Tag Archives: History

Las Hilanderas (1657) by Diego Velazquez

I. The Merging of Catholic and State Power

“The empire on which the sun never sets”

This phrase encapsulated Spanish pride during the 16^th and 17^th centuries. Behind all of that however, the Spanish Golden Age involved the systemic subjugation of indigenous peoples, expropriation of their natural resources, and assimilation of their respective cultures. Generations destroyed by Spanish (and other Western) colonialism left a crippled continent that lacked the capital to upstart its uphill battle from subservience, even to this day. As Uruguayan journalist writes in his book The Open Veins of Latin America: “Our part of the world, known today as Latin America, was precocious: it has specialized in losing ever since those remote times when Renaissance Europeans ventured across the ocean and buried their teeth in the throats of the Indian civilizations.” And with the arrival of Spanish boats on the Latin American continent emerged a new chapter in their once-proud history; one marked with decline and subservience to a power that simply saw their blood as money. The Spanish invasion of Latin America was pushed by its thirst for economic prowess, and was facilitated by demands that held Spain and its Habsburg royal family by the handles. These included mineral profiteering, religion, and finance. Ideologically, the Catholic Church and its thinkers played a crucial role in legitimizing colonial expansion. Monetarily, the influx of silver and gold from Spain’s colonial plunders financed the growth of arms and territorial expansion. This vicious cycle was largely made systemic until the steady decline of the Spanish Empire in the 19^th century.

Before creating conflict, presumably war, it is essential to have academic backing beforehand to hold popular support. Despite being an autocratic monarchy, an ideology was necessary to justify Spain’s colonial ventures. The Catholic Church proved to be a viable outlet since its power was diminishing on the European stage. Critics, such as Martin Luther, questioned the Papacy and threatened the Catholic rule that had been the status quo for over a millennium. The Church struggled to counteract the powers that were splintering its unity and it found leverage in Spanish politics. Given the expansionist aims of Spain, the Catholic Church viewed this as a proper opportunity for evangelical expansion. Therefore, the Spanish state and the Catholic Church worked hand in hand but for different reasons – the former wanted to reap profit and the other wanted to expand its mode of theological thinking. Throughout the Spanish Empire, the Catholic Church worked alongside colonial interests to build on its influence although its prevalence was most prominent in the formative years of the empire. Many conquistadors pursued conquest for materialist and religious aims. Declarations titled Requerimiento were read aloud by Spanish authorities upon calling a new region their own, citing divine law and God’s plan as their justification. Written by Juan López de Palacios Rubios, a Council of Castile jurist, these degrees were given credibility through the Catholic Church and its dominion. The language was purely Catholic, naming Saint Peter and his Papal successors as proper evidence that God had the right to rule over the entire earth. Naturally, by association, God had given this authority to the Spanish monarchy. And if the indigenous people refused to be converted or ruled, they were threatened with murder, torture, and enslavement. Oftentimes, such theological justifications were read to indigenous people despite language barriers and to empty towns as a rationalization for murder and destruction. Dominican friars usually accompanied the conquistadors as they read the declarations, granting the decree holy justification. Despite enriching the coffers of the Spanish ruling class, the Requerimiento was abolished in 1556, since it was deemed unjust to impose a religion by threats if the victims had never heard of Christ prior. However, Requerimiento served its purpose – it established the religious justification for Spanish imperialism.

The marginalization of the New World began with the creation of administrative regions of control. The North and South American continents were carved up by the Treaty of Tordesillas in 1494 between the Spanish Crown and Portugal. Another treaty was signed between them in 1529 titled the Treaty of Zaragoza, which aimed at determining their respective regions of control in Asia. With the territorial lines set, the Spanish empire could now employ its ecomienda system of labor which institutionalized the enslavement of indigenous peoples and spread its Catholic evangelical message by sword even more efficiently. The Catholic Church sanctioned these territories with the papal bulls given in 1493, setting the groundwork for the Treaty of Tordesillas and Zaragoza. Called the Bulls of Donation, it granted overseas territories to the Catholic Spanish monarchs and Portugal. The major area of contention was Latin America, but is also involved a few islands in Asia among other regions. This holy sanctioning of land fundamentally usurped the power away from the Native Americans and granted the Spanish Crown the divine right to rule. Likewise, this was evoked many times over in conquest. Aside from the Requerimiento, which was read after a region was conquered, the Spanish Crown also instated the Spanish Requirement of 1519. This solidified Catholic rule in the colonies. It decreed that the Spanish Empire was divinely decreed to take the land of the New World. It also explicitly granted Spain the privilege of exploiting, subjugating, and enslaving the native inhabitants when they saw fit. The conquistadors that invaded, then, evoked this and believed those who resisted occupation also resisted God’s plan. Thereby, from then on, the colonial mission was fully set in motion – it had a monetary incentive, since territorial expansion provided bullion for the coffers of those in power, and it provided an ideological justification through God’s will.

II. The Catholic Theological Debate Over Colonialism

The Spanish Empire was unique in that it had a strict religious undertone. Other empires, such as the British and French, lacked such a prophetic message and were not as fervent in their religiosity to new-found lands. The difference was that the religious and governmental spheres of Spanish societies overlapped. This was especially evident in the Spanish Crown’s insistence in spreading Catholicism by lawful decree. The law of Burgos was passed in late December of 1512 and it was the first set of laws to govern the behavior of Spaniards living in the Americas in their treatment of indigenous peoples. It forbade them from being “mistreated” and facilitated converting them to Catholicism. However, it was largely ineffective in preventing the former. The system of ecomienda was too ingrained in the colonial economic system to be ruined by Spanish decree. This was tried to be corrected again in 1542 by King Charles V, but it was again largely ignored in the largest colonial regions. The native peoples of the Americas were then left with mistreatment and forced Catholic conversations, the decrees doing little to better their condition beside force more religion upon them.

Chiapas Bartolomé de las Casas was arguably one of the first to conceive of universal conception of rights.

In theological circles, the question of forced conversation and treatment of indigenous peoples in the Americas was one of much debate. Although the political sphere justified its colonization of peoples through a religious lens, the Catholic consensus on the matter within the upper echelons of its administration were split. This disagreement on the treatment of Native Americans would eventually reach its culmination in the Valladolid debate, which was held in the Colegio de San Gregorio of the Spanish city of Valladolid. The two debaters were the Bishop of Chiapas Bartolomé de las Casas, defending their right for equality, and Dominican Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda, who argued that their enslavement was justified by divine law. Casas was one of the first individuals to criticize Spanish colonization and argued that the Native Americans were capable of reason and could be brought to Christianity without coercion. And, according to natural law, they were to be treated just as the Europeans were. Sepúlveda, on the contrary, argued from a strangely secular position. Arguing from an archaic Aristotelian point, he stated that indigenous peoples have a predisposition for slavery since they fall into the definition of “barbarian.” Hence, they were to be considered “natural slaves.” He went on to outline four mine reasons for the enslavement of native peoples of the Americas. Firstly, their condition in nature was one that was akin to slavery and demanded a Spanish master. Secondly, it prevented the indigenous peoples from engaging in obscene acts such as cannibalism and sexual perversion. Thirdly, it prevented chaos amongst them and stopped them from engaging in forms of offensive sacrifice. And finally, slavery was the most effective way of teaching them of European Catholic culture. Casas, furious, responded that there is an international duty to protect innocence from being treated unjustly. Remarkably, this was one of the first public callings for universal human rights. The debate ended with both sides polarized and there was no clear “winner” of the Valladolid debate. However, Casas’s arguments had an effect on policy to some degree. The ecomienda labor system was marginally weakened and the New Laws of 1542 were passed, however this did little to better the condition of the Native Americans. All in all, neither side came out truly victorious – to Cases’s dismay, Spanish colonialism and expansion continued and Sepúlveda, who wanted to strengthen the ecomienda system, failed to tangibly do so.

Papal bulls served as the moral justification for colonization since the Spanish Empire had little in the law books over the mistreatment of the indigenous peoples.

III. The Ultimate Victor

Despite the winner the argument being ambiguous, Sepúlveda argument for “natural slavery” is one that was prevalent in Christian circles. It originates from Aristotle, that certain individuals have a predisposition for slavery and subservience. The ideologically basis for it is inherently racist, Euro-centric, and was used to justify enslavement of the Native Americans by political, military, and Church leaders. However, it would be unfair to argue that the entire Church condoned the actions of the Spanish empire. Bartolomé de las Casas was only one of many that opposed such mistreatment on the basis of natural rights. Much of the opposition grew out of the writings of Saint Thomas Aquinas, which was interpreted as a rebuttal to the enslavement of Native Americans. This would eventually form a new school of ecclesiastical thought, from the turn of the 16^th century, which aimed to reconcile the work of Saint Thomas Aquinas with the new emerging political order. It was titled the School of Salamanca. They tackled the topics of the Spanish empire and its treatment of peoples, the Reformation, and the rise of humanism. The school represented the eventual end of medieval thinking and the focus on individual liberty in ethics. Natural rights were elaborated upon and were argued to have been given to all humans, including Native Americans. This was contrary to the dominant opinion in Europe at the time, which was that indigenous peoples lacked such rights and were made for subservient positions. Moreover, this was one of the first times in history when a group of intellectuals questions the basis of imperial conquest rather than merely justifying it. One of the leaders of this group was Francisco de Vitoria, who was also the founder of the School of Salamanca. He argued that the claims to land by the Spanish Crown were largely illegitimate and that the peoples of Latin America also possessed property rights. From this, he outlined a rough conception of international law, which was the first of its kind, and his Just War theory. Thereby, he concluded as did others in the intellectual movement, that the enslavement of the indigenous peoples was unjust on the basis that it was provoked and it usurped them of their natural right to free will. Contrary to mainstream thought, Vitoria made the bold claim that wars for glory or forced conversion against “heretics” or “infidels” were inherently unjust since they were inherently aggressive rather than defensive.

The history of Spanish plunder in their occupied territories is one of complete destruction – not just in Latin American, but elsewhere also. Generally speaking, the purpose of colonization was to expropriate mineral-rich reserves from the colonies while maintaining it benevolent in the eyes of Catholic dogma. Largely efficient for Spaniards in power, some questioned it and such criticisms lead to the establishment of natural rights in intellectual circles. International justice came from ills of Spanish colonization, from within the Catholic establishment, and a set a precedent for future human rights movements. Thinkers along the likes of Bartolomé de las Casas and Francisco de Vitoria argued against the subjugation of indigenous peoples from a principled position of ethics. Rejecting the Aristotelian argument of “natural slavery,” their writing focused on the soul of each man as being equal. This consequently broke the chains of medieval thinking, but it would take a long while until such criticisms reached the mainstream. Despite the dissenters, Spanish colonization was based largely on Catholic evangelism. Catholicism was the underpinning of all of Spain’s imperial conquests, one of the only empires to exclusively do so, and it provided a rationalization for the torture and violence that they would inflict on the native peoples. The synthesis of the Church, with the Pope’s involvement, and the political system of Spain created a deadly dualism that would eventually lead to one of the greatest tragedies in human history –involving the complete destruction of certain cultures and peoples just for the sake blood profiteering. With the Catholic justification as the mainstream ideology supporting colonization, its critics scrambled to stop the bloodshed. Eventually, their voices would be heard, but only after millions have been victimized by the brutal labor system imposed by the Spanish Crown. And this plunder would roll the clock back on the Latin American experience, and other colonies, hundreds of years. It is a tragic setback that is still felt today, in culture and in economy, and a wound that will perhaps never be fully healed.

Thomas Jefferson: The Leninist Patriot

March 2, 2013

History

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Usually when one mentions Thomas Jefferson, Vladimir Lenin isn’t particularly the first person to come to mind (nor the second, nor third). At a superficial initial glance, they have little in common: a conflicted slave-owner, president, and brilliant writer that planted the seeds of democratic republicanism versus a Bolshevik leader and the main theoretician behind 20th century revolutionary thinking and praxis. A comparative analysis of these two different men would seem rather absurd given the political climate of the United States — who would have the gall to compare one of, if not the, founder of the original constitutional republic to a dirty red?

After we take off our post-McCarthyist goggles, there are some genuine comparisons to be made that merit a closer look at Jefferson’s ideology through a Leninist perspective. When the American experiment was rearing its head in the international scene, it was the first of its kind. A struggling republic midst an onslaught of Western imperial powers — few expected it to last. However, Jefferson held a firm belief that the empires of Europe would succumb to their own violence, which he considered alien to the United States. He writes to James Monroe in 1823:

I have ever deemed it fundamental for the United States never to take active part in the quarrels of Europe. Their political interests are entirely distinct from ours. Their mutual jealousies, their balance of power, their complicated alliances, their forms and principles of government, are all foreign to us. They are nations of eternal war. All their energies are expended in the destruction of the labor, property and lives of their people [1].

Calling for the complete separation from European politics, he writes to George Logan in 1801:

It ought to be the very first object of our pursuits to have nothing to do with the European interests and politics. Let them be free or slaves at will, navigators or agriculturists, swallowed into one government or divided into a thousand, we have nothing to fear from them in any form [2].

He would go on to exploit, what he viewed, European weaknesses during his time in diplomacy and terms as president. Realizing early that New Orleans was crucial for the development of the American experiment, he managed to properly balance his diplomatic talks with French powers to cheaply acquire Louisiana, while some Federalists were calling for war [3]. And he remarkably did so by using the Napoleonic wars in Europe to his advantage, since Napoleon was lacking the funds to fuel his imperialist ventures. Similarly, Lenin utilized the contradictions of European imperialism after World War One in his diplomacy and managed to retreat Russia from the war and marginally keep it secure.

Jefferson also took an internationalist approach to the American experience. “The Empire of Liberty,” as he called it, must spread its wings across the entire American continent and eventually the entire globe. He writes in 1795, commenting on the revolutions in France and Holland, in a letter to Tench Coxe:

This ball of liberty, I believe most piously, is now so well in motion that it will roll round the globe, at least the enlightened part of it, for light & liberty go together. it is our glory that we first put it into motion [4].

Again he argues this point in a 1824 letter to William Ludlow Monticello:

And I have observed this march of civilization advancing from the sea coast, passing over us like a cloud of light, increasing our knowledge and improving our condition, insomuch as that we are at this time more advanced in civilization here than the seaports were when I was a boy. And where this progress will stop no one can say. Barbarism has, in the meantime, been receding before the steady step of amelioration; and will in time, I trust, disappear from the earth [5]

After the Revolution of 1917, Lenin expounded a similar view of the ultimate destruction of the bourgeois powers of Europe. He argues in his influential pamphlet, Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism, about the nature of “decaying capitalism” and how historical necessity will bring about the demise of capitalist powers. He writes:

That imperialism is leading to annexation, to increased national oppression, and, consequently, also to increasing resistance [6].

And then on the inevitability of the destruction of imperialist capitalism:

That private economic and private property relations constitute a shell which no longer fits its contents, a shell which must inevitably decay if its removal is artificially delayed, a shell which may remain in a state of decay for a fairly long period… but which will inevitably be removed [7].

Lenin’s thoughts on the ultimate collapse of Western capitalism and its predatory nature bears resemblance to Jefferson’s writing on the destruction of the empires of Europe. The difference being, they were analyzing completely different social epochs. Lenin was witnessing, or so he believed, the transition from capitalism to some form of socialism. Jefferson, on the hand, witnessed the development of fledgling democracies and the destruction of archaic monarchies. Both articulated an internationalist tone in their message, either for Jeffersonian democracy or for socialism, and preached the inevitability of such events — Lenin called for a “revolutionary vanguard” in his April Theses, Jefferson believed in an empire of liberty with which “this ball of liberty… will roll around the world.”

Objectively speaking, both Jefferson and Lenin were internationalist revolutionaries. They viewed the old order with disdain, inevitable in its collapse, and believed in securing the future through revolution and popular struggle. Jefferson was keen and uptight in his support for the French Revolution and its excesses. Although not particularly pleased with all the Terror, he still argued in favor of the French struggles. He writes to William Short in 1793:

But time and truth will rescue and embalm [the Jacobin Terror], while their posterity will be enjoying that very liberty for which they would never have hesitated to offer up their lives. The liberty of the whole earth was depending on the issue of the contest, and was ever such a prize won with so little innocent blood? My own affections have been deeply wounded by some of the martyrs to this cause, but rather than it should have failed, I would have seen half the earth desolated [8].

His dedication to the French revolution is unquestionable; he sees it a worthy endeavor to defend at all costs. As he puts it, most bluntly, he would rather see “half the earth desolated” than see his ideals in France wither and fail. And as for Lenin, the Red Terror was used under his rule to purge the countryside of dissenters in order to ready it for socialism. The point being, both these individuals viewed themselves as instruments of history. They viewed themselves as prime movers of a social development that was inevitable in the grand historical narrative of humankind. There is a hint of arrogance in both Jefferson and Lenin in their push for social transformation, much of it being dogmatic, which is likely the reason why their ideologies intersect so often. From their condoning of violence to their opinion of Western powers to their internationalist political demeanor, Lenin and Jefferson can both be considered eerily similar in their interpretations of history and their justification for its transformation. And oddly enough, at least in American politics, one is lamented as an American savior, while the other is considered the absolute worst scourge of the Earth — never compared, they hold completely different chairs in history, seldom discussed in conjunction. Perhaps this dynamic best illustrates how absurd historiography can become, and how easily it can be morphed into fitting a particular nationalistic narrative. Two sides of a similar coin, Jefferson and Lenin truly show this absurdity in full.

The Victorian Era: Sexuality and the Family

February 10, 2013

History, Religion

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I. The Rise of the Bourgeois Work Ethic

The Crystal Palace, home of the Great Exhibition of 1851, was the first World Fair where Britain showed its industrial might and astute culture.

The Victorian Era was a strange time of mystic sexual morality, distinct fashion, industrialization, and — above all — imperial conquest. It was Britain’s century, their colonialist high-point, and they likewise influenced lands far beyond their water-locked country. The “Victorian morality” was a strange development in the emergence of bourgeois society. It was hypocritical as much as it was limiting; the mantra was to better the human condition, while, at the same time, turning a blind eye to the plight of the child worker and the general laborer (There were exceptions, of course. A spare few were in fact unsettled by the plight of these poor folk, one of them being Karl Marx).

With the rise of industrialization in the British mainland came a downplaying of hedonism. Pleasure was seen as seemingly antithetical to the ideal Victorian, where hard-work was cherished as a means to religious salvation [1]. Max Weber spoke of this in his seminal work The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, where he argues that the rise of Protestantism gave headway to new laborious expectations and allowed for further divisions of labor. In the Calvinist view, Martin Luther’s, and others of the Reformation, it was not enough to be devoted to supernatural salvation; one had to also be devoted to earthly labor and his craft. Because of the inability of individuals to influence God’s grace, given the Calvinist doctrine of predestination, they struggled to find signs of their destiny — which was either eternal damnation or salvation. A rigorous work ethic was preached as being a sign of “God’s grace,” and it became the epitome of the Calvinist tradition. Although only Scotland of Great Britain was largely Calvinist, due to the teachings of John Knox, the rest of the industrializing island also exemplified a similar outlook on labor. Religious individualism was crucial in any Protestant tradition that broke from the Catholic Church, even in the Anglican Church of England. In contrast, places such as Ireland (predominately Catholic), according to Weber, lacked this attitude due to the authoritarian nature of the Catholic Church and its overreaching doctrine, which limited individualism [2]. Coupled with the fact that “sloth” was considered a deadly sin in Christian doctrine, the development of bourgeois society fall hand-in-hand with the development of this new robust industrial individualism and the facilitation of Protestantism.

II. Demonizing Lust

Because of the development of a new work ethic, sexuality became an impediment to such ends. Such relations were relegated to private rooms, away from public sight. The majority of children, even among the poor, were sent to Sunday school where they were inculcated in a belief that one must abstain from sexual perversion. It was seen as an obstacle to God’s grace (let us not forget, “lust” is yet another deadly sin) [3]. Pleasure, as told by religious dogma, was merely a test of faith and should not be responded in kind. In part by this, sexuality become externalized — it became part of the object, rather than the self — and became regarded, seemingly, as a necessary evil.

Sexuality become a construct of public attention and scrutiny even in common language. It became impolite to bring up such topics in company and euphemisms emerged to describe them, need it be brought up [4]. Nearly every part of the body had a corresponding euphemism, with even the term “leg” being impolite and being replaced with “limb.’ The entire concept of procreation was made into fables that were nicely-worded to be avoided with children; such as the famous story of the “white stork” being the harbinger of small children that became popularized with the Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tale The Storks [5]. Equally absurd, genitalia were seen as too explicit to be shown in any context, even in artistry, during Victorian times. Expurgation, the censorship of the “offensive,” become common. Perhaps the best known example is one of the “fig-leaf,” where Queen Victoria, as the story goes, was repulsed to see the genitalia of Michelangelo’s statue David. A proportional fig leaf was then made to cover the obscenity, so the figure could be tolerated [6]. Even classical literature was found guilty of obscenity — Dr. Thomas Bowdler omitted and rewrote Shakespearean plays to make it more “accessible to children and wives.” Called The Family Shakespeare, minor expletives were omitted and death was made gentler, among other things. With the gentry holding morality of society by the handles, these such moral impositions pervaded all facets of British life, from the top down. Consequently, these norms were brought to all dominions of British rule and, given its vast empire, its sexually-repressive influence was vast and lasting.

III. The Patriarchal Family

The standard Victorian family had many children.

Perhaps most striking, in contrast with late developments of the family, is the role of women in society. The structure was overtly patriarchal. In Victorian society, the woman was servile and sexually docile. She was bound to her domestic life, despite having some political and civil autonomy, and was given the unspoken task of functioning as the moral instruction for servants and children. Women were expected to give birth to many children and the standard was set by the Queen Victoria and her husband — i.e. the “Royal Family” — who, in total, had nine children. Standards of femininity were established in the higher rungs of Victorian society and were expressed actively in the arts. The great Victorian poet Lord Alfred Tennyson espoused such repressive virtues in his poem The Princess:

Man for the field and woman for the hearth:
Man for the sword and for the needle she:
Man with the head and woman with the heart:
Man to command and woman to obey;
All else confusion [6].

One of the reasons for this gender polarity and rigidity is the development of the bourgeois middle-class during the Victorian era. The average Victorian male worked, unlike the gentry, and was able to afford at least three servants [7]. The household became a symbol of the male’s moral character and was regarded as a reflection of social class.. Thereby, it did not matter if the working man had to face obscene conditions and do monotonous labor to earn his living; as long as he had a respectable house to come back to, his social class was maintained. The paradox of experiencing a inferiority in the workplace induced a need to establish a superiority in the household, ultimately giving rise to patriarchal sentiments and female submission. This dynamic would establish two separate spheres of control in Victorian society — the private and the public, the workplace and the home, and the domestic and the business.

IV. Sexuality as an Object

The History of Sexuality, Volume I: An Introduction by Michel Foucault

In 1976, philosopher Michael Foucault published one of the first volumes to a three-volume series that would come to be known as one of his seminal works. His book, The History of Sexuality, analyzed the role of human sexuality in the Western world and its development. It aimed at questioning the presupposed “repression hypothesis” — that the current repressive elements of sexuality are a symptom of the Victorian era, which is when rigid restrictive norms were put in place. Although Foucault does not outright reject repressive Victorian morality as a major factor in the rise of modern Western sexuality, he turns the mainstream thesis on its head in arguing that sexuality was more discussed than ever before during the Victorian era.

The long rule of Queen Victoria has been characterized by sexual repression, censorship of the obscene, and domestication of the female; however, is there more to Victorian culture than merely superficial restrictions on discourse? Although there was relative silence on the topic between child and parent, teacher and pupil, or even master and house servant — was there not also, perhaps, a growing fascination with sexuality as a human condition? In 1841, the British state, for the first time, became instituting a full census of their population. This expansionary measure would include statistics on marriage, birth rates, and death rates [8]. The family was promoted as the building block of British life and marriage was superimposed as a guiding force in establishing such social harmony. Prostitution became an epidemic as poor female laborers struggled to find an income and were economically coerced to sell their bodies to usually wealthy upper-class gentry [9]. Priests became more interested in “confessions on the flesh” during the Christian practice of Penance, where individuals would confess to the priest their supposed “impurities.” Foucault writes:

But while language may have been refined, the scope of the confession — the confession of the flesh — continually increased. This was partly because the Counter Reformation busied itself with stepping up the rhythm of the yearly confession in the Catholic countries, and because it tried to impose meticulous rules of self-examination; but above all, because it attributed more and more importance in penance — and perhaps at the expense of other since — to all insinuations of flesh: thoughts, desire, voluptuous imaginings, delectations, combined movements of the body and soul; henceforth, all this had to enter, in detail, into the process of confession and guidance [The History of Sexuality Vol I, 19].

He goes on to argue how the establishment of Penance in Protestant (and Catholic) nations began deviating from actual confession of sins and became obsessed with the smallest of pleasures.

According to the new pastoral, sex must not be named imprudently, but all its aspects, its correlations, and its effects must be pursued down to their slenderest ramifications: a shadow in a daydream, an image too slowly dispelled, a badly exorcised complicity between the body’s mechanics and the mind’s complacency: everything had to be told [The History of Sexuality Vol I, 19].

Likewise, the Victorian era and the few decades prior to its development set a standard: Now, not only did one need to confess to acts that were against the law, they also had to tell all their pleasures and desires in church discourse, under the watchful eyes of the priest or minister. This set a new tone to sexuality in the Western world previously unheard of — it gave rise to innumerable euphemisms to describe acts or body parts previously taken as merely “being,” in an effort to describe this new sexual fascination. Sexuality was now externalized, treated as undesirable pleasure, and was to be repressed in public. And henceforth, the repression in Western culture took on a two-faced form; on the one hand, sexuality was to be beaten down from the public eye, but, on the other hand, was to be properly dissected under the guise of an authority that demands it.

Austro-German psychiatrist Richard von Kraft-Ebing, author of “Psychopathia Sexualis” (1886).

In academia, sexuality began to be added to the scientific lexicon. The Oxford English Dictionary began to add specific terms to their newly-printed releases; “sexual intercourse” (1799), “sexual function” (1803), “sexual organs” (1828), “sexual desire” (1836), “sexual instinct” (1861), “sexual impulse” (1863), “sexual act” (1888), and “sexual immorality” (1911). Moreover, sexual behavior became robustly studied as a field worthy of attention [10]. Sexuality was seen, in scientific circles, as a proper way to assess one’s personality and behavior. Who you slept with became, peculiarly, also an identity in the Western mindset. This became especially prevalent in psychiatry, before the Freudian revolution of thought, where sexual deviancy was seen as particularly problematic. And this phenomenon was present far beyond the bounds of Victorian England, since talks on sexuality were rising in the confession booths all across Christian Europe. Austro-German psychiatrist Richard von Kraft-Ebing published his work Psychopathia Sexualis in 1886 in which he outlined four sexual categories of, what he considered to be, symptoms of neurosis. They were titled: paradoxia (sexual desire at the wrong time), anesthesia (not enough sexual desire), hyperesthesia (too much sexual desire), and paraesthesia (sexual deviancy, i.e. queer and fetishism). He goes on to discuss the sexual “impassivity” of the female compared to the male, describing the male as having a “stronger sexual appetite” — only reaffirming the hypocritical sexual expectations of the male and female which is pervasive in Western culture to this very day.

V. Modern Victorian Sexuality

The ramifications of such repression, and private sexual objectification, has reared its ugly face even in contemporary society. The hysteria over discussion on sexuality is still pervasive and shied away in any public discourse. Archaic conceptions of sexual “immorality” are still being tossed around in the public arena and are commonly told to children. Rigid notions of femininity and masculinity are institutionally enforced and kept in check by popular disapproval once one steps outside the preconceived bounds. Perhaps, what is seen more vividly, is the persistent caricature that one’s sexuality is an indicator of one’s personality. The marginalization of sexuality continues to plague the Western mindset, always thrown to the back-burner of our minds, too frightening to be discussed. Such are the chains that have to be properly broken if we wish to actually articulate real “sexual liberation’ or any humanization of what, should be considered, natural human urges. To put it most bluntly, perhaps it is time to bring, first and foremost, such topics of sexuality to light. And all the while, let us give those that decry its discussion the proper response — ignore and pressure them to change their repressive ideas of sexuality, which have been shamefully penning individuals in a sexually-normative box ever since its adoption as a Western moral imperative. It is about time the discussion has been opened, rather than have sexuality continue to be an object of scrutiny.

***

– The Victorians: Gender and Sexuality

A Brief Economic Analysis of Yugoslavia

January 4, 2013

History, Political Economy

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I. Nationalization and Reindustrialization

The port city of Zadar in Croatia after many bombings during the war.

The port city of Zadar in Croatia after many Allied bombings from 1943 to 1944.

The victory of the Yugoslav Partisan army in World War II created many hefty challenges for the newly-liberated Balkan region. After being occupied by the Ustaše from 1941-1945, the destruction was severe – “the human and material losses were the greatest in Europe after the USSR and Poland” [Simon, Jr. 5]. The former Kingdom of Yugoslavia was virtually left in ruins, being usurped of its raw materials and resources, and stripped of its transport infrastructure, mining, and manufacturing industries.

Being granted the honor of victors after World War II, the Partisans formed their own government, based on the ideology of Southern Pan-Slavism and a socialist economic philosophy in the Marxian tradition. The Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia was established on the 29^th of November, 1945 and, after its creation, quickly allied itself with the Soviet Union. It immediately began to implement programs to rebuild its broken post-war state. Power became strongly centralized, based on the Soviet model of state socialism, and order firmly kept in place by Marshal Josip Broz Tito’s Communist Party. Six regions were then created, of relatively equal political power, in the newly drafted Constitution of 1946: Croatia, Montenegro, Serbia, Slovenia, Bosnia & Herzegovina, and Macedonia. Soon after, sweeping restructuring began to take root; property was transferred from its former private owners to the communist-run state, financial capital was expropriated from formerly being privatized, and the means of production was converted to public ownership. Firstly, large financial institutions, such as the banks, were nationalized to control the money supply and the flow of financial capital. After that was achieved, large industries were then overtaken by state control to promote industrialization in the war-crippled socialist republic. Then, finally, the smaller transport, commercial, and agricultural industries followed suit; they were also nationalized to increase production [Simon, Jr. 5].

II. Deterioration of Yugoslav-Soviet Relations

Edvard Kardelj, one of the creators of the Yugoslav model of socialism.

Although the initial recovery program enacted under Tito’s leadership was derived from Stalin’s 5-year plan model, significant splits shortly began to ferment between the Soviet leadership and the Yugoslav communists. Economic blockades were being placed on the young socialist state because of their alliance with the Soviet Union, and Tito’s independent stance on issues angered Stalin and his associates. Moreover, Yugoslav theoreticians began to formulate their own strains of Marxist thought and began to criticize the internal political and economic structure of the Soviet Union. Consequently, this gradually led to Yugoslavia’s expulsion from the Cominform by the end of the 1940s. It was at this point Yugoslavia began to economically develop differently than its socialist counterparts – creating a unique form of decentralized market socialism based on workers’ self-management [Simon, Jr. 6]. Frankly, the idea behind it was simple; the withering of bureaucratic state would only occur if innovative mass-participatory structures were created. Egalitarianism and populism became more of a principle rather than a political tool, contrary to the Soviet Union. Decentralized socialization of industry quickly followed Yugoslavia’s alienation from the Soviet Union. Led by the efforts of thinkers by the likes of Edvard Kardelj and Milovan Đilas, the original state-control of industry began to be broken down into localities and councils were created for respective industries. The profits were distributed amongst the workers in each individual firm, and some functions of state control were relinquished and allocation became more relied on the basic mechanisms of the market to ensure self-management and proper distribution [Frei, 45].

III. An Economic Revolution

Strictly speaking, this economic transformation can be described as taking place in three major stages: Firstly, in the 1950s, workers’ collectives were created but were restricted by the state’s regulation of capital construction. This was actually a remnant of the Soviet model of socialism. Secondly, the 1960s and 1970s were a radical shift from the aforementioned control that was present in the previous decade; rather than allow the state to control capital allocation and production, socialized markets began allocating it themselves with a self-managing structure using the labor involved. Thirdly and finally, liberalization reform followed until the ultimate collapse during the 1980s and late 1970s mainly caused by inflation and debt [Simon, Jr. 7].

Lunch break for Yugoslav workers, 1952.

The decentralized Yugoslav model mainly employed during the 60s and early 70s was localized, but complex and interconnected. Authorities in certain districts were authorized to oversee consumption and production services, to ensure each commune (the basic local government units) were working in each others interests. Moreover, each autonomous region in Yugoslavia was different; each had different legislative procedures for planning. However, it did still remain a federalist system of governance – most of executive power was exerted in creating land uses, the geographic location of large industries, traffic networking, and grandiose public service projects that required cooperation with different regions [Simmie, 272]. Most of power was derived from the legislative regions, but the localities were actually given little statutory powers. Rather, they were consulted and functioned as “pressure groups” to ensure local interests within the regions are met such as in the areas of housing, settlement, education, national defense, and the likewise [Simmie, 274]. It was a demonstration of a collective economy at work, absent of a real large-scale “free market,” where different elements of production were decided by long-term plans, medium-term plans, and annual action plans – while also being guided by the mechanisms of the supply and demand curves in a regular market, except profits were socialized as was production [Simmie, 276].

The economic growth seen during the period of decentralization was upward and dynamic. Comparatively speaking, Yugoslavia experienced the greatest per capita GDP growth out of all the Eastern Bloc economies [Groningen]. It also embraced a tight-controlled policy on imports from developed capitalist countries after the restoration of Soviet-Yugoslav relations in 1954-1955; foreign trade with socialist countries increased from 1.8% to about 28% in the decade following the return of good relations, while the share from Western capitalist nations dropped from 80.9% to 57.7% mostly due to the policies enacted by the Committee on Foreign Trade which was given extra power in 1956 to protect infant self-managing industries in developing Yugoslavia. Equally important, Yugoslavia enjoyed a balance of trade with the socialist nations during this period – amounting to $176 million of exports and $169 million of imports in 1962. Manufactured goods, machinery, and equipment were traded with the Eastern Bloc nations, while trade with developed capitalist countries consisted mainly of raw materials, food, and tobacco [Frei, 45, 46]. Banking was also heavily regulated, but broken down locally. In 1961, it consisted of eight large sub-national banks and over 380 communal banks, all overseen by the National Bank of Yugoslavia, the main credit institution of the country and giver-of-loans. The sub-national bank, granted on a regional basis, served as intermediaries between the National bank and the communal banks. The idea behind this was to encourage development by focusing giving loans to regions in need of aid, and they used communal banking institutions to do so [Frei, 48, 49].

IV. The Collapse of Yugoslavia

Despite strong economic growth and potential – experiencing an annual GDP growth of 6.1%, a life expectancy of 72 years, and literacy rate of 91% according to 1991 World Bank Statistics from 1960 to 1980 – the experimental Yugoslav system soon imploded on itself due to a variety of factors. Perhaps more importantly, the Oil Crisis of the 1970s had the greatest impact on Yugoslavia and was a precursor to the catastrophe that would unfold after Tito’s death in 1980, ultimately leading to the breakup of the federation in a bloody civil war. The recession in the developed nations in the West severely hurt Yugoslavia, and hindered the economic growth it was experiencing for 30 years. Massive shortages followed in electricity, fuel, and other necessities and unemployment reached 1 million by 1980 due to the energy crisis and the increasing economic embargos imposed by Western powers. Soon, structural economic issues came to light and richer regions became frustrated from over-subsidizing the poorer regions of southern Yugoslavia, called “economic black holes” [Asch, 26]. Production severely dropped, and conditions only worsened as the decade went on; GDP dropped -5.3% from 1980 to 1989, the regions of Kosovo and Montenegro being hit the hardest [Kelly]. Real earnings dropped 25% from 1975 to 1980, further crushing the poorest regions. In an effort to curb the domestic crisis, Yugoslavia began to take loans from the IMF to boost infrastructure development and bring back production levels to their pre-crisis levels. Soon, its debt skyrocketed – Yugoslavia incurred $19.9 billion in foreign debt by 1981 [Massey, Taylor, 159]. As a request for incurring so much IMF debt, the IMF demanded market liberalization and many regions began to implement economic shock therapy: cutting subsidies, privatizing, and quickly opening trade to allow foreign capital, which only worsened Yugoslavia’s economic crisis. Inflation rates soared and Yugoslavia entered a period of hyperinflation, unable to cope with the currency crisis because of its complex banking system – it soon began printing large amounts of Yugoslav dinar banknotes, created a new note of 2,000,000 Yugoslav dinars in 1989. As the broken nation spiraled into further calamity, the terrible war, which would be the bloodiest on European soil since World War 2, would soon begin to rear its dark head and finally put an end to the Yugoslav experiment that lasted little over just 40 years.

The Yugoslav Partisan Army marching through the city of Bitola, Macedonia.

V. Bibliography

– Simon, Jr., György. An Economic History of Socialist Yugoslavia. Rochester: Social Science Research Network, 2012. 1-129.

– Simmie, James. The Town Planning Review , Vol. 60, No. 3 (Jul., 1989), pp. 271-286

– The Groningen Growth and Development Centre, n.d. Web. 3 Jun 2012. http://www.rug.nl/feb/onderzoek/onderzoekscentra/ggdc/inde&xgt;

– Frei, L. The American Review of Soviet and Eastern European Foreign Trade , Vol. 1, No. 5 (Sep. – Oct., 1965), pp. 44-62

– Beth J. Asch, Courtland Reichmann, Rand Corporation. Emigration and Its Effects on the Sending Country. Rand Corporation, 1994. (pg. 26)

– Mills Kelly, “GDP in Yugoslavia: 1980-1989,” Making the History of 1989, Item #671, http://chnm.gmu.edu/1989/items/show/671 (accessed June 03 2012, 10:32 pm).

– Douglas S. Massey, J. Edward Taylor. International Migration: Prospects and Policies in a Global Market. OxfordUniversity Press, 2004. (pg. 159)

– Government of the Republic of Croatia – Information on Croatian Economy http://www.vlada.hr/en/about_croatia/information/croatian_economy

– Ballinger, Pamela. “Selling Croatia or Selling Out Croatia?” Bowdoin College, 24 Oct. 2003. Web.

– Vojmir Franičević. Privatization in Croatia: Legacies and Context Eastern European Economics, Vol. 37, No. 2 (Mar. – Apr., 1999), pp. 5-54

The Many European Modes of Communication

September 16, 2012

History, Older Posts

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I. The First Big Leap

The transition to a new communicative medium has never been easy for any society. From our lofty origins in oral tradition to the new techie substitutes, such a dynamic has never been without consequences. With the advent of a new methodology, comes a losing of the elements of the old. And with it, also comes those that oppose the change — those that regard it as vile and damaging to order and stability. Socrates, for one, was skeptical of the early transition to written word. In his dialogue Phaedrus, Plato captures Socrates’s words (perhaps ironically) in a story about the Egyptians:

Socrates: But when they came to letters, this, said Theuth, will make the Egyptians wiser and give them better memories; it is a specific both for the memory and for the wit. Thamus replied: O most ingenious Theuth, the parent or inventor of an art is not always the best judge of the utility or inutility of his own inventions to the users of them. And in this instance, you who are the father of letters, from a paternal love of your own children have been led to attribute to them a quality which they cannot have; for this discovery of yours will create forgetfulness in the learners’ souls, because they will not use their memories; they will trust to the external written characters and not remember of themselves. The specific which you have discovered is an aid not to memory, but to reminiscence, and you give your disciples not truth, but only the semblance of truth; they will be hearers of many things and will have learned nothing; they will appear to be omniscient and will generally know nothing; they will be tiresome company, having the show of wisdom without the reality [1].

Using this tale, Socrates tells us what is lost with the written word: the passion of speaking, the revelation of dialogue, the bearing of truth. He postulates that writing not only degrades truth, it only works to reciprocate it rather than expound it authentically. To Socrates, it denigrates memory by promoting record-keeping rather than mental recollection and contemplation. In essence, it introduces forgetfulness and keeps man from bearing the responsibility of remembering for himself. It is also constant; it bears no substantive change over time, other than, perhaps, its interpretation. And finally, it does not discriminate its audiences — making it accessible even to those that do not understand it. A speaker can change his tone and message depending on the audience. A work of writing can not.

Through this dialogue, Plato captures Socrates’s main concern, which was sustaining the art of rhetoric and fruitful dialogue. Was Socrates right; were some of his ‘predictions’ fulfilled? Absolutely, we certainly did lose something when oral tradition lost prominence. We lost the art of “story-telling,” and perhaps also some of the values of tribal kinship, but we remarkably gained much more. We attained the ability to spread ideas quicker and keep thoughts well-preserved for future generations to enjoy. Satirically, it was because of writing that Socrates is so revered today, despite the criticisms he had of it.

Not surprisingly, however, much of the initial mistrust that was said of the development from oral tradition to written word has been lost. Without a written account of these criticisms, such accusations have failed the test of time — Socrates is the only ones that remains, due to Plato’s writings, but we can only assume similar criticisms were being thrown around at the time. It is very unlikely that Socrates was the only individual making such claims in his day and age.

II. Suppression and Turmoil

“The printing press is either the greatest blessing or the greatest curse of modern times, one sometimes forgets which” – James Matthew Barrie

“The Saint Bartholomew’s Day Massacre” by François Dubois.

Turmoil ensued after the creation of a new technology that would radically alter communication. The printing press was invented in the 1440s by Johannes Gutenberg, and with it came violent social upheaval and a loss of Church dominance. With Protestantism on the rise, catalyzed by Martin Luther’s Ninety-Five Theses and spread through mass-printing, the Catholic Church finally saw a threat to its power. They soon scrambled in fear; Pope Innocent VIII introduced censorship in 1487, requiring that the Church approve of all books before publication [2]. The Bible was prohibited to be printed in any language except Latin. Violence erupted in Western Europe as sectarian religious conflict escalated. Huguenots were slaughtered in France by Catholic mobs during the later half of the 16th century, supposed heretics were burned at the stake during the Inquisition of Spain, and the Thirty Years’ War, which was rooted in religious territorial disputes, became a full-scale European conflict by the first quarter of the 17th century.

Perhaps most importantly of all, the bloodshed Europe experienced after the introduction of the printing press tells us of the power of ideas. The Catholic Church was relatively left unchecked in its power and prestige before Gutenburg’s revolutionary invention. Now that ideas could spread more efficiently, dissent was brewing within Church dominion. In retrospect, the persistent efforts of the Catholic Church extend far beyond the religiosity they were attempting to control; they were the representatives of state power during the Middle Ages. During the height of Catholic rule, individual nations were fragmented and lacked governmental oversight in any meaningful degree. Domestic policy was open, and governance was mostly left to Catholic elites within the appointed hierarchy. The spread of a new communicative medium, the printing press, threatened the Church in its power. Its efforts to preserve its authoritarian hold was under the guise of preserving Catholicism, but that was the populist sentiment to stir peasantry support rather than the actual motivation. The Church still functioned as any other state apparatus; As a rule, the free flow of ideas is always antithetical to centralized power. The Catholic Church was no exception in this regard. It scrambled to secure its power just as any other power structure ultimately does when it feels threatened.

The Original Printing Press.

Catholic control would continue to diminish as the decades went on. The Enlightenment questioned the very nature of divine rule, and nationalism began to fully flourish after the Greek War for Independence, eventually replacing Christian “unity” with nationalist fervor. The printing press, and its quick dissemination, would consequently spark national, linguistic, and cultural unity amongst regional peoples which would form the basis for nationhood. Professor Benedict Anderson analyzes this phenomenon in his book, “Imagined Communities,” in which he cites the spread of nationalism to, what he calls, print-capitalism. The profit incentive to increase circulation by print-masters was so strong that they soon abandoned Latin as the standard, and adopted regional languages to facilitate sales [3]. Soon, regional ties began to emerge as individuals began to relate to one another by their language and dialects, which soon evolved into nationalism and the modern nation-state. More generally, this spurred the beginnings of the modern market and facilitated trade amongst commoners. The Catholic Church now found the land it once controlled severely cut, as regions began forming their own respective governmental structures based on linguo-ethnic commonalities, eventually replacing Catholic dominion by state control in their respective regions. It was over, the Catholic Church finally lost its iron grip. A new epoch had emerged.

III. Reaching Modernity

“Modernity” is characterized by all the gadgetry we enjoy today. Television, radios, and telephones have all advanced our communicative capabilities and have allowed us to be in tune with each other and issues beyond our immediate setting. Recent developments, however, have transcended these inventions and have surpassed them in capacity. The Internet just could be the most remarkable and revolutionary creation of the modern era. Characterized by globalized communication, easy access, and plentiful information — the Internet has created an aura of data that has perhaps exceeded the human ability to indulge in it all. The social impact has been unequivocally exceptional. Spurring social movements in the Middle East, facilitating transparency in governance, and instigating awareness and understanding of worldly phenomena, the Internet has created an atmosphere rich of progressive potentiality and knowledge. It has brought an entirely new dimension to the validity of “spontaneous order.” The Internet, it seems, was created out of pure spontaneity; its branches being a natural development when left to its own means.

The Icon of the Declaration of Internet Freedom.

One of the largest problems in any society is the distribution of information. Generally speaking, whoever controls the influx of academic instruction ultimately holds the populace by the handles. Slowly, as humanity has progressed from each new communicative development, this centralization of information has drastically decreased. The commoners were now able to read, to write, and to engage in discourse — to a limited degree. With the advent of the Internet, this entire dynamic has been turned on its head. In its purest form, the Internet is the democratization of information. Relatively, anyone can comment and discuss issues if they have access. Rather than being restricted to academic elites, such topics have been moved from the institutional setting to the populist pool of discussion. Credentials, at least on the Internet, have become largely defunct.

In its current form, Internet discussion is in its infancy. With the fallacious claims and unsubstantiated arguments that frequent comment threads, we must realize that recent developments are still fundamentally in its early stages. The discussion has been handed to the people, for all the delve into, and it now must be absorbed likewise. Never before has there been such an explosion of knowledge given to the masses, and it can only be expected that its dealings will take several decades to fully take root. The so-called “Internet Generation” will, predictably, adapt to such changes and become used to its functions once they come of age.

Of course, as such changes begin to surface, questions begin to arise. Speculations have been made that the Internet has made us supposedly “dumber” [4]. These Neo-Luddite criticisms bear resemblance to Socrates’s hesitations during the transition to the written word — we are losing a crucial component of our memory, we will only realize superficiality, and our attention will be deluded, it is said. The same archaic arguments are resurfacing, unsurprisingly. In another interesting parallel, the governmental organizations of the modern world are in a frenzy over the Internet’s potential for conflict, just as the Church was when it was threatened. In an effort to curb imaginary terrorism, legislation such as ACTA has been constantly brought to the table to address the issues of the cyber-terrorism, patent law, and threats to domestic tranquility [5]. These resolutions have always come with a human face, promising safety and making clear its supposed necessity. Underneath this persona is the real intention; the facilitation of information is a threat to corporate and state power. Monopolization of power is in the interest of those within the dominion structure, and any clash of opinion is seen at ends with normalcy. The Internet has brought this conflict to the forefront. The struggle between those that wish to constrain information and those that hope to free it has become an acute contention in the modern world. We can only hope the institutions that wish to exhibit this control crumble before the conflict escalates. Freedom comes at a price; and it must be defended likewise.

***

– “The Critics Need a Reboot. The Internet Hasn’t Led Us Into a New Dark Age.”

– “The Impact of Print”

– Some more information on Professor Benedict Anderson and his work, “Imagined Communities.”

The American Economic Miracle

July 13, 2012

History, Older Posts, Political Economy

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In 1893, Frederick Jackson Turner presented his landmark essay The Significance of the Frontier in American History to a gathering of academics at the World’s Columbian Exposition. Turner, in his thesis, argued that the unique American frontier experience shaped the United States’ development and created a distinct culture and political condition. In essence, the frontier was responsible for molding the American character into what it is.

While his thesis certainly stands true, the “Old West” also brought with it an economic anomaly — a differentiating aspect that made the United States’ economic upbringing particularly strange. From its colonial origins and throughout the 1800s, the U.S economy was consistently plagued with shortages of labor. These shortages would influence the development of slavery in the South, where plantation owners find it necessary to import more slaves to sustain their agricultural output. These shortages would also be the reason for the influx of immigrants throughout the 1800s, who where subject to extreme prejudice from nativists once some forms of unemployment actually became evident.

The above graph depicts estimates made by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. However, they are relatively high due to the impossibility of knowing the actual levels of unemployment. Little surveying was done, regional statistics were not kept, and much of the American population was self-employed. This makes assessing the unemployment rate during this period of exceptional American growth difficult. And further complications arise when youth employment is added into the calculations — which customarily started the from age of 10 in most areas. Since not all households required their children to work, making fully accurate estimates is nearly impossible.

However, given the growth of American industry during the 1800s, basic assumptions can be made. For one, the inventiveness of the U.S industrial economy can be properly explained if the labor shortages are taken into account. Because of the lack of labor in the United States, industrial capitalists had to rely on new technology to be able to increase their output and balance the lack of laborers. From this predicament, the American System of Manufacturing, as it was called, was developed. Because of its efficiency, it was revered amongst industrialists in Europe. The most important contribution being — the creation of interchangeable parts. This allowed industry to drastically increase their output and keep costs to a minimum. This also coincided with the high degree of mechanization that was starting to take root in the United States with the beginnings of the first Industrial Revolution.

Much of this technological advancement was also a product of the contention between agricultural and industrial regions during the United States’ great economic expansion. Although these clashing interests date far back to colonial times, the creation of the General Land Office in 1812 was a turning point. This independent federal agency was responsible for distributing and surveying public domain land in the largely unexplored territories of the United States. Two laws in particular addresses the rationing of these lands — the Preemption Act of 1841 and the Homestead Act. The former was passed to ration pieces of the uncultivated territory at a price. Up to 160 acres could be purchased at a time, and at very low prices. It was done to encourage those already occupying federal lands to purchase them. The Homestead Act, first enacted in 1862, was similar in its intent. Its aim was giving applicants roughly 160 acres of land free of charge west of the Mississippi River. Now, northern industrialists not only had to deal with labor shortages — they also had to satisfy their workers enough so they would not opportunistically leave and go westward.

The frontier experience did much more than cultivate the unexplored land westward; it intensified the shortages of labor in the United States. This scarcity created an inventive industrial sector that had to compensate by developing new technology, which would ultimately lead the United States to the economic dominance it enjoys today. Economist Richard Wolff, in a few of his lectures and writings, theorizes that it was this remarkable condition that created a very different experience for those living in the United States.

“What distinguishes the United States from almost every other capitalist experiment is that from 1820 to 1970, as best we can tell from the statistics we have, the amount of money an average worker earned kept rising decade after decade. This is measured in “real wages,” which means the money you earn compared to the prices you have to pay. That’s remarkable. There’s probably no other capitalist system that has delivered to its working class that kind of 150-year history. It produced in the U.S. the expectation that every generation would live better than the one before it, that if you worked hard, you could deliver a higher standard of living to your kids.”

Frankly, Wolff’s analysis makes sense. Rising wages kept the worker class’s morale high, and attracted immigrants — it also served as an incentive for working people to stay as laborers rather than receive land and move westward. So, fundamentally speaking, American employers experienced competition in the labor market for two specific reasons. One, the federal land programs provided incentives for workers to move westward and entrepreneurs had to provide reasons for them to stay and work in the form of higher wages. And second, since the labor supply was constantly in high demand, workers were not easily replaceable. This implicitly forced firms to increase their wages, to attract laborers to their respective industries.

In 2006, Michael Lind published an article in the Financial Times titled “A Labour Shortage Can be a Blessing,” which indirectly supports Wolff’s thesis on wages. He writes:

“In the ageing nations of the first world, the benefits of a labour shortage, in the form of higher productivity growth and higher wages, might outweigh the costs. Where labour is scarce and expensive, businesses have an incentive to invest in labour-saving technology, which boosts productivity growth by enabling fewer workers to produce more. It is no accident that the industrial revolution began in countries where workers were relatively few and had legal rights, rather than in serf societies where people were cheaper than machines.”

In order to validate Lind’s and Wolff’s claims, two specific economic topics must be properly historically analyzed. The first one being — is there evidence for such a labor shortage, and if so, how severe was it?

Given the estimates made by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, it would be safe to assume that unemployment was not a major issue during the 1800s. When youth employment is taken into consideration, the estimates become very inflated, since the labor pool was so large. However, beside macroeconomic analysis, there are specific scenarios which shows that such a dilemma in production was indeed persistent in the United States during the 19th century. The PBS television series “American Experience” gives one particular scenario during the construction of railroads in the 1860s that validates this assumption.

“In early 1865 the Central Pacific had work enough for 4,000 men. Yet contractor Charles Crocker barely managed to hold onto 800 laborers at any given time. Most of the early workers were Irish immigrants. Railroad work was hard, and management was chaotic, leading to a high attrition rate. The Central Pacific management puzzled over how it could attract and retain a work force up to the enormous task. In keeping with prejudices of the day, some Central Pacific officials believed that Irishmen were inclined to spend their wages on liquor, and that the Chinese were also unreliable. Yet, due to the critical shortage, Crocker suggested that reconsideration be given to hiring Chinese…”

Historian Rickie Lazzerini portrays a similar issue in Cincinnati, Ohio during the beginning of the 1800s.

“…the busy industries created a constant and chronic labor shortage in Cincinnati during the first half of the 19th century. This labor shortage drew a stream of Irish and German immigrants who provided cheap labor for the growing industries.”

The second question that must be asked is — was there actually a persistent increase in wages during the 1800s?

To properly answer this question is immensely complex, since such little data is available. However, there exists one specific academic paper on the subject that addresses this question and the one posed prior. In 1960, economist Stanley Lebergott authored a chapter addressing wages in 19th century United States in a full volume called “Trends in the American Economy in the Nineteenth Century” published by the Conference on Research in Income and Wealth. The chapter itself was titled “Wages Trends, 1800 – 1900.” He writes:

“Associated with the enormous size of these establishments was the
need to draw employees from some distance away. Local labor supplies
were nowhere near adequate. One result was the black “slaver’s wagon”
of New England tradition, recruiting labor for the mills. The other was
the distinctly higher wage rate paid by such mills in order to attract
labor from other towns and states. Humanitarian inclinations and the
requirements of labor supply went hand in hand. Thus while hundreds
of small plants in New York, in Maine, and in Rhode Island paid 30 to
33 cents a day to women and girls, the Lowell mills generally paid
50 cents” [451].

Regions that lacked adequate quantities of labor had to rely on larger wages to attract workers from afar. However, apart from the industrial north of the United States, farm wages also increased — perhaps signifying a competitive rift between the agricultural sectors and the industrial ones.

Professor Lebergott, later in his analysis, then provides the full wage computations that he was able to calculate given individual data and trends recorded by local media. He combined the data he acquired on a state by state basis, starting locally and then branching out to create a national average. Also note, the drop in wages between 1818 – 1830 he attributes to “the close of the Napoleonic Wars and the end of the non-importation agreement.”

Based on economist Stanley Lebergott’s analysis, Richard D. Wolff’s assertions are validated; the United States, for the most part, did enjoy increasing real wages throughout the 19th century. Even more so, it goes further in proving Michael Lind’s claim that shortages of labor can indeed cause wage increases and heighten technological innovation. It is very likely that the combined frontier experience and shortages in the production processes created a unique variant of capitalism that was unique to the United States. It gave American households the confidence that if they worked harder, they would earn a better living. It also gave to them the optimism that their children would enjoy a better standard of living.

This unprecedented century of growth and success also had often overlooked impact on the American psyche. Because of the inflated expectations, it instilled a unique mentality amongst working class Americans. As John Steinbeck put it, the poor don’t see themselves as victims — but rather as “temporarily-embarrassed millionaires.” It is this aspect of the American psyche that has allowed the broken system to flourish in the decades since the persistent stagnation of wages of the 1970s. Admitting the issue is just to difficult, for some; if we believe enough, the American dream just might become real again, as it was for those traveling out West to find riches and fortunes. In retrospect, the sooner working class Americans awake from this fantasy, the sooner they will realize that times have changed — and not in their favor.

***

– A lecture where Wolff discusses the frontier experience and 19th century wage increases.

– Some statistics and fact on U.S economic growth during this time period.

– A decent article on this topic from the Wall Street Journal (you need a subscription to view it).

Webster’s Defense of Liberty

May 11, 2012

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Senator Daniel Webster, one of the Great Triumvirate.

The War of 1812 was a brutal conflict between the infantile United States and the British Empire, and the culmination of years of unsettled dues from the Revolutionary War. The first real test of power since its independence, aside from the Barnaby Wars, the United States was faced with a dilemma; they lacked the proper ground troops to deal with such an impending crisis from the British Crown. Scrambling for solutions, then-president James Madison sought advice from his Secretary of State James Monroe who then pitched in his two cents — instate a national draft of 40,000 men. It was this proposal that Senator Daniel Webster fiercely criticized on the House floor in his December address during the winter of 1815. His words are perhaps one of the most eloquent defenses I have read against conscription. Here’s some food for thought:

“…Is this, Sir, consistent with the character of a free Government? Is this civil liberty? Is this the real character of our Constitution? No Sir, indeed it is not. The Constitution is libelled, foully libelled. The people of this country have not established for themselves such a fabric of despotism. They have not purchased at a vast expense of their own treasure and their own blood a Magna Carta to be slaves. Where is it written in the Constitution, in what article or section is it contained, that you may take children from their parents, & parents from their children, & compel them to fight the battles of any war, in which the folly or the wickedness of Government may engage it? Under what concealment has this power lain hidden, which now for the first time comes forth, with a tremendous & baleful aspect, to trample down & destroy the dearest rights of personal liberty? Who will show me any constitutional injunction, which makes it the duty of the American people to surrender everything valuable in life, & even life itself, not when the safety of their country & its liberties may demand the sacrifice, but whenever the purposes of an ambitious & mischievous Government may require it? Sir, I almost disdain to go to quotations & references to prove that such an abominable doctrine has no foundation in the Constitution of the country. It is enough to know that that instrument was intended as the basis of a free Government, & that the power contended for is incompatible with any notion of personal liberty. An attempt to maintain this doctrine upon the provisions of the Constitution is an exercise of perverse ingenuity to extract slavery from the substance of a free Government. It is an attempt to show, by proof & argument, that we ourselves are subjects of despotism, & that we have a right to chains & bondage, firmly secured to us & our children, by the provisions of our Government. It has been the labor of other men, at other times, to mitigate & reform the powers of Government by construction; to support the rights of personal security by every species of favorable & benign interpretation, & thus to infuse a free spirit into Governments, not friendly in their general structure & formation to public liberty.”

He goes on to articulate the gruesome effects of the war on families and lives:

“…Sir, I invite the supporters of the measures before you to look to their actual operation. Let the men who have so often pledged their own fortunes & their own lives to the support of this war, look to the wanton sacrifice which they are about to make of their lives & fortunes. They may talk as they will about substitutes, & compensations, & exemptions. It must come to the draft at last. If the Government cannot hire men voluntarily to fight its battles, neither can individuals. If the war should continue, there will be no escape, & every man’s fate, & every man’s life will come to depend on the issue of the military draught. Who shall describe to you the horror which your orders of Conscription shall create in the once happy villages of this country? Who shall describe the distress & anguish which they will spread over those hills & valleys, where men have heretofore been accustomed to labor, & to rest in security & happiness. Anticipate the scene, Sir, when the class shall assemble to stand its draft, & to throw the dice for blood. What a group of wives & mothers, & sisters, of helpless age & helpless infancy, shall gather round the theatre of this horrible lottery, as if the stroke of death were to fall from heaven before their eyes, on a father, a brother, a son or an husband. And in a majority of cases, Sir, it will be the stroke of death. Under present prospects of the continuance of the war, not one half of them on whom your conscription shall fall will ever return to tell the tale of their sufferings. They will perish of disease & pestilence, or they will leave their bones to whiten in fields beyond the frontier. Does the lot fall on the father of a family? His children, already orphans, shall see his face no more. When they behold him for the last time, they shall see him lashed & fettered, & dragged away from his own threshold, like a felon & an outlaw. Does it fall on a son, the hope & the staff of aged parents. That hope shall fail them. On that staff they shall lean no longer. They shall not enjoy the happiness of dying before their children. They shall totter to their grave, bereft of their offspring, & unwept by any who inherit their blood. Does it fall on a husband? The eyes which watch his parting steps may swim in tears forever. She is a wife no longer. There is no relation so tender or so sacred, that, by these accursed measures, you do not propose to violate it. There is no happiness so perfect, that you do not propose to destroy it. Into the paradise of domestic life you enter, not indeed by temptations & sorceries, but by open force & violence.”

Powerfully speaking, he once again affirms the principles of a free society:

“…In my opinion, Sir, the sentiments of the free population of this country are greatly mistaken here. The nation is not yet in a temper to submit to conscription. The people have too fresh & strong a feeling of the blessings of civil liberty to be willing thus to surrender it. You may talk to them as much as you please, of the victory & glory to be obtained in the Enemy’s Provinces; they will hold those objects in light estimation, if the means be a forced military service. You may sing to them the song of Canada Conquests in all its variety, but they will not be charmed out of the remembrance of their substantial interests, & true happiness. Similar pretences, they know, are the graves in which the liberties of other nations have been buried, & they will take warning. Laws, Sir, of this nature can create nothing but opposition. If you scatter them abroad, like the fabled serpents’ teeth, they will spring up into armed men. A military force cannot be raised, in this manner, but by the means of a military force. If the administration has found that it cannot form an army without conscription, it will find, if it ventures on these experiments, that it can not enforce conscription without an army. The Government was not constituted for such purposes. Framed in the spirit of liberty, & in the love of peace, it has no powers which render it able to enforce such laws. The attempt, if we rashly make it, will fail; & having already thrown away our peace, we may thereby throw away our Government.”

Part of the Great Triumvirate of the Senate, Daniel Webster could not have used his talent of speaking more masterfully.

Lincoln, Marx, and the Civil War

April 26, 2012

History, Older Posts

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The election of 1864 was one of bitter divides. In a strategic effort to garner nonpartisan support, Lincoln attempted to appeal to the splintered Democratic Party where there was a rift between War Democrats and the Copperheads (anti-war Northerners). He ran under the “National Union Party,” in an effort to show American unity during a time of severe crisis and chose Andrew Johnson, a War Democrat, as his running mate. They would go on the capture the imagination of the North, winning the election of 1864 in a landslide against former General George B. McClellan who was running on the Democratic ticket.

Shortly after the election victory, an uncanny letter was handed to U.S Ambassador Charles Francis Adams with the instructions being that it be given to newly-elect, Abraham Lincoln. It was from the First International, and it was written by Karl Marx himself, congratulating Lincoln’s efforts during the United States’ time of war. It was praising and optimistic of the future of labor in the United States. It read:

We congratulate the American people upon your re-election by a large majority. If resistance to the Slave Power was the reserved watchword of your first election, the triumphant war cry of your re-election is Death to Slavery.

Marx goes on to further show eloquently his sincere support and bright anticipation of the workers’ future:

While the workingmen, the true political powers of the North, allowed slavery to defile their own republic, while before the Negro, mastered and sold without his concurrence, they boasted it the highest prerogative of the white-skinned laborer to sell himself and choose his own master, they were unable to attain the true freedom of labor, or to support their European brethren in their struggle for emancipation; but this barrier to progress has been swept off by the red sea of civil war. The workingmen of Europe feel sure that, as the American War of Independence initiated a new era of ascendancy for the middle class, so the American Antislavery War will do for the working classes. They consider it an earnest of the epoch to come that it fell to the lot of Abraham Lincoln, the single-minded son of the working class, to lead his country through the matchless struggle for the rescue of an enchained race and the reconstruction of a social world.

It becomes apparent from this writing that Marx understood the dilemma of the laborers in the United States. Divided between racism, a blemish that became more visible during the eve of the Civil War, the working class was unable to mobilize. They lacked the capacity in numbers and in heart – being divided by systemic racial scapegoating that pitted them against their fellowman. Karl Marx even directly mentions this in his book ‘Das Capital.’ He writes:

In the United States of North America, every independent movement of the workers was paralysed so long as slavery disfigured a part of the Republic. Labour cannot emancipate itself in the white skin where in the black it is branded.

It would be naive for anyone to believe that liberation and class struggle could properly take place with the institution of slavery still intact. Marx fully understood this. He considered it a necessary step in bourgeoisie history for it to be abolished; it being a vital precursor to real proletariat efforts.

A reply to the commemorative letter from Marx was actually given by Ambassador Adams in January of 1865. Seemingly, Lincoln enjoyed the warm support he received from the First International:

So far as the sentiments expressed by it are personal, they are accepted by [President Lincoln] with a sincere and anxious desire that he may be able to prove himself not unworthy of the confidence which has been recently extended to him by his fellow citizens and by so many of the friends of humanity and progress throughout the world.

The rest of the response goes on to espouse a surprisingly internationalist tone:

Nations do not exist for themselves alone, but to promote the welfare and happiness of mankind by benevolent intercourse and example. It is in this relation that the United States regard their cause in the present conflict with slavery, maintaining insurgence as the cause of human nature, and they derive new encouragements to persevere from the testimony of the workingmen of Europe that the national attitude is favored with their enlightened approval and earnest sympathies.

It was perhaps, in this reply and in the events unfolding, the First International saw a glimmer a hope for the emancipation of the laborers in the United States. It was the start of a new ‘epoch,’ as they call it, but however it is disheartening to note that Marx wrote little to nothing on the events that would follow during the Reconstruction. He turned his attention elsewhere, abandoning the struggle in the Western Hemisphere and instead turning to a more Eurocentric revolutionary approach – which was perhaps a mistake in and of itself.

Despite this, a portion of Marx’s predictions came true. There was indeed a shift in the workers’ mentality in the decades after the Civil War. The National Labor Union (NLU), founded in 1866, was the first national labor organization in the United States. Many such organizations formed likewise in the age of railroad tycoons, demanding higher wages and shorter hours. The telling revelation here is that, when compared to the building of the canals during the decades after the turn of the 19th century, the consciousness of the workingman changed. Over a thousand men died from swamp fever during the construction of the Eerie Canal, but little to no backlash followed. Many more worked long and difficult hours on similar projects during that time, but there were no strikes nor was there much violence. This only changed after the institution of slavery was abolished. Marx’s optimism was therefore fulfilled, in some respects; The emancipation of slaves also emancipated the rest of the United States – in body and in mind. Frankly, although some initial momentum was lost after Reconstruction ended, it heightened the peoples’ sensitivity to their impoverished state with which they responded by organizing – such that would be violently repressed years later during the wealth-concentrated time of the Gilded Age, where money was the utmost desire and politics was the wealthy man’s game.

***

– The First International Letter to Lincoln, and the response, can be found here.
– More writing by Marx on the Civil War can be found here.
– Also, a letter exchange on this topic in the Fourth International (2009) can be found here.
– And finally, here is an interesting article from International Socialist Review where they analyze Lincoln from a Marxist perspective.

The Tragedy of Privatization (Part One)

April 9, 2012

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In 1968, Garrett Hardin posted an article in the magazine Science called “Tragedy of the Commons” and it was an attempt at proving that private property was the most efficient method of rationing goods and maintaining resources efficiently. It is oftentimes used in arguments favoring the privatization of common resources. His theoretical scenario was as follows:

There is a plot of land in the middle of a small peasant town. The plot of land is commonly owned, and is used for grazing; it is open to anybody that wishes to send their cattle there. Each peasant owns livestock and must use that land to feed their livestock. Knowing that each individual wants to maximize what they can get from the fertile acreage, each peasant brings as many animals as they can to the pasture, therefore, ruining the pasture for everyone. This is what Hardin calls ‘the tragedy.’ Each peasant wants to maximize their ‘grazing’ because they knew that if they don’t, somebody else would. Garrett Hardin calls this outcome “inevitable,” which he says makes it all the more tragic. He goes on to say there are two possible solutions to prevent such an outcome: either through regulation by an overseeing government body or through privatization of the common pasture so each peasant is responsible for his or her piece of land.

The original article from 1968 can be found here. And here’s a corresponding video with Garrett Hardin talking about his scenario.

Now, there’s a few issues that arise when Hardin’s scenario is contested in a real world environment. He makes three assumptions that do not stack up to what actually happened in the famous commons of England and elsewhere. They are as follows:

1. Each individual is working to maximize his or her profit.
2. The peasants do not communicate with one another.
3. That the pasture is open for anybody to use freely.

What actually happened in the commons of England, where the peasants lived after being freed from the shackles of feudalistic rule, was very different than Hardin describes. In these small villages, these commoners were very careful not to abuse the land that they had because they knew if they did the entire community would starve. The communicated with one another to prevent such happenings, and overgrazing was for the most part prevented. And since they were not functioning in a money economy, by growing their own food, they had little incentive to grow beyond what they needed – and if more was grown it was for surplus in case of shortages. And finally, these pastures were not open to everyone; it was established by common law, assumed through interaction, that the land was to be used only by those that have agreed to take care of it. Essentially, it was to be used only by the peasants living in the village itself.

Common grazing areas for livestock were a commonplace from the Middle Ages until the beginnings of the modern era. Farms were oftentimes broken up into three sections; one for wheat, one for barley, and one for grazing. This three-section open field was popular even after feudalism collapsed, until the advent of a market economy which specifically required the enclosure of common pastures. So the tragedy Garrett Hardin actually describes was seemingly backwards; rather than privatization of the commons being the solution to overgrazing, it became the tragedy itself.
Gilbert Slater, a British economist and social reformer, wrote a book in 1907 titled “The English Peasantry and the Enclosure of Common Fields.” He describes the coercive methods of enclosure:

Enclosure of the common fields, meadows and pastures, of

any particular village may have taken place in the following
ways : —

(1) By Act of Parliament, viz., (a) by a private Act, (b) under
the authority of the General Enclosure Acts of 1830 and 1836,
(c) by the Enclosure Commissioners and their successors, the
Board of Agriculture, under the General Enclosure Act of 1845
and its amending Acts.
(2) By common agreement of all the collective owners.
(3) By the purchase on the part of one owner of all conflicting
rights.
(4) By special licence of the Tudor monarchs.
(5) By various forms of force and fraud.

Commonable waste may have been enclosed in any of the
above ways, and also under the Statutes of Merton and Win-
chester (1235 and 1285), which give Lords of the Manor the right
of enclosing commons provided proof is given that the tenants of
the manor are left sufficient pasture.

Specifically speaking, the most devastating were the Inclosure Acts passed by the Parliament of the United Kingdom that stripped away the rights of common ownership from the local peoples by government force. This completely replaced the common law once understood by the peasant class, and put in its place a codified method of enclosure that many of the poor farmers did not agree to – this was mostly because many were illiterate and did not understand (for the most part only the nobles were educated).

A 17th century poem fully describes the real tragedy this caused to the local folk:

The law locks up the man or woman
Who steals the goose from off the common
But leaves the greater villain loose
Who steals the common from off the goose.

The law demands that we atone
When we take things we do not own
But leaves the lords and ladies fine
Who take things that are yours and mine.

The poor and wretched don’t escape
If they conspire the law to break;
This must be so but they endure
Those who conspire to make the law.

The law locks up the man or woman
Who steals the goose from off the common
And geese will still a common lack
Till they go and steal it back.

William Cobbett, an notable English pamphleteer and journalist, recorded what he saw after the land on the Isle of Thanet was appropriated by the wealthy:

“In this beautiful island every inch of land is appropriated by the rich. No hedges, no ditches, no commons, no grassy lanes: a country divided into great farms; a few trees surround the great farm-house. All the rest is bare of trees; and the wretched labourer has not a stick of wood, and has no place for a pig or cow to graze, or even to lie down upon. The rabbit countries are the countries for labouring men. There the ground is not so valuable. There it is not so easily appropriated by the few. Here, in this island, the work is almost all done by the horses. The horses plough the ground; they sow the ground; they hoe the ground; they carry the corn home; they thresh it out; and they carry it to market: nay, in this island, they rake the ground; they rake up the straggling straws and ears; so that they do the whole, except the reaping and the mowing. It is impossible to have an idea of anything more miserable than the state of the labourers in this part of the country.” [1823]

Enclosure did much more than take away common land from the peasants; it was much more elaborate of a scheme. At the dawn of the Industrial Revolution, the newly emergent capitalist class in North Britain found a new labour supply – the landless disfranchised peasant class that was distraught from centuries of enclosures. The self-sufficient yeomen was crushed, and what was created was a class dependent on wage labour for which they had to relinquish their self-autonomy to feed their families; they had no choice, they had to work. It was this phenomenon that soon followed suit in much of the rest of the world, for England was a colonial power and its influence was global.

One of the leading forces during the Industrial Revolution were textile mills and these required wool to function. The dilemma was, however, that it required taking away common land from the peasants to raise more sheep. The nobles of Britain than turned to Parliament, because they knew if the government forced the peasants to enclose, they would have no choice. Their lobbying and influence ultimately succeeded, and the majority of the Inclosure Acts were actually passed between 1750 and 1860, involuntarily taking away the land of the commoners.

Many of the emerging industrialists and its supporters called the peasants lazy, and they used such justification in advocating for their usage as labourers. Many Quakers and English Protestants also found laziness, which they saw as sloth (one of the Seven Deadly Sins), to be repugnant to a moral English society. John Bellers, a Quaker himself and an educator, tells of such things in his book ‘About the Improvement of the Physick’ and his other writings and expressed his contempt for such idleness:

“Our 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.” [1714]

Thomas Pennet, a noted Enlgish botanist, antiquarian, and noble, wrote of the peasants in his journal in 1772 while in Edinburgh, England and denounced them in the same fashion:

“I was informed that the labor is dear here… the common people not being yet got into a method of working, so do very little for wages.”

“…The manners of the native Highlanders may be expressed in these words: indolent to a high degree, unless roused to war, or any animating amusement.”

He goes on to describe their physique:

“The inhabitant live very poorly… The man are thin, but strong; idle and lazy… they are content with their hard fare, and will not exert themselves father than what they deem necessaries.”

The general attitude of the landowners was much the same. A snippet from Commercial, Agricultural, and Manufactures’ Magazine in 1800 read as follows:

“When a labourer becomes possessed of more land than he and his family can cultivate in the evenings… the farmer can no longer depend on him for constant work…”

This type of mentality was common amongst the industrialists at the time; if the poor were given enough land to be self-sufficient and independent, than they would not be forced to work in the factories. They would be given a choice which would ultimately hurt the industrial North of Britain.

After an analysis of the commons of England, it is apparent that the”Tragedy of the Commons” does not hold up to historical scrutiny. The reality is that peasants lived in the commons for centuries, and it was not until the emergence of a market economy do we see the dismantling of such a system. The ‘inevitability of a tragedy’ that Garrett Hardin theorizes is set in his own limited scenario; one that does not correlate with actual common ownership. The real tragedy here, it seems, is the exploitation of the peasant class from their land and state coercion that was involved in making them work as wage labourers. It is this state-market cooperative dynamic that will become a staple in the capitalist economy in the centuries ahead, and it is even more apparent in today’s globalized economic system – albiet it’s inherent problems are bit more subtle, but all the more the same just on a larger scale.

***

John Beller’s book: Proposals for Raising a Colledge of Industry (1696)
Gilbert Slater’s book: The English Peasantry and the Enclosure of Common Fields (1907)
A short history of enclosure in Britain can be found here.
An article on how the English people became landless.
These enclosures did not come without backlash. Some info can be found here and here.