New Shun 1730

What can be changed and can be changed successfully.

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

This is not a simple "man-made" solution. Of course, man-made, what kind of people are people? Whose country is it? What is the class attribute of the people who do things? These cannot be ignored.

And some problems of Dashun itself make it sure that something big will happen if the reform continues.

Let's take the simplest example.

Some people in later generations satirized some people who were 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 carts must have died out, right?

Bra invented the flush toilet, so the housewives who got up every morning to empty the toilet must have died out, right?

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

The original meaning of this joke is that with the advancement of technology, although some professions have disappeared, some new professions have also emerged, and human beings will not die out because of technological progress.

However, this joke only knows one side of the story, not the other.

In the macro sense, this is fine.

But in reality, people whose jobs have been taken away may not be able to integrate into new industries and new positions.

There is a saying: Don't be content with starving people, but be like a mantis with arms raised.

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

But these people will not sit there and wait to be crushed by the wheel of history according to your wishes.

The reason why people are people is that they will make choices for survival. And for Dashun, this idea of ​​not being content with starving people is deeply rooted.

Take the central part of Shandong after the reform as an example.

Because the railway was built, it was completely profitable to integrate some land into capitalist land management.

For example, growing tobacco, growing peanuts, and growing cotton in western and northern Shandong.

With the completion of the railway, the income from growing cash crops along the railway has far exceeded that from growing food.

Thirty or fifty years ago, Dashun had already seen a large number of "city-dwelling landlords".

These landlords lived in the city and rented their land to tenants, who then sent the rent to the city. The landlords did not manage the land or improve the land, but only collected rent.

Very early on, when Dashun was collecting taxes, it was already contrary to the norm. It was no longer "first city, then countryside", but "first countryside, then city". The reason is that the local officials in various places took the initiative to adjust and create a time difference. After all, the tenants in the countryside paid the rent first, and the landlords in the city had money and grain to collect taxes, so it changed from the past first city, then countryside, to the current first countryside, then city.

Generally speaking, the in-kind land rent is basically 55% or 46%.

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

Then, capital would not choose to operate land, because what kind of things can you grow to achieve a return of 55% or 46%?

With such high returns, agricultural technology has reached its limit at this time, and the per-acre yield is already the highest in the world, so why do we still need to manage the land?

After buying the land, collecting rent from the land will have the highest return on investment.

With the development of transportation, the development of overseas markets, and some policy inclinations, it has become higher to plant cash crops in areas close to railways, especially to plant cash crops that are integrated into the world market in exchange for silver, than to collect grain in kind.

Tenants are not able to plant cash crops.

Take flue-cured tobacco as an example.

Bean cakes, coal, a kiln for flue-curing tobacco, and capital turnover are needed... These are not what tenants can afford.

The previous statement that planting cash crops has led to a large number of farmers going bankrupt, being merged, committing suicide, being swallowed up by usury, etc., refers to farmers who still have some land of their own, not farmers who rely entirely on renting.

So, now that cash crops are profitable and capital is willing to pay higher rents than grain farmers, are the landlords living in the city willing to rent their land to capitalists and let them operate it?

Selling land is impossible.

In Dashun, selling land is considered a prodigal act. As long as life can be sustained, it can only be rented, not sold. Therefore, even if capital wants to operate land, it has to rent.

And the development of transportation, overseas trade, etc., make it possible for capital to pay higher rents even if it follows the "46 points" ratio in the past, and it is paid in silver, not grain or copper coins.

So...

Landlords are willing to rent.

Capital wants to rent.

What about tenants?

From the perspective of capitalist development and land operation, these tenants should perhaps be "crushed by the wheel of history."

The question is, what material is your wheel made of?

How can you be sure that it was crushed by the wheel of history, or that these people's steel and iron bones crushed the wheel?

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

Britain has a population of 6 million, and can mobilize 90,000 regular troops, more than 100 warships, 50,000 Hessian mercenaries, and another 50,000 militias from local gentry. Moreover, Britain is surrounded by the sea, with no room for maneuvering. There is also the New World so close to relieve pressure, so the enclosure movement did not cause any major incidents, but there were uprisings and even the Diggers who tried to make a big move in the army.

And how many people did Dashun have? How many regular troops? How much room for maneuvering?

There is a saying that goes, if you don't have the diamond drill, don't take on porcelain work. If you don't have the ability to be the wheel of history and guarantee that you can crush those people, you can't lead this country into a new era.

Liu Yu's path is 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 Britain and France, let agriculture first appear capitalist management and production.

But this path is actually divided into two steps, internal and external.

He has already taken the external step.

The internal step requires equal distribution of land, restriction of land transactions, and guarantee of the basic survival of small farmers.

The primitive accumulation depends on external expansion and plunder, gold and silver currency depends on foreign trade and American gold mines, and the labor force depends on the landless people in the first developed regions. It is enough to cope with the population of the first industrial revolution-when Britain dominated the world in the first industrial revolution, how many industrial population did it have?

The first industrial revolution only required a foundation of millions of people to complete; the second industrial revolution required tens of millions of people.

As for the internal step, Liu Yu believed that it was impossible to accomplish it by relying on the spontaneous reform of Dashun.

Dashun did not have this ability, which had nothing to do with the personal will of the emperor or even the will of some people in the bureaucracy. Even in the Qing Dynasty, Qian Xiaosi, who faced the memorial of "limiting land to 30 mu", had to say that this was "in line with the right way"; and the literati in the bureaucracy, not to mention the radical retro-style of the Yanli School, were ordinary people, and they also had the idea of ​​limiting and equalizing land.

There was will, but it was useless.

Dashun's organizational ability, ruling foundation, etc., were destined to fail to accomplish this.

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

This typical example was "ruling but not governing".

The nominal centralization and the actual local autonomy, the operation of the empire had a set of traditional processes.

Dashun was not the United Kingdom that could control the sale of wool on the coast to the point of cutting off hands, collecting poverty relief taxes in every village, preventing the outflow of textile technology for 60 years, and collecting taxes according to the number of windows.

It was far from it.

Even Dashun couldn't control the trade restrictions on Japan. Before Liu Yu got involved in trade with Japan, Japan could even "buy" military candidates who were skilled in archery and horse riding to teach military tactics and archery, which was also the case in history.

Let's take a few typical landlord types in Dashun to understand how Dashun's grassroots operations actually worked.

For example, school land landlords.

Before Dashun, it only collected about 20 million taels of silver a year. After deducting the need for raising troops, disaster relief, and national defense, there was basically not much left.

How to do local education?

School land landlords.

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

How to solve the problem of education funding?

Rely on rent collected from school land.

Every year, school land relies on the rent of tenants as education funding.

The imperial treasury? Where is the money in the imperial treasury?

Another example is clan landlords.

How to maintain local stability?

Rely on clans.

Special laws were enacted: if descendants privately sell 50 mu of clan land, they will be punished as selling ancestral graves, exiled 3,000 miles, and sent to the border; if descendants privately sell clan temples, they will be caned 70 times for each room, and the crime will be increased by one level for every three rooms, and the full crime will be caned 100 times and sentenced to three years in prison.

Another example is the landlord of the charity hall.

I will not mention places like the Charity Hall here.

Let me just mention one, for example, the ferry, the charity ferry.

In some places, with the current level of engineering, it is impossible to build a bridge, and it cannot be built.

Then someone needs to ferry people to maintain convenient transportation.

For business, it is no problem to spend some money to cross the river.

But for the rule, some basic living conveniences are still needed, that is, almost free free ferry.

For this thing, even if you find a deaf or disabled person to do it, you have to feed the disabled.

No money, what to do?

Either allocate or donate, and build charity land.

Rely on the rent of the charity land to maintain the expenses of the charity ferry. Tenants must pay rent.

...The above, and so on.

What do these examples show?

There is no mention of normal civilian landlords, gentry landlords, and merchant landlords.

Only school landlords, charity landlords, clan landlords...

These examples show that Dashun's grassroots operations, basic social welfare, school education, stability maintenance system, etc., are all maintained by the "landlord, tenant" tenancy system.

Even if a country does not look at those civilian landlords, merchant landlords, and gentry landlords.

Just look at the welfare, convenience, grassroots operations, etc. in these places, which are completely maintained by the tenancy system.

Then, what is the social operation foundation of Dashun? It can also tell the autumn from the leaves falling.

In theory, many of the inputs here should be the model of government collecting taxes and then spending. But obviously, Dashun is not, and has no ability to collect taxes and spend to maintain grassroots operations, but can only rely on the tenancy system to maintain it.

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

Then, this kind of reform is not as simple as building a railway, shipping, or building a steel plant.

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 the difficulty of building a steel plant or building a Grand Canal is 10.

Then, the difficulty of the latter may be 100,000.

Obviously, this cannot be accomplished through reform.

And Liu Yu, precisely through the changes in these years, created an illusion: Look, aren't these changes unprecedented, but aren't they also successful?

Under this illusion, it is inevitable that there will be people who want to follow suit and continue to reform.

Of course, in theory, looking only at the data, it seems that the tenancy system can be completed without using the big weapon of equalizing land.

Just looking at the data, theoretically, Australia and North America still have at least five to six billion acres of arable land.

In later generations, not counting the three prairie provinces of Canada, the United States alone has 5.6 billion acres of arable land.

At this time, European farming activities in North America were limited to the east of the Appalachian Mountains. It is not an exaggeration at all to say that there are theoretically five to six billion acres of arable land.

In theory, just counting data, Dashun's current population, with an average of 100 acres of land per household, is definitely enough.

However, the gap between theory and reality is really too big.

The premature private ownership of land has caused the people in Dashun, at least when it comes to land, to have a bourgeois legal mindset.

Under the European aristocracy, serfs had feudal obligations, but they also had the right to cultivate their own fields permanently and to graze sheep on roadsides, hillsides, and public lands.

The British land enclosure movement took back this inherent right and established the complete exclusive ownership of land in accordance with the bourgeois land system.

Of course, this traditional right was taken back without compensation.

In Dashun, under the private land system, land is exclusively owned. I can rent my land to whomever I want. A tenant has no right to rent it forever, nor does he have the right to ask me, the landlord, to rent the land only to him.

So, speaking from a general perspective, if tenants can make a living by renting land from the landlord, is this considered a right of the tenants?

Legally, it may not count.

But if it counts, if the commercial agricultural capitalists occupy the land that the tenants originally rented, should they theoretically pay as compensation for the tenants' inability to rent?

If you think so, there is no theoretical solution.

For example, raise taxes.

Didn’t your capital rent this land? Doesn’t it make it impossible for tenant farmers to make a living? Then you pay more taxes, and the court will ask you to collect more taxes. Use this tax to resettle these tenants and let them migrate to Fusang and Southern Ocean for farming.

This is a solution to the joke "Brad invented the flush toilet, and all the women who used it to empty the toilet became extinct" - originally ten people worked on this land, but now six people work, then these six people should come out Money can solve the basic survival problems of the remaining four people.

Of course, this is just one solution.

However, this solution is not applicable in Dashun.

Take North China as an example.

Whether it is going to North America or Australia, with the current level of transportation, the carrying capacity of ships, and the long cycle of six or seven months to cross the ocean.

This makes the migration cost of each immigrant at least 100 taels of silver, only a lot more.

In North China, there has been a serious contradiction between man and land. The per capita land area can basically be considered to have dropped to 3 to 4 acres - at least, this should be the case in Shandong, otherwise it would not have happened. By the end of the Manchu Qing Dynasty, Shandong A day laborer can only buy 1 catty and 6 taels of sorghum rice in one day's work, and there are countless people rushing to do it.

The average per capita cultivated land is 3 to 4 acres.

What kind of thing can you grow that can produce another 100 taels of silver on the basis of the original "four or six rent payments" and still be profitable?

In theory, Dashun can advance the payment.

Then, the money will be recovered through taxes over a period of 20 to 30 years.

The question is, can Dashun’s treasury get this money?

I have no money, how can I pay in advance?

Without money, nothing can be done.

So, in fact, in the joke about "Brad invented the flush toilet, and all the women who filled the toilet became extinct", originally ten people worked on this land, but now six people work on it, then it is these six people who should pay to solve the problem. This reform idea, which addresses the basic survival issues of the remaining four people, is simply not feasible in Dashun.

It doesn't matter whether you follow the British example, go to the city to work, or find a way to cross the Atlantic Ocean, it still won't work in Dashun. Because the tenants don’t want to sit there quietly and be crushed by the so-called wheels of history.

This won't work, and that won't work either. The only way to go is actually what Liu Yu said: coastal areas rely on external plunder, overseas markets, American gold and silver, and excess population to industrialize first; inland areas, Use powerful means to equalize land, prohibit buying and selling, prevent the capitalist system from invading the hinterland and rural areas, and ensure the basic survival of every citizen.

For the first-mover regions, they are afraid that capitalism will not develop enough.

As for the mainland, they are afraid that capitalism will continue to sprout.

However, this is tantamount to bringing the problem back again: equalizing land, prohibiting buying and selling, ensuring survival, reducing taxes, reducing labor... Is this what Dashun can accomplish through reforms?

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

The difference is that if the feudal dynasty in history wanted to reform like this, it would be impossible.

Literacy is the basis for promotion to the ruling class.

Literacy, as well as being a prerequisite for enrolling in school and becoming a scholar, basically guarantee that the family will have to rely on the tenancy system to survive.

During the Qing Dynasty, some people suggested limiting the land area to 30 mu. Qian Xiaosi said at most that what you said was very reasonable, in line with the right path, and in line with the political correctness of Confucianism, but this matter is not easy to handle.

In short, to do things, you need "cadres".

And "cadres" were basically tied to the tenancy system before.

It is obviously impossible to let a group of people who came from the tenancy system oppose the tenancy system and achieve the goal of equal distribution of land.

But Dashun was different.

Dashun had a group of people who neither relied on the tenancy system as their economic foundation nor came from orthodox Confucianism, but were literate, had professional skills and basic governance skills.

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

And this reform was the basis of Liu Yu's "Dashun Exploded".