VOLUME V, CHAPTER 10, SECTION 3
Why Reform of the Law Is Never Complete
The previous section finished the three roads before the weak, and not one of them could move the frame itself. This section looks at another group, the reformers. They are not the weak, they are a minority standing inside the frame, inside the ranks of the strong, wanting to make the law a little fairer. And yet across the ages, not one reform ever fully succeeded. Shang Yang, Wang Anshi, and Zhang Juzheng, the three greatest reformers, three different fates, and not one of them ever stepped outside the root of the strong legislating to hold it alone.
One. Shang Yang, a Successful Reform, a Failed Reformer
Around 350 BC, Shang Yang remade the laws of Qin, first moving a pole to build trust so the people would believe the new law was real. His reform carried three parts, abolishing the well-fields and opening the field paths, establishing ranks of merit through military service and abolishing hereditary rank, and establishing collective liability under harsh law, twisting the whole of Qin into a machine built for war. All three parts struck at the root of the old nobility. In the first year of the new law, the crown prince himself broke it, and since the prince himself could not be touched, Shang Yang punished the prince's two tutors heavily instead, and from then on no one in Qin, high or low, dared disobey the law.
He relied on Duke Xiao of Qin, and stood only so long as the duke stood. Once Duke Xiao died, King Hui of Qin reversed the verdict and hunted him down. He fled toward the border and tried to take a room at an inn, and the innkeeper, following the very law Shang Yang himself had written, refused to house a guest without papers. He sighed a line.
Alas, that the flaw in making law should come to this. Shang Yang, Records of the Grand Historian, Biography of Lord Shang.
He was, in the end, torn apart between chariots. And yet, remarkably, though the man died, the law did not. From King Hui through the First Emperor, Qin used his law for more than a hundred years, turning Qin into the strongest of all and unifying the six states. Why did the man die and the law survive. Because though he had struck at the old nobility, a new nobility risen through military merit had filled the vacancy, and this new nobility upheld the law because it was now their own root. So Shang Yang's success was that the strong who made the law shifted from the old nobility to a new military elite, without ever touching the root of the strong making the law at all. Qin's law remained just as harsh, the peasants just as hard-pressed, and when Chen Sheng rose in revolt, it was against exactly this system, the new elite's law holding scarcity alone.
Two. Wang Anshi, a Failed Reform, Standing Utterly Alone
Wang Anshi was a man of letters, a leader of Song literary circles, and stubborn in temperament. He spoke a line later ages called the three no-fears, no fear of the changes of heaven, no reverence for the ways of the ancestors, no concern for the words of others. Bold in spirit, and yet it denied, in one breath, the three things scholar-officials held most dear, the resonance between heaven and man, the ways of the ancestors, and public opinion, making him an enemy of the entire scholar-official class.
Around 1069, Emperor Shenzong of Song employed him to reform. The green sprouts loan, the labor exemption law, the equal field tax, and the market exchange law, all with intentions that looked good, and all producing great disorder in practice. The green sprouts loan was meant to help farmers, but local officials, forced to meet lending quotas, pressed loans on people who did not want them, and when autumn came and repayment failed, people were seized, turning it into oppression instead. The market exchange law was meant to stabilize prices, but the state itself became the largest merchant, crushing small and midsize traders. However good the intentions, the moment they passed into the hands of officials and clerks at every level, their position of meeting quotas and keeping their own posts twisted the laws into an exploitation of the very farmers they were meant to help. Sima Guang, Su Shi, and Ouyang Xiu all opposed him, and Su Shi was exiled all the way to Hainan. Once Shenzong died, Sima Guang returned to court and abolished every one of the new laws, and Wang Anshi died in grief and resentment. He failed because he never raised up any new class to support the new laws, and struck at nearly the entire scholar-official class at once, trying to force it through on goodwill and reasoning alone, and goodwill has no strength before position.
Three. Zhang Juzheng, a Successful Reform, and a Reckoning After
Around 1573, Zhang Juzheng, as senior grand secretary and tutor to the emperor, carried out a full-scale overhaul. The performance accountability system forced officials to actually work, the single-whip law merged taxes, land surveys dug up hidden fields held by the powerful, and border defense was strengthened under the command of Qi Jiguang, all fiercer, steadier, and more effective than Wang Anshi's reforms. In the first decade of the Wanli era, the treasury was full and the borders were at peace, remembered in history as the Wanli Restoration.
But this whole program struck at nearly every scholar-official's vested interest at once, the performance system forced them to actually work, the single-whip law cut off the gray income clerks had long relied on, and the land surveys exposed the hidden fields of the powerful. While he lived, he was senior grand secretary and the emperor's tutor, backed by the empress dowager and the Directorate of Ceremonial pressing down from every side, and the scholar-officials could only endure it. The moment he died, the twenty-year-old Wanli emperor took personal rule, and the scholar-officials struck back at once, accusing him of monopolizing power and corruption, and two years later his family's property was confiscated, his eldest son, unable to bear the humiliation, took his own life, his posthumous honors were stripped, and his descendants were forever barred from holding office. More importantly, the laws he had built were repealed one after another, and the Ming dynasty swiftly reverted to its old ways, and later generations came to say the Ming fell in the reign of Wanli, not in the reign of Chongzhen, with the root of that ruin planted in the reckoning that followed Zhang Juzheng's death. Why did he fail to hold his ground either. Because he raised up no new class of his own, relying only on his own personal authority to hold everything in place, and once the man was gone, the support collapsed with him.
Four. String the Three Reformers Together and Look
Shang Yang, the man died and the law survived, succeeding because he raised up a new set of the strong to fill the vacancy. Wang Anshi, the man lived and the law was abolished, failing because no new strength rose to support it, relying only on goodwill pushed forcefully through. Zhang Juzheng, the man died and the law died with him, failing because no new strength rose to support it, relying only on personal authority held forcefully in place. Three fates, one shared thread, what a reform strikes at is the existing share the strong already hold, and whether it can hold steady depends on whether a new set of the strong rises to fill the vacancy, whether the reformer can hold onto his own seat, and whether the results have time to take root.
Five. So Why Is Reform Never Complete. One Sentence Reaches the Bottom of It
The reformer is himself among the strong, and once the reform is finished, the strong still legislate, only a different set of them. Shang Yang raised up a new military nobility, and that nobility went on to hold scarcity alone in its turn. Wang Anshi was himself a scholar-official, and his reform was meant to strengthen the Song, never touching the root of scholar-officials holding the law alone. Zhang Juzheng was himself the senior grand secretary, and his reform was meant to strengthen the Ming, never able to touch the root of the cabinet holding the law alone. No one truly shakes the ground he himself stands on, because to truly shake it would be to remove himself along with it.
The ancestors had already seen through this. Laozi says, when the great Way is abandoned, benevolence and righteousness appear, when cleverness comes forth, great deception follows, meaning that only once the Way is already broken does anyone need to speak of benevolence and righteousness at all, and every reform is only one more patch laid over a condition already broken, and however many patches are added, the hole underneath remains a hole. Han Fei says that policy always follows resources, and while the root of insufficient resources does not move, however policy changes, it cannot cure the illness at its root. Huang Zongxi says, this is the law of a single family, not the law of all under heaven, meaning that when the reformers change, the newly made law is still just another family's law, not the realm's law. Three men, from three positions, saw the very same thing, reform can only exchange one set of the strong for another, it cannot abolish the strong altogether, and this is not the reformer's own fault, it is the limit of the position itself. Try to do what the position does not allow, and the position spits you back out. Shang Yang, Wang Mang, the Gracchi brothers, and the Zhang family after Zhang Juzheng, one after another, are all footnotes to this same root.
Six. The Position Set by This Section
This section sets the thirty-first layer. Legal reform is never complete, because the one who reforms is himself among the strong, and once the reform is finished, the strong still legislate, only a different set of them, and no one ever shakes the ground he himself stands on.
So what is the way out. This section does not answer it. This chapter does not answer it. This whole volume does not answer it. This volume only lays out the positions and sees through them, letting the reader see clearly what law is, what reform is, and where the strong and the weak each stand. What to do about it belongs to another dimension entirely, and only after reading through this whole set of positions, and then reading the volume on saving people later in this work, will the reader understand why it was written the way it was. Here, only this layer is set firmly in place, reform can only exchange the strong, nothing more.
The next section turns to contemporary America, and the four tools for fighting over scarce resources. The sections so far have stayed inside history. The next section lands in the present, looking first at America, the patent, the credential, real estate, and the political contribution, four of the most refined tools there are, watching how the root Han Fei exposed more than two thousand years ago, and the root Huang Zongxi exposed more than three hundred years ago, still run today, only dressed in new clothes. Carry this layer, that reform can only exchange the strong, and walk into the next section.
Credit to the ancestors; the mistakes are mine: Tiger Lyon.
Chapter Eleven. The Struggle over Scarcity, from Inside a Nation to Between Nations.