I weave fate in parallel time and space

Chapter 162 One, the thread that runs through history
Xiaya pondered for a moment, then began to speak slowly.

"Relationship of production, you can understand it as several aspects, one is who owns all the materials for food production.

The means of production are land, hoes, seedlings, fertilizers, sickles and all other items needed for farming.

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

The answers to your questions will 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, while Alicia tilted her head and began to listen quietly.

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

Rome didn't start with slavery.

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

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

By 510 BC, the Etruscan king was expelled, and Rome gradually evolved into an aristocratic republic composed of many city-states, no different from the earlier ancient Greek aristocratic republic.

Subsequently, Rome, on the one hand, was engaged in the internal struggle of the common people for the power of the nobility, and on the other hand, it began an external expansion that lasted for hundreds of years.

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

Then, from 264 BC, Rome, as a rising power in the Mediterranean region, began a century-old war with Carthage, an unprecedentedly developed maritime commercial empire.

This series of battles is the Punic Wars.

Punic, derived from the Roman name for Carthage, Punici (Punicus).

In terms of race, this is also the decisive battle between the descendants of the Aryans and the largest Semitic country.

The war went on and on 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 production methods. The prosperity of ancient Roman slavery began after the Punic War.

The original Rome was a republic where nobles and commoners coexisted, and the conflicts between the two sides were harmonious and controllable.

Citizens of all city-states have the right to vote. It is through this system that the Romans gradually occupied and assimilated the Italian peninsula.

During this period, the main body of labor and combat was Roman peasants, who could be called "militia".

However, the expansion war that lasted for hundreds of years greatly consumed the population of Rome.

In addition, during the wars of the militiamen, a large number of their own land and farms were deserted and lost money.

At almost the same time, a large number of prisoners of war looted from the war flowed into Rome.

So, slowly, the social structure of Rome changed.

After the Second Punic War, the polarization of Roman society was extremely serious.

On the one hand, most of the dividends brought about by expansion flowed into the aristocracy and the rich, and these people used a large number of slaves to farm for themselves.

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

After these agricultural products are on the market, the quality is better and the price is lower.

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

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

Those low-level Roman citizens became increasingly impoverished, while the nobles became richer and richer.

As a result, civic uprisings frequently occurred during that period.

When the means of production were underdeveloped, the improvement of productivity could only rely on manpower, and slavery impacted the small peasant economy. "

Arthur said thoughtfully.

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

After being impacted by slavery, the country's production relations became that the slave owner owned the means of production, completely occupied the slaves, and dominated all the products created by the slaves.

This is productivity determines the relations of production. "

Shaar nodded in satisfaction and continued.

"Although the early Roman Republic was only the size of a city-state, it could realize democracy for all.

However, with the continuous conquest of the Roman Republic, it conquered a large area of ​​land, and its territory continued to expand, and it has become a huge empire.

At that time, Rome started from the Danube River in the north, Africa in the south, the Pyrenees Peninsula in the west, Mesopotamia and the Asia Minor Peninsula in the east, and even the Mediterranean Sea became the inner lake of Rome.

Such an unprecedentedly large empire also represented an increase in the difficulty of ruling.

At the same time, because of the impact of slavery on the domestic small-scale peasant economy, the gap between the rich and the poor gradually increased, and the contradiction between the common people and the nobles became increasingly serious.

Moreover, there were a large number of people in the Senate at that time, which also led to the factions in the Senate, and quarreling with each other would only lead to low efficiency.

The elders of the ethnic class focused on their own interests, did not solve the problems of the poor, and lost popular support and authority. The country needed a more powerful and efficient means of governance.

The ubiquity of the small peasant economy was the basis of the civil military system of the Roman Republic.

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

However, with the continuous development of slavery, the formation of large estates and the increasingly serious bankruptcy of small farmers, the citizen military system has no soldiers to recruit.

This directly affected the soldiers and combat effectiveness of the Roman army.

Because of this, Marius carried out military reforms, which changed the original citizen military system to a recruitment system, which became the last straw that overwhelmed the camel.

The soldiers also changed their allegiance to the country to a certain general. Coupled with the leader's outstanding personal charm, the ruling power of the army was in the hands of the head of state, and the Senate lost control of the army.

In 46 BC, Caesar was granted the power of dictator for 10 years by the appointment of the Nursery.And in 44 BC won the right to be a lifelong dictator.

Caesar's dictatorship also officially marked that the era of "equality" has passed, and the republic exists in name only. "

"This is the economic base determines the superstructure." Alicia said.

Xiaya smiled, "You are still as smart as ever."

After a pause, Shaar continued.

"Based on this logic, we can continue to push down.

In a slave society, slave owners often do not treat slaves as human beings, but as "talking tools".

Slaves are the bulk of "commodities" second only to livestock. They are traded as commodities in pens and can be returned, exchanged, and claimed. The master has complete power over his slaves.

Although slavery in Rome was well developed, in order to squeeze the slaves to the extreme, the slave owners only allocated a dozen slaves for every tens of hectares of land. It can be said that labor occupied all the time of the slaves except sleeping.

Slaves were provided with the minimum and worst quality of food and clothing, lived in cages, and slaves died of freezing and starvation every day. Once old and sick, they were abandoned like worn-out shoes.

Because of the cost of taking care of them, it is better to buy another slave directly.

The rebellion of the slaves who have been tortured for a long time has long been brewing. They are like a powder keg. Only one person who can lead them is missing, and the rebellion will erupt like a spark.

Although the production relationship of slavery promoted the development of production within a certain period of time and within a certain limit, the place it opened up for the improvement of productivity was relatively narrow after all.

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

At the end of the slave society, the contradiction between slavery production relations and productivity gradually became sharper, and it became increasingly a shackle for the development of productivity.

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

The living slaves also had no interest in labor, and resisted the exploitation and oppression of the slave owners by slowing down their work and destroying production tools.

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

At the same time, the freeman class in the slave society bears all military service and tax obligations.

Due to the plunder of the exploiting classes and frequent war damage, most of them fell into poverty and bankruptcy, and even became slaves, which caused the exhaustion of the slavery state's military and financial resources.

Prisoners of war were originally the main source of slaves. Now that slavery countries have exhausted their military resources, the way to plunder slaves through war has been blocked.

The lack of normal replenishment of large numbers of slaves fundamentally undermined the foundations of slavery.

And so the Roman world fell into despair.

Slavery had become economically impossible, 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 available in this form.Only a complete revolution can escape this impasse. "

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

Hearing this, Arthur seemed to realize something, and his face gradually became serious. He thought of Britannia now.

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

Although those workers lived better than slaves, they were only better than slaves...

Xia Ya's gaze flickered, and he continued.

"At the end of the slave society, due to the more brutal exploitation of the slave-owner class, the resistance of the slaves was unprecedentedly high, and the flames of the slave riots became more and more intense.

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

There were about 12 rebels, and the struggle lasted for three years.

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

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

This kind of plow is pulled by two oxen, and the production efficiency is high. With two pairs of such plows and plowmen, plus 6 agricultural workers, all the farming of a farm of 200 ug can be completed.

In the northern part of Gaul, corn harvesters appeared, and threshing skids were used for threshing, which reduced the losses caused by harvesting and threshing, and improved production efficiency.

During this period, the crop rotation system and fallow system had been implemented in agriculture, and many areas could achieve two crops a year.

Some estates use beans or green manures to restore soil fertility.Intensive farming has become a major feature of agricultural production.

Due to the improvement of farm tools and the improvement of farming techniques, the agricultural economy of the early Roman Empire had further development.

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

In Egypt and North Africa, the irrigation system has been improved and the area of ​​cultivated land has been expanded.

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

Tunisia and Algeria, once a mere dry steppe, had now been turned into fertile land, with fruitful vineyards, olive groves, and wheat grains everywhere.

The agricultural production relations in these provinces are dominated by free farmers and semi-free farmers renting tenants, and the proportion of slave labor is relatively small.

However, contrary to the prosperity of the agricultural economy in the provinces, Italy's native agriculture is in decline because it is still in the slavery economy.

During this period, although there was no such large-scale slave uprising from the 2nd century BC to the 1st century BC.

However, incidents of slaves resisting forced labor, destroying tools, sabotaging work, fleeing, even killing their masters and staging small-scale uprisings emerged one after another.

The emperors of successive dynasties issued orders to strengthen the suppression repeatedly, but the hatred and hatred of the slaves towards the slave owners were still growing stronger.

At that time, there was a popular proverb in Rome: "As many slaves, there are as many enemies", which fully explained the threat of slave resistance to slave owners.

In addition, the large amount of food imported from other provinces and the reduction of slave sources also accelerated the decline of Italian agriculture.

With the general decline of agriculture, handicrafts and commerce, the economy of the slave-owning estates had become unprofitable.

Under the blow of the slave uprising, some slave owners were forced to change the way of exploitation. They divided the large manor into many small pieces of land and leased them out to freed slaves. "

"Small-scale farming is now the only profitable form of farming again," Char said.

"One by one the estates were divided into small plots, and these small plots were mainly leased to the peasants, who paid a certain annual payment, attached to the land, and could sell it together with that land.

Although this kind of slave farmers were not slaves, they were not considered free people either. They were the predecessors of serfs in the Middle Ages. "The slave farming system is the germ of feudal production relations."

Arthur murmured in a daze, "Productivity once again determines the production relationship."

He was a little shocked. Following Shaar's narration, he felt that he seemed to see a line that did exist but was hard to see, running from the source of human history to the future...

(End of this chapter)