Re: Why the West?

["Jim Drysdale" <jimd48@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Don't be a Menshevik: Clip all extraneous text before replying to a message
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

>From Jim Drysdale,

*****  Why not just access (at an evolving moment of value) to energy
sources, e.g coal.   And, one should never forget that capitalism came into
being dripping head to toe in blood.   That is, the population *did not* go
readily to wage labour.   And, those who strongly resisted (over centuries)
were dealt with.   One wonders what sources some modern *historians* (?)
use?

PROFIT......The early days.

The people didn?t want to leave their land?didn?t want to work for wages.


A mass of free labourers was hurled onto the work market by the breaking-up
of the bands of feudal retainers.  In insolent conflict with king and
parliament the great feudal lords created a huge work-force by driving the
peasantry from the land.
The rapid rise of the Flemish wool manufacturers and the corresponding rise
in the price of wool in England, gave the direct impulse to these evictions.
As Thornton said ? The English working class was precipitated without any
transition from its golden into its iron cage.
Inclosures at that time began to be more frequent, whereby arable land was
turned into pasture.
What the capitalist system demanded was, a degraded and almost servile
condition of the mass of the people.
The landed proprietors carried, by legal means, an act of usurpation,
effected everywhere on the Continent of Europe without any legal formality.
They abolished the feudal tenure of land.  They gave themselves the rights
of modern private property in estates to which they had only a feudal title.
They stole lands on a colossal scale.  Estates were given away or sold at
ridiculous figures.
All this happened without the slightest observation of legal etiquette.
The parliamentary form of the robbery is that of Acts for enclosures of
Commons, in other words decrees by which the landlords grant themselves the
people?s land as private property
The agricultural population is ?set free? as workers for manufacturing
industry.  Some examples?
?In several parishes of Hertfordshire.? writes one indignant person, ?24
farms numbering on average 50 ? 150 acres have been melted up into three
farms.  ?In Northamptonshire and Leicestershire the enclosure of common
lands has taken place on a very large scale.  The ruins of former
dwelling-houses, barns, stables, &., ?are the sole traces of the former
inhabitants.  ?An hundred houses and families have in some open-field
villages?dwindled to eight or ten.
?It is no uncommon thing for 3 or 4 wealthy graziers to engross a large
enclosed lordship which was before in the hands of 20 or 30 farmers, and as
many smaller tenants.  All these are hereby thrown out of their livings and
with their families.
Dr Price says, ? The little farmers (thrown of the land) will be converted
into a body of men who earn their subsistence by working for others.  ?There
will, perhaps, be more labour, because there more will be more compulsion to
it?.Towns and manufacturers will increase, because more will be driven to
them in quest of places and employment?.?From little occupiers of land, they
are reduced to the state of day labourers and hirelings, and at the same
time, their subsistence in that state has become more difficult.
By the 19th century, the very memory of the connection between the
agricultural labourer and the communal property, had, of course, vanished.
Even in recent times?the agricultural population have not received one
farthing of compensation for the 3,511,770 acres of common land which
between 1801 and 1831 were stolen from them by parliamentary decrees
presented to the landlords by the landlords.

Scotland?the ?clearing of estates.?
The Highland Celts were organised in clans, each of which was the owner of
the land on which it was settled.  The representative of the clan, its chief
or ?great man?, was only the titular owner of this property.  On their own
authority these ?great men? transformed their nominal right into a right of
private property.
In the 18th century the hunted-out Gaels were forbidden to emigrate from the
country, with a view to driving them by force to Glasgow and other
manufacturing towns.  An example of the ?method in the 19th century is the
?clearing ? made by the duchess of Sutherland.
>From 1814 to 1820 15,000 inhabitants, about 3,000 families, were
systematically hunted and rooted out.  All their villages were destroyed and
burnt, all their fields turned into pasture.
In this fashion, the Duchess appropriated 794,000 acres of land that had
from time immemorial belonged to the clan.  She assigned to the expelled
inhabitants about 6,000 acres on the sea-shore.  She let these acres at an
average rent of 2s 6d per acre to the clansmen, who for centuries, had shed
blood for her family.  By 1851 the Gaels had been replaced by 131,000 sheep.


***** Some old statutes constructed by the early bourgeoisie and made law in
the name of the current monarch....

Legislation to impose wage discipline:
Early in the ?closures? and ?clearances? the displaced agricultural workers,
suddenly dragged from the way of life that they wanted, refused to adapt to
the discipline of wages.  These were classified as "vagabonds?
Hence at the end of the 15th century and during the whole of the 16th
century, throughout Western Europe a bloody legislation against vagabondage.
The ancestors of the today?s working class were forced to come to heel.
Henry VIII. 1530: Beggars old and unable to work receive a beggars licence.
On the other hand, whipping and imprisonment for sturdy vagabonds.  They are
to be tied to the cart-tail and whipped until the blood streams from their
bodies, then to swear an oath to go back the their birthplace, or where they
have lived for the last three years and ?put themselves to labour.?

Henry VIII:  This statute is repeated but strengthened with new clauses.
?For the second arrest of vagabondage the whipping is to be repeated and
half the ear sliced off: (note?A Clip Around The Ear ) but for the third
relapse the offender is to be executed.

Edward VI:  A statute of the first year of his reign, 1547, ordains that if
anyone refuses to work, he shall be condemned as a slave to the person who
has denounced him as an idler.  The master shall feed his slave on bread and
water, weak broth and such refuse meat as he thinks fit.  He has the right
to force him to do any work, no matter how disgusting, with whip and chain.
If the slave is absent a fortnight he is condemned to slavery for life and
is to be branded on forehead or back with the letter S.  If he runs away
thrice, he is to be executed as a felon.
Justices of the peace, (the landlords) on information, are to hunt the
rascals down.   If it happens that a vagabond has been idling about for
three days, he is to be taken to his birthplace, branded with a red-hot iron
with the letter V on his breast and be set to work in chains.
All persons have the right to take away the children of vagabonds and to
keep them as apprentices, the young men until the 24th year, the girls until
the 20th.  If they run away, they are to become up to this age the slaves of
their masters, who can put them in irons, whip them, &.,   Every master may
put an iron ring around the neck, arms or legs of his slave.
Parish slaves (owned by a benevolent master) were kept in England until far
into the 19th century under the name of ?roundsmen?

Elizabeth, 1572: Unlicensed beggars above 14 years of age are to be severely
flogged and branded on the left ear unless some one will take them into
service for two years; in the case of repetition of the offence, if they are
over 18, they are to be executed, unless some one will take them into
service for two years; but for the third offence they are to be executed
without mercy as felons.

James I: Any one wandering about and begging is declared a rogue and a
vagabond.  Justices of the peace in petty sessions are authorised to have
them publicly whipped and for the first offence to imprison them for 6
months, for the second for 2 years.  Whilst in prison they are to be whipped
as much and as often as the justices of the peace think fit?Incorrigible and
dangerous rogues are to be branded R on the left shoulder and set to hard
labour, and if they are caught begging again, to be executed without mercy.
These statutes, legally binding until the beginning of the 18th century,
were only repealed by Anne.


Statute of Apprentices of Elizabeth,  ten days imprisonment is decreed FOR
HIM THAT PAYS THE HIGHER WAGES?BUT TWENTY-ONE DAYS FOR HIM THAT RECEIVES
THEM.

Coalition of labourers is treated as a heinous crime from the 14th century
to 1825.

George III: forbade a higher day?s wage than 2s 7 ½ d.

1799: an Act of Parliament ordered that the wages of the Scotch miners
should continue to be regulated by a statute of Elizabeth and the two Scotch
acts of 1661 and 1617.


The advance of the market developed a working class, which by experience,
tradition, habit, looks upon the conditions of wages and profit as natural.

Now, the capitalist class can leave the workforce to the ?natural laws of
production?

The European model of disciplining a workforce to the acceptance of wages
and profit has been successfully exported to all countries of the world.


*****  Not really romantic....is it?   Nor is it *now*.

comradely,

Jim.