When later generations mentioned the prosperous commodity economy of the Song and Ming dynasties, especially when they mentioned the prosperous commodity economy of the Ming Dynasty, they were full of praise for the germination of capitalism mentioned in the textbooks. [Full text reading]

Whenever many modern people mention the budding capitalism of the Ming Dynasty, they talk about it with an attitude of appreciation, pride, or regret.

For Wang Shuhui, capitalism is indeed a more progressive social system than feudalism. However, this is only from a sociological point of view. If we really want to discuss this issue from the perspective of people who are in the midst of social change, the germination of capitalism is definitely a bloody process.

If you had the opportunity to ask the British, who had gone from peasants to urban proletarians in the sheep cannibalism, and whether the black Americans, who had gone from slaves on the plantations of the South to workers in the factories of the North through the Civil War, were better off being peasants and serfs, or being exploited by the capitalists in the factories in the dark, the answers of these people would have surprised many modern people.

Of course, these people have become the purest victims and expendables of the primitive accumulation of capitalism. If you want to ask them about their attitude, there is no chance that there is even the slightest thing.

In fact, those who really read their middle and high school political textbooks can find the answer from the sweatshops in the southern part of modern China if they have a keen eye.

Capitalism, after hundreds of years of accumulation, development and perfection, is now showing a peaceful and compassionate face. But when it first appeared in the world, it was countless times more hideous than all the devils that human beings could imagine.

In modern China, many people criticize the Soviet Union and China for not being kind enough to the people in the process of industrialization, but the reality is that they have not thought about how cruel and tragic the industrialization process under the capitalist system is.

At present, those developed countries that shout beautiful slogans and criticize the human rights and environmental problems of developing countries, in fact, the seemingly wonderful life they enjoy is absolutely based on the bones of their own ancestors and countless people in colonial countries such as Asia, Africa and Latin America.

"Praise the achievements of the devil and believe in the righteousness of the devil." There is probably nothing more ridiculous and funny in the world than this situation.

Wang Shuhui knew that the fundamental reason that determined the development of society and led to the change of dynasty must be the outbreak of class contradictions. But at the same time, Wang Shuhui felt that the direct cause of the outbreak of class contradictions was basically economic problems.

When thinking about the change of dynasties in Chinese history, Wang Shuhui found that economic crises are not only under capitalism. Under capitalism, there is the economic crisis of capitalism. Under feudalism, there was an economic crisis of feudalism.

In the final analysis, the root of all problems is economic. He believed that the demise of a feudal dynasty had to go through such a process: first there was an economic crisis, and then there was an intensification of class contradictions. There was the intensification of class contradictions, and then there was the reshuffle of feudal dynasties.

Wang Shuhui looked at the demise of the Ming Dynasty from the perspective of later generations, and felt that the prosperous commodity economy in the middle and late Ming Dynasty was not necessarily beneficial to the Ming Dynasty itself. He argues that the booming commodity economy, to some extent, actually contributed to the demise of the Ming Dynasty.

And in Wang Shuhui's eyes, the budding capitalism in the last years of the Ming Dynasty was not something capitalist in the true sense. To some extent, that thing, which is said to be capitalist, is actually something about the same as feudalism, or bureaucratic capitalism with a layer of capitalist skin.

Unlike capitalism in the pure sense, in the last years of the Ming Dynasty or until modern China, because of the deep-rooted feudal ideology of power, in China's economic structure, such a backward thing as bureaucratic capitalism has always existed.

In the environment of the Ming Dynasty, the people engaged in commercial and trade activities were 100% of the big landlords and big bureaucrats. If one thinks that the backward classes will give birth to an advanced system, this is a completely unscientific delusion.

In the original time and space where there was no Wang Shuhui and no Baath Party, the fall of the Ming Dynasty began with Zhang Juzheng's reforms.

Without mentioning Zhang Juzheng's other policies, it was simply a matter of evaluating Zhang Juzheng's whip law, and the process of abolishing taxes in kind and implementing monetary taxes actually objectively further promoted the bankruptcy of the peasants in the Ming Dynasty and the concentration of land throughout the country.

As we all know, because Zhang Juzheng abolished the tax in kind and implemented the policy of monetary tax, the peasants, who account for the vast majority of Chinese society, must hand over silver, a precious metal currency, to the state in the process of paying taxes. But the problem was that the peasants did not have silver in their hands, and the silver was basically in the hands of the landlords.

Under these circumstances, the peasants, who were already deeply exploited by the landlords' economy, had to accept further exploitation by the landlords who controlled the economy and engaged in commercial activities.

Exploited by the landlords, during the autumn harvest, the grain was sold to the landlords at a low price in exchange for silver to pay taxes, and then in the process of production and life, they had to borrow usury from the landlords. After the double exploitation of the landlords who held the silver and the merchants from the landlord class, a large number of peasants began to go bankrupt under Zhang Juzheng's whip law.

The landlord class constantly made super-profits by exploiting the peasants through the silver in their hands and the commercial sweaters in their hands. However, it is not for nothing that these people are called the landlord class, and they do not invest the profits obtained by economic and political means into the process of social production.

The landlords continued to swallow up the land of the peasants, so that the land of the entire Ming Dynasty was highly concentrated, and at the same time, they turned those silver coins into silver winter melons and silver watermelons and put them in the cellars to grow hair.

This kind of action of the landlords is absolutely harmful to both the peasants and the state.

The landlords were able to become big landlords because they and their children were able to pass the imperial examination to become officials. Once they became officials of the Ming Dynasty, they were exempt from state taxes by virtue of their political status. That is, the more land these bureaucratic landlords held, the less revenue the state would have.

The landlords evaded taxes and concentrated land without using the funds to expand production, which led to a very fatal problem, and the peasants who went bankrupt due to land annexation in large numbers met the labor needs of various workshops in the economically developed Jiangnan region of the Ming Dynasty, because there were not enough jobs and became a large number of displaced people who could not survive.

Once bankrupt peasants, who have no land, no work, and nothing, appear in large numbers in society, then the outbreak of class contradictions will become an inevitable result.

When the emperor, who represented the interests of the state, could not confront the bureaucracy that represented the vested interests, when a large amount of land was concentrated in the hands of the bureaucracy representing the vested interests, and when the government finances went bankrupt amid the clamor of the sanctimonious civil officials who "cannot compete with the people for profit", the Ming Dynasty had already entered the countdown stage

Space-Time Gate 1619

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Chapter 294 The Economic Crisis of the Ming Dynasty 1