Chapter 196 The economic base determines the superstructure

Releasing water is also a science.

He Xi is obviously not too shrewd in this science.

In other words, the merchants of the Ming Dynasty are all monkey spirits. There was a little bit of a stir in the market, and there was an immediate reaction.

Just because they lack some knowledge of finance doesn't mean they're stupid. In particular, many of these people were raised by He Xi, and they are inextricably linked with He Xi's faction and even the entire imperial court.

In this case, it is difficult for He Xi to hide many of his actions.

Even if many people agree with He Xi in terms of political stance, they do not intend to go against He Xi. But the reaction is in action, instinctively protecting their property. As a result, He Xi had to find that his secret issuance of money would cause the gap between the rich and the poor to widen, not to mention, and even damage the credit of the imperial court, making some financial resources more and more powerful.

The reason why this is the case is also a problem that He Xi himself said.

He Xi has put a lot of effort into commercial taxation.

Customs duties, corporate business tax, consolidated various excise taxes. This is the only way to achieve a fiscal income of more than 10 million yuan. He Xi didn't dare to say that his taxation was completely reasonable, after all, the proper benefits of the economy also required wisdom.

However, He Xi knew that it was impossible to make up for the gap in military spending by raising taxes. Additional means must be used.

The problem is to get enough money out of these factory owners, or merchants. It's not as simple as it is for homesteaders.

There are a group of people behind these people, after all, the big businessmen have much more manpower and material resources in their hands than the yeoman farmers. Similarly, the merchant was more flexible than the landlord. The landlords were able to pass on the burden to their tenants in the face of forced taxes imposed by the imperial court.

And how can these people not know to pass on?

Although the Beijing Imperial Court has a million soldiers, in this matter, force can only be used as a background and cannot be easily moved. If you move, the gains outweigh the losses.

So what to do?

At this moment, He Xi has to admit that the economic base determines the superstructure.

In the face of the main body of yeoman farmers, a feudal dynasty is very suitable, even appropriate. In the same way, any sane emperor knows that the foundation of the dynasty lies in the yeoman farmers and the people at the bottom, so he maintains the lives of the people at the bottom. It is inevitable to suppress the intermediate environment.

The one who can do this is Mingjun.

The capitalist system, the big merchants, the big factory owners, in the eyes of the feudal regime, are nothing more than one of countless intermediate links. And it is the most unstable. Naturally, it is under a state of repression.

And the emperor, or the royal family, is impossible to manage such a large empire alone, he must have a helper, and this helper is also selected through various selections, military nobles, relatives, powerful families, scholars, and finally civil officials and bureaucrats.

This is also the political structure of the Ming Dynasty, which has no threat to the imperial power and is the most ideal state for the imperial power to rule. It's just that everything in the world is in flux, and nothing is eternal. These scholars and bureaucrats became the emperor's greatest opponents.

It's just that these bureaucrats themselves obey the ruling ideology of the imperial court, and naturally suppress the rise of other forces in various aspects.

This may be another reason why there was no industrial revolution in ancient China.

And now the situation has changed.

When the dynasty paid taxes, it was based on factories, industry and commerce. Originally, the feudal dynasty did not work in collecting taxes. It has to change.

If it weren't for this war, it might have been able to change gradually. However, He Xi knew that the cost of pacifying the war in the world was an astronomical amount, and He Xi expected that it would be at least 100 million yuan. It looks like a lot, but in fact it is not much, it is nothing more than five years of taxation on the part of Beijing, and if it occupies the world, it will only be available in two or three years.

In He Xi's view, this is just the bottom line.

If you want to raise funds for the war, you can't naturally be so small, and 300 million yuan is probably an appropriate figure.

Such a number, can't you take it out below? In He Xi's opinion, it can be taken out. Originally, He Xi wanted to use the method of printing money to make this money, but he basically calculated it, and now he is producing

The force and scale of production, as well as the scope of banknote circulation under the jurisdiction of Nanjing, are able to afford such over-issuance.

After all, before, it wasn't nothing. It's just that the numbers are too big. It will cause panic.

After all, the market has emotions, and if simple calculations can replace market sentiment, then economics will only retain the mathematical part.

So how do you make so much money? Even if you issue bonds, you have to buy them.

The best way is to get the people below to voluntarily pay the tax.

It's ridiculous to say, but this is a fact that He Xi faces.

Without him, many economic crimes in these years were not crimes, and at the beginning, He Xi also wanted to use the method of auditing to ensure the collection of taxes. But after a long time, the economic prosperity increased, even if there were more than 10,000 officials in Shuntianfu, these officials should be checked one by one, these people don't have to do anything else, just the accounts in their hands are enough for them to find out that they are old.

Moreover, if the tax standard is set rigidly, most of the enterprises below will die, and it will become a carnival of a small number of enterprises with tax privileges, and the tax standard will be set very carefully, and the imperial court will not have enough manpower and material resources.

After all, in an agrarian society, scattered agricultural production areas and yeoman farmers in various places could not unite against a powerful imperial court. The imperial court could use coercion to requisition materials and production surpluses from all over the country. There is no need to explain anything to the people. Look at the book

And the only way for the people to resist is to revolt, and that is to revolt.

So that's how the dynastic periodic law came about, the upper layer is squeezed unlimitedly, and the lower level has no other possibility of dialogue, so they can only use such a decisive means to pull the upper layer to hell together, and then open up a new dynasty on the ruins, and have another round.

But when it comes to industrial society, it's different.

The advanced productive forces of the agrarian society are in the farmland, in the homesteaders. And the advanced productive forces of the industrial society, in the factory. It is not possible to continue to divide the factory into individual workers. The productivity of a single worker cannot represent the advanced productive forces. This new production mode of the factory is the advanced productive force.

If the imperial court wanted to obtain wealth or taxes from the advanced productive forces, it had to deal with not scattered and weak yeoman farmers, but capitalists and factory owners. They are all powerful.

This model is closer to the manor economy of the Eastern Jin Dynasty and the Northern and Southern Dynasties, and the big families.

Of course, this is talking about the relationship between the court and them, and the manor economy is still very different from the factory. But the court of the Sima family was not strong in the face of the families in various places, and the same problem was also here in the court in Beijing.

Coercion will not work, then the only way to do this is to use more artistic means, to get these people to voluntarily hand over the money.

But there is a problem here, and that is the issue of legal system.

Why is ideology the most important?

Human beings are social animals, so there must be rules, and if there are no rules, it is the law of the jungle that whoever is strong is justified. And if you want others to obey a set of rules, you must have a "reason." And this truth is ideology.

He Xi had always avoided ideology, and he also avoided the discussion of the Son of Heaven in Confucianism, that is, he did not want to stimulate the conservative school of Confucianism. At the same time, I don't want to stimulate Zhu Xiongying.

Because Zhu Xiongying's imperial power comes from Confucianism's interpretation of the Son of Heaven.

Respect for heaven and ancestor, these four words have exhausted the source of the emperor's power.

Heaven's Destiny is also. It shows that the emperor inherited the mandate of heaven and is the son of heaven, similar to the Japanese saying that the gods of the world. Fazu, this also says, the world, the ancestors of the world. The emperor's power also derives from his own bloodline.

This world is the world of our ancestors.

This speaks of the two sources of the emperor's power, and also gives the sources used by Confucianism to limit the emperor's power, the interpretation of the will of heaven is the power of Confucianism, and the interpretation of the ancestral system is also the power of Confucianism. This creates a check and balance of power.

Among them, there has never been the status of a businessman.

And now the emperor wants to make the merchants, factory owners, and capitalists pay extra money? There has to be a saying.

It's as if now, the dispute between the north and the south is a dispute between orthodoxy. But businessmen don't care about Orthodoxy. In the eyes of many people, it is nothing more than two brothers fighting for home

Production, you fight for the property, let us go bankrupt? What is the rationale for this?