Crusade against the Pope

Chapter 326: Salvation in this world is no longer a lie
In a sense, true collective agricultural production is closer to the concept of an assembly line factory than to China's traditional household farming.

(One hundred words omitted here)
First of all, we need to make one thing clear: large-scale collective agricultural production is not about pursuing the upper limit of land output, but about ensuring the stability of the production efficiency of individual workers and safeguarding the lower limit of land output.

Objectively speaking, this goal and pursuit is not very compatible with the New Heavenly Kingdom era.

When it was first established, the total population was 5.4 million, the cultivated land area was 14.82 billion mu, and the average per capita cultivated land was only 2.74 mu. According to the statistical yearbook, in the first year of the Xin Dynasty, the average per mu yield of land was only 69 kilograms, and the per mu yield of wheat was only 43 kilograms. After deducting the number of seeds, the output per mu was only 60 kilograms.

In other words, even if the New Heavenly Kingdom tried its best to balance the distribution, after deducting grain and losses, the amount of food that each person could eat would only be about 164 kilograms.

And what about a 12th-century English serf?

According to some records, a bishop once exempted a serf from his tithe because he only had 20 acres of land.

One acre is about 6 mu of land. In other words, this poor, miserable, impoverished serf was on the brink of life and death because he was only allocated 120 mu of arable land.

Even the bishop couldn't bear to collect tithes from the other party.

The gap in per capita arable land between the two sides was so great that if the Xin Dynasty only adopted extensive farming, grain output would only become increasingly insufficient.

At the same time, due to the end of long-term wars and the improvement of medical and health conditions at the time, the population of the Xin Dynasty experienced an unprecedented boom.

The Malthusian population trap, which the British did not encounter, was instead played out during the Xin Dynasty.

In order to meet the basic food needs of the population, it has become an inevitable trend to continuously deepen intensive farming and obtain more food.

Rice plays a unique role in this.

As far as Gellis knows, it seems, and possibly, that all countries whose staple food is rice have fallen into the Malthusian population trap without exception.

Wheat and rice are two crops that show different characteristics during the cultivation process.

Compared with rice, no matter how much effort farmers put in, the per-acre yield of wheat is actually relatively difficult to increase.

But rice is different. The per-acre yield of rice is directly proportional to the manpower input.

As long as the farmers put in enough effort, the yield could easily exceed 400 jin per mu in ancient times. During the Xin Dynasty, it even reached 1500 jin per mu. In some areas, it was more exaggerated, before the emergence of hybrid rice, it could reach nearly 2000 jin per mu.

For a father, if he has enough children to help him cultivate the paddy fields, he will have sufficient labor and thus enjoy more food.

In other words, when land cannot grow and increasing the labor force can bring food output, it is indeed a truth that having more children means more blessings.

It’s just that as the children grow up, their share of the land will almost certainly be less than that of the previous generation.

But at the same time, they can still choose to increase the number of their children and obtain security for their own generation. However, if this continues from generation to generation, the land that farmers can own will inevitably fall into an unspeakable horrible situation.

And when Zeng Guofan said that in the past forty years, there are pits and valleys full of people who should have been killed but were not killed.

A seemingly strong society can suffer from famine and cannibalism if it suffers the slightest fluctuation.

Faced with this situation, the Japanese chose to directly expel the second son group from citizenship. During the Japanese shogunate period, if the second son lived in his elder brother's house, he could be said to be a "slave" of the eldest son.

As long as people are no longer human, they will naturally not starve to death.

Another point is that (100 words omitted here)
As for this problem, how will Garys solve it...

The answer is no.

Anyway, the Franks themselves had no habit of intensive farming, and the collective farm in Antioch was actually just an improvement on the original Frankish manor system.

In the manorial production model, serfs were obliged to cultivate the lord's land for one or two days a week.

During these days, the lord actually only required the serfs to roughly cultivate the land, sow seeds, and occasionally pull weeds, and then wait for the crops to be harvested.

How can the serfs slack off?
So what if I slack off?
The per-acre yield of such land will of course be very low, but if 100 acres of land cannot produce enough food, then find a way to reclaim another 100 acres.

For a long time, before the enclosure movement began, the landowners in Britain and France never said, "If you don't do it, there are plenty of people who will do it."

Even according to Viking records, French lords would often pay ransom to the Vikings in order to redeem the captured serfs because they needed serfs to farm the land.

Of course, even so, Europe's population is slowly increasing. Logically speaking, sooner or later, it will face the same dilemma as the Chinese model.

However, before it could respond to the call of “if you don’t do it, there are plenty of people who will do it”, the Black Death arrived first.

In the population elimination game, the Black Death achieved a good result of at least 25 million and as much as 50 million, successfully helping the Europeans at that time solve the problem of too many people.

When one-third or one-half of the population was wiped out from Europe by the Black Death, the population value of the serf group became even greater. Coupled with the rise of towns at the same time, a large number of serfs even easily got rid of their serf status and became free people...

Then, during the period of population recovery, the emergence of the New World once again solved the problem of too many people.

I don’t know how many people can succeed, but at least there is a pressure relief valve.

During Muhammad's investigation, he also learned more about the Antioch farm.

Since a large amount of land is used for grazing, grazing not only brings meat, eggs and milk, but also provides the livestock needed for farming.

Whether it is ox plowing or horse plowing, both actually exist on the farm where he is.

And this is actually something that goes against the cognition of many later generations compared to the Song Dynasty and the Celestial Empire after the Song Dynasty.

Because there were large tracts of land for grazing, neither Western Europe nor the Eastern Empire was actually so short of animal power.

After a series of calculations, Mohammed finally came up with a rather surprising number.

"You mean to say that on this farm, everyone, even the women, can get 1,500 pounds of grain, plus nearly 100 pounds of meat?"

After thinking about it, Lance finally shook his head.

Then he said: "You only calculated the annual output, but 20% of the grain must be used as seeds or food reserves, and another 25% is subject to tax. The remaining grain, except for enough food for human consumption, must be sold compulsorily." Lance actually does not have enough professional and technical personnel, or farm backbones, to promote the collective farm production model throughout Antioch.

However, encouragement for the farm model is necessary.

Therefore, compared with the 30% tax in ordinary rural areas, the agricultural tax paid by farms is 50% lower than the agricultural tax for non-farm production. This is actually the preferential treatment of the Governor's Office for the farm production method.

Although it is only 5%, when this 5% is expanded to the entire farm, it means thousands of pounds of grain are saved in agricultural taxes.

"Forced sale?" Mohammed did not quite understand the term.

"Yes, it is forced sale. On average, each person is required to keep about 400 pounds of food, plus 20 to 30 pounds of meat. The rest of the food must be sold for money, which is then distributed as dividends to the farm and the workers on the farm."

Lance used the word worker, which was actually the influence of Gérice.

In this kind of collective farm, the attributes of farmers have gradually been replaced by workers.

The purpose of agricultural production is no longer to satisfy farmers' self-survival, but to be required to sell on the market.

It's the same reason. If farmers eat more food, city dwellers will eat less. In fact, Gellis would rather pay high monetary dividends to farm workers than let farmers eat too much of the food they grow.

At least if farm workers are paid high monetary dividends, their purchasing power will be increased, a consumer market will be created, and thus the production of other non-agricultural industries will be stimulated, so that the handicrafts produced in the city will not have nowhere to go.

This view actually leads to a result, which is that the efficiency of money circulation is constantly increasing.

The existing precious metal currencies have begun to experience slight deflation.

Across the Levant, the desire for money is becoming increasingly apparent.

Therefore, before leaving Jerusalem, Gellis had already begun to instruct the Bank of Jerusalem to prepare to issue banknotes to meet the needs of commodity circulation.

After all, Gellis hopes to create a beacon of civilization in the Levant that is a reflection of heaven.

Instead of creating a Leviathan with an extremely widening gap between the rich and the poor by exploiting farm workers and factory workers.

This actually means that the amount of money held by each household will exceed that of ordinary households in any other country or region of this era.

Garys actually knew exactly when the beacon of civilization, like a reflection of heaven, would arrive.

As for how long this lighthouse can be lit, Gellis is a little uncertain.

He only knew that no matter how idealistic this dream was, it also had practical significance.

After all, it is difficult to imagine something that one has never seen.

Whether it is Christianity or Islam, democracy or capitalism, in fact, even the earthly paradise described by Guerris is just an order constructed by imagination.

They do not actually exist in nature, but rely on the consciousness of the human brain to be recognized and defined. When millions of people believe in their existence and regard them as self-evident truths, their existence becomes unbreakable.

But sometimes it only takes a few years or even a dozen years to overturn and change it.

How can we make people believe in these orders? Generally speaking, we must insist that the statements we make to the outside world are absolutely true and not fictional.

It should always be emphasized that this order that maintains stability is an objective reality created by a great God or the laws of nature.

If the order emphasizes that everyone is unequal and is divided into Muslims and slaves, it is not because the caliphs said so, but to emphasize that the Prophet proved the rationality and necessity of the existence of slaves through his own words and deeds.

If the order emphasizes equality for all, as in the Declaration of Independence, it cannot be said that Thomas Jefferson said this himself, but rather that it must be emphasized that this is the result of the way God created man.

Of course, a large number of the people who founded the United States were slave owners themselves, and they were men.

So they excluded people of color and women from the Declaration of Independence, and some theologians claimed that Africans were descendants of Ham, the son of Noah, and that Noah had cursed Ham's descendants to become slaves of his other brothers.

What Garys did was to establish a completely new order, which required breaking the existing order and convincing the people to believe in it.

How to persuade?

For the vast majority of people, from the moment they are born, there are countless people and countless actions that constantly remind them that the order they live in is eternal and unchanging.

They believe that only by following the old order can they have a good harvest, be healthy, and ascend to heaven. If they violate that order, their life will be full of ups and downs, everything will not go as they wish, and they will not be able to be reincarnated. Those orders all emphasize their truthfulness and warn people not to violate them.

Whether it's Feng Shui, reincarnation, or blind belief in God...it's all the same.

Garys wants people to believe that their path is correct and that they are on the path of true faith.

Therefore, we cannot rely solely on verbal debates, but must have solid, iron-clad facts to be able to shake the mountain of the old world that weighs on people's hearts.

With 400 pounds of food per capita for each farm worker, there would be no starvation. As for 20 pounds of meat per capita per year, it was an idea that could only exist in the dreams of the former serfs and lower-class freemen.

What is the superiority of the kingdom of heaven? This is the superiority of the kingdom of heaven.

Those serfs who believed in the old system and acknowledged that the nobles were born to ride on the necks of the serfs would inevitably face the situation of having difficulty in getting enough food.

Those rich peasants who denied the organizational structure of collective farms would inevitably face the impact of grain dumping from collective farms.

The verbal heaven has already created a little real spark in the reality of the world.

The salvation in this world promised by Garys is no longer an empty promise.

A lighthouse, its base having been fortified with rocks taken from the sacred Mount Tabor.

Many people are looking forward to the scene when this lighthouse is lit on a stormy night, which will fill the world with hope.

(End of this chapter)