Xia Ya pondered for a moment, and then began to speak slowly.
“Production relations can be understood in several aspects. One is who owns all the materials for producing food.
This means of production is land, hoes, seedlings, fertilizers, sickles and other items needed for farming.
The second is the relative 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 will have a clearer understanding of where the river formed by human civilization will 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 transformation from slavery to feudalism can be used as an example and reference.
Rome did not have slavery from the beginning.
The earliest Rome was originally just a city on the Italian Peninsula. For hundreds of years, the Romans fought hard against the Etruscans.
At that time, their economic model was a small-scale peasant economy, an economy in which individual families were the units 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 aristocratic republic of ancient Greece.
Later, Rome, on the one hand, was engaged in the internal struggle of the common people for the power of the nobles, 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 starting in 264 BC, Rome, as an emerging power in the Mediterranean region, began a century-old war with Carthage, an unprecedentedly developed maritime commercial empire.
This series of battles was the Punic Wars.
Punic, derived from the Roman name for Carthage, Punici (Punicus).
In terms of race, this was also a decisive battle between the Aryan descendants and the largest Semitic nation.
This war raged on and off for hundreds of years.
The Punic Wars not only established Rome's hegemony in the Mediterranean, but also profoundly changed Rome's social structure and production methods. The prosperity of slavery in ancient Rome began after the Punic Wars.
The original Rome was a republic where nobles and commoners coexisted, and conflicts between the two parties were harmonious and controllable.
Citizens of all city-states had the right to vote. It was through this system that the Romans gradually occupied and assimilated the Italian Peninsula.
During this period, the main body of labor and combat were Roman peasants, which can be called "militia".
But the expansion wars that lasted for hundreds of years greatly depleted Rome's population.
In addition, during the war, the militiamen's own land and farms were largely deserted and suffered losses.
At almost the same time, a large number of prisoners of war captured during the war flowed into Rome.
So, slowly, the social structure of Rome changed.
After the Second Punic War, Roman society became extremely polarized.
On the one hand, most of the dividends brought by expansion flowed into the aristocracy and wealthy classes, and these people used a large number of slaves to farm for themselves.
The cost of agricultural products produced by slave owners through slaves was much lower than that of ordinary people.
After these agricultural products are put on the market, the quality is better and the price is lower.
As a result, the agricultural products of the ancient Roman civilians who relied on the land could not be sold, and they went bankrupt one after another. Even the original land was annexed by the manors and farms of the great nobles.
The main economic system of ancient Rome also underwent tremendous changes.
The lower-class citizens of Rome were becoming increasingly poor, while the nobles were becoming richer and richer.
As a result, citizen uprisings often occurred during that period.
When production tools were not developed, the improvement of productivity could only rely on manpower, and slavery impacted the small-scale peasant economy. "
Arthur spoke thoughtfully.
“I seem to understand that in the small-scale peasant economy, farmers own certain means of production, have certain autonomy in production, and can control part of the products of labor.
After the impact of slavery, the country's production relations became slave owners who owned the means of production, completely occupied the slaves, and controlled all the products created by the slaves.
This is where productivity determines production relations. "
Xia Ya nodded with satisfaction and continued.
“Although the early Roman Republic was only the size of a city-state, it could achieve democracy for all.
But with the continuous conquests, the Roman Republic conquered large areas of land, and its territory continued to grow, becoming a huge empire.
At that time, Rome stretched from the Danube River in the north, to Africa in the south, from the Pyrenees Peninsula in the west, to Mesopotamia and the Asia Minor Peninsula in the east. Even the Mediterranean Sea became the inner lake of Rome.
Such an unprecedentedly huge empire also represents an increase in the difficulty of governance.
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 nobility became increasingly serious.
Moreover, the Senate had a large number of people at that time, which also led to numerous factions within the Senate, and quarreling with each other would only lead to inefficiency.
The elders of the ethnic class focus on their own interests and do not solve the problems of poor people, losing popular support and authority. The country needs a more powerful and efficient means of governance.
The ubiquity of the small-scale peasant economy was the basis of the civil 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 had no troops to recruit.
This directly affected the number and combat effectiveness of the Roman army.
Because of this, Marius carried out military reforms, changing the original citizen military system into a recruitment system, which became the last straw that broke the camel's back.
The soldiers also changed from being loyal to the country to being loyal to a certain general. Coupled with the outstanding personal charm of the leader, the rule of the army was in the hands of the head of state, and the Senate lost control of the army.
In 46 B.C., Caesar was granted the power of dictator of the Sanctuary for 10 years. And in 44 BC he gained the right to be a lifelong dictator.
Caesar's dictatorship also officially marked the era of "equality" as a thing of the past, and the republic existed in name only. "
"This is because the economic base determines the superstructure." Alicia said.
Xia Ya smiled and said, "You are still as smart as ever."
After a pause, Xia Ya continued.
“Based on this logic, we can move on.
In a slave society, slave owners often do not treat slaves as human beings, but just as "talking tools."
Slaves are a bulk "commodity" second only to livestock. They are kept in pens and sold as commodities. They can be returned, exchanged, and claimed. The master has complete power over his slaves.
Although Roman slavery was developed, in order to squeeze slaves to the extreme, slave owners only allocated an average of a dozen slaves per dozens of hectares of land. It can be said that labor occupied the slaves all the time except sleeping.
Slaves were provided with the minimum and poorest quality food and clothing, and lived in cages. Slaves died of cold and hunger every day. Once they got old and sick, they were abandoned like worn-out shoes.
Because the cost of taking care of them is not as economical as buying another slave directly.
The resistance of slaves who have suffered inhumane torture for a long time has already been brewing. They are like a powder keg. If they only need one person to lead them, the resistance movement will explode like a spark.
Although the production relations of slavery promoted the development of production within a certain period and within a certain limit, the space it opened for improving productivity was ultimately relatively narrow.
Rome's prosperity was undoubtedly based on the oppression of slaves, but its decline was also due to slavery.
Towards the end of the slave society, the contradiction between the production relations of slavery and the productive forces gradually became more acute and increasingly became a fetter on 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 productivity of slave society.
Living slaves also had no interest in labor and resisted the exploitation and oppression of slave owners by being passive and sabotaging production tools.
In order to prevent slaves from destroying tools, slave owners made heavy tools for slaves to use.
At the same time, the free people class in the slave society shouldered all military service and tax obligations.
Due to the plunder of the exploiting classes and the frequent destruction of wars, most of them fell into poverty, bankruptcy, and even became slaves, which resulted in the depletion of soldiers and financial resources in slave-owning countries.
Prisoners of war were originally the main source of slaves. Now that slave-owning countries have exhausted their military resources, the channels for plundering slaves through war have been blocked.
A large number of slaves could not be replenished normally, which fundamentally destroyed the foundation of the slavery system.
The Roman world was thus in dire straits.
Slavery became economically impossible, and the labor of free men was morally despised.
The former can no longer become the basic form of social production.
The latter cannot yet take this form. Only a complete revolution can escape this desperate situation. "
“The intensification of the contradiction 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 expression gradually became serious. He thought of Britannia now.
At this moment, Brittania seems to be gradually entering this abyss.
Although those workers live a better life than slaves, they are only better than slaves...
Xia Ya's eyes flashed and he continued.
“At the end of the slave society, due to the more cruel exploitation of the slave-owning class, the resistance struggle of slaves was unprecedentedly high, and the fire of slave riots was getting stronger and stronger.
The Spartacus Rebellion that broke out in Rome in 73 BC was the largest slave revolutionary war in history.
There were about 120,000 rebels, 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 destroying the slave system.
On the one hand, wheeled plows appeared in Greece and northern Italy between the 1st and 2nd centuries AD.
This kind of plow is pulled by two oxen and has high production efficiency. With two pairs of such plows and plow helpers, plus 6 agricultural workers, all farming of a 200-yuge farm can be completed.
Grain cutters appeared in the northern region of Gaul, and threshing sleds were used during threshing. This reduced losses during harvesting and threshing and improved production efficiency.
During this period, plant rotation and fallow systems had been implemented in agriculture, and many areas could achieve two crops a year.
Some estates use legumes or green manures to restore soil fertility. Intensive farming has become a major feature of agricultural production.
Due to improvements in farm tools and farming techniques, the agricultural economy of the early Roman Empire further developed.
This is reflected in the development of the agricultural economy in various provinces. The area of cultivated land in various provinces increased.
In Egypt and North Africa, the irrigation system was improved and the cultivated land area was expanded.
The working people of Egypt built weirs and canals, and used water tanks and waterwheels to transform patches of semi-desert land into fertile fields for growing grains.
Tunisia and Algeria, which were originally dry prairie lands, were transformed into fertile lands, with vineyards full of fruit, olive trees spreading into forests, and wheat grains growing everywhere.
The agricultural production relations in these provinces were dominated by free farmers and semi-free farmers, and slave labor accounted for a smaller proportion.
But contrary to the prosperity of the agricultural economy in various provinces, Italy's mainland agriculture was in decline because it was still a slave economy.
During this period, although there was no large-scale slave uprising like that from the 2nd century BC to the 1st century BC.
However, there were endless incidents of slaves resisting forced labor, destroying tools, sabotaging work, escaping, and even killing their masters and staging small-scale uprisings.
Emperors of the past dynasties have repeatedly issued orders to strengthen repression, but the hatred and hatred of the slaves towards the slave owners is still growing stronger.
There was a popular proverb in Rome at that time: "There are as many enemies as there are slaves." This fully illustrates the threat that slave rebellion posed to slave owners.
In addition, the large-scale import of grain from other provinces and the reduction of the source of slaves also accelerated the decline of Italian agriculture.
There was a general decline in agriculture, crafts, and commerce, and the economy of the slave-owning latifundia had become unprofitable.
Under the attack of the slave uprising, some slave owners were forced to change their methods of exploitation. They divided the large estates into many small plots of land and rented them to freed slaves. These freed slaves who rented the slave owners' land were called slave farmers. "
“Now small-scale operations have become the only profitable form of farming again,” said Xia Ya.
"Granges were divided into small plots of land one after another. Such small plots of land were mainly leased to slave farmers, who paid a certain amount every year, attached to the land, and could be sold with that piece of land.
Although these slave farmers were not slaves, they were not considered free persons. They were the predecessors of medieval serfs. "The slave-farming system was the bud of feudal production relations."
Arthur muttered absentmindedly, "Productivity once again determines production relations."
He was a little shocked. As Xia Ya told him, he felt that he seemed to see a line that did exist but was difficult to see, running from the source of human history to the future...
(End of chapter)
