Emperor Whisperers: China Invents (Or Discovers?) Communism
My new book is out, and is free for paid subscribers to this Substack
Welcome! I'm David Roman and this is a special issue of my History of Mankind newsletter. If you've received it, then you either subscribed or someone kind and decent forwarded it to you.
If you fit into the latter camp and want to subscribe, then you can click on this little button below:
To check all previous newsletters in the History of Mankind, which is pretty long, you can click here.
Like I said a few times before, my new “Emperor Whisperers: a Comparative History of Ancient Western and Chinese Philosophy,” published earlier this year, is available at Amazon here and also at a much cheaper price and straight from the publisher, which you can contact here.
Just as a reminder, I’m sending a free electronic copy to all paid subscribers, existing and those who become paid subscribers throughout this year. Anyway, here’s another extract below, this time from Chapter Eight.
Just for context, this refers to the era right after the death of Emperor Wu of Han (r. 141-87 BC), the longest-reigning in ancient Chinese history and a contemporary of, for example, Rome’s Sulla. He was a very impactful and particular guy, whom I will discuss at length in several posts to come.
Emperor Wu died the year before Sima Qian himself did, after his very long run on the throne. Over the next 96 years, in which eight emperors reigned, the Han dynasty would slowly deteriorate: even as it still produced strong emperors, it also had a fair share of duds.
Scholars remained influential in court, however. The “Discourses on Salt and Iron” (“Yan Tie Lun,” 鹽鐵論;), an account of a conference that was held in 81 BC, are evidence of a court filled with competent officials debating important affairs with well-thought arguments.
In this case, the discussion focused on whether Emperor Wu’s monopolies (for example, on salt and iron production) should be overturned as Confucian scholars required, out of concern on the long-term effects of extreme government control; or whether the controls should stay to ensure that government would have enough resources to fund the army and colonization campaigns in the north and west, and that merchants wouldn’t grow too rich and powerful on the trade of important commodities, as so-called modernists argued.
Still, the debate went further, straying into philosophical ground as the participants challenged their assumptions on statecraft. Confucian reformists expressed concern at the empire’s costly expansion, and pointed to signs that it was over-stretched, while criticizing the important-export trade along the borders; the modernists stressed the need to protect the Chinese civilization and way of life, and securing the friendship of non-Chinese peoples who could be drawn to the Chinese camp. The old discussion on appropriate punishments was rehashed too, with the Confucians arguing for moral lessons rather than oppressive laws as was their wont, and the modernists citing Shang Yang on the utility of scaring some sheep to keep the flock obedient.
The discussion ended in a victory for centralizers, and the monopolies mostly held (only alcohol production was entirely liberalized after the debate), only to be removed in the next century, when only the state monopoly of coinage remained. The “Discourses” are framed as a dialogue, an idealized summary of the arguments presented by each side, and the responses given to those arguments, not unlike a Platonic dialogue on state administration; the sympathies of the compiler, who published the document a few years after the actual debate, were with the liberalizing Confucians, who are shown to best their rivals with witty arguments at several points.
The “Discourses” are highly important for the history of global philosophy and politics for two reasons. First, because they are strong evidence that the political division between two strong ideological poles is a historical global constant; China in this era had no way to take either oligarchic or democratic input into its policymaking, and yet the Han court was cleanly divided between two ideological blocs – one arguing for a complete set of policies, and the other for an opposite set of policies, with little ground in between.
For much of ancient Egyptian history, also in the absence of participatory politics, the divide was between supporters of royal power and supporters of priestly power; in India, the divide was between supporters and opponents of the Vedic tradition and the caste system it supported; in Greek poleis and Rome, between democrats and supporters of oligarchic or tyrannical alternatives. In every human society, political discussion optimizes for the creation of two blocs that simplify the issues at stake, and the bloc that secures the highest degree of cohesion wins. This is evident throughout the “Discourses.”
Secondly, the “Discourses” are important because some of the centralizers’ arguments – for example, that the state monopoly on iron production ensured the availability of good quality implements for farmers, a point openly questioned by the Confucians – hint at the shape of the intellectual landscape of the time, one that made the rule of Wang Mang (王莽, 45 BC-23 AD), who took power a few decades after the conference, at all possible[1].
The last emperor from the main Han bloodline, a semi-literate child named Ruzi, was completely controlled by one of the oddest couples in all Chinese history: the fabulous empress dowager Wang Zhengjun, and her nephew and protegé Wang Mang, the first Communist emperor.
Wang Mang is one of the most particular characters in world history. He grew up in the imperial palace and his career, early on, was promoted by his powerful aunt, who played important roles during the reigns of five successive Han emperors: her husband, son, two step grandsons, and step great-grand-nephew. Lacking any plausible claim to the throne, his rise was driven by an absence of obvious enemies, as well as humility, thrift, and desire to study. To emphasize his career as wise bureaucrat, rather than his role as golden child, he took to wear the clothing preferred by Confucian scholars.
After many twists and turns, the smart schemer became commander of the imperial forces at the age of thirty-seven, and this is the point at which things become really interesting: one of Wang's cousins, who happened to be Emperor Cheng, died of an overdose of aphrodisiacs, while the next emperor, who disliked Wang, died suddenly for no apparent reason (which in old and not-so-old history typically translates to poisoning).
Wang became chief minister to the successor, a child named Emperor Ping, whom he quite brazenly killed with poison, this time quite openly, at the age of thirteen. He then lorded over the aforementioned boy-emperor Ruzi, until he became bored with the whole charade and took over as first (and eventually last) emperor of the new Xin Dynasty.
Wang Mang's reign was a cascade of revolutionary changes that go well beyond the scope of his book. What matters for the history of Chinese thought is that he instituted a completely new land redistribution system, ordering that all land in the empire become legally the property of the empire, to be known as “wangtian” (王田). These turned former landholders into tenants at the sufferance of the state – which was also required to redistribute “excess” land from the well-off to fellow clan members, neighbors, or other members of the same village.
Wang, a contemporary of Jesus Christ (a teenager when Wang took absolute power), also abolished slavery across the empire. Even though resistance to both land redistribution and the slavery ban led to repeals soon thereafter, the mere fact that an emperor was able to implement such radical policies by fiat became a powerful example for future Chinese rulers and thinkers.
Other “Communist” measures, which stayed in place for most of Wang's reign, include the creation of an economic adjustment agency that sought to control fluctuations in the prices of food and textiles by buying and selling excess goods, and lent money to entrepreneurs; an income tax for professionals and skilled labor, the first such tax in human history; a state monopoly on liquor and weapons[2]; and a “sloth tax” on uncultivated land: those who couldn't pay the tax were sent to a primitive “Gulag” system, where they were forced to work for the state.
Wang Mang was eventually dethroned and killed in one of the many rebellions against his rule. After further instability, Emperor Guangwu, one of many descendants of the Han emperors, restored the bloodline and set up what is called the Eastern Han dynasty in AD 25. Having lived through several civil wars in his lifetime, he abolished military service in China in AD 31. From that point on, and until 1911, the Chinese army was professional, generally unreliable and rarely able to defeat determined foreign invaders, lacking massive manpower and ability with guns, which remained banned for most citizens.
[1] Terry Peach, in “The Political Economy…”, argues that the division between two opposing blocs in the Discourses is commonly exaggerated, and represents a simplification of the wide range of ideas at the time. His point is that there were no pure “Confucians” and no pure “Legalists” battling for ideological supremacy; but that is precisely why the Discourses illuminate the simplification that political processes impose on intellectual discussion: any Confucian who wanted to have any influence whatever on policymaking had to fall in line with the wider “Confucian” bloc on all issues, and swallow his objections to such and such point in the wider Confucian program he didn’t agree with; he also had to oppose their “Legalist” opponents – especially when he agreed with them, in order to ensure the support and patronage of other Confucians, who would reward his discipline. Rather than describing the protagonists of the Discourses as “Confucians” and “Legalists”, Loewe (Op. Cit.) proposed using “modernist” and “reformist” on the grounds that the former antinomies “had hardly emerged as discrete, defined unities during the first two centuries BC.” This misses the point entirely; no political antinomies (between Shia and Sunni, between Guelphs and Ghibellines, between modern “Democrats” and “Authoritarians” etc.) have ever “emerged as discrete, defined unities.”
[2] This monopoly was eventually extended to salt, iron, coinage, forestry, and fishing, which led to popular disaffection that sped up Wang Mang's fall.
Are the two poles of U.S. political ideas Classical Liberalism (Lost Cause) and modern Liberalism (Post Civil War Constitution)?