Xinshun 1730

Chapter 1433 The Antidote

Quenching thirst by drinking poison is not the same as catching fish from the river.

In terms of governing the country, drinking poison to quench thirst is more about knowing the crisis in the future, but for the sake of emergency, we have to take the initiative to bury this crisis.

Of course, most of the time, in the middle and late stages of the dynasty, they began to play the routine of drinking poison to quench thirst.

For example, before Liu Yu’s Lianghuai salt reform, in the 45th year of Wanli, Yuan Shizhen’s salt administration reform was the standard method of drinking poison to quench thirst, rather than exhausting the water for fishing.

Yuan Shizhen's reform is tantamount to selling the right to buy, transport and sell the country's economic lifeline such as salt in one package, and it can be hereditary.

The advantage is that in the precarious juncture of the 45th year of Wanli, the salt tax was raised.

Of course, the downside is that even Yuan Shizhen, who is reforming, knows very well that selling the right to buy, transport and sell salt in one package will cause big trouble in the future.

It's just that the thoughts of those who drink poison to quench their thirst are nothing more than two.

One is that the bastard has only lived for 200 years. I believe that the wisdom of future generations can solve these troubles.

The other is to drink the poisoned wine first, otherwise you will die of thirst.As long as you are alive, there are infinite possibilities. Maybe you can find the antidote before the poison occurs?If he could take the antidote, wouldn't he have had a glass of wine in vain?

Now that the emperor said these words, we need to figure out first, where exactly is the toxicity of the poisonous wine that the emperor said?What is the antidote for?

If this is not clear, it is easy to have a deviation in understanding.

In Liu Yu's view, doing this would be poisonous wine for the Dashun Dynasty, because once the bourgeoisie in the pioneering areas grew stronger, they would not honestly refuse to eat up the internal market.

This is Liu Yu's understanding of drinking poison to quench thirst.

It is the poisonous wine of the Dashun Dynasty understood from the perspective of class struggle.

In the eyes of the emperor, this cup of poisoned wine was more of a technical problem.

That is, the rapid development of industry and commerce, the unification of internal currencies, the concentration of a large number of currencies in the first-developed areas, the private ownership and the unchanged ownership of land sales will lead to a rapid increase in the speed of "mergers".

And "annexation", in the eyes of the emperor, is the real danger.Therefore, the emperor’s so-called quenching thirst by drinking poison was understood from a technical and economic point of view. He believed that after the shackles of industrial and commercial development were lifted, it would lead to currency concentration and eventually intensified mergers.

Is Liu Yu and the emperor's understanding of "drinking poison to quench thirst" the same thing?
Essentially, it's not the same thing.

The emperor understood it from the perspective of the cycle of the rise and fall of the traditional feudal dynasty.

Liu Yu understands it from the perspective of the struggle for power of the emerging class at the turn of the new era and the old era.

Therefore, the two people also have differences in thinking about the future.

Simply put, both men are optimistic.

Liu Yu is optimistic because if he does this, the Dashun Dynasty will die.Even if the Li family might not be liquidated and rely on inheritance to become a member of the ruling class of the new era, the old era will be completely smashed.

The emperor is also optimistic, because according to the emperor's understanding of poisonous wine, the Dashun Dynasty may not die.Instead, from the perspective of "small farmers", it is possible to use the power of small farmers to wipe out the power of the emerging class, but to leave the productive forces created by them, or to inherit their legacy.

The smartest rulers will definitely try to borrow the power of small farmers and small producers.Use the first type of private ownership to oppose the second type of private ownership.

It’s what Lao Ma said: [In principle, economics often confuses the two types of private ownership.One of those two kinds of private property is based on the labor of the producer himself; the other is based on the extraction of the labor of others. 】

[The latter is not only in direct opposition to the former, but the royal power will develop on the grave of the former. 】

Liu Yu understood where the emperor's optimism—the optimism of drinking the poisonous wine first and finding the antidote later—come from.

However, Liu Yu's optimism was also based on his attitude of scoffing at the emperor's optimism.

Since the emerging class and the emerging class are based on the extraction of labor from others, it is obvious that this is a system accompanied by light and shadow.In addition to a group of bourgeoisie who are relatively weak under the social conditions of Dashun, there is also a group of new-born classes who can stand with tenant farmers and sell their labor.

Who said that the emerging class that overturned the old era must refer specifically to those industrial and commercial bourgeoisie?
Or, who said that there is only one emerging class?
In the old days, the two lived together.If there are no tenant farmers, how can there be landlords?Without workers, how can there be bourgeois who live by extracting the labor of others?
Therefore, the emperor can be optimistic and understand the problem as a purely technical problem with the traditional thinking of the feudal dynasty.This is Liu Yu's so-called variant Westernization Movement.

Liu Yu is equally optimistic, using the class struggle ideas of the new era to understand the problem as "capitalism in the inland areas is not developed enough, which provides a broad space for the revolutionary forces to move around, and at the same time suppresses The development of the power of the bourgeoisie has prevented it from penetrating into the interior. At the same time, it has led to the confrontation between the bourgeoisie and the landlord class, thus dispersing the enemy's strength."

If we do this according to the emperor's idea, we will really enter the script that Liu Yu is familiar with - the traditional power of the traditional dynasty, controlling the inland; new things are raging in the coastal "ports", and once the power allows, we will think about exerting force in the inland Son.

It is nothing more than that two of the three mountains have merged into one, and imperialism is nothing more than the bourgeoisie of the country.

Again, the "tariff" issue affects the development of the bourgeoisie in the country, and the tariff issue does not make any difference to the small farmers, and they all want to disintegrate them.

Because, in theory, there should be no tariffs between provinces within a country.Then, after the development of the bourgeoisie in the country, there is no difference between the cloth of Songsu and the cloth of Manchester for small farmers; it is just that for national capital, the difference is huge.

It should be said that Liu Yu's series of reforms only brought the comprador class to death, making Dashun really want to be a comprador now but can't—

"Not anti-human" products, European products are almost impossible to sell. Of course, this is not all due to Liu Yu's reforms, but the labor of millions of working people. In history, before the 1800s, it was also the capital of hanging hair in Europe. They couldn’t sell, but Britain and France were forced to issue policies one after another. The Joiners’ Association clamored to ban the East India Company from buying Chinese goods. Defoe wrote frenzied essays. Manchester’s weeping textile industry asked for a ban on oriental cotton cloth. Hume lamented that it was vast. Dayang, as a natural tariff, withstood Chinese manufacturing.

"Anti-humanity" commodities, Dashun's centralized power has not yet collapsed, and the rule is still very strong. Even if the merchant class feels that it is not cost-effective to return from Europe with empty ships, they dare not go to Turkey to collect opium and bring it back. If they seize it, they will die.And because Dashun’s centralization has not collapsed, franchises, trade concessions, etc. can still be supervised, just like the East India Company, a large company that protects the British textile industry. It is large and relatively easy to manage. , because the technical level of anti-smuggling customs and other technologies in this era is here, the bigger the company, the fewer corporate entities, the easier it is to manage.

It sounds counter-intuitive that the bigger, the fewer corporate entities, the easier it is to manage.

But in fact... Britain can't even control French molasses, why can it implement the "Cotton Cloth Prohibition Order"?Why does the UK not allow Dutch tea to go to North America, but can control the tea auction house in London?

Because, the West India is not a company, but only a loose West India Chamber of Commerce; while the East India is a company, there is an entity, not a loose East India Chamber of Commerce.

It seems counter-intuitive to say that the emperor supported the continued development of industry and commerce, and even direct technological progress.

But in fact, this goes back to the rhetoric of "closed ignorance, closed country": In 1760, the traditional Chinese feudal dynasty was not based on overseas trade, had a population of more than 3 million, and had a trade surplus of tens of millions every year. The biggest contradiction is the contradiction between man and land, and the lack of yield per mu leads to a country that will not be able to eat even if it continues to develop... The so-called closed, so-called retreat, outside the external closure, outside the closed door, who solved this problem?Who raised the yield per mu to more than 200 catties?The biggest contradiction has no hope of resolution at all, so what to embrace?Is the expulsion of Catholic missionaries a closed country?If so, then France and Spain forced the palace to disband the Jesuits, and even threatened to withdraw from the Holy See, are they shutting themselves off?
Still the same sentence: The increase in yield per mu brought about by the enclosure movement and the development of science and technology is relative to Britain and the late Middle Ages in Europe.

The British Agricultural Revolution was a "huge increase in agricultural productivity" relative to Britain itself.

Up to now, the results of the British agricultural revolution are still far behind the yield per mu in North China. The yield per mu in the UK surpassed that in North China, until the large-scale mining of saltpeter in Chile and the basic collapse of the centralization of power in the Qing Dynasty and the collapse of water conservancy facilities. After the collapse and the Yellow River North.As for the yield per mu in the paddy soil area in the south of the Yangtze River, don't think about surpassing it before using artificial fertilizers.

Therefore, is there any problem with the words "closed to ignorance and closed to the outside world?"

no problem.

The question is, what to learn?
In this day and age, what do you study?is a big problem.

Learn agriculture?The yield per mu is 150 catties, go to school and the yield is 120 catties per mu?Learn the curved shaft plow learned from the Netherlands, replacing the bulky six-horse wheel plow in Northern Europe?Or learn the ridge cropping and crop rotation on the opposite side?
Study business?Cotton cloth was forced to issue the administrative "Oriental Cloth Prohibition Order", and Defoe, who had worked in a pottery factory with his friends, was forced to mutter about clay pots in the novel all day long, and Europe was forced to examine the excavation of the ancient city of Pompeii to combat the increasing style of the court. Serious invasion of oriental aesthetics... what can we learn?

If you learn the wrong object, you will find that there is nothing to learn.

And what is the real thing to learn?
What you really need to learn is what Lao Ma said about "how capitalism came about", that is, what Lao Ma said [colonial plunder, national debt system, heavy tax system, protection system, commercial war-the era of handicrafts, the supremacy of commerce , brought about industrial development.The supremacy of commerce requires national strength, a navy, heavy taxes, a protection system, and commercial warfare].

As for the details, what you need to learn is the military system, firearms thinking, troop training system, sailing ship combat skills, and commercial warfare - here, the protection system, Dashun does not need to learn, because without protection, the opposite side can't even sell it. .

This is what Liu Yu thinks, although the emperor also thinks it is, but the two have different ideas of "drinking poison to quench thirst".

In the pioneering areas, Liu Yu practiced the reforms that Lao Ma said about "How Capitalism Comes From", and learned what he should learn, including military affairs, sailing ships, heavy taxes, franchise rights, and commercial wars.

Because of learning what should be learned and discarding those things that seem to be learned but actually learned and used without even regressing, the capitalist production system in the advanced areas can basically be established with certainty.

Once this thing is established, its purpose will be towards the "world market".And the "world market" must include the "domestic market" first.

Therefore, Liu Yu believed that to continue to move forward, for Dashun, it was drinking poison to quench thirst.

This is different from the emperor's understanding of drinking poison to quench thirst from the traditional thinking.The emperor believed that drinking poison to quench thirst was based on the internal logic of "emphasizing agriculture and despising business". This old-age logic is based on the "only" means of production.

In short, what the emperor understands is "private ownership and free land sales", and "commercial, usury finance, the speed of capital accumulation is far faster than real industry, management and agriculture, and it cannot solve the high value of land as a financial attribute and a safe-haven asset. "Contradiction.

This is a technical idea.

The premise of this idea is what Lao Ma said [confuse the two kinds of private ownership].

What Liu Yu understands is that both the development of capitalism and the underdevelopment of capitalism, the contradiction between the two kinds of private ownership, and the irreconcilability of the latter private ownership must be built on the grave of the former.

This is a political economy idea.

Therefore, according to the emperor's understanding, there is an antidote for this cup of poisoned wine.

From Liu Yu's understanding, there is no antidote for this cup of poisoned wine.

Because the emperor still does not understand the difference between the two types of private ownership.

For example, technically, the emperor could understand Liu Yu's immigration ideas in Fusang; but at the core, the emperor didn't understand what was going on at all.

For another example, in terms of technology, the emperor supports the construction of railways and sea transportation, because this will strengthen his rule, facilitate disaster relief, and facilitate the suppression and deployment of troops. At the same time, it can ensure that the military group is always stationed within the controllable range around the capital; But at the core, the emperor still did not excavate the new canal in the Nantong area, and the iron-wheeled single-person small household looms adapted to the East Asian characteristics of the outsourcing system, fake men farming and women weaving, along the new canal, It spread rapidly and completely changed the economic structure of Nantong area in a few years, leaving only a "fake, no old core of men farming and women weaving" in the coat of "men farming and women weaving".This is essentially the same thing as technically developing a steamer that can travel directly from Songsu to Hankou.

If we talk about technology.

The real technical problem that Dashun has to face is the first ideal of private ownership, which is deeply rooted in the hearts of the people-the tiller has his own land, equal land, limited land, restraint of business, and even the farmhouses in the Spring and Autumn and Warring States Periods. Utopias are all ideals based on the first type of private ownership. They are really things that have been deeply rooted in the hearts of the people for thousands of years since the opening of the fields and the destruction of the well fields.

The real technical problem is how to ensure that the development of the second type of private ownership is built on the grave of the first type of private ownership, but there are 3 million supporters of the first type of private ownership, and they do not want to enter the grave or sit there. A technical problem waiting to be crushed by the wheels of history - this accounts for at least 35% of the total world population at this time.

The whole world at this time together has less than 10 billion people. 3 million people, say 35%, say less.

Is this a technical issue?

Not only but, but also.

The premise of saying that it is a technical problem is that people are living creatures with thoughts, they will not sit there waiting to be crushed, they will fight... As long as you admit that this is the real world, then this is a very high-end technical problem .

Whoever has this "technology" will be able to dominate the land of China for the next hundred years.

(End of this chapter)