THE SALT AND IRON DEBATES
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Thesis: Whether or not the monopolies on salt, iron, grains and other primary commodities vested in Emperor Chao should end so that the majority of the people will be encouraged to pursue farming and not secondary occupations such as craft trades.All quotes from Minister Sang Hung Yang and the Learned Men are from Huan Kuan's abridgement of the Debates on Salt and Iron.Though the salt and iron debates presented before the Emperor Chao in 81 B.C. took place more than 2000 years ago, the issues involved have contemporary resonance. Should all the wealth of a monarchy or imperial government be controlled by its king or emperor so that only the government benefits? Should food be the sole concern of the general population? Should ambitious and talented people in the lower classes be kept there or encour- aged to pursue other professions, becoming wealthy merchants themselves or even one of the learned elite?Minister Sang Hung Yang, who took the government's side in these debates, helped institute these monopolies for Emperor Wu (141 87 BC), who needed a mountain of money for imperial conquest, especially of the non-Chinese peoples of the northern steppe. Yang argued in a variety of ways for the continuation of the monopolies so that Emperor Chao would retain his predecessor's imperial control over the food supplies and thus over the distri- bution of those supplies, especially in time of war. "Equitable marketing" was a euphemism for the emperor alon
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nd poverty (16) . . . Thus in antiquity ministers of state never (exploited) their power to satisfy their own self-interest" (16).
This was one of the few times that the LM dropped their line of moralistic doubletalk to address the real issues at stake, namely Chao's patrimonial government and Yang's blatantly greedy conflict of interest in collusion with the merchants. However, patrimony vs. bureaucracy was less an issue with the LM than the people's need to eat every day and than keeping them from the temptations of money.
For most of their arguments, though, the LM stubbornly clung to antiquity and to what their revered "ancients" would have done, as though the ancients were never themselves ambitious young men, people are stuck in time, and the world never changes. When debating the need for a single standard of currency, they observed that "the ancients had marketplaces but no coinage. Everyone exchanged what they had for what they lacked" (12). But they also noted that in later times, "metallic money emerged as the media of exchange. Each time the currency system changed the people became more and more dishonest" (12). All the more reason, then, to have one consistent, governmental, currency.
Yang both countered this spec
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Some common words found in the essay are:
Huan Kuan's, Yang LM, Emperor Chao, Wu-chih Lo, Biographies Money-makers, Emperor Wu, LM Confucian, DEBATES Thesis, Hung Yang, Huan K'uan, salt iron, emperor chao, common people, yang lm, salt iron debates, arguments lm, natural resources, biographies money-makers, wealthy merchants, hung yang, sang hung yang, primary occupation,
Approximate Word count = 1687
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page)
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