I rode and slashed unparalleled in the Three Kingdoms

Chapter 385 Aristocratic Family and the Powerful

How to deal with these powerful families is something Su Yao has been constantly thinking about.

At the beginning, relying on his understanding of future generations, Su Yao, who was well aware of the countless disastrous consequences that the growth and expansion of aristocratic families had brought to the country, had an innate aversion to them.

Therefore, whenever he had the chance, he would uproot and eliminate the powerful families and noble leaders.

For this reason, he didn't care even if it created a great bad reputation for himself and prevented those children from prominent families from recruiting him.

However, after observing along the way through Jizhou and Youzhou, Su Yao discovered that his understanding of these people was gradually deepening.

First of all, as the main forces that make up today's society, the powerful and the aristocratic families are two different concepts, clearly distinguished from each other.

Aristocratic families, also known as noble families, have distinguished family backgrounds and wealth passed down from generation to generation; more importantly, because they have the privilege of holding official positions, these high-ranking aristocratic families often have true moral role models and people of outstanding talents.

For example, Lu Zhi, Zhong Yao, Xun Yu and others whom he had met were all like this. Even the current Sima family, after secretly observing them, he found that the personal character of the family members was absolutely impeccable.

The reason is very simple. In addition to the guidance of social atmosphere, it is the reality of official struggle under the official-centered system.

Unless you have great power, you can ignore public opinion and comments.

Otherwise, in the political struggle, if one does not have a good reputation to rely on, it will be easy for opponents to find a handle on him, knock him down to a lower class, and his family inheritance will be cut off.

Therefore, these aristocratic families attach great importance to moral education. Under the watchful eyes of countless people, they must cherish their reputation. Therefore, it is an indisputable fact that most of the world's talents in this era come from aristocratic families.

The powerful and wealthy, on the other hand, are a completely different story.

These people either fell into low social classes due to failure in officialdom struggles and had to settle down in the local areas, or they came from humble backgrounds but were bold and daring, and took advantage of the opportunities of the times to amass a large amount of land, wealth and population through various channels and means.

But these powerful people have one thing in common, that is, they have no political power.

Since they cannot enter officialdom and do not need to care about reputation, they can only focus on local expansion. These people tend to act more extravagantly and lawlessly.

This is the nature of the times.

Compared with the gladiatorial arena in Bingzhou where the Hu and Han fought each other, the influence of the aristocratic families and powerful people in Jizhou and Youzhou had already penetrated into every aspect of the entire society.

Every region and every county is controlled by several prominent families or powerful people, and they have become an integral part of the local economy.

They lived together in clans and built manors and forts.

The children of these big families lived centered on the manor, with the patriarch as their leader, and gave up their personal rights and freedoms in exchange for intensive planting and handicraft production with clear division of labor.

At the same time, they worked as a family unit, helped each other for mutual benefit, carried out unified elementary education and subsidized the education of their children.

Even because of their concentration of power, when the government finances collapsed and were unable to carry out infrastructure construction, they took the initiative to take over local infrastructure work, such as repairing bridges, paving roads, and building water conservancy facilities.

It can be said that in the late Eastern Han Dynasty, when natural disasters and wars were constant, the manor economy of the aristocratic families dealt a dimensionality reduction blow to the small peasant economy of ordinary people, crushing it to the point of leaving nothing behind.

The ordinary people's small peasant economy, which was based on individual family units, was decentralized, with men farming and women weaving and being self-sufficient, was certainly not restricted by anyone in peaceful years and they lived an idyllic ideal life.

However, its low productivity and weak risk resistance led to the bankruptcy of a large number of self-employed farmers during natural disasters and man-made disasters.

These people became refugees, and in order to survive, they had only two choices: either raise the banner of rebellion or rely on powerful families.

After several changes, today the rich have fields stretching for miles, while the poor have no place to stand.

After seeing all this, Su Yao gradually gained a deeper understanding of the dry saying in class that the economic base determines the superstructure.

No wonder some people say that the Three Kingdoms is the stage for the aristocratic family.

Behind the seemingly legendary story of heroes emerging in large numbers and one taking over as the next, is actually a stage where major families compete with each other.

Behind almost every well-known strategist is the interest of a local aristocratic family.

In this era, it is simply impossible to cut them off.

The more chaotic the times, the more obvious the advantages of manor economy become.

Just as the landlord class was eventually crushed by the capitalists' factories with billowing smoke, in this era, the small peasant economy cannot beat the manor economy of the aristocratic families. It is for this reason that the wheel of history will eventually roll forward.

The aristocratic families dominated the development of the era based on the manor economy, and only gradually disintegrated during the Tang and Song dynasties.

The inheritance of their clan-based and patriarchal social system still has a widespread influence in the southern region today, and only large-scale industrialization can eliminate it.

Therefore, no matter how he killed before, he was just replacing one force with another.

The advanced will always replace the backward.

There will always be other families to fill the vacant power vacuum.

What's more, for those families who are good at management and also take good care of their reputation.

The people trust them more than the government.

Outside the Tian family manor that day, the scene of the people closely united around Tian gave Su Yao a deep shock.

Those people firmly believe that they can live a better and more stable life there.

And I, an outsider flying the flag of the imperial court, am the destabilizing factor that will bring them suffering.

This is what the people want.

"."Su Yao closed his eyes and immersed himself in deep thought.

So, compromise?
Just close your eyes and don't think about this issue.

The most rational approach is obviously to continue pushing forward quickly, win over a few obedient families, and throw all the difficult problems to them to solve.

As long as enough rights and interests are given up, these people will find ways to solve the problems themselves.

But
If he gave up so easily, he would not be Su Yao.

"Pinggang and Liaodong are perfect for my experimental fields."

Su Yao touched his chin and thought about his next goal.

Now I have rights, land, and even people.

The most important thing is that he has the experience and lessons summarized by his ancestors over thousands of years.

As long as it is not a problem with the mechanism, he has the confidence to challenge it.

If you want to control the influence of aristocratic families and powerful people, you must start from the basics.

First, it is necessary to break the monopoly of political privileges by aristocratic families.

The second is to improve productivity, release the means of production, and truly benefit the people.

While ensuring peace, change the economic base as much as possible to allow small farmers to break away from personal dependence on the powerful families, get out of the manor economy, and survive independently, thus breaking the economic privileges of both.

Only in this way can this problem be truly solved.

Just thinking about it makes me feel extremely troubled.

This cannot be achieved through military victory alone.

However, it is indeed challenging and worth trying.

After all, only when such conditions are met can it be considered a perfect clearance.

"Let me see how much freedom you have."

(End of this chapter)