How can there be a breakthrough in the industrial and commercial system of the Song Dynasty? What's the point?

In recent years, with the rapid development of contemporary China's economy, international academic circles began to re-evaluate the development level of China's traditional economy, especially in the Ming and Qing Dynasties. The California School, represented by Kenneth kenneth pomeranz and Frank, advocated the theory of economic development in Ming and Qing Dynasties. For example, Kenneth Pomeraz's book "The Great Divergence" holds that China was always ahead until 1800 years ago. Frank's book Silver Capital holds that 1840 years ago, half of the world's silver production flowed to China. Such a strong ability to absorb silver shows that China is the center of the world. Some scholars in China believe that the Qing Dynasty was the peak of China's traditional economic development, and its achievements surpassed those of the Tang and Song Dynasties. At present, historians' criticisms of kenneth pomeranz and Frank have been published in Huang Zongzhi, Qin Hui and other long articles, which are very convincing, so this article will not comment. Therefore, the research scope of this paper is limited to the traditional economy of China. This paper mainly discusses three issues: first, whether a scientific evaluation scale can be found for comparison (including comparison between China and the West and comparison between dynasties); Secondly, how to judge the stage of economic development in Song Dynasty according to this scale; Third, how to explain why such a developed industrial and commercial civilization in the Song Dynasty failed to drive the Song society to realize modern transformation.

First of all, starting from Hicks' theory of economic history

* * * The same road of human economic development In order to find a * * * to compare China and the West and compare dynasties, we need to proceed from the same road of human economic development. From the perspective of productivity, this road is nothing more than the gradual development of manual labor into machine production; From the perspective of production relations, it is a gradual evolution from a closed system (natural economy) to an open system (market economy). This paper's understanding of the evolution direction of the economic system benefits from the British economist John Hicks. In the Theory of Economic History published by 1969, he thinks that the modern economy is essentially a market economy, while the previous "custom economy" (such as village community economy) and "command economy" (such as feudal lords' fief economy) are ancient economic forms opposite to the market economy. This is a scientific analysis from the economic system, which is very incisive, but it lacks the dimension of productivity. The productivity that promotes the continuous evolution of production relations and economic system comes from the accumulation of labor skills, the progress of science and technology and the emergence of production machinery. Therefore, considering the same road or direction of human economic development, we must also add the dimension from manual labor to machine production. We arrange and combine the four elements involved in the above two dimensions (productivity and production relations), and we can get four different economic types:

1, manual labor+closed system = traditional economy (natural economy of ancient society) 2, manual labor+open system = primitive industrialized economy (transitional form from ancient times to modern economy) 3, machine production+open system = market economy (modern economy) 4, machine production+closed system = planned economy (eastern European model of the former Soviet Union) If the development of productivity is taken as the abscissa,

As can be seen from the above. The * * * path of human economic development is roughly a trajectory from a closed ancient natural economy to an open market economy after the transition of primitive industrialization stage, which may reflect the universal laws of various economic evolution in the East and the West, and the direction is the same. Due to the differences in geographical environment, resource endowment, natural and human environment, the economic development of various countries will present various forms and endless changes. However, it is a truth that people of all countries, nationalities and regions should move towards machine production and market economy. It's the same at home and abroad. Obviously, as far as the economic level is concerned, whoever wants to develop must go in two directions: efficient machine production and open market economy. From Adam Smith, through Marshall and Keynes, to today's neoclassical synthesis and new institutional economics school, the full development of modern economics has proved this point. From this, can we draw a conclusion: as far as the re-evaluation of China's traditional economy is concerned, which dynasty is closer to machine production and market economy, whether it is the Tang and Song Dynasties or the Ming and Qing Dynasties, then this dynasty is more advanced and has more development prospects. By extension, whether it is a vertical comparison (such as the comparison between Ming and Qing Dynasties and Tang and Song Dynasties) or a horizontal comparison (such as/kloc-China Jiangnan and England in the 8th century), we should start from these two dimensions, namely, machine production and market system.

Second, "production for the market": the first start of the original (early) industrialization process.

Song Dynasty was between Han and Tang Dynasties and Ming and Qing Dynasties. The foundation of Han and Tang dynasties was small-scale peasant economy, and the natural economy was very strong; Although Song and Ming Dynasties still established their country by agriculture, on the basis of highly developed agricultural economy, many industrial and commercial civilization factors such as cities, money, commerce, credit and overseas trade have increased, and new things such as wage labor, merchant employer convention, commercial credit and fund-raising partnership can be found, which is already on the eve of stepping into modern society. Compared with Han and Tang Dynasties. The most striking feature of economy in Song Dynasty. It is the rapid growth of commodity economic components in traditional society. With the development of agricultural production, the improvement of grain surplus rate, the appearance of coal-iron revolution, the expansion of handicraft production, the progress of transportation tools (such as oil tankers and seagoing ships) and the improvement of traffic conditions (such as Bianhe and coastal shipping), the primitive (early) industrialization process began.

As far as Europe is concerned, in the centuries before industrial revolution in europe in the18th century, the development of small-scale handicrafts distributed in urban and rural areas played a huge role in promoting economic growth and social progress, which was concentrated in preparing conditions for the later industrial revolution in terms of capital, business owners, workers, technology and even markets. American scholar Mendel put forward the theory of "primitive industrialization". In his view, the industrialization process can be divided into two stages: primitive industrialization and factory (machine) industrialization. The so-called primitive industrialization process is "the rapid development of industries traditionally organized for the market and mainly distributed in rural areas". In order to distinguish it from the long-standing cottage industry, the process of primitive industrialization is composed of three factors that coexist in the regional economy, namely, the development of rural industry, external market and commodity agriculture. Because the city is the base of wholesalers, technology and capital are intensive, and the city even participates in and dominates some handicraft production in rural areas through commercial capital, so the city constitutes the fourth element of the original industrialization process. Shortly thereafter, German scholars P, Crete and others further defined primitive industrialization as "the development of rural areas whose population completely or largely depends on the large-scale production of industrial products for regional markets or international markets". Its significance lies in introducing population as the fifth factor into the theory of primitive industrialization, and thus leads to the historical process and its internal mechanism on which the process of primitive industrialization depends.

We believe that one of the five elements that constitute the process of primitive industrialization is "production for the market". Mendel, Crete and others' emphasis on the market should be said to be consistent with Marx's historical investigation of capitalist mode of production. The so-called production for the market is what Marx called commodity production. The unprecedented prosperity of commodity economy in Song Dynasty was also marked by the expansion of the market, including the rapid expansion of domestic market and overseas market. In the historical environment of expanding domestic and international markets, the process of primitive industrialization in Song Dynasty started not only earlier than the northern Mediterranean countries and the British Isles, but also in scale and level. This is mainly manifested in the following aspects.

First, the occurrence of the coal-iron revolution and the emergence of wage labor in private mining and metallurgy workshops. The Northern Song Dynasty was marked by the surge of iron production and the popularization of steel casting method. Ushered in the second great transformation period of China's iron smelting and casting industry. The inspiration for this change comes from the large-scale mining and industrial utilization of coal (such as ironmaking and porcelain burning). Historical facts show that the coal mining industry in Hedong (now Shanxi), Hebei, Shaanxi and other roads was quite developed during the Northern Song Dynasty. In order to distinguish it from the original charcoal (called "soft charcoal"), the words "Carboniferous period" and "mineral charcoal" appeared in the Song Dynasty, specifically referring to coal.

The rise of coal mining industry not only eased the contradiction of traditional fuel shortage, but also increased the output of iron. At the same time, the improvement of furnace temperature and smelting efficiency has promoted the transformation of casting technology, especially the large-scale popularization of steel casting method characterized by "raw and cooked miscellaneous darts" and the sharpening of forged iron steel have become the inevitable results of all this. These major developments constitute the spectacular scene of the coal-iron revolution in the Song Dynasty.

As early as 1959, Mr. Ke Changji pointed out that according to Su Shi's Book of the Emperor of Xuzhou, the "Thirty-six Smelters" under the jurisdiction of Li Guojian near Xuzhou had an employment relationship. According to Su Shi, each of these 36 private iron smelting workshops has more than 100 workers and has the atmosphere of handicraft workshops; Every smelter owner has "hidden a lot of money": the government has closed the Hebei market ("for the benefit of the country, iron is not allowed to enter Hebei"), and all smelters have "unemployment worries": the ban is about to be lifted, "iron will go north" and smelters "do whatever they want", which shows that this is commodity production and there is an interval market. Most of the 3,000 to 4,000 iron smelting workers are "hungry and desperate", which reflects that they are separated from the land to varying degrees, and most of them are separated from political governance. At least during the period of employment, neither the landlord nor the country is bound by personal attachment.

Second, the rise of private enterprises in Sichuan and Chongqing and the economic struggle of employees. Zhuotong well appeared for the first time in Jingyan County, Sichuan Province during the reign of Renzong in the Northern Song Dynasty, which marked the transition of drilling technology from large shallow wells to small deep wells. It pioneered the "impact retreat method" in drilling technology, and the "blade" made of wrought iron steel blade should be the first deep well drill bit in the world, which pioneered modern drilling technology: in the hole-forming wall technology, it pioneered the "casing waterproof method", and the bamboo casing used (that is, the origin of the name of Zhuo barrel well, Zhuo Zhu, Yi Zhuan) was obviously a wooden conduit in the Ming and Qing Dynasties. In the process of chip removal, the "valve fan mud cylinder" was pioneered: in the process of brine extraction, a "bottomless open" brine extraction cylinder replaced the original skin, which automatically opened when entering the water and closed when exiting the water. These major innovations have laid the basic principles of modern deep well drilling technology from all aspects, so they are praised as "the father of modern oil drilling" by the history of science and technology.

It is precisely because Zhuotongjing essentially changed the old technology of large-mouth shallow wells and showed great advantages in terms of digging cost, brine quality and production efficiency that it spread rapidly once it appeared. In just 20 or 30 years, it spread all over Nanling Prefecture, Jiazhou, Rongzhou and other places in Sichuan, and thousands of "valleys are connected, and the kitchen scale is the second". Mr. Guo, an expert in salt history, according to the recitation of Lingzhou experts during Zong Xining's reign, proved that Sichuan well salt industry not only had employment relationship, but also had economic struggle to improve working conditions. According to Wentong, there were more than 100 barrel well workshops in Jingyan County at that time, and each workshop employed "40-50 to 30-20 people" respectively. Most of these thousands of craftsmen come from "other counties in other States" and have left the land. Their way of making a living is to "be servants", that is, to sell their labor to make a living. If they are not satisfied with their working conditions or treatment during their employment, they will join hands with each other and protest collectively, which is called "handover". If there is no improvement, I will settle accounts with the well owner "Hao Zhe" and ask for salary. The so-called "calculate the value of the work and ask for it"; Looking for another job, the so-called "invest in another place and get used to it" is obviously free to come and go.

Third, the commodity production nature of ceramic industry and its expanding domestic and international markets. Ceramic production in Song Dynasty entered a mature stage. So far, the sites of porcelain kilns in Song Dynasty have spread all over 17 provinces 130 counties, most of which are folk kilns. Dehua kilns in Fujian Road and porcelain kilns in Jinjiang and Xiamen, as well as Quanzhou Ciyao, Anxi, Nan 'an and Tongan kilns, are the production bases of large-scale export porcelain in Tong Tong Port of Quanzhou. On a large-scale "sea ship" with compass navigation, "merchants distribute goods, and people have to wait several feet to go down and store things, and lie on it at night. There are many pottery goods, and the size is matched, and there is no shortage of space. " Japanese scholar Gao Min Sanshan made many years of field trips along the Silk Road, and published the book Maritime Silk Road in 1979. The second chapter introduces the distribution of Song Dynasty porcelain in Singapore, Jakarta, Saigon, India, Mysore and Madras, Bambur in Pakistan, Samara in West Asia and Faustine in North Africa and Egypt. This shows that the ceramic industry in Song Dynasty has the nature of commodity production as far as its main part is concerned and has a broad overseas market.

Fourth, the emergence of tens of thousands of textile users and the formation of the convention of businessmen and employers. The "machine shop" in the Song Dynasty was generally a family workshop with family members as workers and specialized in textiles for a living, and its nature was an independent commodity producer. There are also a few machine users who practice employee production. According to Mr. Qi Xia's estimation, the number of mobile phone users in the Northern Song Dynasty was about 654.38+million, which was considerable. The problem is that most of these mobile phone users are in rural areas except a few in cities, and their products need to be transported to the market by middlemen in order to truly become commodities, so there are business employers. The "Chen Tai's Unjust Dream" in Yongle Dadian is a typical example of Jiangxi merchants' employers during the reign of Xiaozong in the Southern Song Dynasty (65438+70s). Chen Taiyuan, the wronged shopkeeper, was originally a cloth dealer in Fuzhou. At the beginning of each year, he issued productive loans ("loans") to machine operators in Chong 'an, Le 'an and Jinxi, and then went to these places to ask for linen in summer and autumn, and then shipped it out. As the business grew bigger and bigger, there appeared agents who had waited for the "owner" and "the first owner" to release money and collect cloth. Le 'an alone "accumulates thousands of horses". Judging from "so long", it is not accidental that this practice has lasted for a long time before Xichun. This practice is not different from the "accounting office" in the Ming and Qing Dynasties in essential characteristics, and it is a common practice among businessmen and employers. Mr. Guo pointed out that in the silk weaving industry in Zhejiang and the silk brocade industry in the four seasons, there were also practices such as "taking silk to lend money", "paying customers on credit" and "paying silk money in advance", which showed that merchants and employers in the Song Dynasty were widely distributed, and their activities could be seen in Jiangxi, Zhejiang and Sichuan.

Through the above brief summary, we can see that the start of the primitive industrialization process in Song Dynasty is all-round. Driven by the coal-iron revolution, handicraft industries, including metallurgy, ceramics, well salt, textile and other industries, once showed a comprehensive prosperity trend: private handicraft industries rose in an all-round way, and their dominant position was undoubtedly established except for a few industries such as coin and military industry, and they owned regional markets, interval markets and even overseas markets to varying degrees; At the same time, the employment relationship with modern colors and the convention of businessmen and employers are also growing tenaciously. All this makes us believe that the handicraft industry in Song Dynasty entered a new period of development, a period of preparing conditions for the emergence of modern industry and providing historical premise for the arrival of capitalist mode of production, which we call the pre-modernization period. If this momentum can be maintained continuously for two or three centuries, it will certainly lay a solid foundation for the later industrialization of factories (machines).

Third, the economic basis, scientific and technological conditions and social environment of the initial industrialization process in Song Dynasty.

Now we have to ask, did the society in Song Dynasty have all the conditions to start the process of primitive industrialization? Our understanding is that "three are short of one", that is, three of the four conditions are met and one is still missing.

First, under the pressure of population growth (the population of Huizong in Northern Song Dynasty reached 1 100 million, twice that of Han and Tang Dynasties), the occurrence of agricultural revolution, the increase of grain surplus rate and the growth of commercial agriculture provided an economic basis for the process of primitive industrialization. Because the population growth rate exceeds the expansion rate of cultivated land area, a large number of landless or less farmers have been produced, and they have been forced to make another living and enter cities and industrial and commercial fields in large numbers. The improvement of agricultural productivity provides these non-agricultural population with essential food supply. According to the author's calculation, an agricultural labor force produced about 4000 Jin of grain every year in Song Dynasty. It is twice as high as that of the Han Dynasty and 30% higher than that of the Tang Dynasty, which is roughly equivalent to 1984, and the output of each labor force is 4379 Jin. This achievement is related to the change of farming system in Song Dynasty. Around the turn of the Song Dynasty, that is, in the first half of12nd century, the double cropping system was recognized as the basic farming system in the Yangtze River Delta, Chengdu-Chongqing Plain, Jiangsu-Anhui Plain and Fujian coastal areas, as well as the Ji Tai Basin in central Jiangxi. The increase in grain output has also freed up more arable land to grow cash crops. The situation of small land and large population in the southeast region is also forcing local farmers to seek more efficient cash crops, such as ramie, mulberry, tea, sugarcane, fruit trees, vegetables, and even medicines and flowers. When there is a corresponding market around the place of origin. Producers' attention will naturally shift from the use value of the product to its exchange value, so professional tea farmers, sugarcane farmers, fruit farmers and vegetable farmers emerge in large numbers, and commodity agriculture has developed.

Second, the promotion of the coal-iron revolution and the expansion of domestic and foreign markets have led to the rise of technological innovation within handicrafts, which can be regarded as the internal driving force of the original industrialization process. For example, the promotion of steel casting method in steelmaking, the invention of copper lining method in copper smelting, the use of "spinning" (that is, simple lathe) in metal processing, the small-mouth deep well technology represented by "Zhuo barrel well" in well digging, the promotion of pedal spinning wheel and the use of shaft warping method in textile processing, the invention of watertight cabin in shipbuilding, the use of navigation compass, the maturity of hard fiber softening technology such as bamboo pole in paper industry and printing technology. Such great scientific and technological progress and technological innovation are obviously the internal driving force for the start of the primitive industrialization process. It is not difficult to see the ingenious conception and extraordinary efforts of craftsmen in Song Dynasty from manual labor to machine production. Thirdly, the relaxation of personal dependence and the acceleration of urbanization lead to the evolution of urban nature and the emergence of citizen class, which is the social condition of the primitive industrialization process. Since the collapse of the land equalization system in the mid-Tang Dynasty, the increase of land circulation rate has led to the disintegration of the lifelong system of master and servant, and the growth of land ownership in rural family economy has led to the basic separation of administrative jurisdiction and land ownership, while the deviation between land ownership concentration and land parcel dispersion has forced the management mode of Buqu manor system to decline day by day. Driven by these economic reform trends, the main body of farmers in the Song Dynasty really broke away from the previous serfdom status of the Ministry, the guest, the apprentice, the private, the maid and the tenant, and gradually gained the right to migrate and withdraw the rent. Once they leave the land and flow into cities or mining areas, they may make a living by selling their own labor, as we have seen in mining, metallurgy and well salt industry.

At the same time, the process of urbanization is also accelerating. In Song Dynasty, not only the number of cities increased sharply, but also the nature of cities changed with the increase of commercial significance. Bianjing and Lin 'an, as provincial capitals, are world-class cities with a population of one million. Although they are still political and military centers, their industry and commerce are still very prosperous. Suzhou, Yangzhou, Chengdu, Ezhou and other cities have gradually grown into regional economic centers because they are located in economically developed areas or traffic tunnels. What is more noteworthy is that a few productive industrial and commercial cities appeared in the Song Dynasty, such as Jinhua in eastern Zhejiang, which can be considered as an important textile town. Li Guojian, near Xuzhou mentioned above, can be regarded as a metallurgical town, as well as the lead mountain field in Jiangxi and the Censhui field in Guangdong, where more than 100,000 miners often gather. There are also tens of thousands of well salt craftsmen in Jingyan County, Sichuan Province, which is a salt town: the world-famous Jingdezhen in Jiangxi Province has thousands of potters, which is a hometown of ceramics. As for Guangzhou, Quanzhou, Mingzhou and Banqiao in the north, they are new port cities, from Quanzhou to "making a living by ships" to "500,000 people have no worries" in the Southern Song Dynasty.

The increase of cities and the growth of their commercial significance have accelerated the flow of rural population to urban areas and the transformation of suburban farmers into small commodity producers (such as tea farmers and fruit farmers). At the same time, the number of bureaucrats and landlords who run industry and commerce in cities is also increasing. The development of urban handicrafts, commerce, transportation and service industry provides fertile soil for the development of employment relations. One of the main results of all this is the prosperity of the citizens in cities (including mining areas and ports). In the literature of the Song Dynasty, there are "rich businessmen and tycoons", "smelters", "millers" and "tea house owners", as well as "old-fashioned" and "market leaders" (the above is one side), as well as "miscellaneous craftsmen", "Shu Ren embroiderers" and "wandering hands as the last workers" (the above is the other side). As mentioned earlier, the salt workers in Jingyan County are "servants and laborers". When they are not satisfied, they can be regarded as economic struggles. Wang Ge, a miner in Susong, Zhou Shu, Anhui Province, was an armed fighter during the reign of filial piety in the Southern Song Dynasty. As we all know, the combination of capital and wage labor is the basic structure of modern industrial society. It is in this sense that we regard the historical process of rural population flowing into cities, the development of employment relations and the rise of the civil class as the social conditions on which primitive industrialization depends.