The Yunmeng documents reveal a similar preoccupation with agriculture and the control of resources:
"Whenever the rain is beneficial and affects the grain in ear, a report in writing is to be made concerning the crop that has been benefited and the grain in ear, as well as the number of qing [15.13 acre units] of cultivated fields and areas without crops ... Likewise in cases of drought and violent wind or rain, floods, or hordes of grasshoppers or other creatures which damage the crops, the number of qing concerned is always to be reported in writing. Nearby prefectures have light-footed [runners] deliver the letter, distant prefectures have the courier service deliver it." [H21/A1/W7.1a] The government granaries supplying the army and state laborers were closely policed (see The Unification of Words: "Regulated Stockpiling" below).
The state had at its disposal two categories of laborers: corvée laborers and hard-labor convicts. In the following dynasty, the Han (206 B.C.-220 A.D.), all men except the higher levels of the (by then reconstituted) aristocracy had to perform two years of military service and one month of corvée duties per year. In the Qin, men were enrolled on the registers at age 15 and left them at 60. Soldiers of the triumphant armies of Qin presumably served long periods in the army: battles were fought almost continuously from 256 to 210 B.C. The length of time served by convicts has been much debated. Hulsewe maintains that it was under six years but other authorities disagree. In any case, there must have been immense armies of prisoners of war working away their lives on the gigantic Qin hydraulic and wall-building projects. Personal files appear to have been kept on laborers, noting which tools were lent to them, whether they were delinquent at their duties, and even whether or not the sections of pounded-earth wall they had worked on had collapsed within a year of their work on it.
Effective measures were taken to ensure that all surplus-value was channeled into war, directly in the form of food and soldiers for the army, and indirectly in the form of labor for fortifications and for public works promoting intensive agriculture.
2. MILITARIZATION OF SOCIETY. All of society was reorganized according to
a military model, transforming the Qin state into an immense war machine.
The impetus for the application of the military model to society at large
appears to have been the prolonged contact between the Qin state and the
'barbarians,' as groups outside the mainstream of Chinese culture were
called. (See From the Steppes to the Sea: "Nomadic Carriers" below.)
a) CELL STRUCTURE. The military practice of organizing troops into five-man squads was applied to the entire population through household registration. Every five-family group had to provide five men for the military draft and corvée labor. Officials were punished for attempting to draft more than one member of a family at the same time, but they were also punished if they failed to register young men who had come of age, or failed to muster the conscripts, or attempted to conceal those who should be conscripted by making them "retainers."
b) MILITARIZATION OF RANK. Rank in civil administration was pinned to military exploits rather than aristocratic title. Specifically, it hinged on chopping off enemy heads. Anyone who took one head was promoted one rank, up to the fourth rank. Then one could be promoted only if one became the leader of a military squadron, and then only if one's squadron took 33 heads [Tu 1985]. Officers were awarded special prerogatives, but were still kept in five-man mutual surveillance units.
The specifics of the assignment of ranks, tax exemptions, and lands and estates in reward for heads taken in battle are given in Chapter 19 of The Book of Lord Shang, "Within the Borders." The Han Feizi [17:43.15] summarizes the situation: "The law of the Lord of Shang said: 'Those who take one head receive one degree in rank, and those who desire an office (instead), receive an office of 50 piculs of grain; those who take two heads, receive two degrees in rank'." [D 296, n.5].
"If the centurions and corporals take over 33 heads, this is accounted ample. ... (D297/KH 19:147)."
"If in attacking a city or beseiging a town, (each general) can capture 8000 heads or more, it is accounted ample; if in a battle in the open field, 2,000 heads are accounted ample. ..." [D297/KH 19:149].
c) HIERARCHIZATION. The entire social structure was integrated into a twenty-tiered hierarchy of ranks.[12] This represented a significant extension of hierarchy by comparison to the earlier feudal social organization, in which the graduated ranks of the aristocrats set them off as a group from the undifferentiated 'masses'. There was a corresponding development of specialized units within the military. Ranks in the military were marked by badges and flags, and in civil society by sumptuary regulations governing clothing, official lodging, and per diems.
d) PASS SYSTEM. The movement of the entire population was restricted and organized along military lines, requiring tallies and passports to move between cities and in some cases even from one part of a city to another [Yates 1980].
3. UNIFYING ABSTRACTION AND THE CAPTURE OF LAND. The entire empire was divided into administrative units modeled on the military commanderies, or garrison colonies, that had been established in frontier regions captured from the 'barbarians.' This involved the imposition of a unified system of administration over what had been widely diversified feudal holdings and particularistic communities.
The crucial step in this process was Shang Yang's "destruction of the well-field system [the legendary feudal tenant farming system], and the opening up of the pathways and roads between the fields." This removed the land from the control of the feudal fiefdoms and local clans. It took the capture of land to a new level: land is now viewed abstractly as consisting of quantifiable units by a state which minutely surveys its products, efficiently taxes it, and redistributes it for its own ends.[13] This 'statistical' method of governing was one of the major innovations championed by the Legalists, and entailed the first population censuses conducted in China.[14] Shang Yang's land reforms appear to have opened the way for some form of private land-ownership and the buying and selling of land. However, the state maintained ultimate ownership and the peasant's rights of possession was closer to usufruct. The break-up of lineal territorialities had the effect of 'nuclearizing' the family. Nothing would stand between the now standardized basic productive unit of society and the central administration. The landed holdings of the feudal lords and the particularistic self-contained village communities were gathered up and transformed into building blocks for the new edifice of empire.
After the First Emperor's death, usurpers bypassed his eldest son and installed a younger sibling as Second Emperor. They ordered the eldest son and General Meng Tian to commit suicide, cynically charging them with disloyalty toward the imperial house. Meng Tian refuted the charges, but implied that his innocence concealed a guilt of a different nature: "Indeed I have a crime to die for. Beginning at Lintao and extending to Liaodong, I have made ramparts and ditches over more than ten thousand li [one-third mile], and in that distance it is impossible that I have not cut through the veins of the earth" [SJ 88:2570]. The veins of the earth refer to Chinese geomantic principles, but also recall the close relationship between 'primitive' communities and the territories to which those communities had religious as well as lineal ties (see Divinity: "Divinity as the Fulfillment of Patriarchy" below). These territories are cut loose from their traditional dividing lines, gathered up by the State, and recodified; this process may be called "overcoding." Meng Tian's evocation of a crime against geomantic lines in relation to a controversy surrounding the imperial line indirectly expresses the transposition from earth-based territoriality to a reterritorialization on the imperial household as abstract unifying principle of a now centralized and hierarchical State. The First Emperor was of course guilty of similar crimes. One of the imperial progresses he undertook to mark the boundaries of his newly conquered realm was impeded by local goddesses. In retribution, he ordered 3,000 convicts to chop down all the trees covering the goddesses' sacred mountain and to paint the mountain red, a color associated with condemned criminals. [SJ 6:248/MH 2:154-156] This is a graphic example of imperial overcoding: the Emperor sweeps down to impose his judgment, literally leaving his mark as he transforms the earth, usurping the powers associated with a local sacred site as part of a unifying circuit arouond the realm.[15]
4. THE LAW ENTERS THE PEOPLE: THE SPYING-MACHINE. To ensure that the
people pursued the single and correct path, and to excise or block the
development of any mediating lice, the state of Qin instituted a system of
mutual responsibility. No segment of society was exempt. In the army,
rank-and-file and officers alike were organized into five-man units. In
civil society, peasant families, merchants, and bureaucrats were all
broken down into fives. If one member of a cell was found guilty of a
crime, the other four received the same punishment. Several passages in
the Yunmeng legal documents suggest that the spying system was a social
innovation that required repeated clarification, in particular the concept
of mutual responsibility. Notice the self-referential and reflective
nature of the text of the law:
"What is the meaning of 'the four neighbors'? The 'four neighbors' means the group of five" [H146/D82/W8.30b].
"[The Statutes say that in the case of] robbery and all other crimes 'those who dwell together' are liable to be tried. What is the meaning of 'those who dwell together'? The household is meant by 'those who dwell together.' Servants are tried for crimes [committed by the members of a household] but the [members of the household] are not tried in those crimes committed by the servants: that is the meaning." [H126/D19/W8.28a]
The abstraction of the land and the population and their recodification by a centralized State apparatus made it possible for the emperor's will to reach into the people in the form of a self-policing body of law.
5. TAXATION AND STATE MONEY MONOPOLY. At the same time as the State
abstracts the land and asserts ultimate ownership over it, a system of
taxation is created to abstract the flow of wealth.
"The delivery of hay and straw per qing is made according to the number of fields bestowed. Irrespective of whether the fields are cultivated or uncultivated, per qing three bushels of hay are delivered and two bushels of straw. ... When delivering hay and straw, conversion of the one into the other is permitted." [H23/A3/W7.1b] The reference to government bestowal of land is evidence against outright private ownership [Hulsewe 1985:215-18].
The next step in the abstraction of wealth was also taken: the introduction of a general conversion standard. In other words, money. Several passages in the Yunmeng materials refer to the payment of fines, fees, or taxes in cash. Currency consisted of round bronze coins and pieces of cloth measuring 8 feet by 2 1/2 feet (equivalent in value to 11 coins). An allusion to the apprehension of counterfeiters reveals that the Qin state kept a monopoly on money. In a particularly heavy-handed measure, the First Emperor intentionally made the coins weighty and cumbersome in an effort to slow down the flow of capital unleashed by his own centralization policies.
6. SUMMARY. By recodifying and redistributing the territory, imposing
conscription and corvée, reorganizing society into mutual spy cells,
creating money, and instituting regularized taxation, the State was able
to capture both labor and land as part of a generalized militarization of
society. All resources followed an orderly flow inward--into centrally
administered food and weapon production, stockpiling, and
fortification--in order then to be discharged through the one and only
hole of the State. Not only was all of society subordinated to war, it was
explicitly reorganized on a military model. Lice fell on hard times, as
particularist desires for satisfaction and preservation were converted
into regimented collective predation carried out without concern for life
or limb of the 'masses.'
CONTINUE 
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