Xinshun 1730

Chapter 1067: Evil Dragon Afterimage ([-])

Rumors related to everyone's vital interests always spread quickly.

The flow of business routes caused by overseas trade, and the towns along the trade routes are more developed industries and commerce, and the citizens of the towns are precisely the most afraid of this rumor coming true, so the speed at which this rumor spreads is almost catching up with the imperial court. The station hastened.

The panic of the small bourgeoisie in Jiangsu about the reactionary retrogression stems from the many reforms in southern Jiangsu over the years.

These reforms were all approved by the emperor after weighing the pros and cons and believing that he could strengthen his own rule.

And these various reforms, going forward, originated from the entry of a large amount of overseas silver and the development of the commodity economy starting from the Ming Dynasty.

This is the foundation.

The more recent foundation is the development of shipping, the abandonment of the canal, the commodity grain base brought about by overseas expansion, and Liu Yu's many reforms in southern Jiangsu based on this.

To give the simplest example, if the physical grain rice is collected, the grain grain will not fly directly to the capital, and someone has to transport it.

And Songjiang Mansion received a large amount of physical cotton cloth, and it was impossible to fly to the capital by itself, and someone had to transport it.

Taxes, taxes, and servitude must be separated.

The national tax and local apportionment must also be separated.

The theoretical system of taxation and servitude, and the implementation at the grassroots level, still need to be separated.

The direction of Liu Yu's reform is also very simple.

collect money.

Make sure money buys things.

It looks very simple, but in fact without the accumulation of the previous 20 years, this is pure fantasy.

Take the land dispute in the south of the Yangtze River that lasted from the Longqing period to the end of the Chongzhen period, and developed to the point where the two county-level governments attacked each other. What is the root cause?
The root cause, Huang Zongxi also mentioned this issue regardless of Yanwu, the reason is that "in the past, Tian was the mother and Ding was the son; but in this life, Ding is the mother and Tian is the son".

Pushing forward, why does this happen?

Because it involves feudal corvee and labor.

It must be physically bound with the household registration land.

Pushing forward, it is the difference between official land and private land at the beginning, and the tax rates of various counties after the official land has been greatly reduced due to inertia are completely inconsistent.

Pushing forward further, the capital is set in the north, and Jiangnan is the economic center. These materials cannot be sent directly to the north through the portal, and someone must serve in corvee to send them there.

Even if there is no need for the capital, if a river embankment, a breakwater, etc. are built locally, labor must be collected.

That is to say, in the simplest way, let Tian be the mother and Ding be the son, or even cancel the existence value of Ding, and only tax the land, which needs to meet many prerequisites.

First of all, you have to collect money, not grain.

Second, money ensures that things can be bought, and prices are basically stable.And the premise of this is that Dashun needs to have a navy, a sea transport team, and commercial grain bases such as Yezo, Liaodong and Nanyang to ensure the stability of grain prices, and to transport materials from Jiangnan to the capital to maintain the operation of the court.

Then, there must be a large number of "jobless people". If there is any corvee in the local area, they can be hired for money.

And then, the place has to be rich.

If local governments want to get rich, they must reform the tax system.

Carrying out tax reform, in turn, requires the above as a prerequisite.

It should be said that it is Liaodong's commodity grain, Nanyang's rice plantation, navy, and silver for maritime trade. These four things can support the reform of a single southern Jiangsu.

It was not until Dashun completely abandoned the canal and the emperor realized that money could really buy things that the reform in southern Jiangsu was basically completed.

A series of disputes from the Longqing period to the previous few years, such as land taxation, land ownership, labor, which county the cultivated land belongs to, and so on, were finally resolved.

Only when all the above foundations are in place can we achieve "taking the field as the mother".

Many great Confucians realized this before, but the reform plans they thought of were all regressive - to build well fields, which is actually empty talk.

When this reform is completed, it will actually be regarded as the real lifting of the hard soil that was pressing on the sprouting capital in southern Jiangsu.

The resulting reform of industrial and commercial taxation, the ordering of cotton cloth required by the imperial court with silver currency reversely promoted the development of handicraft industry, the abolition of feudal corvee in many industries and commerce, and the reform of the official system of the silk weaving industry.

Take Bu Jie from Songjiang Mansion as an example.

The previous dynasty had to collect cotton cloth first, and then send people to serve as corvees to send the cotton cloth to the capital.There will be another deduction in the capital, and another deduction on the way, and the grassroots will have the decision-making power to dispatch labor, plus the preferential exemption for students and officials from the imperial examination... Theoretically, the government can also pay for it later, and spend money to hire labor .But in fact, firstly, there is no money, and secondly, the money given to him is stupid.

Therefore, in theory, it seems fair to share the income between the rich and the poor, and to collect grain at the same time.

But what is fair in theory, at the grassroots level, is the carnival of subordinate staff.

Liu Yu changed his previous method, and according to the needs of the court, the Songjiang Mansion only expropriated 17 bolts of cloth a year.

Not much.

After the reform of the tax system, the tax was collected, the order was placed directly, the textile factory produced, the goods were inspected and shipped, and the goods were shipped north to Tianjin, and the delivery was completed.

It seems very simple, but without many preparations in front, it is really impossible to do it.A single Java cotton without Nanyang plantations can get stuck at the first step.

This change, as well as overseas trade, Nanyang Songjiang cloth driving out Indian Surat cloth, European smuggling, etc., greatly promoted the development of industry and commerce.

At the same time, because of the large steam-age factories, the textile industry has not yet been affected.

Therefore, at this time, for small producers and small handicraftsmen, they are in a stage of "all the former evils have been eliminated, and the latter evils have not yet come".

Basically, it can be regarded as the golden age of Dashun petty bourgeoisie in southern Jiangsu.

It even created the beautiful fantasy legends of batch after batch of small producers who "get rich through labor, complete the class leap, from mechanics to machine owners".

Of course, the reform is only a small part now, and the textile industry is only a microcosm of many reforms.

Such rumors are thrown out at this time because these small producers feel that their lives have improved and their burdens have been relieved, but their own anxiety makes them full of panic about everything in the past.

And such rumors and anxiety will inevitably be magnified in the debate on the reform of the salt administration.

Because, under the lure of Liu Yu, the group of people who used Huainan Yanhu as a cover on the opposite side could come up with nothing more than two solutions.

keep.

reactionary.

Both of these will meet extreme opposition from these small producers, causing great panic.

Conservation is in the interests of those salt merchants.

That is to maintain the current state, do not toss.

Neither reclamation.

Nor will it be divided into households again.

Merchants can still enter the market and control Yanhu.

And this kind of conservative policy, those petty citizens who are disturbed by the rumors are also strongly opposed.

Because they oppose the exploitation of commercial capital by merchants and the control of big capital, just as they oppose the exploitation of them by subcontractors.

And reaction is the only way those Confucian scholars who really have ideals can come up with.

For example, Wang Gen, the founder of the Taizhou School and a disciple of Wang Yangming, conceived of this point.After all, he was born as a private salt dealer, so he has a good understanding of the situation in salt households.

The so-called "cracking the soil to seal the border is the work of the king; equally dividing the grass and sloping the soil is also a matter of cracking the soil."There is a book on the top, a ticket on the bottom, a picture on the top, and a business at the bottom... Although it has been thousands of years, there is no confusion anymore]

In essence, it is still the set of son inheriting his father's business and having a fixed identity.

And this is extremely opposed by the ordinary citizens of Jiangsu.

The appeal of small producers is anti-blockade and anti-capitalism.

If the big factory system and big capital continue to erode their interests, they will think about retreating.

But now that Jiangsu is undergoing reforms, it is the time when all things are flourishing, and the whip of big factories and big capital that has been lashed at Yanhu is temporarily out of reach, so they are naturally afraid of the fixed identity.

In short, the mentality of small producers is very interesting: they want the benefits of commodity economy development and markets, but want to get rid of all the disadvantages of capitalist development.

I have been trying to imagine the development of capitalism as an ideal pattern without a dark side.

As for Dashun's current situation, the "dark side" of these small industries such as the textile industry has not been revealed, so they are more worried about the evil dragons of the past.

There is no predictable panic about the bloodthirsty demons of the future.

The fixed identity of salt households is a system that may fall on every small producer.

What's more, after the waste salt is reclaimed, cotton is grown, which is an urgently needed raw material for small producers in the textile industry.

Liu Yu hopes that through the chaos of the salt reform this time, and through the disputes between the two sides, the deep-rooted thought of "reactionary retreat if you can't find a way" will be wiped out as much as possible in Jiangsu.

In other words, it solves the weird situation that began in the middle of the Ming Dynasty, "Many people found that the old ruling order could no longer be governed as usual, but after trying a round, they all chose to be reactionary and retreat".

At least some intellectuals, through this debate, realized that going back could not solve the problem.In addition to going backwards, there is a way to go forward that seems to really work.

It was Liu Yu who forcibly tied the Yanhu issue to the reactionary retreat.In other words, he forcibly established the Yanhu issue as a "reactionary totem pole."

Because this is one of the few reforms that he can achieve immediate results, the emperor is satisfied with the salt tax and the control of salt production, and the common people think that the price of salt has been reduced.

Creation out of nothing will not affect old industries such as glass manufacturing at all. It is not a reform, nor will it cause controversy. New things painted on white paper are not the same thing as altering old paintings.

Sometimes, the reform itself is not important, but what is important is the debate caused by the reform.

…………

Liu Yu, the behind-the-scenes instigator of all this, was leisurely visiting the Fan Wenzheng Temple in the county town that had temporarily restored calm but was brewing a bigger dispute, accompanied by some local prominent families.

The Mao family, the Jiang family, etc., the local rich families, followed suit.

With the help of Fan Wenzheng's famous saying, "worry about the world's worries first, and enjoy the world's joys later", after the imperial court governed the Huaihe River and cut off the threat of flood discharge from Hongze Lake, these local tycoons finally asked Liu Yu tentatively. Find out how to solve the grass problem.

(End of this chapter)