How Can an Agricultural State Escape the Cycle of Class Struggle?

ok, sounds Marxist...sorry, but there is no better way to phrase the
issue...really, on this particular problem, it really is about
economic class...not class in a classic Marxist terminology of
proletariat vs bourgeois, but the creation of class within a group long
considered to be united within a single class by most classical
Marxist historians: the petty peasantry...but thinking about the cycle
of Chinese dynastic history the other day while reading about Mao's
debauched attempts at escaping that cycle (a move that cost China 300
million lives and pushed the great military strategist into the ranks
of the world's worst nation-builders) really allowed me to see the
fault of considering even peasantry of same initial economic status to
be a single economic class.


A quick observation of Chinese history: peasant rebellions are often
the most direct causes (if not the decisive cause) for the downfall of
a dynasty. The rebels often argue for dividing up the land equally
amongst all peasants...an extreme cause that betrays the unequal
distribution of land among Chinese peasants. Many becomes completely
landless or end up with small plots of unproductive land (or they just
maybe the vast majority, given the numbers, often in the millions, who
join these peasant rebellions) and these landless peasants seeks to
kill the landlords who owns all the land in their home villages and
divide up the landlords' land amongst the village families equally.
Just as the Westerners say, "the Chinese are a meek and stoic people."

The statement is not without truth. Peasant rebellions are only
triggered in the most extreme of the circumstances, i.e. as people are
completely starving, often because of the price of grains (even the
worst, cheapest grains like barley) are no longer affordable because
of natural disasters, mismanagement, or both. New dynasties are
established only with these peasants appeased, they demands satisfied.
The landlords, or the upper crust of the local gentry that must have
had strong connections with the fallen dynasty, are killed, and as the
new dynasty is established, the land really is divided up amongst all
the village families, as equally as the rebellions have demanded them
to be.

Yet, 200~300 years (if most of the emperors are generally competent
and they are no major foreign wars) later, the peasantry goes up in
rebellion for exactly the same reason: kill the landlords and divide
up the land equally...make you really wonder: are Chinese rulers are
simply stupid and can never manage to learn the lessons from previous
dynasties? or is there some sort of force beyond the control of the
emperors, that cause the dynasty to have such unfortunate destinies?

The answer is "both"...for the reasons completely economic, but only
slightly political. In a feudal society, whether medieval Europe or
imperial China, land is the most important commodity. Its passed down
from generation to generation, symbolizing the continuous flourishing
of the particular family. It is the last thing the family will sell in
economic difficulties. Because its sale can only put families in
estate of others ("sharecroppers" in the landlords' "plantations," to
use some modern terminology), never to hold land ever again, because
(1) the large landlords do not need to and will not sell any land for
extra income and (2) the "sharecroppers" will not get enough cash
income to buy land from other unfortunate families willing to sell
their land.

So its easy to understand how the landlords manage to become bigger
and bigger over time. They are the only ones who has the cash to buy
the land of the unfortunate families selling off the family plots, and
then can expand agricultural operations by hiring the newly landless
peasantry at low cost...so basically the unfortunate families without
land are still toiling their own lands, but get a much small income
(often not in cash but as a share of their products to feed
themselves) and no longer has direct access to the agricultural
markets. Taking advantage of economy of scale, the agricultural goods
become cheaper as production and logistics becomes more concentrated
and greater in volume, so technically, all should go well.

But when disasters strike, even highly limited to a certain locality,
this whole system breaks down. Say, a drought hits a certain remote
village, where the "sharecroppers," starving because not enough can be
produced in their plots, demand the landlord open his cellar to share
excess grains. Their demands are soundly rejected by the landlord who
either barely has enough in storage for his own family (or, less
likely, are selling the excess storage at this time of high price to
reap enormous profits). The starving sharecroppers rebel,
overwhelming the landlords' guards and killing the landlords' family,
dividing up the lands, anything in grain storage, and any of the
landlords' personal properties that can be sold in the markets for
cash value.

Now, it should be a question why the landed gentry, over the thousands
of years seeing the same thing happen over and over again, would not
take greater precautions in preventing some thing like that from
happening. But in reality, the problem really isn't about preventing
the revolt, but facing the consequences. After all, natural disasters
cannot be prevented even with our modern technologies that they didn't
have, and the landlords really didn't have enough grain in storage to
satisfy the sharecroppers' demands. In fact, considering natural
disasters (floods, droughts, locusts) happen every couple of years,
how does the landlord predict which one is gonna lead to armed revolt?

But here is the bigger point: say the landlord actually had enough
guards to put down the revolt and protect his grain storage and
personal properties, he would realize that his time as a landlord is
over. Why? all his productive workers have been killed by his guards.
In a time where people move with land (even the land that did not
belong to them) and mobility between towns and countryside as well as
different localities are practically nil due to difficulties in
communications and transportation, how does he continue production on
his empty lands?

Given the lack of modern tools and integrated job markets, he can only
expect much less production after the unsuccessful revolt...much of
his land now sits fallow or are converted to non-agricultural use
(selling them is not really an option, considering the cultural value
of land as a symbol of wealth and the fact that no other landlords will
buy the excess land considering that they have very little extra labor
for cultivating far away lands...the movement of extra population from
a natural increase can only happen within very limited geographic
proximity and therefore has a negligible overall effect).

Imagine enough of the landlords lose workers from such unsuccessful
rebellions. Decrease production force food prices to go up, weakening
the power base of the dynasties in the towns and cities and forcing
the emperor to crack down on the landed gentry. At the same time, the
landlords are significantly weakened. Less production means less cash,
less grain storage, and less guards for protection, making them more
vulnerable when the next natural disaster strikes. So, even if the
peasant rebellion does not succeed the first time, each failed
rebellion contributes to a greater probability of success for future
rebellions.

So, at some point, a small peasant rebellion succeeds, killing the
landlord and dividing the land. The leader of the rebellion sees a
vision of imperial glory (the power of ideology seen right here:
military success equal to dreams of greater power in China). He is not
satisfied with just him and his colleagues getting equal land, he
wants that for the entire country dominated by landlords. Thus, they
start trekking the country with the attractive slogan of "equal land
for all," rallying "sharecroppers" content with the status quo and
helping them kill their landlords (heck, who doesn't want their own
lands when success is guaranteed?)

So a rebellion spread from one incident to the whole country, and its
leader becomes the new emperor. The whole country is liberated from
landlords, and all peasants now have equal land...so, all is well and
peace in China, right? well, for a few generations, at least. Being a
peasant leader and governing a vast agricultural nation like China is
two completely different matters, and the peasant leader cannot
possibly foresee that his descendants, who did not go through the same
ordeal in poverty and rebellion, need the exact same people to prop up
the family regime as the previous dynasties.

In modern politics, it is argued that the middle class is the most
important element is ensuring the stability of the country: the middle
class values the status quo and has the most to lose in any move against
the exacting government. Getting the middle class' support ensures
the government much greater chances at surviving internal problems.
This analysis, quite true today, can also be applied to the past. In
a predominantly agricultural country like imperial China, the urban
merchant class is important as middle class, but they are heavily
overshadowed by the landed gentry as the core of this "middle class"
(while the landed gentry is the upper class in the countryside, but
from the perspective of the entire society, their wealth is nothing
compared to the imperial family, the nobility, and the high
bureaucratic circle)

To ensure the stability of agricultural production and "meekness" of the
peasantry (to make sure no peasant rebellion occurs again), the landed
gentry must be highly regarded by the emperors as economic developers
and armed defenders of remote areas that cannot be reached by imperial
power. It is in the interest of the emperors to develop the landed
gentry despite knowing that unequal land distribution would be the
consequence (later emperors and bureaucrats who do not go to peasant
areas in their entire lifetimes just don't see the graveness of the
consequence stated here)

Now, it is natural that some families are better at farming than
others. Those better families get more production out of their
initially same plot of land as other families who simply eat away
their capital as production fails and/or family issues (infighting,
gambling, etc) decreases wealth...after a few generations or even just
a few decades, it becomes clear who will become the landlords and who
the "sharecroppers"...the movement is practically economically
irreversible unless the landlord family falls in some extreme way
(abnormal death of a leader, fighting with other families, etc)
The imperial family at the capital encourages such developments after
the memories of the first emperors' peasant struggles fade away. The
landlords become politically powerful as the local spokespeople of the
imperial family, leading to further widening of the socio-economic gap
between them and the landless peasantry working for them....after some
time (maybe a few generations, can be as long as centuries), the class
conflict boils, leading to a renewed cycle of peasant rebellions and
equal division of land.

Whats really interesting is that this cyclic nature of history only
occurs in China due to its special conditions as a vast, populous
country without major ethnic divisions. Looking at multi-ethnic
empires, e.g. Rome and imperial India, localities may have peasant
rebellions for the same reason, but because of ethnic and cultural
differences, local revolts cannot become national and
all-encompassing. Peasant rebellions that unite the landless peasant
class is not feasible as a force to overthrow the government, only
ethnic governments can do so.

Such a conclusion from history clearly proves wrong the Marxist belief
that "a person's first loyalty is to his/her class." People will not
follow a leader with whom they do not share cultural values. In fact,
no successor to the Roman Empire can be formed precisely because no
uniform Roman cultural identity can be created. Imperial India only
formed with great autonomy to the local princely states, a tradition
that still holds true in modern India, where ethnically divided states
hold enormous power in a local jurisdiction that cannot be violated by
national government.

Then, looking at China's vast size. Geographic distance from imperial
capital and local nobility contributed to the local power of the
landed gentry. In contrast, in mono-ethnic Korea and Japan, local
nobility held on to individual farmers with a tight fist, themselves
becoming the landlords micromanaging the local economy. Such is
definitely not achievable in imperial China, even with well-developed
imperial road systems.

Finally, has China escaped this cyclic nature of history? Yes and no.
Yes, because the existing PRC government came to power using (albeit
sophisticatedly modified and theorized) exactly the same ideologies of
the hundreds of major peasant rebellions that struck China over its
long history. And the initial results are the same: landlords are
destroyed and land is equally distributed among the peasantry.
But then, using communist ideology, Mao attempted to end this cycle.
Using modern communication technology, he can now prevent the rise of
the landed gentry class. His action is simple, to prevent the rise of
landlords, the whole concept of private ownership of land should be
destroyed. With the state owning the land, the state can become the
big landlord, creating communes where economies of scale can allow for
increased production just as the landlords of the past have done with
their sharecroppers.

Except he forgot an important factor in transferring the role of the
landed gentry to the state: time. He did not allow time to pass so
that the unsuccessful peasant families begin to lose their land to the
successful ones and "volunteered" to become "sharecroppers" for sake
of survival. Instead, he concentrated the land in the hands of the
state just as the peasants are restarting their roles as farmers of
their individual plots.

Farmers are now being coerced into becoming sharecroppers, without
having a chance to be proven as successful or not as individual
farmers. Everyone believing themselves to be more successful
individually (the mentality haven't changed: becoming sharecropper is
humiliating display of failure, its the last resort after generations
of mismanaging family land, and is definitely something to be
avoided), enthusiasm for production sharply declined, ensuring
starvation to happen first time in history due to institutional change
rather than a natural disaster.

And because the institutional change here was nationwide (rather than
the local nature of the natural disasters), the grave consequences
were much more devastating, with more dead and more angry than before.
But the option of peasant rebellion is no longer feasible. In the
PRC, the landed gentry and the imperial presence has rolled into one
omnipresent figure known as Mao, a revolt no longer fights a local
landlord but against the entire resource of the state.

And more importantly, the moral high ground of peasant rebellion is
now defeated from the beginning. After the struggle to establish the
PRC, the CCP has dictated the idea of dividing the land equally used
for thousands of years to be "communist," and for any future peasant
leaders to use the slogan would be inappropriate and counterproductive
against the CCP, who, by nature and experience, has the exclusive
right all ideas communist in China and the right to define and
redefine what is "communist" from an ideological standpoint.

So, in essence, Mao defeated the political power of peasant revolts in
China once and for all but he did not end the economic contradictions
that lead to peasant revolts. And even with Mao's death and end of
his experiment in agricultural collectivization, the economic reforms
that brought wealth to China still have yet to really resolve the
issue of this economic cycle. The attachment to the land still exists
heavily among the peasantry in China as a consistent mentality, and
while rebellion is no longer a viable option, their anger at losing
land to more successful peasants and increasingly, urbanization, is
angering them and pushing them toward social disorder.

Yes, China has become the world's manufacturing center and Chinese
urban population is now ready to overtake rural one. But even then,
compared to the metropolises, the countryside still is a vast area
with a large population of 600 million, which is more than the
agricultural population of any previous dynasty. Peasant families
work in the cities for extra cash but are still unwilling to give up
their lands. Their city-earned cash means they no longer need to sell
land even if unsuccessful in agriculture.

So they keep their lands and rent them out to others to farm when they
work in the cities. Those who rent large tracts of land become
"temporary landlords." They have a large amount of land that they can
productively farm with modern technologies, but considering the
shortness of the rent on most lands (city jobs are inconsistent for
most peasants), they are unwilling to invest in lands that are not
they by title.

So at then end, we face a problem with mentality. How do we force most
people to completely give up their lands, sell them, and become urban
residents when they have the feudal mentality of seeing the land as
symbol of family continuity? These peasant-workers in the city perhaps
the least exposed to modern ideas of property and wealth. Not like
their urban counterparts and the "temporary landlords," they don't
have the time (work hard at low end jobs, little money, long time) and
money (have to be saved for the kids back home, trip homes in the
holidays, and insurance when the jobs suddenly go away) to be exposed
to advanced ideas.

Instead, we are more likely to see the "temporary landlords" who are
most efficient and skilled at farming to move to cities instead,
governing their agribusiness from their comfortable suburban houses.
But more successful these "temporary landlords" are, the more likely
they lose their wealth, as the peasants who rented them their lands
now see success in farming again...if the mentality is not changed, I
don't see how giving peasant workers in the city urban residency helps
to solve the problem (they would still go back home to farm, even with
urban residences)

Either way, this peasant problem still is a major economic issue as
China transit into a real manufacturing and services society. Unless
the future generation of peasants really see the comfort of city life
and are willing to stay there permanently and let their kids grow up
in the cities, their lifestyle and mentality would not change...lets
see how this issue pan out in the near future...