In 1997, Feng Xiaogang served as the screenwriter and director of the Chinese New Year film "Party A and Party B".
The movie has received unanimous praise since its release, and one of the classic lines has been repeatedly mentioned and even adapted until now.
The landlord's family has no surplus grain" not only reflects the classic plot in the movie at that time, but also pays tribute to Yang Bailao in the famous drama "The White-Haired Witch", which makes people feel the exploitation of ordinary peasants by the landlord class at that time.
So why did the landlords oppress the common people so heavily at that time?
Why did the first effort to eliminate the landlord class after the founding of New China?
What kind of impact do they have on different farmers? Today we will take a look at the emergence and development of the landlord class.
The origin of the landlord class.
Speaking of how the landlord class arose in our country, we must mention the 5,000-year history of our country, in fact, as early as the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, there was already the shadow of the landlord class.
All the turning points opened in the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period.
Prior to this period, all land was owned by the state, and the well field system was practiced at that time. Cultivated land is divided into two parts, although the land is divided into public land and private land, this does not mean that the owner of the cultivated land has changed, but that the common people must first cultivate the public part and then cultivate the private part.
Moreover, even if the name of the private land has "private" in it, it is not owned by the people, and the people only enjoy the right to use it.
However, with the development of the social system, the old system was difficult to meet the needs of the country, and after the beginning of the Western Zhou Dynasty, the imperial court began to gradually decline.
In the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, the various vassal states began to work hard, and they would reward land to meritorious officials, enhance national strength, stimulate their combat effectiveness, and slowly land was allowed to be bought and sold freely.
However, at this time, land privatization was not all negative effects, and when it was first introduced, it really greatly increased the enthusiasm of peasant households for production, and the country's national strength was also enhanced.
After the people knew that the land was cultivated for themselves, their enthusiasm for planting continued to rise. At the same time, they also have a greater sense of trust in the state. In this way, the state has made a decision that the advantages outweigh the disadvantages of consolidating the localities and promoting agricultural development.
However, as the power of the landlords gradually increased and gradually became a force, the control of the state gradually weakened, and the rising landlords became a new class in society, and they even became the source of the main turmoil in the state.
During the period of the Shang Dynasty that we know as we all know, wealthy merchants and aristocrats would use their surplus money to purchase real estate to acquire land, thus giving rise to a new class called the landlord class.
It can be said that the emergence of the landlord class is not only an inevitable trend of historical development, but also has something to do with China's special national conditions. China has a large land and a large population, but compared with the dense population, the land that can be cultivated is relatively small.
Therefore, it is destined to produce the reality that the land and the peasant population are not equal, and the special land resources lead to the inevitable emergence of different classes in social development.
As long as the ** was sound and the policy was stable at that time, after an ordinary family saved money to buy one acre of land, through their own cultivation, they could often expand the land to two or three acres, or even one hundred acres.
When they get more and more land, they don't work for themselves, but recruit landless peasants to cultivate for themselves, and they take care of the long-term labor, or rent the land to the peasants, so that they don't work for nothing.
In addition, the hereditary system prevailed in ancient China, and most of these people who had the money to buy land were nobles with relatively high ranks, or wealthy merchants, and they would pass on the land from generation to generation after they obtained it for rewards or various reasons, which is the reason why many large landlord classes appeared in the later period of the slave society.
From this, the ancient landlord class can also be divided into the following types.
First of all, those nobles with relatively high social status, their families have served the court for generations, and as long as they have merit, they will be rewarded with all kinds of fiefs and treasures. This helped them to purchase more land.
The second is the very common political bandits in all kinds of martial arts, although they don't have much money, but they have great political power, so they will also use their privileges to seek personal benefits for themselves. In the ** period, such people emerged in endlessly.
The third group is those small landlords with relatively low class status, who can form a certain size because in the early days there were people in the family who went out to do business and obtained money to buy land.
Among the common people, they were considered to be in a better family position, but they were still exploited by the landlord class of higher rank than themselves.
How the landlord class exploited the peasants.
However, some people have raised the question that the landlord, as a product of the times, will inevitably produce a class. Why is it criticized and spurned by many people when it can not only help the state supervise the production of peasant households, but also provide a subsistence job for farmers who have no land to cultivate?
This must mention how the landlord class in ancient times brutally exploited the peasants.
In fact, most of the people were helpless at that time, the country was poor, and the people were struggling to make a living. In order to survive, these homeless peasants had no choice but to work for the landlord class, even if they were exploited.
As far as the state is concerned, because of the poor economic situation, they also receive a lot of taxes, but even this does not help the grassroots peasant households to live a better life, but instead feeds the middle landlord class more and more fat.
In some classic stories at that time, there were profound descriptions of the exploitation of peasants by the landlord class, for example, the small landlord represented by Zhou Papi, although he had a lot of land in his family, and he relied on the industry accumulated by his ancestors, it can be said that he was a local tyrant on the side of the small land and wealth.
But he himself was extremely picky, not only breaking a penny into two cents, but also in order to exploit the peasant households who worked for himself, let the long-term workers in the family work more, he would learn to crow every night before dawn, and let the long-term workers go out to work against the moon.
Because their employment contract stipulates that the working hours are based on the rooster's crowing every morning, this is only the most common means by which he oppresses ordinary farmers.
For these landlord classes, there are other ways in which they have no human approach. The first thing to bear the brunt of this is to lend money to the peasants.
Rather than having long-term workers do more work, they prefer to expand their treasury in this way.
When the peasants were short of money, they could only borrow money from the landlord class, and the landlord class would lend it to them at a fairly high interest rate, which was usury.
When the time came, most of the peasant households were unable to repay the principal, so they mortgaged the land left by their ancestors to the landlord class.
This leads to the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer. In the heyday of the landlord class, not only did the land that a peasant family had accumulated over several lifetimes belong to the landlord class, but they also had to work for the landlord to pay off their debts all their lives.
At that time, the peasants were oppressed by the landlord class and never had a bright future.
According to relevant information, in 1933, the peasant report counted by the Nanjing National ** showed that half of the peasant households in the country were in debt, or the problem of borrowing grain, and the reason for their borrowing was mainly to buy some necessities of life, or wedding and funeral furniture and other major events. It can be seen how much the exploitation of the landlords at that time had an impact on the common people.
If a country wants to be sustainable for a long time, the most important thing is to understand the importance of its people.
In such an era, ordinary people are suffering from oppression, and it is impossible to help a dynasty continue to develop steadily.
Why fight the landlord class.
However, this was not the only reason for cracking down on the landlord class after the founding of New China. Looking at the whole trend of development throughout history, we can also draw some conclusions.
For example, when some dynasties are replaced, it is often accompanied by the annexation of land. Serious land annexation has led to the decline of a country, especially the prosperous era of the Tang Dynasty, which we are more familiar with.
In the Tang Dynasty, in its heyday, singing and dancing rose, and the people lived and worked in peace and contentment, but when it came to the end, it can be found that the festival envoys in various regions at that time had developed into famous local landlords.
Whether it is the Huainan Jiedu envoy or the Hedong Jiedu envoy, they not only have power but also wealth, so they will use the convenience of official business to frantically accumulate wealth for themselves, and regard the country's policies as empty things, and the people are helpless about it.
After a long time, the people lived quite poorly, and the country had no money. When the class gap became wider and wider, and the landlords in the middle became more and more wealthy, the contradictions became prominent, and thus began more than ten years of war and chaos.
For these landed classes, they don't care about how ordinary people live, and when ordinary people can't even solve the problem of food and clothing, they are still thinking about how to collect more land at a lower price for their own profits.
Therefore, from the perspective of historical development, the existence of the landlord class in a country is of little significance, and it will also threaten the stability and harmony of the social development of the whole country.
Fortunately, this landlord class did not last until now, with the outbreak of the Nanchang Uprising in 1927, when the slogan of the peasants surrounding the city spread throughout the country, more and more people shouted to fight the local tyrants and divide the land, ushering in great success.
After the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1945, although our country was still in a relatively poor situation, our leaders also deeply realized that for a country dominated by the common people, their class enemy was the landlords.
They not only hindered the development and progress of society, but also hindered the sustainable development of the whole society, so the agrarian revolution drove these landlords away, so that the peasants could obtain the land that they really cultivated for themselves.