(1) Clan landlords and gentry landlords with high social status and political privileges occupy or seize or buy land by virtue of their hereditary or non-hereditary status and privileges. They conceal real estate, pay less or pass on land tax; And often legally or illegally shelter relatives and other Ding Kou. They are the most conservative, decadent and reactionary class in the landlord class.
(2) Sublime landlords with low social status and no political privileges. Mainly small and medium-sized landlords. They were bullied by powerful landlords, and with their wealth, they colluded with the government and oppressed the villagers. As land can be bought and sold, the composition of the landlord class often changes. With the development of social productive forces, the minimum necessary amount of land required to obtain the status of landlord decreases, and the number advantage of co-landlords increases. After the great development of commodity economy, businessmen bought land and industrial and commercial landlords appeared.
The classification of boundary markers erected by farmers for landlords in Wen Yi District, yinan county shows that the big landlord class, as its name implies, refers to the landlord class with a large amount of land and huge agricultural means of production and wealth.
In literary and artistic works, the image of the big landlord class-Huang Shiren petty bourgeoisie is a social group based on individual ownership of the means of production and individual labor. Mainly including middle peasants, small craftsmen, small businessmen, freelancers and so on. The petty bourgeoisie occupies a small part of the means of production or a small amount of property. Generally speaking, they are neither exploited nor exploited by others, and mainly rely on their own labor for a living. However, a small number of them are slightly exploited.
The concept of the big bourgeoisie can be applied to the small bourgeoisie. Simply put, it is a social group based on private ownership of the means of production and large-scale wage labor. Appeared in the late feudal period and was the founder of the landlord class.
There is still a big difference between the two. The big landlord class is essentially a class that lags behind the bourgeoisie and is a class under the feudal relations of production, which cannot promote social progress. But its wealth is enormous. Due to social changes and its own reasons, it can be transformed into the bourgeoisie or even the big bourgeoisie. The petty bourgeoisie has its unique duality, which requires both breaking the private ownership of landlords' land and fearing fierce market competition and maintaining a moderate market closure. So they may become middle class or bankrupt civilians.
The main forms of feudal mode of production in China. It has been fully developed in China feudal society for a long time and is typical.
Feudal economy is another form of feudal mode of production. Academic circles have different views on whether this form existed in China feudal society. Some people think that the economy after the Western Zhou Dynasty or the Spring and Autumn Period is feudal. Well field system is its land system and economic organization form. In ancient books, "Shu Ren" was a serf who paid labor rent to feudal owners in the form of "gang". After the Spring and Autumn Period, this landlord economy gradually transformed into a landlord economy. Some people think that the Western Zhou Dynasty is still a slave society, and it is a state-owned land system that is "all over the world, not the land of kings" and "the land is not fat". Well field system is the management form of this land system. After the Spring and Autumn Period, this kind of slavery was gradually replaced by the landlord economy with private land.
Class characteristics The landlord system economy in China was produced under the condition that the productive forces and commodity economy developed to a certain extent. Its main features are land sale, small-scale peasant management and land rent in kind. During the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, the use and popularization of iron farm tools and Niu Geng improved the level of agricultural productivity, provided sufficient material conditions for individual labor, and led to the establishment of private ownership of land. Shang Yang's political reform, "in addition to mining fields, the people have to buy and sell", and land sales have since been legalized. From the Qin and Han Dynasties to the Sui and Tang Dynasties, the feudal kings of past dynasties not only granted land to aristocratic officials, but also implemented the system of occupying land equally. Although land sales have always been very popular, they have also been restricted to some extent. In Song Dynasty, farmland system was not established, and land sales became more and more common. Because of the sale of land, land merger has always been the economic source of social unrest. However, some businessmen bought land and became landlords, forming a close combination of landlords, businessmen and usurers, easing the contradiction between land rights and money rights. Some farmers can buy land and become yeomen or landlords, which also injects vitality into the landlord economy and is conducive to its continuation. But from another point of view, with the development of this trading system to a certain extent, farmers can no longer survive, so there was the collapse of the old feudal dynasty and the reconstruction of the new feudal dynasty. Once a new and powerful new class emerges, it will subvert this economic relationship and establish capitalist relations of production.
Landlord-class tenancy system Feudal landlords managed their own land by exploiting slaves or employees, mainly by subletting the land to farmers for farming in order to collect land rent. During the Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties, tenant farmers and other dependent farmers, as a type of tenant farmers, occupied a dominant position. They have strict dependence on the landlord, "all guests care about their families" and are sheltered by the landlord. If they want to be free, they must go through the formalities of release and redemption. After the middle Tang Dynasty, the tenant farmers' class expanded day by day. During the Northern Song Dynasty, they obtained the status of state editors, their personal attachment was relatively loose, and they had certain freedom to migrate, rent land and withdraw tenants. This kind of tenant farmer, which is different from dependent farmers, has occupied a dominant position in the tenancy relationship since then. During the Ming and Qing Dynasties, with the development of fixed rent system and permanent tenancy system, tenant farmers got rid of the landlord's intervention in production activities, could arrange production reasonably and use their own labor flexibly, and their operating independence was relatively expanded. Due to the popularity of mortgage system, the contractual relationship between tenant farmers and landlords has changed to "no requirement except paying rent".
Feudal landlords collected land rent in kind from farmers, mainly grain. During the Qin and Han dynasties, landlords "divided fields to grab holidays" and farmers "got fields to the tiller, depending on what taxes they paid". During Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties, subletting system prevailed. Although the fixed rent system in the Tang Dynasty has been seen for a long time, it is only used in military camps. After the development of Song and Ming Dynasties, especially in the Qing Dynasty, the fixed rent system finally replaced the sub-rent system and occupied a dominant position. The sub-lease system is related to the relatively low level of productivity. The binary system is the most common, that is, tenants give 5% of the grain harvest to landlords; Of course, there are also higher or lower than 50%. Fixed rent system is based on the premise that agricultural productivity reaches a certain stable production level. The amount of fixed rent is generally determined by 50% of the grain harvest in normal years; On the long-term average, it is greater than the shared quantity. However, with the development of agricultural productivity, the grain yield per mu increases, the multiple cropping area increases, cash crops and cottage industries expand, and the proportion of land rent in the household income of tenant farmers will decrease, which is conducive to mobilizing the production enthusiasm of tenant farmers.
Tenants and landlords rent the land to farmers in small plots, and each household is a production unit. Tenants not only produce the agricultural products they need, but also produce most of the industrial products they need. The combination of scattered small-scale agriculture and cottage industry, especially male farming and female weaving, constitutes a basically self-sufficient family economy. With the development of productive forces and a series of adjustments in the above-mentioned feudal relations of production, the part of goods produced by tenant farmers gradually expanded, and the combination of self-sufficiency production and commodity production was formed to varying degrees. This is more conducive to the tenant farmers to achieve a balance between production and consumption, but also more conducive to the prosperity of the tenant farmers' family economy.
A complete tenant farmer must have relatively complete means of production and subsistence, such as cattle, farm tools, seeds, rations, houses and so on. At first, there were not many such tenants. Tenants in the Tang dynasty often relied on landlords to "borrow grain to rent land", and even fewer owned scalpers themselves. After the development of the Song and Ming Dynasties, in the Qing Dynasty, the number of tenants in the full sense increased significantly. The sharing system is related to the incompleteness of the means of production and living owned by tenants, and the fixed rent system is related to the completeness of the means of production and living owned by tenants. The change from sub-lease system to fixed rent system in Qing dynasty is a reflection of the large number of tenant farmers with complete significance.
Social Status The landlord class is the main exploiting class and ruling class under the landlord system economy. Among the landlord classes, those with high social status and political privileges were called mighty landlords in the Han and Wei Dynasties, aristocratic landlords in the Sui and Tang Dynasties, situational households in the Song Dynasty and gentry landlords in the Ming and Qing Dynasties. Their appearance is a reflection of the feudal hierarchy. By virtue of their power, they occupied or forcibly purchased land, concealed land property, paid less land tax, or passed the burden of land tax on to small and medium-sized landlords and yeomen by means of flying, cheating and hanging. They used the privilege of being free from corvee to shelter their relatives and tenants. Some farmers cling to them in order to avoid heavy money extortion by officials, resulting in the phenomenon of "hundreds of households with thousands of people * * *". They are more conservative, decadent and reactionary among the landlord class.
Landlord class The landlord class has a lower social status and no political privileges. These landlords are generally called subaltern landlords. Most of them are small and medium-sized landlords, but there are also large households. They are bullied by powerful landlords, but they also rely on their own financial resources to collude with the government, sing operas at will and oppress farmers. With the development of social productive forces, the minimum necessary amount of land required to obtain the status of landlord has decreased, and the number of common landlords has increased, and there has been a trend to measure the social status of landlords from economic power, that is, the amount of land occupied.
Class contradiction Landlords and peasants are two opposing classes under the landlord system economy. China's centralized feudal monarchy system was the ruling tool of the landlord class. It oppresses farmers politically and exploits them economically through taxes and corvee. On the other hand, in order to safeguard the fundamental interests of the landlord class, it is also beneficial to farmers objectively to adopt policies and measures such as reclamation, water conservancy construction, storage and reduction. When the class contradiction between local landlords and peasants is sharp, especially due to the excessive expropriation of feudal regime, large-scale peasant uprisings often break out. Peasant uprisings in the history of China are famous for their large scale and many times. Every important peasant uprising has hit the landlord class to varying degrees, promoted the adjustment of feudal production relations, and is conducive to the recovery and development of social economy.
China is a country with a vast territory and a large population. For more than two thousand years, the landlord economy, which first developed in the north, gradually spread to the southeast, then to the southwest and finally to the northeast, which promoted the development of these areas and promoted the social, economic and cultural development here. After a long and full development, the landlord economy in China has a strong economic foundation and superstructure, and a splendid feudal culture. Its internal economic structure, such as the exploitation tradition of the trinity of landlords, businessmen and usurers, and the natural economy closely combined with small farmers and cottage industries, are extremely stable. Its patriarchal clan system, centralized bureaucracy and complete feudal ideology are also world-famous. This fully developed economic base and superstructure have great adaptability to the development of social productive forces and great room for manoeuvre in regulating social contradictions, thus prolonging the life of the landlord economy and leading to the long-term continuation of China's feudal society.