aims. Actually, such laws had never before been customary; either Wang
Mang completely misinterpreted passages in an ancient text to suit his
purpose, or he had dicta that suited him smuggled into the text. There
can be no question that Wang Mang and his accomplices began by
deliberately falsifying and deceiving. However, as time went on, he
probably began to believe in his own frauds.

Wang Mang's great series of certain laws has brought him the name of
"the first Socialist on the throne of China". But closer consideration
reveals that these measures, ostensibly and especially aimed at the good
of the poor, were in reality devised simply in order to fill the
imperial exchequer and to consolidate the imperial power. When we read
of the turning over of great landed estates to the state, do we not
imagine that we are faced with a modern land reform? But this applied
only to the wealthiest of all the landowners, who were to be deprived in
this way of their power. The prohibition of private slave-owning had a
similar purpose, the state reserving to itself the right to keep slaves.
Moreover, landless peasants were to receive land to till, at the expense
of those who possessed too much. This admirable law, however, was not
intended seriously to be carried into effect. Instead, the setting up of
a system of state credits for peasants held out the promise, in spite of
rather reduced interest rates, of important revenue. The peasants had
never been in a position to pay back their private debts together with
the usurious interest, but there were at least opportunities of coming
to terms with a private usurer, whereas the state proved a merciless
creditor. It could dispossess the peasant, and either turn his property
into a state farm, convey it to another owner, or make the peasant a
state slave. Thus this measure worked against the interest of the
peasants, as did the state monopoly of the exploitation of mountains and
lakes. "Mountains and lakes" meant the uncultivated land around