After crossing the Bianhe River on a ferry, and seeing someone limping from the inspection village from time to time, Li Ping'an greeted him from afar: "Have you beaten it?" ”

"Hit!" The people who came were smiling and laughing, and walked forward.

After these days, everyone has seen the situation clearly, as long as they have not committed any major incidents, they will only hit the board a few times when they come to the inspection village. The official in charge of the execution was also tired, so he did a few perfunctory strokes hastily, and it was good to raise it for a day and a half. The so-called being a new person after being beaten by the board, and once you come here, you will be cut off from the messy things before, and you will be law-abiding and good citizens from now on.

After leaving the dock and walking a short distance north, I saw a grass hut set up on the side of the road, and a big post was posted there: "Recruit people to cultivate fields." ”

Li Ping'an said to Liu Dadao: "There are four big characters there, isn't it a place to recruit people?" Doing things on this side of the river is refreshing. ”

After speaking, the three of them went to the side of the shed together and probed their brains outside the shed.

Inside, a man wearing a short brown shirt had a red hoop on his arm and was drinking tea. When he saw Li Ping'an and the three of them, he shouted: "Those few birds, what are you doing looking outside!" This is the place of the government, so don't you have to have some bad intentions! ”

Liu Da hurriedly dragged the two into the shed, and arched his hand: "Brother, don't talk nonsense!" We are all law-abiding and good citizens on the other side of the river, and we heard that people are recruiting people to cultivate land here, so we came together. Just looking for a job to do, looking for food and clothing. ”

When the man heard this, he beckoned to a few people: "Since you want to recruit for reclamation, you should go inside and talk." ”

Several people entered the shed, stood in front of the table, and looked at the man sitting behind the table.

The man looked at the three of them, pointed to the red hoop on his arm, and said: "In Xiahu Zhonghai, the township scrivener of Yi Village over there is a legitimate value today." Where are you from when you came to apply for reclamation? Do you have a family? Do you want to settle here, or do you want to work for a short time? ”

Liu Dadao: "The three of us are all from Yongcheng County, opposite each other, and do some odd jobs every day. It's been a tough time lately, and I've been doing odd jobs to earn a few bucks. ”

Hearing this, Hu Zhonghai was excited, took three signatures from the table, and asked the names of the three people.

Li Ping'an has been thinking about his mother's burning incense, and said busily: "Brother, don't worry. I am also from the opposite city, and my family has a wife, but I have no children yet, and I have an old mother. Because it is a rented house, I don't know what the charter is here. ”

Hearing the registration, Hu Zhonghai's eyes lit up suddenly: "The registration is different." There are built houses in this village, and there is a place to live when you settle down. In addition to the fields cultivated in Zhuangzi, each family also has some private vegetable fields, and the CD is their own, and they are exempt from taxes for three years. If you don't want to live in the official village, you can also go and cultivate the fields yourself, and the government will lend you grain, seeds, and farming tools for only two cents a year. As long as you work diligently for a few years, it will be a middle-class home, as if you have no fixed place to live in the opposite city. ”

Li Ping'an thought that he had misheard, looked at Liu Da and Zhu Liang beside him, and asked, "Is there such a good thing in the world?" ”

"The affairs of the government, the list is posted there, is there any fake?"

Li Ping'an still didn't believe it, so he took Liu Da and Zhu Liang out to read the list and let them read it to him.

Not far from the shed, Du Zhongxiao and Liu Ji walked among the newly opened fields, checking the situation of the cultivated fields.

Looking at the barren and messy land not far away, with a few houses scattered around, Liu Ji said to Du Zhongxiao: "You let the people who cultivate the fields live in the village here, work and farm together, and leave some vegetable plots with them, which is actually quite ancient." In today's view, this method is excellent. Why are there still some families left over there to reclaim the land and repay the farm tools and seeds to them? Gathered in the village, how easy it is for the government to manage! ”

Du Zhongxiao smiled and shook his head: "Is it troublesome?" Not necessarily. Everyone planted together, harvested together, and after harvesting the grain, they distributed it to each house, and everything seemed to be fine. But who is in charge of the work on weekdays? In the end, who will divide it? Not to mention all kinds of chores on weekdays, who will supervise the work? At first, these were easy to say, but after only a few years, there were constant disputes. The ancient system of Jingtian, not only one or two thousand years ago, I don't know how many capable people think that this method is the most fair, but no one can repeat this ancient method, it can be seen that it is not easy. ”

The Jingtian system that the literati kept mentioning in ancient times did not refer to the slavery system of the pre-Qin period, but to the rural collective economy in a certain sense.

The core issue of the agricultural economy is the ownership of land as a means of production. From the private manor system, to the well-field system of the collective economy, and even the mutual aid forms of various township covenant cooperatives, and even the public ownership system, almost all of them were proposed in the Song Dynasty, and even many of them were practiced, but they all failed without exception.

In his previous life, Du Zhongxiao went from a small homesteader who distributed land equally, to a mutual aid cooperative, to a large commune under public ownership, and then to a rapid and drastic contract of production to households, but in a very short period of time, he restarted these ancient and modern Chinese and foreign land systems. And the reality is that every earth-shattering reform lasts only one or two decades, and then it has to be changed.

Unless there is a continuous transformation from an agrarian society to an industrial and commercial society, no matter what kind of land ownership system, it can only solve the problem for a few decades. The pace of development of the productive forces of agriculture is so slow, and there is no way to gain more than a thousand years of knowledge.

According to what Du Zhongxiao learned in his political class in his previous life, the most important class contradiction in this era was the contradiction between the landlord class and the peasant class. There is no need for Du Zhongxiao to use his knowledge of a thousand years to remind others that most of the readers in this era are clear. However, some of them believe that the solution to the problem is to reduce the amount of money and curb land annexation. Some people believe that the state should support small yeoman farmers in terms of policy and crack down on land annexation. Others believe that the landlord class should be eliminated directly, that the cultivators should have their land, and that those who do not cultivate should not occupy the land. The last one is the flattening method and the well field system of Li Ji and Zhang Zai, who are doing everything from theory to practice.

What makes Du Zhongxiao better than these people is that he knows that we cannot only look at these issues from the perspective of morality and ethics, but also look at the productive forces and production relations.

These farms were established by cultivating land, which was in fact a collective economy dominated by the government, and at the same time allowed farmers to have their own land. Du Zhongxiao's previous life did not maintain this model for many years, why do you think that this era can solve rural problems? So in addition to these farms, Du Zhongxiao also imitated the usual practice of this era, officially lending start-up funds and means of production, and allowing farmers to shoot seeds, which are the villages that Liu Ji saw.

Why do it? Because a very important fact that Du Zhongxiao learned from his previous life is that at such a stage, one cannot use one ownership system and production relations to conquer the world. With the coexistence of multiple ownership systems and the richer production relations, the imperial court will have more initiative.

Seeing that Liu Ji was still a little puzzled, Du Zhongxiao said: "General judgment, in the past, when the states recruited people to cultivate fields, most of them borrowed seeds and farm tools, and they were exempted from taxes for many years. However, in many places, people died in the government, and when it was time to collect taxes, many farmers abandoned the land and left. I'm different here. Tax exemption is not the key, the most important thing is borrowing. These peasant households have all their materials loaned to them by the government, and they pay interest every year, and the rest of the interest is their income from farming. This kind of loan is not limited to the age of the loan, as long as they are still planting here, they will be loaned to them, and the government only earns interest. ”

This is the most important model of Du Zhongxiao in addition to the government-run farm, all fixed assets are loaned out by the government. As long as you farm here, you owe money to the government. Tethering the producers with loans is the advanced exploitation method that Du Zhongxiao learned from his previous life.