Army and Tongping Zhang, and the dispute between them came to an end. The division between Lu and Wang weakened the power of the reformists to a great extent, which caused heavy losses to the reformists!
Secondly, the contradiction between Lv Huiqing and Ceng Bu. Ceng Bu is also one of the core members of the Reform School, but he is a capricious person. When the opposition attacked history, have it both ways wrote that it was out of date. This is a serious slander against the new law within the reform school. Wang Anshi hated his behavior and wrote to Zongshen not to believe what Bu said. However, Song Shenzong still issued an imperial edict asking Ceng Bu and Lv Huiqing to investigate the inconvenience caused by urban convenience services, which is believed to be true. In the process of investigating the urban law reform, Lv Huiqing insisted on upholding the new law and launched a tit-for-tat struggle with Ceng Bu, finally persuading Song Shenzong to save the day.
In short, Wang Anshi's political reform is undoubtedly in line with the historical development trend, and the starting point is Qiang Bing, a rich country. However, due to such serious drawbacks in the implementation of the new law and so many contradictions within the reformers and between the reformers and the opposition, these factors are intertwined and isomorphic, which has become the reason for the failure of the reform.