New Shun 1730

Drinking poison to quench thirst is not quite the same as draining the pond to catch fish.

In governing a country, drinking poison to quench thirst means knowing the crisis in the future, but for the sake of emergency, you have to take the initiative to bury this crisis.

Of course, most of the time, it is in the middle and late stages of the dynasty that the routine of drinking poison to quench thirst begins.

For example, before Liu Yu's Lianghuai salt reform, Yuan Shizhen's salt policy reform in the 45th year of Wanli was a standard method of drinking poison to quench thirst, rather than draining the pond to catch fish.

Yuan Shizhen's reform was equivalent to a one-time package transfer of the right to purchase, transport and sell salt, the lifeline of the national economy, and it could be inherited.

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

Of course, the disadvantage is that even the reformer Yuan Shizhen knew very well that the one-time package transfer of the right to purchase, transport and sell salt would inevitably cause big trouble in the future.

However, there are only two ideas for those who drink poison to quench thirst.

One is that the bastard only lived for 200 years, and 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 an antidote before the poison takes effect? ​​If you can take the antidote, wouldn’t it be a waste of a glass of wine?

Now the emperor’s words need to be clarified first. Where is the poison of the poisoned wine that the emperor said? What is the antidote for?

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

In Liu Yu’s view, doing so is poisonous wine for the Dashun Dynasty, because once the bourgeoisie in the first-developed areas grows stronger, they will not honestly not eat up the internal market.

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

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

In the emperor’s view, this cup of poisoned wine is more of a technical issue.

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

And "mergers" are the real danger in the eyes of the emperor. Therefore, the emperor's so-called drinking poison to quench thirst is understood from a technical and economic perspective. He believes that after the constraints on the development of industry and commerce are removed, it will lead to currency concentration and eventually intensify mergers.

Are Liu Yu and the emperor's understanding of "drinking poison to quench thirst" the same?

In essence, they are not the same.

The emperor understands it from the perspective of the rise and fall of traditional feudal dynasties.

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

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

In short, both of them are optimistic.

Liu Yu is optimistic because if this is done, the Dashun Dynasty will die. Even if the Li family may not be liquidated, relying on inheritance, it will transform into a member of the ruling class of the new era, but the old era will be completely smashed.

The emperor was also optimistic, because according to the emperor's understanding of the poison wine, the Dashun Dynasty might not die. Instead, it was possible to stand from the perspective of "small farmers" and use the power of small farmers to wipe out the power of the emerging class, but leave the productivity they created, or 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 is what Lao Ma said: [In principle, economics often confuses the two types of private ownership. One of the two types of private ownership is based on the producer's own labor; the other is based on the exploitation of the labor of others. ]

[The latter is not only the opposite of the former, but the royal power will develop on the grave of the former. ]

Liu Yu understands where the emperor's optimism - the optimism of drinking the poison wine first and then finding the antidote - comes from.

However, Liu Yu's optimism is also based on a sneer at the emperor's optimism.

Since the emerging class and the emerging class are based on the exploitation of the labor of others, it is obviously a system of light and shadow. In addition to a group of relatively vulnerable bourgeoisie under the social conditions of Dashun, there is also a group of new classes that can stand together with tenants and sell their labor.

Who says that the emerging class that subverts the old era must refer specifically to the industrial and commercial bourgeoisie?

Or, who says that there is only one emerging class?

In the old era, there were also two of them. Without tenants, where would the landlords come from? Without workers, where would the capitalists who make a living by exploiting the labor of others come from?

Therefore, the emperor can be optimistic and understand the problem as a simple technical problem with the traditional thinking of the feudal dynasty. This is what Liu Yu called the variant of the Westernization Movement.

Liu Yu was equally optimistic. With the class struggle thinking of the new era, he understood the problem as "the underdeveloped capitalism in the inland areas provided a broad space for the revolutionary forces to maneuver, and at the same time suppressed the development of the bourgeoisie to a certain extent, making it unable to penetrate into the inland areas. At the same time, it led to the confrontation between the bourgeoisie and the landlord class, thereby dispersing the enemy's power."

If the emperor did what he wanted, then it would really enter the script that Liu Yu was familiar with - the traditional power of the traditional dynasty controlled the inland areas; the new things were rampant in the coastal "ports", and once the power allowed, they would think about exerting their strength in the inland areas.

It was nothing more than that two of the three mountains merged into one, and imperialism turned out to be the bourgeoisie of the country.

Again, the "tariff" issue affects the development of the country's bourgeoisie, while the tariff issue makes no difference to small farmers, as it will destroy them.

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

It should be said that Liu Yu's series of reforms only drove the comprador class to death, and made Dashun really want to be a comprador but couldn't...

It is almost impossible to sell European goods that are “not anti-human”. This is of course not entirely due to Liu Yu’s reforms, but the result of the labor of millions of working people. Historically, before the 1800s, Europe was also the capital of the world. Unable to sell, Britain and France were forced to issue policies one after another. The Joiner's Guild made a big fuss and demanded that the East India Company be banned from buying Chinese goods. Defoe wrote crazy essays. The Manchester textile industry cried out for a ban on oriental cotton. Hume lamented that it was vast. The ocean acts as a natural tariff to withstand Chinese manufacturing.

For "anti-human" commodities, Dashun's centralized power has not yet collapsed, and its rule is still very powerful. Even if the merchant class feels that it is uneconomical to return from Europe with empty ships, they dare not go to Turkey to collect opium and transport it back. If they catch it, they will die. And because Dashun's centralized power has not collapsed, franchises, trade concessions, etc. can still be regulated, just like the East India Company, a large company that protected 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 and the fewer corporate entities, the easier it is to control.

It may sound counter-intuitive that the bigger the company and the fewer corporate entities it has, the better it will be managed.

But in fact... the UK can't even control French molasses, so why can it enforce the "Cotton Prohibition Order"? Why does the UK not only ban Dutch tea from going to North America, but it can control the tea auction house in London?

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

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

But in fact, this goes back to the rhetoric of "closed ignorance and isolation": China's traditional feudal dynasty in 1760 was not based on overseas trade, with a population of more than 300 million and an annual trade surplus of tens of millions. The biggest contradiction is the contradiction between man and land. Insufficient yield per mu leads to a country that cannot have enough to eat even if it continues to develop even if the land is equalized... The so-called isolation, the so-called seclusion, outside the external isolation, outside the door, who has solved this problem? Who increased the yield per mu to more than 200 kilograms? The biggest contradiction has no hope of resolution at all, so why should we embrace it? Is expelling Catholic missionaries a sign of seclusion? If so, then France and Spain, which forced the palace to dissolve the Jesuits and even threatened to withdraw from the Holy See, closed their countries?

Still the same sentence: The increase in yield per acre brought about by the land enclosure movement and technological development was compared to that of Britain and the late Middle Ages in Europe.

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

Up to now, the results of the British Agricultural Revolution are still far behind North China's yield per mu. The UK's yield per mu will surpass North China's. It will not be until the large-scale mining of saltpeter in Chile and the basic collapse of the centralization of water conservancy facilities in the Qing Dynasty. After the collapse of the Yellow River and the North Battle of the Yellow River. As for the yield per mu in the rice soil areas in the south of the Yangtze River, don’t even think about surpassing it before using artificial fertilizers.

So, is there anything wrong with this sentence of being closed-minded and ignorant?

no problem.

The question is, what to study?

In this day and age, what should we learn? is a big problem.

Study agriculture? The yield per mu is 150 kilograms, should we learn from the one who yields 120 kilograms per mu? The curved shaft plow learned from the Netherlands replaced the heavy six-horse wheeled plow in Northern Europe? Or should we learn the opposite method of ridge farming and crop rotation?

Study business? Cotton cloth was forced to issue an administrative "Oriental Cloth Prohibition Order" on the opposite side. Defoe, who worked in a pottery factory with his friends, was muttering about clay pots in novels all day long. Europe was forced to try to excavate the ancient city of Pompeii to counter the increasing court style. Serious invasion of oriental aesthetics...what can we learn?

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

And what do you really want to learn?

What we really need to learn is what Lao Ma said about "how capitalism came about", which is what Lao Ma said [colonial plunder, national debt system, heavy tax system, protection system, commercial war - in the era of handicraft industry, it is the supremacy of business. , brought about industrial development. The supremacy of commerce requires national strength, a navy, heavy taxes, a protective system, and commercial war].

As for the details, what you need to learn are the military system, firearms ideas, military training system, sailing ship combat skills, and commercial warfare - here, Dashun does not need to learn the protection system, because without protection, the other side will not be able to sell it. .

This is what Liu Yu believed, and although the emperor also believed it, they had different ideas of "drinking poison to quench thirst."

Liu Yu practiced the reforms that Lao Ma said about "how capitalism came about" in the first-mover area, and learned what he should learn, including military affairs, sailing ships, heavy taxes, franchises, and commercial wars.

Because we have learned what we need to learn and abandoned those things that seem to be what we need to learn but are actually reused without even regressing, the capitalist production system in the first-developed areas has been basically established.

Once this thing is established, the purpose will be to strive for the "world market". And the "world market" must first include the "domestic market".

Therefore, Liu Yu believes that continuing to move forward is like drinking poison to quench thirst for Dashun.

This is different from the emperor's understanding of drinking poison to quench thirst from the traditional way of thinking. The emperor's view of drinking poison to quench thirst is based on the internal logic of "focusing on agriculture and neglecting commerce" - the internal logic is that the speed of commercial accumulation of funds is too fast, and the private ownership of land can be bought and sold, the means of production will be gathered and merged in the hands of merchants, and land is the "only" means of production. This is the logic based on the old era.

In short, what the emperor understands is the contradiction between "private ownership and free land trading" and "commerce, usury finance, the speed of accumulating capital is far faster than the real industry, operation and agriculture, and cannot solve the high value of land as a financial attribute and safe-haven asset".

This is a technical idea.

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

What Liu Yu understood was the contradiction between the two types of private ownership, which was caused by both the development of capitalism and the lack of development of capitalism, and the irreconcilability of the latter type of private ownership that must be built on the grave of the former.

This is a political economics approach.

Therefore, the emperor's understanding is that there is an antidote for this cup of poisonous wine.

But Liu Yu's understanding is that there is no antidote for this cup of poisonous wine.

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

For example, technically, the emperor can understand Liu Yu's immigration ideas in Fusang; but in terms of the core, the emperor does not understand what is going on at all.

For example, in terms of technology, the emperor supported the construction of railways and shipping, because this would strengthen his rule, facilitate disaster relief, and facilitate the mobilization of troops, while ensuring that the military group was always stationed within the controllable range around the capital; but in terms of the core, the emperor still did not dig the new canal in Nantong. The system of purchasing, fake men farming and women weaving, and iron wheel single-person small family looms adapted to East Asian characteristics spread rapidly along the new canal, completely changing the economic structure of Nantong in a few years, leaving only a "fake, no old core men farming and women weaving" coat. This is essentially the same as technically making a steamship that can reach Hankou directly from Songsu.

If we talk about technology

The real technical problem that Dashun had to face was the ideal of the first type of private ownership, which was deeply rooted in people's hearts. The ideal of tilling the land, equal distribution of land, land restriction, suppression of business, and even the fantasy of farmers in the Spring and Autumn and Warring States Periods that full labor for full results were all ideals based on the first type of private ownership. They were really something that had been deeply rooted in people's hearts for thousands of years since the opening of fields and wells.

The real technical problem was how to ensure the development of the second type of private ownership, which had to be built on the grave of the first type of private ownership. However, there were 300 million supporters of the first type of private ownership. They did not want to go into the grave, and did not want to sit there waiting to be crushed by the wheels of history... Technical problem - this accounted for at least 35% of the world's total population at that time.

At that time, the world together had less than 1 billion people. 300 million people, saying 35%, was an understatement.

Is this a technical problem?

Not only that, but also that it was.

The premise of saying that it was a technical problem was that people were living beings with thoughts, and would not sit there waiting to be crushed, but would fight... As long as we admit that this was the real world, then this was a very high-end technical problem.

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