Xinshun 1730

Chapter 1425 The game of death

What can be changed, and can be changed successfully.

What cannot be changed, and it is impossible to succeed if it is changed.

This is not a simple "man-made" solution.Of course, everything depends on human effort, who is a person?Whose country is it?What is the class attribute of the person doing the work?These must be considered.

And Dashun's own problems made it even more difficult to continue the reform, and there must be big troubles.

Give the simplest example.

Later generations satirized some people who worried that technological progress would lead to unemployment, and made up a joke.

It is said that Watt improved the steam engine, and the horses and coachmen who pulled the cart must all be dead, right?

Paula invented the flush toilet, so the housewives who get up to empty the toilet every morning must be dead, right?

Seinefeld invented lithography, so those who copied books for a living must have died out?

The original meaning of this joke is to say that with the advancement of technology, although some occupations will disappear, some new occupations will also appear, and human beings will not die because of technological advancement.

However, this joke, only know one, not the other.

Macroscopically, this is no problem.

But in fact, those who have been robbed of their jobs may not be able to integrate into new industries and new jobs.

There is a saying that goes well: An'an should not be starved to death, and You should be like a praying mantis.

In fact, it has almost the same meaning, even if it can be said that this is the rolling wheel of history.

However, these people will not sit there and wait to be crushed by the wheels of history according to your wishes.

The reason why people are human is that they make choices in order to survive.But for Dashun, this thought of inappropriately starving An An was deeply rooted.

Take the reformed central Shandong as an example.

Because of the construction of the railway, some land has been integrated into capitalist land management, which is completely profitable.

For example, grow tobacco, grow peanuts, and grow cotton in Luxi and Lubei areas.

With the completion of the railway, along the railway, the benefits of planting cash crops have been far greater than growing food.

In Dashun three or fifty years ago, "urban landlords" had appeared in batches.

These landlords lived in the city, and their land was leased to tenants, who sent the rent to the city.Landlords, on the other hand, don't care about management or land improvement, they just collect rent.

Very early on, when Dashun collected taxes, it was already uncharacteristically, no longer "first the city and then the countryside", but "first the countryside and then the city".The reason is that the local officials in various places took the initiative to adjust and create a time gap. After all, the tenants in the countryside paid the rent first, and the landlords in the city had money and food to collect taxes. city.

Generally speaking, the ground rent in kind is basically fifty-five cents, forty-six cents.

If the transportation is inconvenient, if Dashun does not open up overseas markets, if Dashun does not win the World War I.

Well, in fact, capital will not choose to operate the land, because what kind of stuff can you grow to achieve a profit of [-], [-] or [-] cents?
With such a high income, the agricultural technology has reached its limit at this time, and the yield per mu is already the highest in the world, so why do we need to manage the land?

After buying the land, the highest rate of return on investment can only be obtained by sitting on the land and collecting rent.

With the development of transportation, the development of overseas markets, and some policy inclinations, the cultivation of cash crops in areas close to the railway, especially the cash crops that have been integrated into the world market in exchange for silver, is already higher than sitting on the ground to collect food in kind. .

Tenants are incapable of growing cash crops.

Take flue-cured tobacco as an example.

The need for bean cakes, coal, a kiln for flue-cured tobacco, and capital turnover... These are not what the tenants can afford.

I said before that because of the cultivation of cash crops, a large number of farmers went bankrupt, were merged, committed suicide, and were swallowed up by usury, etc. This refers to farmers who still have some land, not farmers who rely entirely on renting.

So, now that cash crops are profitable and capital is willing to pay higher rents than grain tenants, are those landowners living in cities willing to lease their land to capitalists and let them manage it?

It is impossible to sell land.

In Dashun, selling land was regarded as the act of a prodigal. As long as people could live on, they could only rent it, not sell it.Therefore, even if capital wants to operate the land, it has to rent it.

The development of transportation, overseas trade, etc., enable capital to pay higher rents even at the previous "four to six cents" ratio, and they are given silver instead of grain or copper coins.

So……

The landlord is willing to rent.

Capital wants to rent.

What about tenants?
From the perspective of capitalist development and land management, perhaps these tenants should be "crushed by the wheels of history."

The question is, what material are your wheels made of?
How can you be sure that you were crushed by the wheel of history, but these people crushed the wheel with steel and iron?

Therefore, even if we want to go that way, we must have an extremely powerful and centralized ruling group to be the so-called rolling wheel of history.

With a population of 600 million in the UK, 9 regular troops can be drawn out, more than 100 warships can be drawn out, 5 Hessian mercenaries can be drawn out, and 5 more gentry militias from various places can be drawn out.Moreover, the United Kingdom is surrounded by seas, there is no room for maneuvering, and there is still so close to the New World to relieve pressure, so the enclosure movement did not cause any major events, but there were also uprisings, and there were even earth-digging factions trying to gain ground in the military. Do a big wave.

And what is the population of Dashun?How many regular troops?How much room to move around?

There is a saying, don't do porcelain work without diamonds.It is impossible to lead this country into a new era without the ability to be the wheel of history and guarantee to crush those people.

The path Liu Yu took was to abandon the capitalist production model of agriculture, and rely on overseas markets and external expansion to complete industrialization.Instead of following the normal path in history, especially the path of countries such as Britain and France, first let agriculture appear in the capitalist-style operation and production.

But this way is actually divided into two steps: internal and external.

He has already taken that step outside.

For the internal step, it is necessary to equalize the land, restrict land sales, and ensure the basic survival of small farmers.

Primitive accumulation relies on foreign expansion and plunder, gold and silver currencies rely on foreign trade and American gold mines, and the labor force depends on the landless people in the pioneering areas, which is enough to cope with the population of the first industrial revolution——Britain’s hegemony in the world in the first industrial revolution At that time, how many industrial populations did it have?

The first industrial revolution only needed millions of people to complete; the second industrial revolution needed tens of millions of people.

For the internal step, Liu Yu thought that relying on Dashun's spontaneous reform would be impossible to complete.

Dashun didn’t have this ability, and it had nothing to do with the emperor’s personal will, or even the will of some members of the bureaucracy—even under the rule of the Qing Dynasty, Qian Xiaosi faced the memorial of “limiting [-] mu of land” like Xiaosi, and he still had to say this. It is "in line with the righteous way"; and the scholar-bureaucrats inside the bureaucratic group, not to mention the radical retroists of the Yan and Li School, are ordinary people, and it is not without the idea of ​​​​limiting and equalizing the land.

There is will, no eggs.

Dashun's organizational ability, ruling foundation, etc., are all doomed to fail to accomplish this task.

Dashun is a typical feudal dynasty after the Tang and Song Dynasties.

This kind of model is "rule but not rule".

Centralization in name, local autonomy in essence, the operation of the empire has a set of traditional procedures.

Dashun is not the United Kingdom that can control the sale of wool along the coast and cut off hands, can distribute taxation to every village, can manage textile technology that has not flowed out for 60 years, and can levy taxes according to the number of windows.

It's not far off.

Even Dashun couldn't even control the trade restrictions on Japan.Before Liu Yu got involved in the trade with Japan, Japan could even "buy" martial arts masters skilled in bow and horse to teach the art of war and riding and archery, which is also the case in history.

By giving a few typical types of landlords in Dashun, we can understand how Dashun’s grassroots operation works.

For example, Xuetian landlord.

Dashun only collected around 2000 million taels of silver in the previous year. Excluding military support, disaster relief, and national defense needs, there was basically not much left.

What about local education?
Xuetian landlord.

Either donated or officially allocated, in short, these lands are school fields.

How to solve the education expenses?

Relying on school fields to collect rent.

Every year, the school land is rented by the tenants as education funds.

The imperial treasury?How can the imperial treasury have money?

Another example is clan landlords.

What about maintaining local stability?
It depends on the clan.

A special law has been introduced: descendants who privately sell 70 mu of clan land property will be punished as a crime of selling ancestral graves, and they will be sent to the border for three thousand miles; descendants who have privately sold ancestral halls will be charged [-] sticks per rod, and every three crimes will be increased by one class, and the crime will be full. One hundred rods, three years of deeds.

Another example is the landlord of the charity hall.

Places like the Salesian Church are not mentioned here.

Just say one, for example, ferry, free ferry.

In some places, with the current level of engineering, it is impossible or impossible to build bridges.

Then someone needs a special ferry to maintain the convenience of transportation.

As far as business is concerned, it is no problem to spend some money to cross the river.

But as far as the rule is concerned, some basic living conveniences are still needed, and it must be almost free passage.

You said that even if you find a deaf or disabled person to do this stuff, you have to feed the disabled person.

What should I do if I have no money?
Either allocate or donate to build a righteous farm.

Relying on the rent of Yitian, the expenditure of Yidu is maintained.Tenants must pay rent.

... above, and so on.

What do these examples illustrate?
The normal commoner landlords, gentry landlords, and merchant landlords are not mentioned here.

Only talk about Xuetian landlords, charity hall landlords, clan landlords...

These examples show that Dashun's grassroots operation, basic social welfare, school education, stability maintenance system, etc. are all maintained by the tenancy system of "landlords and tenants".

A country, even if you don't look at those commoner landlords, merchant landlords, and gentry landlords.

Just looking at the welfare, convenience, and grassroots operations in these places, they are completely maintained by the tenancy system.

Then, what is the basis of Dashun's social operation, you can know the autumn.

It stands to reason that a lot of investment in this should be the model of government collecting taxes and then spending.But obviously, Dashun is not, nor is it capable of collecting taxes and expenditures to maintain the operation of the grassroots, but can only rely on the tenancy system to maintain it.

In other words, if Dashun continues to reform, the reform will go deep into the interior and the entire empire.

Well, this kind of reform is not as simple as building a railway, shipping by sea, or building a steel factory.

Instead, it is necessary to reshape the operating logic of the grassroots, rewrite the economic foundation of the grassroots, rewrite the tax and expenditure system, reorganize the relationship between the central and local governments, and completely abolish the tenancy system at the grassroots level...

If we say that the difficulty of building a steel factory or building a Grand Canal is 10.

Then, the difficulty of the latter may be 10.

Obviously, this cannot be accomplished through reform.

And Liu Yu, through these years of reforms, created a false impression: You see, these reforms are also unprecedented, but aren't they also successful?
Under this illusion, it is inevitable that there will be follow-up people who want to follow suit and continue to reform.

Of course, in theory, just looking at the data, it seems that the tenancy system can be completed without moving the big killer of land equalization.

Just looking at the data, in theory, Australia and North America still have at least 60 billion mu of arable land.

Later generations do not count the three prairie provinces of Canada, but only look at the United States, there are 56 billion mu of arable land.

At this time, the cultivation activities of Europeans in North America were still limited to the east of the Appalachian Mountains. It is not an exaggeration to say that there is still an area of ​​60 billion acres of arable land in theory.

Theoretically, just counting the data, Dashun's current population, with an average of [-] mu of land per household, must be enough.

However, the gap between theory and reality is too great.

The premature private ownership of land made the people in Dashun, at least on the land, think of bourgeois legal rights.

Under the aristocratic system in Europe, serfs had to bear feudal obligations, but serfs also had the right to perpetually cultivate their own fields, and the right to herd sheep on roadsides, hillsides, and common land.

The land enclosure movement in Britain took back this inherent right, and determined the complete and exclusive ownership of land according to the bourgeois land system.

Of course, this traditional right was withdrawn and not compensated.

In Dashun, under the private ownership land system, the land is exclusively owned.I can lease my land to whoever I want. The tenant has no right to lease it forever, nor does he have the right to let me, the landlord, only lease the land to him.

Then, in terms of Dashun, is it a tenant’s right to live by renting and cultivating the landlord’s land?
Legally, maybe not.

But if it counts, if the operating agricultural capitalists occupy the land originally rented by the tenants, in theory, should they pay money as compensation for the tenants’ inability to rent?

If you think so, there is no solution in theory.

For example, tax increases.

Isn't your capital renting this piece of land?Didn't it make the tenants unable to make a living?Then you pay more taxes, and the imperial court asks you to collect more taxes, and use this tax to resettle these tenants and let them migrate to Fusang and the Southern Ocean to cultivate.

This is a solution to the joke of "Bula invented the flush toilet, and all the women who poured the toilet were extinct"—Originally, ten people worked on this land, but now six people work, so these six people should come out. Money, to solve the basic survival problems of the remaining four people.

Of course, this is just a solution.

However, this solution is not applicable in Dashun.

Take North China as an example.

Whether it is going to North America or Australia, it takes six to seven months to travel across the ocean in terms of the current level of transportation and the load capacity of ships.

The migration cost of each immigrant is at least 100 taels of silver, not much more.

In North China, there has been a serious conflict between man and land, and the per capita land area can basically be considered to have dropped to 3 to 4 mu—at least, this should be the case in Shandong, otherwise it would not have happened in the late Qing Dynasty. A part-time worker can only buy 1 taels of sorghum rice for a day's work, and there are countless people rushing to do it.

And per capita 3 acres of arable land.

What kind of stuff can be used to pay 100 taels of silver on the basis of the original "four or six rents", and it is guaranteed to be profitable?

In theory, Dashun can pay in advance.

Then, in two or 30 years, the money will be taxed back.

The question is, can Dashun's treasury afford this money?
No money, how to pay in advance?

No money, nothing to play.

So, in fact, in the paragraph "Bula invented the flush toilet, all the women who poured the toilet were extinct", originally ten people worked on this land, but now six people work on it, so these six people should pay for it. The idea of ​​reforming the basic survival of the remaining four people is also totally unworkable in Dashun.

It doesn't matter if you learn from Britain, or go to work in the city, or find a way to cross the Atlantic Ocean, it still won't work in Dashun.Because tenants don't want to sit back and be crushed by the so-called wheel of history.

This doesn’t work, that doesn’t work either. In fact, the path that can be taken is the method Liu Yu said: the coastal areas rely on foreign plunder, overseas markets, American gold and silver, and surplus population, and industrialization first; the inland areas, Use strong means to equalize the land, prohibit buying and selling, prevent the capitalist system from invading the inland and rural areas, and ensure the basic survival of every common people.

For the pre-developed regions, it is for fear that capitalism will not develop enough.

As for the inland areas, it is to be afraid that capitalism will continue to sprout.

However, this is tantamount to bringing the problem back: equalization of land, prohibition of trading, guarantee of survival, reduction of taxes, reduction of labor... Is this what Dashun can accomplish by itself through reforms?

Now, the situation facing Dashun is different from that of the dynasties in history.

The difference is that if the historical feudal dynasties wanted to reform like this, it would be impossible at all.

Literacy is the basis for promotion to the ruling class.

As for literacy, and admission to school as a prerequisite for juren and Jinshi, it can basically be determined that the family must live on the rental system.

During the Qing Dynasty, someone came forward and said that there was a limit of [-] mu of land.To be a junior is at most that is to say, what you said is very reasonable, and it is also in line with the righteous way, and it is more in line with the political correctness of Confucianism, but this matter is not easy to handle.

In short, "cadres" are needed to do things.

And "cadres", before, were basically bound to the tenancy system.

It is obviously impossible for a group of people who were born in the tenancy system to oppose the tenancy system and achieve the goal of equalizing the land.

But Dashun is different.

In Dashun, there is a group of people who neither rely on the tenancy system as their economic foundation nor have a background in orthodox Confucianism. They are literate, have professional skills and basic governance skills.

This group of people made it possible for Dashun to launch reforms.

And this kind of reform is the basis of what Liu Yu said, "Dashun exploded".

(End of this chapter)