Friendly Feudalism: The Tibet Myth 1-2

Religions have had a close relationship not only with violence but with economic exploitation. Indeed, it is often the economic exploitation that necessitates the violence. Such was the case with the Tibetan theocracy. Until 1959, when the Dalai Lama last presided over Tibet, most of the arable land was still organized into manorial estates worked by serfs. These estates were owned by two social groups: the rich secular landlords and the rich theocratic lamas. Even a writer sympathetic to the old order allows that “a great deal of real estate belonged to the monasteries, and most of them amassed great riches.” Much of the wealth was accumulated “through active participation in trade, commerce, and money lending.” 10

Drepung monastery was one of the biggest landowners in the world, with its 185 manors, 25,000 serfs, 300 great pastures, and 16,000 herdsmen. The wealth of the monasteries rested in the hands of small numbers of high-ranking lamas. Most ordinary monks lived modestly and had no direct access to great wealth. The Dalai Lama himself “lived richly in the 1000-room, 14-story Potala Palace.” 11

Secular leaders also did well. A notable example was the commander-in-chief of the Tibetan army, a member of the Dalai Lama’s lay Cabinet, who owned 4,000 square kilometers of land and 3,500 serfs. 12 Old Tibet has been misrepresented by some Western admirers as “a nation that required no police force because its people voluntarily observed the laws of karma.” 13 In fact. it had a professional army, albeit a small one, that served mainly as a gendarmerie for the landlords to keep order, protect their property, and hunt down runaway serfs.

Young Tibetan boys were regularly taken from their peasant families and brought into the monasteries to be trained as monks. Once there, they were bonded for life. Tashì-Tsering, a monk, reports that it was common for peasant children to be sexually mistreated in the monasteries. He himself was a victim of repeated rape, beginning at age nine. 14 The monastic estates also conscripted children for lifelong servitude as domestics, dance performers, and soldiers.

In old Tibet there were small numbers of farmers who subsisted as a kind of free peasantry, and perhaps an additional 10,000 people who composed the “middle-class” families of merchants, shopkeepers, and small traders. Thousands of others were beggars. There also were slaves, usually domestic servants, who owned nothing. Their offspring were born into slavery. 15 The majority of the rural population were serfs. Treated little better than slaves, the serfs went without schooling or medical care, They were under a lifetime bond to work the lord\'s land--or the monastery’s land--without pay, to repair the lord\'s houses, transport his crops, and collect his firewood. They were also expected to provide carrying animals and transportation on demand.16 Their masters told them what crops to grow and what animals to raise. They could not get married without the consent of their lord or lama. And they might easily be separated from their families should their owners lease them out to work in a distant location. 17

As in a free labor system and unlike slavery, the overlords had no responsibility for the serf’s maintenance and no direct interest in his or her survival as an expensive piece of property. The serfs had to support themselves. Yet as in a slave system, they were bound to their masters, guaranteeing a fixed and permanent workforce that could neither organize nor strike nor freely depart as might laborers in a market context. The overlords had the best of both worlds.

One 22-year old woman, herself a runaway serf, reports: “Pretty serf girls were usually taken by the owner as house servants and used as he wished”; they “were just slaves without rights.”18 Serfs needed permission to go anywhere. Landowners had legal authority to capture those who tried to flee. One 24-year old runaway welcomed the Chinese intervention as a “liberation.” He testified that under serfdom he was subjected to incessant toil, hunger, and cold. After his third failed escape, he was merciless beaten by the landlord’s men until blood poured from his nose and mouth. They then poured alcohol and caustic soda on his wounds to increase the pain, he claimed.19

The serfs were taxed upon getting married, taxed for the birth of each child and for every death in the family. They were taxed for planting a tree in their yard and for keeping animals. They were taxed for religious festivals and for public dancing and drumming, for being sent to prison and upon being released. Those who could not find work were taxed for being unemployed, and if they traveled to another village in search of work, they paid a passage tax. When people could not pay, the monasteries lent them money at 20 to 50 percent interest. Some debts were handed down from father to son to grandson. Debtors who could not meet their obligations risked being cast into slavery.20

The theocracy’s religious teachings buttressed its class order. The poor and afflicted were taught that they had brought their troubles upon themselves because of their wicked ways in previous lives. Hence they had to accept the misery of their present existence as a karmic atonement and in anticipation that their lot would improve in their next lifetime. The rich and powerful treated their good fortune as a reward for, and tangible evidence of, virtue in past and present lives.

10. Pradyumna P. Karan, The Changing Face of Tibet: The Impact of Chinese Communist Ideology on the Landscape (Lexington, Kentucky: University Press of Kentucky, 1976), 64.
11. See Gary Wilson\'s report in Worker\'s World, 6 February 1997.
12. Gelder and Gelder, The Timely Rain, 62 and 174.
13. As skeptically noted by Lopez, Prisoners of Shangri-La, 9.
14. Melvyn Goldstein, William Siebenschuh, and Tashì-Tsering, The Struggle for Modern Tibet: The Autobiography of Tashì-Tsering (Armonk, N.Y.: M.E. Sharpe, 1997).
15. Gelder and Gelder, The Timely Rain, 110.
16. Melvyn C. Goldstein, A History of Modern Tibet 1913-1951 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989), 5 and passim.
17. Anna Louise Strong, Tibetan Interviews (Peking: New World Press, 1959), 15, 19-21, 24.
18. Quoted in Strong, Tibetan Interviews, 25.
19. Strong, Tibetan Interviews, 31.
20. Gelder and Gelder, The Timely Rain, 175-176; and Strong, Tibetan Interviews, 25-26.

慈悲的封建制－－西藏迷思（第一章之二）

宗教不但与暴力，也与经济剥削曾有着密切的关系。事实上，通常是经济剥削引发暴力冲突。西藏的神权政治就是这样一种情形。在1959年以前达赖喇嘛统治西藏时期，大部分的可耕地仍旧归各庄园所有，由农奴进行耕作。这些庄园为两个社会集团所有：富裕的俗家地主和富裕的喇嘛。即使是一位对旧秩序持同情态度的作者也认为“大量的地产属于寺院，大多数寺院都聚集了巨大财富。”许多财富是“积极参与贸易、商业和借贷活动”聚集的。[注10]

哲蚌寺就曾是世界上最大的土地所有者之一，它共拥有185个庄园，2.5万名农奴，300片大草场和1.6万名牧民。寺院的财富掌握在少数高品阶的喇嘛手中。大多数普通僧人生活朴素，并没有对这些巨大财富的直接使用权。达赖喇嘛本人则“在拥有1000个房间、高达14层的布达拉宫里养尊处优。”[注11]

俗家领袖过得也不差。一个明显的例子是藏军司令，也是达赖喇嘛世俗内阁的一名成员，他拥有4000平方公里的土地和3500名农奴。[注12] 旧西藏被一些西方的崇拜者描绘为“一个不需要任何警察势力的国家，因为其人民自愿遵守因果报应的规律。”[注13] 实际上，旧西藏有自己的军队。尽管规模不大，但主要被地主们当作宪兵用来维持秩序、保护他们的财产并追捕逃跑的农奴。

西藏男孩常常被从其农民家庭夺走，送入寺院接受训练成为僧人。一旦进入寺院，他们就终身为僧。僧人扎西次仁（Tashì-Tsering）曾报告农民的孩子在寺院里遭受性虐待是司空见惯的事。他本人从9岁就开始不断遭到强奸。[注14] 寺院还征召儿童终生作为家仆、舞蹈表演者和士兵。

在旧西藏有少数的农民是自由民，另外大约还有一万名左右的商人、店主和小业主构成的“中产阶级”。还有成千上万的乞丐。还有一些一无所有的奴隶，他们通常是家仆，他们的后代也生来就是奴隶。[注15] 农村人口的大部分都是农奴。尽管农奴在待遇上比奴隶稍好，他们也得不到学校教育或者医疗服务。他们一生都得在地主或者寺院的土地上无偿干活，或者维修其主人的房屋，或者运送粮食，采集柴火。如果需要，他们还得为主人提供运输和交通的畜力。[注16] 他们的主人告诉他们种什么庄稼、饲养什么牲畜。没有主人或者喇嘛的同意，他们不能结婚。如果主人将他们租借到遥远的外地劳动，就得同他们的家庭分离。[注17]

与奴隶制不同，如同在自由劳动力体系中，农奴主对于农奴的“保养”没有任何责任，对于这样一件昂贵的财产的生死也没有直接的兴趣。农奴必须自己养活自己。但是又同奴隶制一样，他们依附于自己的主人，这就保障其成为固定、终生的劳动力，既不会组织起来、也不会罢工或者自由离开，而在市场体制下的劳动力是可以这样做的。这些农奴主因而享有两种体制的好处。

一位22岁的逃亡女农奴报告说：“漂亮的农奴姑娘通常会被其主人带回家作为仆人，并对其为所欲为”；她们“不过是没有任何权利的奴隶。”[注18] 农奴去任何地方都需要得到允许。地主在法律上有权力抓回试图逃走的农奴。一位24岁的逃亡农奴将汉人的介入视为“解放”。他作证说在农奴制下，他被置于无尽的劳作、饥饿和寒冷中。在第三次逃亡失败后，他被农奴主的手下无情殴打直至口鼻喷出鲜血。他还宣称，然后他们又往他的伤口上泼酒精和腐蚀性的苏打水以增加痛苦。[注19]

农奴结婚、生子和死亡都得纳税。在自己的院子里种树或者养牲口也得纳税。参加宗教节日、集体舞蹈和鼓乐、入狱、释放等等都得纳税。找不到工作的人得缴纳失业税，去别的村子找活儿干得缴纳过路费。如果没有钱纳税，寺院就以20%至50%的利息借给他们。一些债务由父亲传给儿子又传给孙子。借债人如果无法履行义务还面临成为奴隶的危险。[注20]

神权的宗教教义巩固了这个阶级秩序。教义告诉穷人和受苦人，他们今生遭罪是因为前生的冤孽。因此，他们必须接受今生的苦难，因为这是孽报，只能期望来生命运更好。而富人和权贵则认为自己的富贵是前生和今世德行的回报和证明。

取自"http://pro.yeeyan.com/wiki/ForLordsAndLamas_2"

感谢雷声大雨点大的格式修订。感谢Evelen提供其它章节的链接。

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