REDISTRIBUTING WEALTH 32I
nationalization of land the people would be granted the leeway to make private
exchanges of different types of land or enter into private agreements to swap
labor for land as long as it was confined to the village. "Among relatives and
neighbors naturally there could be mutual adjustment in accordance with the
cireumstances."25 Even though some would end up with all dry land and others
with all paddy land. the situation would still be equitable and certainly prefer-
able to present circumstances where large numbers of peasants had no land at
all. In any casc, the northern part of the country consisted mostly of dry fields
while the southern part was mostly paddy land. Nationalization would not change
this situation and the peasants could work out minor prohlems through mutual
agreement. 26
Obviously Yu was willing to tolerate the private exchange of land within the
context of a public ownership system because the aholition of private property
would sanitize the private transaction, converting it from a mechanism for the
satisfaction of greed and desire into a simple means for the cooperative exchange
of goods and services. Once society was rid of the profit motive, social soli-
darity would operate to ensure harmonious relations in the village community.
Yu, of course, felt constrained to demonstrate that his system of distrihution
would guarantee equality of income to the peasant cultivator and his family. He
had to show not only that each family would get the same sized plot but also
that there was sufficient land in the country to guarantee a grant to everyone,
and he went to great lengths to present the mathematical evidence for this. In
addition, in his dchatc with his adversary he responded directly to the charge
that the kongjon system would result in unequal distribution in places with high
population density or a high man/land ratio, a popular argument against the fea-
sibility of restoring the well fields by the more practical reformers of Chinese
history (see chap. 5).
He began his defense with a patently nonempirical statement of blind faith.
In the creative and transforming power of naturc I eh onji choilw(l I there is
no such principle [i.e .. where nature would allow Cor disparities of a local
or regional nature between people and landl. The relationship between living
beings and land is similar to the relationship between fish and water [lit.. the
way man is born on the land is like the way fish are born in the water]. I have
never heard of a case where there were too many fish and not enough waler to
sustain them.^27He made this statement only by way of introduction, however, for his main point
was that minor inequalities or discrepancies that might result from an imperfect
system of public ownership and distribution were as nothing compared to the
major inequalities that plagued the system of private property.
Should we be unconcerned about the faet thal at present one mall may monopo-
lize control over large areas of land lkyiimhyo/l!5] while the mass of the people