Daming Yuanfu

Chapter 1601 Inside (Part [-])
"Is there a reason?" Wu Dui asked with a thoughtful look on his face, "Seeking the truth, I'm worried about the emperor..."

Gao Wushi did not answer directly, but said: "Recently, my younger brother has realized something. In the early years, I often heard a saying, saying: 'Demo is more important than loving the people, and nothing is degrading than harming the people.' Therefore, Dong Zhongshu once said : 'Shoulu's family is just food, don't compete with the people for business, then the profits can be distributed evenly, and the people can have a family.'”

Wu Dui naturally knew this, nodded and said: "Pull sunflowers to weave, there is indeed such a saying, but nowadays people who can do this have long been extinct, at least very few. Besides, Brother Yu, remember, to be honest, you don't agree with this statement." mean?"

What Gao Wushi said just now means that those who receive state salaries are not allowed to compete with the common people for their interests.From ancient times to the present, "not competing with the people for profit" has been the most basic governing concept, and it has been called "this is the principle of heaven, but it is also the way of the ancient times".

"Those who eat salary shall not compete with the people for profit, and those who receive the big shall not take the small." According to "Historical Records", after Gong Yixiu became Prime Minister of Lu, he stipulated that all officials should not operate industries and compete for profits with the people, and in this way Be strict with yourself and your family.

When Gong Yixiu ate the refreshing vegetables grown by himself, he "pulled out the sunflowers in his garden and discarded them"; when he saw someone weaving in his family, he immediately "sprinted out his wife and burned his machine", and said very angrily "Do you want to make farmers, workers and women safe and secure their goods?" Since then, "pulling sunflowers and weaving" has become an idiom that has been passed down through the ages, and has been repeatedly taken as a warning by latecomers.

As recorded in the "Sui Shu", at that time, due to the lack of funds required by the officials, the central government and local governments set up public funds for lending, "received at interest."Su Xiaoci, Minister of the Ministry of Industry at the time, believed that this was a competition between the government and the people for profit, "not the way of Xinghua", so he "please let it go on the table, and ask the ministers and ministers to give jobs to everyone."

"Zizhi Tongjian" also said that during the reign of Empress Wu Zetian, Pei Jiegong, the Shangfang supervisor who managed the Royal Xiyuan, suggested that the unfinished fruits and vegetables should be sold in the market, "to reap the benefits".Su Liangsi, who was the prime minister at the time, categorically called a stop: "In the past, Mr. Lu, the minister of honor, could still pull out sunflowers and weave them. I have never heard of the Lord of Ten Thousand Vehicles, who would sell his fruits and vegetables to compete with his subordinates for profit."

It stands to reason that it is not a big deal to weave some cloth and grow vegetables at home, and the government lends money to collect interest, and sell the unfinished fruits and vegetables. How about a masterpiece?

The reason is very simple, but the meaning is also very profound.On the surface, doing so will have a certain impact and damage on people's livelihood.But the deep-seated harm is that they think that once this hole is opened, it will only get bigger and bigger in the future, and more and more people will follow and follow suit.

Moreover, in ancient society, the government and officials held power in their hands, and with such public power to "compete for profit" with the "unarmed" people, it was up to each other to see who was strong and who was weak.If things go on like this for a long time, the people may live in dire straits under the law of the jungle, and in the end, there will be many evils, and it will be hard to return.

What is even more frightening is that "struggling for profit" is often open and implicit at the beginning, but gradually it evolves into extortion and even robbery.For example, in "Brahma Lu Conglu", a certain eunuch in the Qing Dynasty under the banner of "Lafayette" went to Kaifeng to collect charcoal for the palace for the winter, and said to the county magistrate: "You need to prepare thirty catties of charcoal."

This is not difficult, but he immediately put forward harsh conditions: "Each branch must be one foot and five inches long and one inch and five cents round", and "no knots" and "no cracks".When the county magistrate showed distress, the eunuch threatened, "If Lafayette freezes, you will be guilty!"

At this time, someone naturally came out to smooth things over, saying: "If you have money, you can discuss it." As a result, the county magistrate was knocked out of more than 1000 taels of silver.From the meaning expressed in this story, "pulling sunflowers to weave" and "dismissing money from the public house" are all precautions, the purpose of which is to eliminate the disaster in the bud.

"The world is so big, Li Yuan is the first." Sima Qian divided the economic policy of governing the country into five grades in "Huozhi Biography": "The good ones follow it, the second is to benefit the way, the second is to teach, the second is orderly, and the bottom is fight with it."

Why is "competing for profit with the people" considered the lowest economic policy?This is because, "Government prospers when it obeys the will of the people, and what destroys it is when it goes against the will of the people."

People's hearts are actually the biggest politics.

"If you compete for small things, you will lose the way." Competing with the people for profit is tantamount to fishing out the water, which is the greatest disobedience and harm to the people's will. What you win is profit, but what you lose is people's support. "If you win the crowd, you will win the country, and if you lose the crowd, you will lose the country." Tang Taizong's metaphor of boats and water, the principle of rise and fall, cannot but be vigilant.

After Gao Wushi explained this truth to Wu Dui, Wu Dui's face became a little suspicious, he hesitated for a moment, and said in a deep thought: "To be honest, you and I are doing these logistics transactions to compete with the people, so we should have given up. ?
If this is the case, then if you transfer this business to the imperial court, isn't that still a fight for profit with the people?It's nothing more than that the people fighting for profit have been replaced by the imperial court—but the imperial court is ultimately the emperor. Isn't it a bigger bad thing for the emperor to compete with the people for profit?

"Mencius" said: "Why does the king say profit?"There is also benevolence and righteousness. ""Yalt and Iron Theory" said: "So the emperor doesn't say how much, the princes don't talk about benefits, and the doctor doesn't talk about loss." "If you, me and all the officials can't do this 'struggle for profit', why can the emperor do it?" "

Gao Wushi had expected that Wu Dui would call him Mencius after hearing what he said. Yes, Mencius said, "Why do kings call benefits? There is only benevolence and righteousness."

What do you mean by that?That is, as an emperor, you should not always talk about your interests. This is too vulgar. You should always keep benevolence and righteousness in your heart. This is a good emperor that people like.

The virtuous Confucian scholars in "Yalt and Iron Theory" put it more clearly: Therefore, the emperor does not say how much, the princes do not say what is good or bad, and the doctor does not say what is lost.

It stands to reason that the truth of this statement is actually correct. If the emperor does not compete with the people for profit, and keeps benevolence and justice in his heart at all times, then the world will live well because of it.But the problem is that this sentence came to the Ming Dynasty, because of the difference in understanding of a word, the civil servants of the Ming Dynasty who were full of benevolence and righteousness personally destroyed the Ming Dynasty!

which word? The word "people".

What is the people?
When a modern person sees this word, he will naturally think that citizens are the people, in other words, ordinary people are "min".

However, this view may not be true in ancient times, and it must be wrong, but at least it must be controversial and can be confused.

The sub-sage Mencius mentioned just now, in addition to expressing a lot of "people-oriented" ideas, he actually said a sentence that may be "not well-known": "It is not difficult to govern, and it is not difficult to blame the rich. .”

What's the meaning?It means that governing the country is very simple, as long as you don't offend those big families, with their support, you can go anywhere.

Before the implementation of the imperial examination system, this was especially true for those officials at that time. As long as they spoke out for their respective families, they could be as stable as Mount Tai in the officialdom.Even if he is dismissed occasionally, someone will recommend him again soon.

Since the Sui and Tang Dynasties, the imperial examination has become the only way to become an official, so the situation has changed a little. If the aristocratic family cannot maintain prosperity along the imperial examination for a long time, their family fortune will often fall.But it is also because of this that the more incumbent officials are, the more eager they are to collect money, because the more financial resources are invested in the education of their children and grandchildren, the more they can ensure the longevity of their family.

In modern Chinese, "people" is a word that expresses the same meaning, but in ancient society, such as today's Ming Dynasty, "people" and "people" do not have the same meaning, and the meanings they express are actually different .

Similar to this is the word "mass", which is a word linked together to express the same meaning in later generations, but it was not the same in ancient society: a group is a group, and a group is a group, and the two are not unified.

The word "person" in oracle bone inscriptions can be seen at a glance to express its meaning. "Anyone who can stand upright and walk around" is a person.Therefore, you add a wooden character on the right side of the herringbone, and wood is an obstacle, so "Xiu" stops walking; you add a character word on the right side of the herringbone, that is, this person is going to bring the word, which is "xin", the word of mouth letter.

Therefore, man is free and has an individual who decides what to do.

This is not the case for Min. In oracle bone inscriptions, Min first draws an eye, and then the whole is derived from the eye.Guo Moruo has a well-known thesis that "people" are "horizontal eyes with thorns, and if they are blind, they think they are slaves. Therefore, the ancient saying 'the people are blind'."

Guo Moruo believes that in the Yin and Shang Dynasties, the pictograph of the word "min" was to pierce the left eye with an awl, and such a person was a min, and a min was a slave.

But later some scholars began to question it, and put forward a new theory, thinking that the meaning of the pictograph, the so-called "awl" actually refers to "eyes", and the eyes are downwards for the people.

What is looking down?It means looking down at the ground, which means not daring to look up—of course, those who dare not look at the ground refer to the ruler, or the ruling class.

In this way, it can be concluded that the status of "people" is higher than that of "people".

This is not just talking casually. Just look at the regular group of words, you will know that "people with lofty ideals", "people will conquer nature", "dare to be the first", etc., all contain strong commendatory meanings, and the characters of Min also have commendatory meanings, but more However, there are derogatory words such as "untouchables", "grass people", "mobs" and so on.

It is precisely for this reason that the ancients seldom used the word "Min" when naming, which formed an extremely strong contrast with the naming style after the Red Dynasty.

But some people may also ask, how to explain "Li Shimin"?He was certainly not the King of Qin, let alone the Emperor, when he was named, but the Li family in Longxi was also a powerful figure at the level of the Eight Pillars Kingdom at that time, why did he have the word "Min" in his name as a son of a family?
That's because Li Shimin's "Shimin" is by no means "serving the people from generation to generation", but its original meaning is "benefiting the world and benefiting the people"—Jimin, what is economic?The relief of relief, which represents the meaning of the salvation of all peoples.

Just because "people" and "people" were not the same thing in ancient society, no matter in "The Analects" or other documents of the pre-Qin period, "people" has a broad sense and a narrow sense.

"People" in a broad sense refers to "people" who are different from all things, all "people"; "people" in a narrow sense refers to "nobility" above "scholars" as opposed to "people".And "people" refers to ordinary people other than "people" in the narrow sense.

In ancient Chinese, the word "teaching" follows words and is related to "speech", while "teaching" follows "text" and is related to "force".The object of Confucius' "teaching" is "people", and the content of "teaching" is "knowledge (wisdom)"; the object of "teaching" is "people", and the content of "teaching" is "Rong" and "war".

If you understand this, you will find that Confucius advocated "teaching people tirelessly" for "people", and Confucius advocated "not making them know" for "people".It can be seen that the structures of "teaching people" and "educating the people" in "The Analects of Confucius" are distinct, and Confucius never confused them.

In the Ming Dynasty, because the civil service group had firmly controlled the social discourse power, and used various people-oriented ideas to limit and restrain the imperial power, their attitudes towards the ownership of the "people" also changed, and sometimes even some Schizophrenia.

For example, when talking about "educating the people", scholars and bureaucrats exclude themselves from the "people", thinking that they are superior to the "people" and that they are the ones who educate and not the ones who are educated.

But if interests are involved, especially interests that conflict with imperial power, the attitudes of literati and bureaucrats will change, and they will consider themselves "people"-I don't even have a title, and official positions cannot be hereditary, so I am obviously not a "nobility". Then why am I not a "people"?

Because I am a citizen, your emperor cannot compete with me for profit.This is also the source of the Donglin Party's basic idea that collecting their commercial taxes is "competing for profit with the people" in history.

As for your question, why can the land tax be collected?Well, because the land tax has always been paid in the past dynasties, there is a historical inertia, and the Donglin Party itself does not need to pay the land tax, even if it has to pay, it is very small, so of course there is no problem.If you tell the Donglin Party that in the future, officials and gentry will pay food as a whole, and you can see how the Donglin Party will react.

However, the problem facing Gao Yushi right now is that the Donglin Party is the representative of interest groups in the DPRK and China. Isn't the Practical School not an interest group?
Obviously impossible, and the Practical School itself cannot escape the trap of interest groups.If there is any difference, it is that the Real School headed by Gao Gong was to a large extent "royalist" in nature, and its interests were basically formed by attaching to the imperial power in the early days.

In the Gao Gong era, the Practical School relied on imperial power to obtain official positions and the right to speak in the court, but after the Guo Pu and Zhang Siwei eras, the Practical School has gradually grown. How could it not consider maximizing its own interests at this time?
At this time, everyone discovered that there is a ready-made channel for maximizing benefits. As long as they board this big ship, their benefits can be guaranteed-this big ship is Jinghua.

Relying on the magical power of high pragmatism turning stones into gold, officials of the practical school gradually entered the "Pan Jinghua" system. If Jinghua is the trunk of a tree, then they gradually become branches and leaves.

"Is there a gardener in the other courtyard of my brother's house?" Gao Wushi asked, "The reason for the gardener to cut off the redundant branches and leaves is to make the whole tree grow taller and more leafy."

Wu Dui frowned, and said, "Then what are you going to do with these 'excessive branches and leaves'? Brother Yu just said that if you discard them and don't use them, I'm afraid some people will be willing to gather them up."

Gao Wushi said: "How can we abandon it and not use it? Didn't the younger brother also say that the purpose of removing redundant branches and leaves is to make the main body taller—brother, we are going to see the truth with those people in the Jiangnan area."

(End of this chapter)