350 LAND REFORMAlthough he found contemporary discrimination against nothoi excessive and
sought to remove some of the restrictions on them, he could not state a satis-
factory general principle justifying equal treatment once he had conceded the
propriety of discrimination. The choice, therefore, was not between equality and
discrimination, but the proper degree and type of discrimination for which there
were no clear guidelines.CONCLUSION
It is quite clear that Yu was adamantly opposed to the private ownership of land
but not necessarily private property in general, especially because he was will-
ing to countenance the continuation of slavery for at least fifty to a hundred
years. He was also reluctant to advocate the use of force to confiscate land from
the landlords and proposed a number of scenarios by which the landlords might
be willing to permit the division oftheir property by their heirs. But when forced
to confront the prospects of indefinite postponement of his plan for the redis-
tribution of land, he had to admit that he was willing to authorize the use of
force against thcm. How then does one explain the apparent contradiction
between his rcadiness to compromise with slavery and other modes of dis-
crimination and special privilege, and his unyielding opposition to the private
ownership of land?
In the first place, it should be obvious that he was a social engineer and a social
planner who felt strongly that private landownership would be an insurmount-
able obstacle to the achievement of a perfect society. The existence of private
ownership presupposed a society of individual choice, where people would be
free to move from one place to another, or to exchange land for money or goods.
Constant movement in an open society made it too difficult for government
authorities to keep accurate records of land and population to ensure fair and
equitable assessment of taxes and military service. The open society presup-
posed flux and change, which was uncontrollable. Land, however, was tangible
and provided the opportunity for fixity and stability in a world of change, but it
could not perform that function if private individuals controlled it for their own
purposes. In other words, the planned, controlled, and regular distribution of
land was the means by which the state could create an ideal society.
In the second place, private property was morally corrupting because it stim-
ulated man's propensity for avarice and self-interest. No matter how equitable
a system of distribution or taxation, if private property were tolerated, it would
drive men to neglect, avoid, or totally transform any ideal system of distribu-
tion so that the division between the rich and the poor would be recreated just
as it had in both the late Tang and late Koryo periods. Private property was asso-
ciated with private desire and the dark side of man's nature, whereas a system
ofpublic ownership ofland was in full conjunction with the spirit of a true moral
order. Thus for a combination of utilitarian and moral reasons, private owner-
ship of land had to be abolished.