Char pondered for a moment, then began to speak slowly.

"The relations of production, you can understand in several aspects, one is who owns all the means of producing food.

This means of production is land, hoes, seedlings, fertilizers, sickles, and everything else needed for farming.

The second is the position of those who produce food and those who own it, and who ultimately distributes it.

The answers to these questions must ultimately be told from these points.

And as long as you understand these things, you can have a clearer understanding of where the river formed by human civilization should eventually flow. ”

Arthur nodded, and Alicia tilted her head and began to listen quietly.

We can take the Roman Empire as an example, and its transition from slavery to feudalism can be used as an example and reference.

Rome didn't start with slavery.

The earliest Rome was originally just a city on the Italian peninsula. For the next hundred years, the Romans fought against the Etruscans.

At that time, their economic model was a small-scale peasant economy, an economy in which individual families were the unit of production and livelihood.

By 510 BC, the Etruscan kings were expelled, and Rome evolved into an aristocratic republic of city-states, not unlike the earlier Greek aristocratic republics.

The ensuing Rome, on the one hand, was engaged in a struggle for the power of the nobility among the commoners, and on the other hand, it began to expand externally for hundreds of years.

During this period, the Romans completely conquered and assimilated the Etruscans, and defeated the Epirus Empire, which originated from Alexander's empire.

Then, from 264 BC, Rome, as an emerging power in the Mediterranean, began a century-long war with Carthage, an unprecedented maritime merchant empire.

This series of battles was the Punic War.

Punic derives from the Roman name for Carthage, Punici.

Ethnically, it was also a decisive battle between the descendants of the Aryans and the largest Semitic nation.

The war was fought intermittently for hundreds of years.

The Punic War not only established Rome's hegemony in the Mediterranean, but also profoundly changed Rome's social structure and mode of production.

Originally, Rome was a republic where nobles and commoners coexisted, and the contradictions between the two sides were harmonious and controllable.

The citizens of all the city-states had the right to vote, and it was through this system that the Romans gradually occupied and assimilated the Italian peninsula.

During this period, the main body of labor and warfare were the peasants of Rome, which can be called "militia".

But the war of expansion, which lasted for hundreds of years, greatly depleted the population of Rome.

In addition, during the period when the militia was fighting abroad, a lot of their own land and farms were barren and lost.

At about the same time, prisoners of war from war entered Rome in large numbers.

So, slowly, the social structure of Rome changed.

After the Second Punic War, Roman society was extremely polarized.

On the one hand, most of the dividends from expansion went to the aristocracy and the wealthy, who used slaves to farm for themselves.

The cost of agricultural products produced by slave owners through slaves was much lower than that of civilians.

When these produce are marketed, they are of better quality and at a lower price.

As a result, the agricultural products of the ancient Roman commoners who lived on the land could not be sold, and they went bankrupt one after another, and even the original land was annexed by the estates and farms of the great nobles.

The main economic system of ancient Rome also underwent great changes.

The lower Roman citizens were becoming more and more embarrassed, while the aristocracy was getting richer.

As a result, civic uprisings were frequent during that period.

When the means of production were not developed, the increase in productivity could only rely on manpower, and slavery hit the small peasant economy. ”

Arthur spoke, thoughtful.

"I seem to understand that in a small-scale peasant economy, the peasants have a certain amount of means of production, a certain degree of autonomy in production, and can control part of the products of labor.

And after being hit by slavery, the relations of production of the state became that the slave owners owned the means of production and completely occupied the slaves, and dominated all the products created by the slaves.

This is where the productive forces determine the relations of production. ”

Char continued with a satisfied chin on his head.

Although the early Roman Republic was only the size of a city-state, democracy for all could be achieved.

However, with the conquest of large areas of land by the Roman Republic, the territory continued to grow and it became a huge empire.

At that time, Rome stretched from the Danube River in the north, Africa in the south, the Pyrenees Peninsula in the west, the two river basins and the Asia Minor Peninsula in the east, and even the Mediterranean Sea became Rome's inner lake.

Such an unprecedentedly large empire also represents an increase in the difficulty of rule.

At the same time, because of the impact of slavery on the domestic small peasant economy, the gap between the rich and the poor gradually increased, and the contradiction between the commoners and the aristocracy became increasingly serious.

Moreover, the Senate at that time had a large number of people, which also led to a large number of factions within the Senate, and quarreling with each other would only lead to inefficiency.

The patriarchs of the clan class are focused on their own interests, do not solve the problems of the poor people, lose the will and authority of the people, and the state needs a stronger, more powerful, and efficient means of governance.

The prevalence of the small-scale peasant economy was the basis of the civic military system of the Roman Republic.

Roman citizen soldiers, mainly free people, played an important role in foreign expansion.

However, with the continuous development of slavery, the formation of large estates and the bankruptcy of small farmers, the citizen army system was not conscripted.

This had a direct impact on the strength and combat effectiveness of the Roman army.

Therefore, Marius carried out military reforms, which changed the original citizen soldier system to a conscription system, which also became the last straw that broke the camel's back.

The soldiers also changed their allegiance to the state to a certain general, and with the prominent personal charisma of the chief, the rule of the army was in the hands of the Führer, and the Senate lost control of the army.

In 46 BC, Caesar was given the power of dictatorship appointed to the nursing home for 10 years. And in 44 BC he was granted the right to be dictator for life.

Caesar's dictatorship also officially marked the end of the era of "equality" and the existence of a republic. ”

"This is the economic base that determines the superstructure." Alicia spoke.

Char smiled, "You're still as smart as ever. ”

After a pause, Char continued.

Based on this logic, we can move on.

In slave societies, slave owners often did not treat slaves as human beings, but as "talking tools".

Slaves are a bulk "commodity" second only to livestock, and they are bought and sold as commodities in enclosures, which can be returned and exchanged, and claims, and the master has the power to kill his slaves.

Although slavery was developed in Rome, slave owners allocated an average of a dozen slaves to dozens of hectares of land in order to extremize the slaves, and it can be said that labor occupied all the time of the slaves except for sleeping.

Slaves were provided with minimal and inferior food and clothing, lived in cages, and every day slaves died of starvation, and were abandoned as if they were old and sick.

Because of the cost of caring for them, it is not as affordable as buying another slave directly.

The revolt of the slaves who had been subjected to inhuman torture for a long time had already been brewing, and they were like a powder keg, and only one person who could lead them was needed for the rebellion to erupt in flames.

Although the slave relations of production promoted the development of production for a certain period of time and within a certain limit, the place for the increase of productive forces was relatively narrow after all.

Rome's prosperity was undoubtedly based on the exploitation of slaves, but its decline was also due to slavery.

At the end of the slave society, the contradiction between the slave production relations and the productive forces gradually sharpened, and increasingly became a shackle to the development of the productive forces.

The extremely cruel economic exploitation and political oppression of slaves by slave owners caused the premature death of a large number of slaves and seriously destroyed the most basic productive forces of slave society.

Living slaves also have no interest in labor, and rebel against the exploitation and oppression of slave owners by passively sabotaging labor and destroying production tools.

In order to prevent slaves from destroying their tools, slave owners made bulky tools for slaves to use.

At the same time, the freedmen in the slave society were responsible for all military service and tax obligations.

As a result of the plundering and frequent wars of the exploiting classes, most of them fell into poverty, bankruptcy, or even slavery, which led to the depletion of the military and financial resources of the slave states.

Prisoners of war were the main source of slaves, and since the slave countries had depleted their military resources, the way to plunder slaves through war was blocked.

A large number of slaves were not properly replenished, which fundamentally dismantled the foundations of slavery.

So the Roman world was in a desperate situation.

Slavery was no longer economically possible, while the labor of free men was morally despised.

The former is no longer the basic form of social production.

The latter is not yet able to become in this form. Only a complete revolution can get out of this desperate situation. ”

"The sharpening of the contradictions between the relations of production and the productive forces will inevitably greatly aggravate the class contradictions and class struggles in society."

Hearing this, Arthur seemed to realize something, and his face gradually became solemn, and he thought of the current Britannia.

At this moment, Britannia seems to be gradually stepping into this abyss.

The workers were better off than the slaves, but only better off than the slaves......

Char's eyes flickered as she continued.

"At the end of the slave society, as the exploitation of the slave-owning class became more brutal, the slaves' resistance and struggle were unprecedentedly high, and the flames of slave revolt became more and more vigorous.

The Spartacus Revolt that broke out in Rome in 73 BC was the largest slave revolutionary war in history.

The rebel army numbered about 120,000 men, and the struggle lasted for three years.

The magnificent slave uprising dealt a heavy blow to the reactionary rule of the slave-owning class and played a decisive role in the destruction of the slave system.

On the one hand, in the 1st-2nd centuries AD, ploughs with wheels appeared in Greece and northern Italy.

This plough is pulled by two oxen, and is highly productive, with two pairs of these ploughs and a ploughman, plus six agricultural workers, it is possible to complete the entire cultivation of a farm of 200 yogs.

In the northern part of Gaul, the introduction of threshing machines and the use of threshing skids in the field have reduced losses during harvesting and threshing and increased production efficiency.

During this period, the system of plant rotation and fallow was already implemented in agriculture, and many areas could achieve double cropping in one year.

Some estates use the method of growing legumes or green manure to restore the fertility of the soil. Intensive cultivation has become a major feature of agricultural production.

The agricultural economy of the early Roman Empire developed further due to improved farming tools and improved farming techniques.

This is reflected in the development of the agricultural economy in the provinces. The area of cultivated land in the provinces has increased.

In Egypt and North Africa, irrigation systems have been improved and arable land has been expanded.

The working people of Egypt built weirs and canals, and used water tanks and water wheels to transform patches of semi-desert land into fertile fields for growing grains.

Tunisia and Algeria were originally just dry savannahs, but they were also cultivated into fertile land, with fruitful vineyards, olive groves and abundant wheat cereals.

The agricultural production relations in these provinces were dominated by free and semi-free peasant tenants, and the proportion of slave labor was small.

However, contrary to the prosperity of the agricultural economy in the provinces, the agriculture of Italy itself was weakened because it was still a slave economy.

This period did not take place as large-scale slave revolts as in the 2nd and 1st centuries BC.

However, slaves rebelled against forced labor, destroyed tools, sabotage, fled, and even killed their masters, and staged small-scale uprisings.

Successive emperors repeatedly issued orders to intensify repression, but the hatred and hatred of slave owners among slaves continued to grow.

There was a popular proverb in Rome at the time: "There are as many enemies as there are slaves", which fully illustrates the threat of slave resistance to slave owners.

In addition, the large import of grain from other provinces and the reduction of slave sources also accelerated the decline of Italian agriculture.

The general decline of agriculture, handicrafts and commerce, the large estates of slave owners had become unprofitable.

Under the blow of the slave revolt, some slave owners were forced to change their exploitative methods, and they divided the large estates into many small plots of land and rented them to freed slaves, and these freed slaves who rented the land of the slave owners were called subordinate farmers. ”

"Now small-scale farming is the only profitable form of farming." Char said.

"One by one, the grange was divided into small plots of land, which were mainly leased to the subordinate farmers, who paid a certain amount of money each year, attached to the land, and could be sold with that land.

Although they were not slaves, they were not considered freemen, they were the predecessors of medieval serfs. "The subordinate peasant system is the germ of feudal production relations."

Arthur lost his mind and muttered, "Once again, the productive forces determine the relations of production. ”

He was a little shocked, and as Char narrated, he felt as if he had seen a line that really existed, but was difficult to see, from the source of human history to the future......

(End of chapter)