Xinshun 1730

Chapter 1429 Wang Xieyan, the common people's home
"Treat the symptoms? Cure the root cause?"

The old emperor had heard these two words countless times over the years.

However, from Liu Yu's mouth at this time, the emperor still sounds very novel.

After repeating it in a murmur, the emperor smiled silently, turned his back to Liu Yu, and said indifferently: "The Master said, the journey of the Dao will lead to great order in the world. If you don't know the Dao, how can you cure the root cause?"

"I don't want to cure the root cause."

"I've read some of your articles, and to sum it up, there is only one sentence: This world is about material things."

"Guanzi said: The storehouse knows the etiquette."

"Besides that, no matter the way, the virtues, or even the Three Emperors and Five Emperors, the rule of the Three Dynasties, or even the resurrection of civil and military affairs, can it solve the situation you mentioned in Shandong where the per capita land is three mu and the yield per mu is less than a hundred catties?"

"If it can be solved, it can be ruled."

"If it can't be solved, it's going to repeat three generations, self-denial and return to etiquette. Does it mean that you don't need to eat if you only rely on etiquette?"

"Emperor Taizong once said that there are thousands of words, but one sentence: If the common people don't have enough to eat, they will rebel."

"Whether the land is equal or the land is limited, the solution is not to solve the problem of more than one hundred catties per mu and three mu of land per capita. It is to solve the problem that some people are connected and some people have no land to stand on."

"But this matter will not solve the problem of more than one hundred catties per mu and three to five mu per capita."

Hearing this, Liu Yu thought that what he did to fool the emperor when he built the railway was a variant of the thinking of the Westernization Movement.Political conservatives are not necessarily technological innovators.

What the emperor said today is actually not true.

Indeed, no matter whether the land is equal or restricted, land cannot be changed.

However, in order to solve the problem of yield per mu, industrialization is needed; and the huge impact of industrialization must make the small farmers feel miserable first; and the small farmers who are dying of pain, of course, are not willing to be safely and safely by the wheel of history as those progressives say. crushed.

Therefore, the problem of equalizing and limiting land is the only way for Dashun's transformation.

The reason why it is said that this is the only way is because of the special circumstances of Dashun.

Again, the first industrial revolution required millions of people.As for Dashun, there is no shortage of people.

The first industrial revolution required a market.And Dashun now has a vast market from the east of the Cape of Good Hope to the other side of the Pacific Ocean.

Does Dashun have the kind of situation that "the textile machine is the capital under certain 'conditions'" as Lao Ma said?

Have.

Dashun's capitalist development must start from agriculture?
You can either say yes or you can say no.

Agriculture is the foundation of industrial development, and Dashun's agriculture, at this time, is the pinnacle of agricultural productivity per mu in the world.Of course, it is not per capita, but per mu, but for the time being, Dashun does not need to consider the per capita agricultural productivity so as to free up enough people to invest in industry.

The prerequisite for the development of capitalism is the separation of labor and means of production.At this time, in the pre-industrial era, it refers to "agriculture" and "land", which separates labor from land.

Dashun has fulfilled this premise a long time ago.

The reason why it is difficult for European farmers to separate from land is that a series of issues such as private ownership, sales, property rights, and exclusive ownership of land are very unclear due to the strong feudal system.

One of the problems to be solved in the British enclosure movement was who owns the village communal land.

In Dashun, however, this problem does not exist at all: What is the village communal land?In other words, what is "commons"?
In the pre-industrial era, the late handicraft era, and the early stage of capitalism, to develop, nothing more than a few things are needed.

As far as Europe is concerned, Lao Ma said that in the handicraft industry, everyone's level is about the same, so a strong country is needed to obtain internal protection from colonies, markets, and tariffs.

That's not bad.

Even if it is Dashun's special tea, if there is no strong protection from the state, it will be stolen.

The national strength developed by Dashun in recent years has solved the problems of colonies and markets.And because of Dashun's silver problem and price revolution, Dashun doesn't need to consider the issue of tariff internal protection.

This problem was solved after the end of World War I.

The population, especially the population stripped of labor and means of production... Dashun can create a British industrial population that is sufficient for the first industrial revolution in history.

In the first industrial revolution, a population of one million was enough.

The rest, capital, primitive accumulation, currency, gold and silver, raw materials, technology... In fact, Dashun does not lack these things now.

So, in fact, at this moment, Dashun has fully accumulated all the prerequisites for the first industrial revolution, and it can completely break out smoothly.

A Shandong has a population of about 2800 million at this time.

The Songsu area, of course, includes Nanjing, Xuzhou and other places, with a population of 3200 million.

Together, these two have a population of 6000 million.

During the period from the outbreak of the first industrial revolution to the time when the sun never set in Britain, until the time when Britain and France dominated the world before the Franco-Prussian War, did the total population of Britain and France total 6000 million?

The problem now is not the various preconditions.

The change of the times is not a problem. It can be done in one step when all the preconditions are met.

The change of the times requires bloodshed, death, repression, and a painful process in which a new era is born from the mother of the old era—especially Dashun, which is a standard new era. The times are difficult to give birth, because I am too afraid of pain, so I keep the big but not the small, and accumulate these contradictions too much.

Different countries face different situations.

For example, the situation faced by the United Kingdom is the shortage of wage laborers who have been stripped of the means of production, which is the primary problem.

But in Dashun, the serious surplus of potential wage laborers who have been stripped of the means of production is the primary problem.

It must be noted that the prerequisite for the development of capitalism is "a large number of laborers separated from the means of production".

This is the prerequisite.

And this prerequisite, manifested in Britain, is the enclosure movement.

So, that is to say, the enclosure movement is not a prerequisite for the development of capitalism.

It is because of wage laborers who have "a large amount of labor separated from the means of production". This prerequisite, in Britain, can only be expressed in the form of enclosure movements.

To use a metaphor: the prerequisite for having a baby is the fertilization of eggs.

The concave-convex movement is just one way of this prerequisite; it is possible to make test tubes, artificial plugs, or even swim in theory, etc., are all possible.

The problem with trying to find a sword is that, watching other people's bumpy movement, one thinks that bumpy movement is the necessary condition for having a baby, but they don't think about what the real necessary condition is.

What is your own situation, can you support yourself, or you have strong support but no tadpoles... These situations are different. If you can’t see the essence through the phenomenon, you can’t understand the prerequisites that Lao Ma said, capital is a social relationship. Wait, just copying the phenomenon according to the first-mover countries, then there must be problems with copying.

The problem with Dashun is that the capital is too free. Dashun’s imperial court ruled but not governed. The region is actually in a semi-autonomous state, which makes the capital grow its own legs. Tens of thousands of potential laborers whose labor is separated from the means of production.

It must be noted that at this time, whether it is France or even North America, buying land is not as convenient as Dashun.There are many restrictions on buying land, but Dashun has almost no legal restrictions. As long as you are willing to sell, you can buy it with money. In some areas, Dashun even recognizes the land deeds of the previous dynasty—some Dashun compromised in the past In the land, the problems of land skin, field bone, first ownership, first tenancy right, and second and third subletting after first tenancy have always been a headache for the prefectures and counties of Dashun.

To put it simply, because the British mercantilism policy is too strict, capital is too unfree, and trade is too restricted, so if the UK wants to develop, it must solve its own strict mercantilism policy, capital is too unfree, and trade is too restrictive. limited problem.

However, Dashun, due to various historical reasons, has to find a way to restrict the capital that is too free and can freely purchase land; to limit the return on land investment, if it cannot be solved by economic means, it must find a way to force the capital to be unable to use administrative means. flow to the land.

This problem of capital flow to land was a headache for Liu Yu when he was reforming in Songsu.

Take the UK as an example.

The enclosure movement had a remarkable effect, increasing the yield per mu in the UK from 90 jin to the current 130 jin.This has greatly developed productivity - and if it wants to be higher, we have to wait for the era of the 1800s, the era of large-scale trade in Bengal saltpeter, Chilean saltpeter, and Pacific struvite.

Take Dashun as an example.

In addition to planting cash crops, if only food is grown and land is merged, can the effect of the British enclosure movement on the increase in yield per mu be achieved?

In fact, not only can't it, it may even be necessary to retreat at this time.

Because, in the North China area of ​​Dashun, along with the increase in the contradiction between man and land, intensive cultivation and two years of three crops have essentially pushed the yield per mu to the limit.

Why must we consider growing food?Does growing food show that the ruling class is "ignorant and ignorant"?
Because, the group of people in the Manchu Qing Dynasty found that opium was highly profitable, it was too market-oriented, everything was based on profit, and it was too invisible, and then came a wave of "strange shortages".

Then, the problem of increasing agricultural yield per mu can be ignored.

Another important achievement is to provide Britain with a large number of landless people, enabling the development of capitalist industry and commerce to have a sufficient population.

And this achievement...is it meaningful to Dashun?
The third achievement is to solve the common land problem in the UK and to determine the exclusive ownership of the land.

And this result... Dashun let alone arable land, just a piece of fucking grove where branches are folded and burned for cooking. In some places, it is exclusive ownership, and this result is even more meaningless.

The fourth achievement is to allow British capital to gather, enabling some landowners to invest money in industry and commerce.

As for this achievement, Dashun has also solved it by relying on tea, silk, porcelain, cotton cloth, rhubarb, and brass.The financial capital of Dashun's first-developing area is short of landlords?Before, a casual trip to South America could bring back three to five million taels of silver. From the middle of Ming Dynasty to the present, how much silver has been eaten in this place?How many more did you spit out?Silver, or currency, still needs to be gathered in the hands of a few people by enclosing land?
Again.

The first industrial revolution only needed a population of one million, and the huge productivity it unleashed would lead the world into modern history.

With the development of capitalism, hundreds of millions or billions of wage laborers will not be needed until after the third or even fourth industrial revolution and full industrialization.At that time, the problem here is to find a way to destroy the small peasant economy and provide more industrialized personnel.

Take the United Kingdom in its heyday as an example. With a market area of ​​3500 million square kilometers and almost half of the world, how much population can the United Kingdom accommodate in the first industrial revolution?To put it too much, 500 million is the sky.

As for Dashun, assuming that this old path of the British Empire is taken in history, it is equivalent to... I have prepared one table of food, but there may be 100 tables of people coming to eat, what should I do?The people who ate at the 100 tables and the 99 tables that did not sit down will inevitably choose to overturn the table.Can't you just sit down?Then don't do it!lift!

Even if the people at this table are full, the remaining 99 tables are all hungry—it’s the age of firearms, and you are still in the era of feudal knights and warriors?Riding a war horse and putting on armor, can you defeat a hundred with a full meal?

Times have changed!

(End of this chapter)