In the following passage, Kropotkin uses the example of feudalism to illustrate this process (Kropotkin 1970: 163). A feudal baron seizes a fertile valley. But as long as the fertile valley is unpopulated our baron is not rich. His land brings him nothing; he might as well possess property on the moon. Now what does our baron do to enrich himself? He looks for peasants! But if every peasant-farmer had a piece of land, free from rent and taxes, if he had in addition the tools and the stock necessary for farm labor, who would plow the lands of the baron? Each would look after his own. But there are whole tribes of destitute persons ruined by wars, or drought, or pestilence. They have neither horse nor plow. (Iron was costly in the Middle Ages, and a draft horse still more so.) All these destitute creatures are trying to better their condition. One day they see on the road at the confines of our barons estate a notice board indicating by certain signs adapted to their comprehension that the laborer who is willing to settle on this estate will receive the tools and materials to build his cottage and sow his fields, and a portion of land rent free for a certain number of years. The number of years is represented by so many crosses on the sign board, and the peasant understands the meaning of these crosses. So the poor wretches swarm over the barons lands, making roads, draining marshes, building villages. In nine years he begins to tax them. Five years later he levies rent. Then he doubles it. The peasant accepts these new conditions because he cannot find better ones elsewhere; and little by little, by the aid of laws made by the oppressors, the poverty of the peasants becomes the source of the landlords wealth. And it is not only the lord of the manor who preys upon him. A whole host of usurers swoop down upon the villages, increasing as the wretchedness of the peasants increases. That is how things went in the Middle Ages; and today is it not still the same thing? If there were free lands which the peasant could cultivate if he pleased, would he pay fifty pounds to some Monsieur le Vicomte for condescending to sell him a scrap? Would he burden himself with a lease which absorbed a third of the produce? would he -- on the métayer system -- consent to give the half of his harvest to the landowner? But he has nothing. So he will accept any conditions, if only he can keep body and soul together, while he tills the soil and enriches the landlord. So in the nineteenth century, just as in the Middle Ages, the poverty of the peasant is a source of wealth to the landed proprietor.
Posted on: Tue, 04 Nov 2014 20:34:50 +0000