{"id":105257,"date":"2018-01-22T12:00:40","date_gmt":"2018-01-22T12:00:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=105257"},"modified":"2018-01-21T12:34:40","modified_gmt":"2018-01-21T12:34:40","slug":"the-invention-of-capitalism-how-a-self-sufficient-peasantry-was-whipped-into-industrial-wage-slaves","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2018\/01\/the-invention-of-capitalism-how-a-self-sufficient-peasantry-was-whipped-into-industrial-wage-slaves\/","title":{"rendered":"The Invention of Capitalism: How a Self-Sufficient Peasantry Was Whipped into Industrial Wage Slaves"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201c\u2026everyone but an idiot knows that the lower classes must be kept poor, or they will never be industrious.\u201d<\/em>
\n\u2014Arthur Young, 1771<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Our popular economic wisdom says that capitalism equals freedom and free societies, right? Well, if you ever suspected that the logic is full of shit, then I\u2019d recommend checking a book called\u00a0The Invention of Capitalism<\/a><\/em>, written by an economic historian named Michael Perelmen, who\u2019s been exiled to Chico State, a redneck college in rural California, for his lack of freemarket friendliness. And Perelman has been putting his time in exile to damn good use, digging deep into the works and correspondence of Adam Smith and his contemporaries to write a history of the creation of capitalism that goes beyond superficial\u00a0The Wealth of Nations<\/em>\u00a0fairy tale and straight to the source, allowing you to read the early capitalists, economists, philosophers, clergymen and statesmen in their own words.\u00a0And it ain\u2019t pretty.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>One thing that the historical record makes obviously clear<\/a> is that Adam Smith and his laissez-faire buddies were a bunch of closet-case statists, who needed brutal government policies to whip the English peasantry into a good capitalistic workforce willing to accept wage slavery<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Francis Hutcheson, from whom Adam Smith learned all about the virtue of natural liberty, wrote:\u00a0\u201dit is the one great design of civil laws to strengthen by political sanctions the several laws of nature. \u2026 The populace needs to be taught, and engaged by laws, into the best methods of managing their own affairs and exercising mechanic art.\u201d<\/p>\n

Yep, despite what you might have learned, the transition to a capitalistic society did not happen naturally or smoothly.\u00a0See, English peasants didn\u2019t want to give up their rural communal lifestyle, leave their land and go work for below-subsistence wages in shitty, dangerous factories being set up by a new, rich class of landowning capitalists. And for good reason, too.\u00a0Using Adam Smith\u2019s own estimates of factory wages being paid at the time in Scotland, a factory-peasant would have to toil for more than three days to buy a pair of commercially produced shoes. Or they could make their own traditional brogues using their own leather in a matter of hours, and spend the rest of the time getting wasted on ale. It\u2019s really not much of a choice, is it?<\/p>\n

But in order for capitalism to work, capitalists needed a pool of cheap, surplus labor. So what to do? Call in the National Guard!<\/p>\n

Faced with a peasantry that didn\u2019t feel like playing the role of slave, philosophers, economists, politicians, moralists and leading business figures began advocating for government action. Over time, they enacted a series of laws and measures designed to push peasants out of the old and into the new by destroying their traditional means of self-support.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cThe brutal acts associated with the process of stripping the majority of the people of the means of producing for themselves might seem far removed from the laissez-faire reputation of classical political economy,\u201d writes Perelman. \u201cIn reality, the dispossession of the majority of small-scale producers and the construction of laissez-faire are closely connected, so much so that Marx, or at least his translators, labeled this expropriation of the masses as \u2018\u2018primitive accumulation<\/a>.\u2019\u2019<\/p>\n

Perelman outlines the many different policies through which peasants were forced off the land\u2014from the enactment of so-called Game Laws that prohibited peasants from hunting, to the destruction of the peasant productivity by fencing the commons into smaller lots\u2014but by far the most interesting parts of the book are where you get to read Adam Smith\u2019s proto-capitalist colleagues\u00a0complaining and whining about how peasants are too independent and comfortable to be properly exploited, and\u00a0trying to figure out how to force them to accept a life of wage slavery.<\/p>\n

This pamphlet from the time captures the general attitude towards successful, self-sufficient peasant farmers:<\/p>\n

The possession of a cow or two, with a hog, and a few geese, naturally exalts the peasant. . . . In sauntering after his cattle, he acquires a habit of indolence. Quarter, half, and occasionally whole days, are imperceptibly lost. Day labour becomes disgusting; the aversion in- creases by indulgence. And at length the sale of a half-fed calf, or hog, furnishes the means of adding intemperance to idleness.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

While another pamphleteer wrote:<\/p>\n

Nor can I conceive a greater curse upon a body of people, than to be thrown upon a spot of land, where the productions for subsistence and food were, in great measure, spontaneous, and the climate required or admitted little care for raiment or covering.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

John Bellers, a Quaker \u201cphilanthropist\u201d and economic thinker saw\u00a0independent\u00a0 peasants as a hindrance to his plan of forcing poor people into prison-factories, where they would live, work and produce a profit of 45% for aristocratic owners:<\/p>\n

\u201cOur Forests and great Commons (make the Poor that are upon them too much like the Indians) being a hindrance to Industry, and are Nurseries of Idleness and Insolence.\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Daniel Defoe, the novelist and trader, noted that in the\u00a0Scottish Highlands \u201cpeople were extremely well furnished with provisions. \u2026 venison exceedingly plentiful, and at all seasons, young or old, which they kill with their guns whenever they find it.\u2019\u2019<\/p>\n

To Thomas Pennant, a botanist, this self-sufficiency was ruining a perfectly good peasant population:<\/p>\n

\u201cThe manners of the native Highlanders may be expressed in these words: indolent to a high degree, unless roused to war, or any animating amusement.\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

If having a full belly and productive land was the problem, then the solution to whipping these lazy bums into shape was obvious: kick \u2018em off the land and let em starve.<\/p>\n

Arthur Young, a popular writer and economic thinker respected by John Stuart Mill, wrote in 1771: \u201ceveryone but an idiot knows that the lower classes must be kept poor, or they will never be industrious.\u201d Sir William Temple, a politician and Jonathan Swift\u2019s boss, agreed, and suggested that food be taxed as much as possible to prevent the working class from a life of \u201csloth and debauchery.\u201d<\/p>\n

Temple also advocated putting\u00a0four-year-old kids to work in the factories, writing \u2018\u2018for by these means, we hope that the rising generation will be so habituated to constant employment that it would at length prove agreeable and entertaining to them.\u2019\u2019 Some thought that four was already too old. According to Perelmen, \u201cJohn Locke, often seen as a philosopher of liberty, called for the commencement of work at the ripe age of three.\u201d Child labor also excited Defoe, who was joyed at the prospect that \u201cchildren after four or five years of age\u2026could every one earn their own bread.\u2019\u2019\u00a0But that\u2019s getting off topic\u2026<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Happy Faces of Productivity<\/p><\/div>\n

Happy Faces of Productivity\u2026<\/strong><\/p>\n

Even David Hume, that great humanist, hailed poverty and hunger as positive experiences for the lower classes, and even blamed the \u201cpoverty\u201d of France on its good weather and fertile soil:<\/p>\n

\u201c\u2018Tis always observed, in years of scarcity, if it be not extreme, that the poor labour more, and really live better.\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Reverend Joseph Townsend believed that\u00a0restricting food was the way to go:<\/p>\n

\u201c[Direct] legal constraint [to labor] . . . is attended with too much trouble, violence, and noise, . . . whereas hunger is not only a peaceable, silent, unremitted pressure, but as the most natural motive to industry, it calls forth the most powerful exertions. . . . Hunger will tame the fiercest animals, it will teach decency and civility, obedience and subjugation to the most brutish, the most obstinate, and the most perverse.\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Patrick Colquhoun, a merchant\u00a0who set up England\u2019s first private \u201cpreventative police<\/a>\u201c\u00a0force to prevent dock workers from supplementing their meager wages with stolen goods,\u00a0provided what may be the most lucid explanation of how hunger and poverty\u00a0correlate to productivity and wealth creation:<\/p>\n

Poverty is that state and condition in society where the individual has no surplus labour in store, or, in other words, no property or means of subsistence but what is derived from the constant exercise of industry in the various occupations of life. Poverty is therefore a most necessary and indispensable ingredient in society, without which nations and communities could not exist in a state of civilization. It is the lot of man. It is the source of wealth, since without poverty, there could be no labour; there could be no riches, no refinement, no comfort, and no benefit to those who may be possessed of wealth.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Colquhoun\u2019s summary\u00a0is so on the money, it has to be repeated. Because what was true for English peasants is still just as true for us:<\/p>\n

\u201cPoverty is therefore a most necessary and indispensable ingredient in society\u2026 It is the source of wealth, since without poverty, there could be no labour; there could be no riches, no refinement, no comfort, and no benefit to those who may be possessed of wealth.\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

_____________________________________<\/strong><\/p>\n

Yasha Levine is a \u00a0founding editor of<\/a>\u00a0The eXiled. You can reach him at levine [at] exiledonline.com.<\/em><\/p>\n

Want to know more recovered history?\u00a0Read Yasha Levine\u2019s investigation into the life of Harry Koch, the man who spawned Charles and David Koch, the two most powerful oligarchs of our time:<\/em>The Birth of the Koch Clan: It All Started In a Little Texas Town Called Quanah<\/a><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 filmsforaction.org<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201c\u2026everyone but an idiot knows that the lower classes must be kept poor, or they will never be industrious.\u201d \u201cPoverty is therefore a most necessary and indispensable ingredient in society\u2026 It is the source of wealth, since without poverty, there could be no labour; there could be no riches, no refinement, no comfort, and no benefit to those who may be possessed of wealth.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":105261,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[55],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-105257","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-capitalism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105257","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=105257"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105257\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/105261"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=105257"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=105257"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=105257"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}