The fundamental reason for the failure of Wang Anshi's change of law was that he tried to cover up political problems through economic means, and as a result, because there was no right medicine, the contradictions were intensified, and eventually developed into the complete darkness of the last years of the Northern Song Dynasty, and finally disappeared, and now it is also admitted that the opponents of Wang Anshi's change of law were originally also supportive of the change of law, so why did they oppose it en masse? That's because those who opened up the road of public opinion for changing the law before, such as Fan Zhongyan, Han Qi, Fubi, Ouyang Xiu, Sima Guang, and others, had a different sense of poverty and weakness in their eyes than those who now praise Wang Anshi's change of law. The weakness in their eyes is that the imperial court has spent so much money for the army, but the military has not improved, so the military problem is not the problem of investing more money and less money, but the problem of the army system, not solving this system, and then spending no money on the military will not solve the problem, and the accumulation of poverty, the great Song Dynasty in their eyes is the law of the mean people in the past dynasties, the common people are difficult to survive under the heavy exploitation of the Zhao and Song dynasties, and it is the poor people here, not the Zhao and Song dynasties.
Therefore, the reform proposal they propagated in society was to control the extravagance and waste of the central financial expenditure of the Zhao and Song dynasties, reduce exploitation, and let the people breathe a sigh of relief; in fact, what they proposed to solve was the political issue involving the wrong way of governing the country that Zhao song liguo began to establish and implement, and they did not make up the rhetoric to oppose Wang Anshi's change of law, but to widely publicize it before Wang Anshi changed the law and won the approval of the mainstream of the whole society. Secondly, the time and place are favorable and the people are not there, so they failed, the Song and Liao peace period, the Western Xia Dali Vietnam and the Uighurs could not destroy the Song but the Song could not destroy them, the Song and the neighboring countries were in a period of relative balance of power, the external troubles were not serious, and the pressure from the outside to change the law was not strong; the Song Dynasty's finances were tense for a long time, but this was caused by the Song Dynasty setting up more officials to hire more soldiers to treat the scholars, in fact, the Song Dynasty's agricultural taxation, monopoly of state-owned enterprise profits, and foreign trade were all very good, and they were really nervous, and the layoff of some personnel could get by. The determination to change the law from within is not strong, and the most fundamental thing is to use the ideal state to apply to the actual needs.
For example, the green shoots method, the ideal state is that when the green and yellow are not received, the state provides seeds to the farmers at a low interest rate, and the farmers return them to the state after the harvest in the next year, so that the state can increase income, and the people are exempted from the exploitation of money. However, there are huge loopholes in reality: First, the Bien Miao Law stipulates that if you borrow this year, there will be great variables in the coming year, for example, what if next year is also a disaster year? The people borrowed this year for the next year can not be repaid, not only did not help, but also increased a lot of burdens, in the past to borrow money can not be repaid, a big deal to run, there is still a way to live, but now borrow the country, have you run? So not long after the implementation of the Qingmiao Law, the crime rate of the Song Dynasty soared. Secondly, in order to adapt to the law, it is necessary to add more posts, the Song Dynasty originally had the problem of redundant officials, and now that it is done, the bureaucracy of the Song Dynasty is even larger and the administrative efficiency is even lower, and in order to support these people, it is necessary to increase a lot of financial burdens, and in order to make up for the finances, it is necessary to raise taxes on the people.
The Song Dynasty lost the borderlands in the three directions of the north and southwest, the geographical security was unstable, but the Song Dynasty also accounted for the vast majority of the high-quality arable land, the driving force for external expansion was not strong, the Song Dynasty was dominated by small farmers, the demand for capital itself was not large, the country's land diversity was large, vulnerable to flood and drought disasters, on the one hand, it was dependent on centralized power, on the one hand, it was necessary to exert the subjective enthusiasm of the cultivators, the harvest had an upper limit, and the tax space available to the central government from the land was not as large as imagined. Some people also say that the reason for the failure of Wang Anshi's change of law is that Wang Anshi is good at offending people and not good at uniting people, and some books say that Wang Anshi has a paranoid personality disorder (Wang Anshi is a thorn head, and the people who are with him are either hypocrites or thorn heads, and some people have commented on Meng Anshijun, saying that there are chicken and dog thieves under Meng Tianjun, and at the critical moment, Meng Anshi let Meng Anshi escape from the capital of the Qin Kingdom, but Wang Anshi said that it is precisely because there are chicken and dog thieves under Meng Tianjun's hands, so he has not achieved great things. ）
In addition, the reason for the financial difficulties of the Northern Song Dynasty is not that there are few economic resources, nor is it the low taxation, but that there are redundant soldiers, redundant officials, and waste, and Wang Anshi's approach is to increase more economic resources (Sima Guang felt that saving is a better way to solve financial difficulties, so he opposed Wang Anshi's change of law, as long as the law is changed, it will definitely be resisted by interest groups (it is impossible to change the law without violating interests). The Song Dynasty selected talents by examination, the literary literacy was high but the understanding of the economy was not deep, over the years, the huge bureaucratic landlord class, gradually networked, the energy to protect private property was very strong, the salaries of officials were not low, but it was not enough to maintain the bribery of high-level officials and the luxurious life of the family, collective corruption was inevitable, and it was the active choice of most officials to hollow out their minds and plunder the people. Wang Anshi's failure to change the law was jointly determined by various factors of the great era, and the support of Song Shenzong was very strong, but Song Shenzong and his father and ancestor did not suffer from the successive wars and crises of national subjugation suffered by Qin Xiaogong's father and grandfather, and the unchanged law would not destroy the country, and the uncertainty of changing the law was great, so there were reservations about changing the law in the depths of their minds
Wang Anshi's various new legal measures after taking advantage of the rising voice of reform to come to power are themselves completely twisted with the direction of change that has been widely recognized, that is, Wang Anshi, who is now the most stubborn supporter, also has to admit that although the reform of the law is under the slogan of the people not adding endowments and the country is fully used, the implementation of the new law has also increased the burden on the people at the bottom, this is not a general collection of floating wealth from relatively wealthy households, but a rush of food from the mouths of the ordinary people who have been exploited by zhao and Song; he has not solved the problem of the people's poverty. On the contrary, it makes the people poorer. Originally, it was a question of eliminating some of the rentier classes within the ruling clique and reducing ineffective financial expenditures to improve administrative efficiency, but Wang Anshi tried to satisfy the greedy appetite of the various profit-sharing groups of the ruling clique by increasing fiscal revenue; however, the tarieri clique within the ruling clique became larger and larger, and its appetite became more and more greedy, and in the end it still devoured the wealth that Wang Anshi had painstakingly tried to steal from the mouths of the common people, and when the Jin army attacked at Jingkang, the final result of the change of law was that there was no money and no soldiers.
Third, the Emperor of Heaven is far away, many people in remote areas originally did not need to borrow green shoots, but the officials in charge of the Green Shoots Law forcibly apportioned them in order to complete their performance, and the people had to borrow them, otherwise they were resisting the will, so the law that was originally for the good of the people turned out to be another kind of tax, but was it not to squeeze the people? Finally, because the legal interest rate of young seedlings is lower than that of the private sector, this has created a profitable situation, some landlords and businessmen do not need to borrow, but because of the interest rate difference, they will use their dominant position to hoard and fiercely suck the wool of the country, and the final result must be that they need to borrow the wool of the young seedlings, and they do not need to borrow a lot. There are two direct reasons, one is because there are many loopholes in the new law, and many problems have arisen in the implementation, such as the Green Shoots Law, where the peasants eventually borrow the money of the government as young as little less than the money borrowed from the landlords, and the procedures are cumbersome; the second is that the employment of personnel is improper; Lu Huiqing and others used by Wang Anshi are treacherous and mercenary, and Wang Anshi lacks the wisdom to know and use people.
In fact, the most fundamental reason is that the dynasty has accumulated in the middle and late period, the reform is difficult, the failure is normal, the success is a miracle, not only Wang Anshi failed to change the law, the country's ancient feudal social and economic reform was rarely successful. Because the selection of officials in ancient times has always been based on Confucianism as the standard, there is no education in economy and science, the state governance is to rule the country with virtue, pay attention to etiquette and filial piety, the economy of the empire is a small peasant economy, a certain stage of development, there will be land annexation, tax reduction, economic difficulties, especially in the occurrence of wars, disasters, the economy will collapse. However, the country also has no economic talents, can not be reformed according to the laws of the market economy, so most of them will fail, the success is relatively small, in this regard, Zhang Juzheng is relatively successful, but zhang Juzheng only 10 years later, the reform system was mostly abandoned, the Ming Dynasty fell into the tide of land annexation again, and then 40 years later the Ming Dynasty collapsed and perished, so Zhang Juzheng's reform can not be said to be successful.
Zhang Juzheng is actually more of a compromise while reforming, so the basic political system has not changed, as long as the highest promoter is gone, the reform results will be swallowed up completely, so Zhang Juzheng's reform is difficult to say that it is successful, more is to interrupt or suspend the tide of land annexation at that time. Wang Anshi's transformation method is different from the Shang martingale transformation method, the geographical location of the Qin Dynasty allows it to have enough wasteland to reclaim, in the Warring States period of war and strife, the Shang martingale transformation method encourages the low-level people to kill more enemies, the Shang martingale transformation method will have great achievements on the battlefield, and Wang Anshi came to the Song Dynasty, it is completely different, and the implementation is not effective, and it will be defeated. Changing the law is nothing more than for reform, reform is bound to move the cheese of vested interests, so throughout the history of the country, behind the success of any reform there are two words of centralization, it is obvious that Song Shenzong is not, no reform will be revolutionary, reform is to redistribute the cake rationally by not shedding blood, because with development, the gap between rich and poor is getting bigger and bigger, if there is a person with talent, there will be problems, and reform is to eliminate this problem. If the contradiction is not eliminated and resolved, it is doomed to failure.
Although Wang Anshi's policy is good, but it can not develop the productive forces, nor can it be strictly implemented, and eventually it becomes an increase in harsh taxes and miscellaneous taxes, increasing the burden on the people, as a small ordinary person, I still expect such a reform to be less, after all, if I live in that era, I will definitely be exploited. Some people want to get rich, want to be rich in the world, some people want to be famous in history, beneficial to the people, no matter how much money and fame they seek, they should even be greatly appreciated, and those who get rich and famous through exploiting the people should arouse the vigilance of future generations. Whether or not to change the law and to what extent, it is necessary to clarify the comprehensive and more detailed, more advanced data support and the promotion timetable on top of this, so that the relevant interests can form a consensus, and only the impression and demand need to be insufficient, otherwise the general probability is to fall into party strife and talk.
The harm of Wang Anshi's change of law was that when the Northern Song Dynasty needed to change political affairs, it did not take the road of streamlining the army and simplifying the administration to improve efficiency, but continued the dead-end road of extravagance, waste, arrogance, and extravagance; the reason why the party struggle intensified was precisely because of the dispute over the line rather than the general dispute over personal rights and grievances; the reform of the Southern Song Dynasty was all lip service to the art of advocating the yuanyou, that is, at least verbally acknowledging that it was necessary to take the road of streamlining the army and simplifying the administration and alleviating the people's difficulties. When the original core ruling group of the Northern Song Dynasty was captured by the Jin people and taken to the north, no one dared to continue Wang Anshi's approach, and the road of Wang Anshi's change of law was finally abandoned by people who did not want to be slaves to the country, which was a failure, but unfortunately the failure was too late. All in all, Wang Anshi's design is indeed very advanced and excellent, but people are the biggest variable, you can't expect people in feudal society to be just and honest, it is precisely the human factor, resulting in the content of its change of law will inevitably change from good to bad.
Wang Anshi's personal ability is very strong, but there is no huge group of firm supporters such as fellow villagers, classmates, and students, and can only rely on the administrative power of the emperor and the prime minister to influence the sympathizers of the existing bureaucracy who want to use the change law to seek promotion. Changing the law is beneficial to the state, but it is not conducive to maintaining the stability of the country, and it is impossible to completely replace the existing bureaucracy by relying on military or political forces, so top-down support is not sustained and firm, and failure is inevitable.