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Date: Mon, 08 Feb 93 21:43:04 EST
From: "Daniel A. Foss" <
[email protected]>
Subject: Ming Taizu's crisis legislation [cont'd from yesterday]
To: Chris Chase-Dunn <CHRISCD@JHUVM>
*Economic collapse and the Ming crisis legislation*. [cont'd]
The new Ming regime resorted to drastic measures to ensure the supply
of workers for textile workers in these factories: Workers and small
employers had been abandoning their occupations when unable to make a
living from dwindling sales of their products; conscription was used in
recruitment. Artisan status was made hereditary to ensure supplies of
labor: Those acquainted with the ruin of commerce and urban life in the
Late Roman Empire and the resort to fixing of hereditary occupational
status for labro-scarce occupations might see a parallel here. Thousands
of people were also drafted for labor in state-owned porcelain works and
silk factories. Large numbers of construction workers were kept busy
building the new capitals of Nanjing and Beijing and in reconstructing
the Great Wall.
Ming Taizu, emulating the fallen Mongol Yuan Dynasty in currency policy
much as he also did in administrative structure, decreed the restoration
of paper currency. This was a notable failure. Not even "the most
bloodthirsty tyrant in Chinese history" (Hucker, 1978; quoting Motte with
approval) could mount political terror sufficient to efface the experience
of the hyperinflation wherein the Yuan state etiolated in 1355 (the year
of the fall of the dictator Toghto and also the same year he himself led
his ragged and starving guerrilla army in the capture of its first
fortified town). The extent to which this factor *alone* ensured the
failure of the restoration of the protocapitalist *status quo ante* is
unknown and, indeed, unthought about. (Other factors which may be
entered into consideration include the shrunden population, the loss
of productive technique and scientific knowledge due to the tendency of
practitioners of advanced crafts and empirical sciences to gather in one
place, sharply curtailed private elite consumption due to social
reviolution with its consequences in Ming Taizu's own political purges,
and the "bamboo curtain," see below).
The extent of state coercion undoubtedly contributed to the prohibition
on international trade in 1371 to prevent the escape abroad of the very
artisanal and mercantile groups whose activities were so urgently
stimulated at home: The cost of this policy was the sacrifice of China's
lead in long distance ocean-going transport, displayed for the last time
in the early fifteenth century in the voyages of Admiral Zheng He. And
theis in turn left the way clear to European hegemony.
State power was used directly and indirectly in assorted unsystematic
measures to stimulate mercantile trade. Taxes on trade were kept low;
social discrimination against merchants was mitigated; and trade was
stimulated by policies intended to lower prices. Egregious instances
of gouging were suppressed; monopoly pricing powers of urban guilds
were combatted; and merchants were in effect subsidized by the provision
of state-owned trading warehouses in competition with those of the
guilds.
*A comparison*.
While in Europe the lure of the cities due to the market mechanism
sufficed to sustain the cities if with smaller populations, in China
deliberate and massive state activity was called for to sustain urban
life. Modest though not severe rises in European industrial prices,
associated with pressures to raise money wages, accompanied declining
prices of surplus agricultural crops produced for the market; which in
turn set off a renewed dynamic of technical innovation driven by the
lure of increased profit margins and expanded markets. Due to the major
importance of direct and indirect state intervention to stimulate first
the supply of, then demand for agricultural and industrial goods there
transpired a critical period during which the incentive to economize
on labor costs while also actively seeking outlets for increased
production did not exist.
[The above contains new material never before written let alone shown on
television.]
Coming: A series of digressions on How To Tell If Its Capitalism (as
opposed for example to True Love or, less facetiously, Whatever Came Before.)
No. 1. Why the precapitalist capitalist did not and could not profit-
maximize. Case studies and horror stories from Europe and China. Also, the
Prophet Muhammad, Inshallah!
No. 2. Why were 4 out od 6 of the world;s most spectacular social
revolutions made in China?
No. 3. Japanese peasant tenure as a police measure by Toyotomi Hideyoshi:
Social scientists get burned again believing social institutions "just
happen." (Does anyone recall how even Marx got faked out by the Russian
*mir* a.k.a. *obshchestvo*?)
Just send stamp-self-addressed e-mail with your request. Just like to
remind the viewing audience that all that stuff about *eye cataracts* is
*true*. It hurts. Gotta split.]
