No More Poverty (part one)
Posted 06/08/08 by Matt B in the Urban category
If we take as a comparative society the medieval feudal system we can actually see that things rather than improving have simply changed and in changing allowed conditions for some to become worse. To justify this statement we will consider the conditions of poverty within a Feudalism Autocracy based society and compare it to the current system which is a generally Capitalistic Democracy. I will show that there are strong parallels that will allow us to consider our society from a new perspective.
Feudal Britain had a number of “working class” and poverty class levels which included the Slave, the Serf, the Peasant, the free labourer and the Artisan. The peasant and the artisan were free as were, often the free labourer. The surf and the slave were bonded to masters and were non-free.
It is tempting to consider the serf and the slave as equivalent but the serf would rightly have been able to look down on the feudal slave. A slave was effectively forced labour with minimal (if any) rights and they were not considered citizens. The surf was a bonded servant and had rights and citezenship and could expect to be cared for, housed and fed in return for his labour.
The surf had a contractual arrangement with the master that included the masters requirement to care for the surf and would often include a period of bondsmanship which might have been in lue of payment of debts. The bonded surf (and his family) would then work for the master (most often on his land).
There is no such thing as a typical peasant. A peasant was a free person with access to a means of self support. This included “tenant farmers” who possessed their land by lease from (land) lords as well as owners of small plots, community owned and ran farms and pretty much all others that worked “their own land”. The institution of surfdom created a common law and level of expectation whereby a bondsman could expect a known minimum level of treatment.
This is similar to the laws that governed slave ownership in Roman times. A Roman slave could expect to work for no longer than 30 years after which he must be offered his freedom.
If a peasant fell on hard times (perhaps through famine, poor planning or loss of lease) where debts exceeded the ability to repay then they might consider submitting to the conditions of serfdom to avoid the slavery option of a debtors prison. There is sufficient variability that even this broad generalisation might only hold for some instances.
Compare this to “modern socioty”. We have abolished slavery as an injustice and have done away with traditional surfdoms as equally “unjust”. Interestingly many surfs were singificantly worse off after their emancipation and many opposed the move.
Today we still have a form of bondsmanship but under different terms and conditions. Today's lower classes do not have access to a means of production or the materials of production. Marx supposed that this lack of access would lead to revolution that would rectify the inequality but this is perhaps an unrealistic and impractical suggestion.
Due to the absence of a peasant level of access to the resources to meet one's own material needs a form of bondsmanship is created called a “contract of employment”. Under this agreement the master now called “the employer” must provide for the material needs of the worker. Rather than provide this directly this provision is now made fluidly with the provision of money (called “income” or “wages”) with which the worker may obtain housing, food, clothing and medical aid as they choose.
This system is driven and maintained not by lords or kings but by the masters of the financial system (the banks and monetary policy makers). Unlike under the feudal system there is a smaller “ruling class” this is not rule as in the rule of law but the rule of power - by this I mean that there are those with control or influence over the running of the financial world and then there is everyone else.
The “super rich”, the British cabinet and Prime Minister (in the UK), the bank of England and a few others have the power of control over the financial system and the rules and choices that keep it running. On the whole we think little of those that have this power other than the ones we elect every four years. We trust them to do their job and mostly that is what they do.
The financial system works or at least it works within the boundaries it defines for itself. There are some problems, of course, these are the problems of modern life. Poverty, unemployment, taxes, inflation and so forth but rarely do we consider if the financial system should be the biggest feature of our lives. It is just there and so we never question the culture we live in (just as the average fish has never questioned the water in which it swims).
I wish to question the system and see if it might not be a better system if other systems existed along side it. Systems that might offer an alternative to the endless chase for money. Systems that offer the poorest members of society a chance to be self sufficient.
This year I will attempt the impossible - subscribe so that you do not miss it.
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