LATE CHaSON PROPOSALS 379hire slaves indicated that he was more interested in borrowing the rational meth-
ods of rich peasants in the early nineteenth century to maximize production than
in freeing the slaves or creating a system of perfect equality of income - a far
more progressive idea than the pattern illustrated in his earlier essay on land
(chOllon).
Kim argued that by raising production, improving methods, stressing spe-
cialization, and favoring the most productive peasants, Tasan hoped to trans-
form society by elevating the wealth, status, and prestige of the peasant class as
a whole. He even proposed that district magistrates conduct an investigation to
find peasants of the greatest ability in agriculture once evcry twenty years and
recommend them for office either in the central government or in the local dis-
trict. Kim concluded that in his later, more mature writing, Tasan must have
planned to revolutionize society by expanding the number of rich peasants and
educating the poor peasants in more rational methods of production, thus break-
ing the stranglehold on society by those fcw landlords and rich peasants who
had become successful in recent years.^64
Kim's argument is a curious one, as if the justification of slavery on rational,
capitalistic grounds is more deserving of praise than Yu's condemnation of her ed-
itary slavery as a violation of Confucian moral standards. On the other hand,
Kim was correct in showing how Tasan's standards of reform shifted in the last
part of his life in the early nineteenth century from exclusively moral criteria to
arguments based on greater productivity, efficiency, and utility.
A few years ago Pak Chonggun praised Tasan for his concern for a more equi-
table distribution of wealth and his confidence in the "masses," but he criticized
him for his inability to perceive the necessity to mobilize the revolutionary power
of the masses to carry out a social revolution, let alone the creation of a new
economic order based on capitalism or industrial production. Although Pak
charged that Tasan's revolutionary method was "backward" because he aimed
for gradual progressivism based on the king's authority rather than the power
of mass action, it is anachronistic to expect that any of the Choson dynasty state-
craft reformers could have had any notion that the uneducated peasant masses
possessed the potential for a revolutionary transformation of society. The Con-
fucian reformers did, however, have a strong sense of economic equity and a
powerful distaste for the maldistribution of wealth in Choson society.
The evolution of Tasan's proposals on land reform does illustrate a shift from
an ancient model of national ownership and equal distribution similar to Yu's
plan, to an acceptance of private property with greater efficiency and produc-
tivity. The development of this mode of thought can not be attributed to the log-
ical fruition ofYu's ideas, but to Tasan's obscrvation of prevailing practices in
farm management in the early nineteenth century, stimulated no doubt by King
Chongjo's abject failure to seize the initiative for a land reform program in the
I790s.