Legal Reform From The Perspective Of Evolutionism

The most prominent point of Wang Anshi’s economic reform research emphasizes the influence of the crisis in the middle period of the Northern Song Dynasty and the will of legislators on the reform.It thinks that law is the means to achieve the specific social purpose,and the sovereign can use it to achieve the social purpose that it wants to achieve,forming the theory of reaction and will theory and other constructivist rationalism research perspective.This research perspective is good at investigating the specific background and system of the reform,but it is weak in explaining a series of deep-seated logic such as "why the reform was so changed".From the perspective of evolutionism,this paper holds that all kinds of systems and habits are gradually formed through long-term trial and error evolution and in a way of cumulative development,trying to explain what social,economic,political,cultural and other factors constantly restrict the logic of reform in the horizontal and macro level,and how the reform measures in the vertical and micro level passed the previous generation of laws.It is the logical result and an important link of the systematic reform in Tang and Song Dynasties,and the historical orientation and dimension of the reform should be found in a larger historical position.When we think about and explain Wang Anshi’s economic reform from this perspective,we can see that the reform is not out of the subjective will of the reformers,nor is it a simple stress response to the crisis in the middle of the Dynasty and a tool to overcome the crisis,but the result of the evolution of multiple structural systems since the Mid Tang Dynasty.The reformers are only consciously or unconsciously acting as the tool of this system evolution.Constructivist rationalism underestimates the historical significance and complexity of the reform,and overestimates the role of law in the social system.Law is neither the result of design nor invention,but gradually formed by long-term cumulative development.In addition to the introduction and conclusion,this paper is divided into four chapters:The introduction combs the research of Tang and Song Dynasty reform and the traditional economic reform research of Wang Anshi,pointing out that the traditional understanding and interpretation of Wang Anshi’s economic reform from the perspective of Constructivism rationalism.It also points out that the reform is the result of the progressive changes in the Tang and Song dynasties.At the same time,this part also expounds the innovation points in the research of Wang Anshi’s economic reform perspective and content.The first chapter summarizes the changes of Tang and Song Dynasties from three aspects:land ownership,personal relationship and economic structure.First,from the Northern Wei dynasty to the middle of the Tang dynasty,the government limited the transfer rate of land ownership through the land equalization system and restricted land annexation by means of super-economic coercion.With the continuous erosion of the trend of land privatization,the restriction of the state legal right on land annexation was gradually lifted.The promulgation of the tax law marked the end of the middle ancient land system and the advent of a new land policy era of non-restriction of land acquisition,and the landlord class achieved a historic victory in its struggle for large land ownership.Second,farmers were firmly attached to the land during the Sui and Tang dynasties,but with the rise of the contractual tenancy economy,the land ownership system changed to free migration.It becames more difficult for the government to force peasants to work in the old way.The monetization of labor advanced,and the corvee system changed from labor to employment.Third,the commodity economy flourished again in the Song dynasty,and the commodity economy infiltrated the strongest bastion of the natural economy.The economic function of the city grows continuously,the economic city develops rapidly,the economic significance of the city grows unprecedentedly.The second chapter mainly discusses how the change of land ownership affects the green seedling law.In the early period of Northern Song dynasty,economic strength became the dominant strength of land annexation,and land annexation became a serious social problem.The Chen jing land system and emperor Renzong of Song land system indicates that the rulers still haven’t given up their efforts to restrict the annexation with the traditional super economic coercion,but the failure of the two land systems indicates that the traditional super economic coercion is no longer feasible in the era of the historic victory of private ownership of large land,so the economic means must be explored to restrict the annexation.As an economic means of suppressing annexation,the ever-normal granary alleviates land annexation to a certain extent.However,since it is essentially a macro-economic control means of price adjustment and famine relief,it is difficult to solve the problem of borrowing and lending for daily reproduction of farmers.In order to solve this problem,the green seedling law was introduced to maintain farmers’ reproduction with regular low-interest loans and avoid the poor peasants suffering from land annexation.However,because of the rising inflation in the Song dynasty,the law finally went bankrupt.The third chapter studies how the monetization of labor affects the the law of service exemption.With the advancement of the monetization of labor,the tax structure evolved from the dual system of corvee,poll tax and field tax to the monorail system of field tax.The law of service exemption is a key part of this evolution.In the Tang dynasty,the Two —Tax laws realized the conversion from regular service to monetary service tax,and the unmonetized clutter evolved into service in the early Song dynasty.In the middle and early period of the Northern Song dynasty,the continued use of the law of servitude was inconsistent with the historical trend of the monetization of servitude,so it must be reformed.Two approaches to reform emerged.One is on the basis of the persistence of the officers to expand the range of the service to reduce the burden of the workers,the other is to pay for the service.The former did not fundamentally jump out of the logic of the law of servitude,so it failed.The latter,because of its adaptation to the historical trend,has achieved a good effect and is inherited and popularized by the law of service exemption.The implementation of the law of service exemption means that the servitude has also embarked on the road of the monetary service tax.Although the law of service exemption was abolished in the restoration of Yuanyou,its affirmation of private enslavement and its implementation of the system of justice show that the monetization trend of labor represented by the law of service exemption cannot be shaken.The fourth chapter focuses on how the development of commodity economy and the shift of economic center of gravity to the south affect the law of uniform transportation.The double variation of the natural environment and the feudal tenancy promoted the shift of the economic center of gravity to the south.The revival and development of commodity economy had a great impact on the grain transport system.During Pei Yaoqing’s reform in Tang dynasty,the collection of grain was mainly based on taxation,and the commodity market began to play a role in Liu Yan’s reform.Following the trend of grain collection marketization,the law of uniform transportation expanded the quantity of grain bought in the market,and formed an absolute and overwhelming advantage of grain collection by taxation.The execution of the law of uniform transportation means that the market has become an indispensable force in grain supply.The failure of "direct method" in Emperor Huizong of Song dynasty indicated that the neglect of market and commodity economy law in Song dynasty would be failure.On the basis of the above chapters,the conclusion explains that Wang Anshi’s economic reform is not only the product of the stress of the crisis or the will of the rulers in the middle of the Northern Song Dynasty,but also the logical result of the evolution and transformation of the social system in the Tang and Song dynasties.On this basis,it shows that social evolution has spontaneity,and evolutionary rationalism is more convincing than constructive rationalism in interpreting legal reform.At the same time,it is pointed out that the reform of Tang and Song Dynasty endowed Chinese history with the significance of world history,and Wang Anshi’s reform complied with the trend of reform with world significance.In this sense,it can be regarded as an important link in the evolution of Chinese law to modern times.