Chapter 3 Troubled Times Descend Section 15 The Scourge of the Yellow Turban

In February of the seventh year of Guanghe, the Yellow Turban Uprising, and the world shook.

At that time, it was a time when the green and yellow were not harvested, the old grain of the people had been eaten, and the new grain had not yet been harvested, and the yellow scarves were together, and for a time, millions of hungry people wrapped their heads in yellow cloth and shouted out: "The sky is dead, the yellow sky should stand", and the momentum poured towards the counties like a tide.

Zhang Jiao's Yellow Turban disciples attacked villages and towns everywhere, burning them when they encountered them and robbing them when they encountered property. Immediately, this large-scale "uprising" turned into a large-scale armed robbery, just like the peasant uprisings of all dynasties.

As the leader of the Yellow Turban disciples, Zhang Jiao, and his two younger brothers, Zhang Bao and Zhang Liang, only knew how to draw charms and chant spells, spray water to cure diseases, and use magic or hypnotism to attract believers and push the court and its government. And how could the governments at all levels of the Han Dynasty be so bad at the time of the emperors of An, Shun, Huan, and Ling? What kind of government should be used to replace the government of the late Eastern Han Dynasty? What are the other reasons for the suffering of the common people besides the exorbitant taxation? What measures should be taken to eradicate the root causes of the economic problems of the time? These big questions are not something that Zhang Jiao and others can answer, nor can they think of it.

They, like the leaders of the peasant revolutions that followed, were only very dissatisfied with the status quo and acted on impulse to "revolution for the sake of revolution" and "destroy the status quo first"! From the beginning, they didn't want to open their eyes to see the world, but only closed their eyes and moved blindly in the dark, and finally they didn't fail?

It is undeniable that the rebellion of the Yellow Turbans also has a popular base, and the natural disasters for many years have caused the people to be displaced, and the government not only does not provide relief, but instead increases the tax burden, and the people are miserable, so they rebel. Natural and man-made disasters, how can they do it alone?

In China's history, there is a high correlation between social **** and natural disasters. China's history is first and foremost a social history, and the theory of "prosperous times" proves the universality of "troubled times".

Geographically speaking, China's unique geographical location and land area form the basis of China's unique natural disasters. China is located in the southeast of Eurasia, the world's largest continent, and borders the Pacific Ocean, the world's largest ocean. The monsoon climate is particularly pronounced due to the thermal differences between land and sea. China is one of the countries with the most significant monsoons in the world. The monsoon climate is mainly characterized by severe seasonal variations, concentrated precipitation, and relatively concentrated droughts. This climatic feature is unique in the world.

In addition, China's topography is high in the west and low in the east, with extreme ups and downs, and several major rivers run wildly from west to east; In addition, the precipitation is relatively concentrated in time, and the floods are particularly serious, and China is the most flooded country in the world. At the same time, China's topography is complex and multilateral, with high mountains and deep valleys, and rainfall on windward slopes, frontal rainfall, and debris flows are prone to disasters. Chinese can be said to be "residents on the slope", and on this incline of disasters, stable survival is often threatened, and life is often destroyed.

Especially in the early history of Chinese society, devastating natural disasters laid the natural foundation of society, and then natural disasters alternated between society and society, as well as between various societies.

"Destructive natural catastrophe" is the first foundation of "predatory society", and then the continuous replacement of natural catastrophe and social catastrophe and the **** cycle of plunder and anti-plunder.

Devastating natural disasters seriously threaten the survival of humanity and reduce human societies to the brink of death, poverty and fear; Because the catastrophe swept away the means of subsistence and destroyed the resources of survival, the plundering of limited resources of survival has become the main reason for the society. The bad relationship between man and nature is transformed into a bad relationship between people. The essence of Chinese society is the battle for survival.

The principle of the battle for survival is "you live or die", which is more brutal than the battle of doctrine and honor.

The battle for survival is a predatory social catastrophe; As cataclysms destroyed the "cost of exchange" and exacerbated the extreme shortage of subsistence necessities, costless expropriation and plunder completely replaced commercial exchange and competition, and the "expansive order" was destroyed in a predatory economy.

The battle for survival has dominated Chinese history.

The theme of Chinese civilization is survival rather than development; The trigger point of every **** is famine and extreme poverty, every time **** has to rebuild and survive, and every **** has to be "prepared" for how to survive in ****. This manifests itself in political history as dynastic cycles and the stillness or stagnation of civilizations.

There is nothing more perverse than the theory that **** (the so-called peasant war) promoted historical progress.

The peasant rebellion in China was 100% a disaster uprising, and this **** is one of the reasons for the stagnation of history, although we may sympathize with the "peasant revolution" in human sympathy. The desire to combine truth and ethics is a methodological advantage, but it can also be an epistemological disadvantage.

In his theory of the Asian mode of production, Marx believed that Chinese society has always been in the initial stage of human historical development, that is, the stage of semi-barbarism and semi-civilization. Here, there is no private ownership of land, only tribal co-ownership and orientalism-style state ownership of land. That is, the slave state of 10,000 people subject to the **** monarch (or the state).

The theoretical basis of Marx's theory is the "irrigation hypothesis". According to the "irrigation hypothesis", large-scale public utilities (construction of dams, canals, etc.) were the basis for making agriculture possible in the East, and in order to manage such large-scale undertakings, the organized power of the "**** monarch", that is, the "Asiatic state", was necessary.

According to Marx, what is the "Chinese Revolution"? It is a fundamental subversion of the "Confucian" society that has existed for thousands of years, and it is a subversion of the "Confucian" society that belongs to the category of non-civil society. The frequent outbreak of large-scale peasant wars is a major feature of Chinese history. Often, hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of impoverished peasant masses are mobilized into violent resistance movements every few decades. As is clear in the demographic charts of China's past history, such vast peasant wars break out periodically every 200 years. And this peasant war led to the collapse of the social order that existed at that time, respectively. At the same time, such riots often cost more than two-thirds of life, which is very clear in the demographic statistics of the early dynasties of all dynasties.

According to Marx, the fundamental cause of this violent peasant war lies in the inevitability of the "Confucian" social structure. The "Confucian" society, under the domination of the "bureaucrats-landlords", inevitably led to the fact that the landlords, who were less than 10 percent of the population, owned the majority of the land, while the peasants, who accounted for more than 90 percent of the population, had little land and no land. ”

Therefore, there has never been a shortage of traitors and traitors in Chinese society. Therefore, Chinese officials are always so cruel to their own compatriots, but they are always humble and subservient to the outside world, always consuming their strength in internal fighting, and powerless to resist when foreign enemies come.

Marx pointed out that in the Confucian society, which lasted for more than 2,000 years, although the impoverished peasant masses, who had lost their means of production (land), carried out a large-scale "organized" resistance movement to deal the final blow to the original dominating relations of the dynasties, in China this "uprising" never produced a fundamental subversion of the relations of production, that is, this uprising never intended to change the social system.

When we remove the veil of truth, we reveal the true meaning of the so-called uprising: the purpose of all peasant "uprisings" and struggles is only for the establishment of a new feudal dynasty based on the "irrigation hypothesis". The essence of these people's "revolutions" is that they want to dominate other people's property and replace other people's dynasties with their own dynasties. As for the land reform, it was nothing more than an organized and planned armed robbery. Its purpose is: "I will distribute your property, and you do not want me to suppress it." ”

In the economic activities that have emerged in human beings, it can be said that "robbery" has the lowest cost and the highest profit if the social cost is not calculated. This has led to a particular "commercial" preference for an aversion to economics and the pursuit of politics, and experience has taught that politics is the biggest economy and power is the biggest business.

The strongest in the plague, that is, the most ferocious and cunning, plundered the most resources for survival, so he is the Son of Heaven. He took power by force.

After the monopoly of limited resources, alignment with "power" is the only feasible and effective "rational choice". Individuals are attached to the most powerful groups for survival, especially to resource monopolists in the hope of obtaining "feuds" or rewards. This is already the common sense of "economics" in a troubled society.

This "dependent order" strengthens the power and legitimacy of the power ****. This is the reason why the more economically backward the region, the stronger the **** power.

Rebel leaders can easily find thugs at minimal cost among the desperately impoverished rebels, build up a team of looters and henchmen in the form of spoils, and defend their privileges through violence. In a rebel society of widespread abject poverty, the opportunity cost of joining this robbery is minimal, and survival is more likely to be assured. At the same time, the existence of competition strengthened the power of the chief.

The power struggle in the disaster society fully implements the principle of "life and death", and violence is the final settlement of the power struggle, because only violence can control the enemy to death.

These people take plunder as their goal in life, and killing as the foundation of their happiness. However, what they plundered and killed were their own brethren.

At the same time, this violence has also created the weakness and cowardice of the people, and bravery as a basic human nature has been completely buried. Surrendering to power has become a kind of "national consciousness", and this consciousness of obedience to the people is born in **** and also nurtures ****.

At this moment, I deeply feel that in order to break the fate of the Chinese nation and let the cycle of riots every 200 years under the irrigation hypothesis not come, we must adhere to the purpose of building a commercial country, let all laws, religions, and government systems break free from the shackles of agricultural culture, make China a commercial country, make commercial factors run through the whole thought, and let all changes of dynasty be carried out under the system of law, the Son of Heaven can change, and the law will still exist.

Only by changing the dynasty and no longer needing to carry out bloody massacres of our own compatriots, can the Chinese nation avoid future doom and become strong step by step.

What is a Yellow Turban? At this moment, the scene from the movie "Furong Town" came to my mind,* after which the mentally disturbed cadre struck a broken gong and shouted in a hoarse voice all over the street: "Revolution, movement".

The scene is just as it was then.