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<title>F.8 What role did the state take in the creation of capitalism?
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<h1>F.8 What role did the state take in the creation of capitalism?</h1>
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<p>
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If the "anarcho"-capitalist is to claim with any plausibility that "real"
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capitalism is non-statist or that it can exist without a state, it must
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be shown that capitalism evolved naturally, in opposition to state
15
intervention. In reality, the opposite is the case. Capitalism was born
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from state intervention. In the words of Kropotkin, <i>"the State . . .
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and capitalism . . . developed side by side, mutually supporting and
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re-enforcing each other."</i> [<b>Anarchism</b>, p. 181]
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</p><p>
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Numerous writers have made this point. For example, in Karl Polanyi's
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flawed masterpiece <b>The Great Transformation</b> we read that <i>"the road
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to the free market was opened and kept open by an enormous increase in
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continuous, centrally organised and controlled interventionism"</i> by the
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state. [p. 140] This intervention took many forms -- for example, state
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support during "mercantilism," which allowed the "manufactures" (i.e.
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industry) to survive and develop, enclosures of common land, and so forth.
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In addition, the slave trade, the invasion and brutal conquest of the
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Americas and other "primitive" nations, and the looting of gold, slaves,
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and raw materials from abroad also enriched the European economy, giving
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the development of capitalism an added boost. Thus Kropotkin:
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</p><p><blockquote>
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<i>"The history of the genesis of capital has already been told by socialists
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many times. They have described how it was born of war and pillage, of
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slavery and serfdom, of modern fraud and exploitation. They have shown
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how it is nourished by the blood of the worker, and how little by little
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it has conquered the whole world . . . Law . . . has followed the same phases
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as capital . . . they have advanced hand in hand, sustaining one another
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with the suffering of mankind."</i> [<b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 207]
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</blockquote></p><p>
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This process is what Karl Marx termed <i><b>"primitive accumulation"</b></i> and was marked by
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extensive state violence. Capitalism, as he memorably put it, <i>"comes dripping
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from head to toe, from every pore, with blood and dirt"</i> and the <i>"starting-point
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of the development that gave rise both to the wage-labourer and to the capitalist
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was the enslavement of the worker."</i> [<b>Capital</b>, vol. 1, p. 926 and p. 875]
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Or, if Kropotkin and Marx seem too committed to be fair, we have John Stuart Mill's
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summary that the <i>"social arrangements of modern Europe commenced from a distribution
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of property which was the result, not of just partition, or acquisition by industry,
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but of conquest and violence."</i> [<b>Principles of Political Economy</b>, p. 15]
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</p><p>
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The same can be said of all countries. As such, when supporters of "libertarian"
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capitalism say they are against the "initiation of force," they mean only <b>new</b>
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initiations of force: for the system they support was born from numerous initiations
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of force in the past (moreover, it also requires state intervention to keep it going
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-- <a href="secD1.html">section D.1</a> addresses this point in some detail).
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Indeed, many thinkers have argued that it was precisely this state support and
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coercion (particularly the separation of people from the land) that played the
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<b>key</b> role in allowing capitalism to develop rather than the theory that
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<i>"previous savings"</i> did so. As left-wing German thinker Franz Oppenheimer
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(whom Murray Rothbard selectively quoted) argued, <i>"the concept of a 'primitive
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accumulation,' or an original store of wealth, in land and in movable property,
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brought about by means of purely economic forces"</i> while <i>"seem[ing] quite
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plausible"</i> is in fact <i>"utterly mistaken; it is a 'fairly tale,' or it is a
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class theory used to justify the privileges of the upper classes."</i> [<b>The
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State</b>, pp. 5-6] As Individualist anarchist Kevin Carson summarised as part
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of his excellent overview of this historic process:
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</p><p><blockquote><i>
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"Capitalism has never been established by means of the free market. It has
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always been established by a revolution from above, imposed by a ruling
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class with its origins in the Old Regime . . . by a pre-capitalist ruling
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class that had been transformed in a capitalist manner. In England, it was
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the landed aristocracy; in France, Napoleon III's bureaucracy; in Germany,
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the Junkers; in Japan, the Meiji. In America, the closest approach to a
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'natural' bourgeois evolution, industrialisation was carried out by a
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mercantilist aristocracy of Federalist shipping magnates and landlords."</i>
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[<i>"Primitive Accumulation and the Rise of Capitalism,"</i> <b>Studies in
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Mutualist Political Economy</b>]
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</blockquote></p><p>
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This, the actual history of capitalism, will be discussed in the following
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sections. So it is ironic to hear right-"libertarians" sing the
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praises of a capitalism that never existed and urge its adoption by all
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nations, in spite of the historical evidence suggesting that only state
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intervention made capitalist economies viable -- even in that Mecca of
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"free enterprise," the United States. As Noam Chomsky argues, <i>"who but
84
a lunatic could have opposed the development of a textile industry in New
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England in the early nineteenth century, when British textile production was
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so much more efficient that half the New England industrial sector would have
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gone bankrupt without very high protective tariffs, thus terminating industrial
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development in the United States? Or the high tariffs that radically
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undermined economic efficiency to allow the United States to develop steel
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and other manufacturing capacities? Or the gross distortions of the
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market that created modern electronics?"</i> [<b>World Orders, Old and New</b>,
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p. 168] Such state interference in the economy is often denounced and dismissed by
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right-"libertarians" as mercantilism. However, to claim that "mercantilism" is
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not capitalism makes little sense. Without mercantilism, "proper" capitalism
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would never have developed, and any attempt to divorce a social system from
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its roots is ahistoric and makes a mockery of critical thought (particularly
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as "proper" capitalism turns to mercantilism regularly).
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</p><p>
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Similarly, it is somewhat ironic when "anarcho"-capitalists and other right
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"libertarians" claim that they support the freedom of individuals to
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choose how to live. After all, the working class was not given <b>that</b>
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particular choice when capitalism was developing. Instead, their right
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to choose their own way of life was constantly violated and denied --
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and justified by the leading capitalist economists of the time. To
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achieve this, state violence had one overall aim, to dispossess the
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labouring people from access to the means of life (particularly the land)
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and make them dependent on landlords and capitalists to earn a living.
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The state coercion <i>"which creates the capital-relation can be nothing
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other than the process which divorces the worker from the ownership
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of the conditions of his own labour; it is a process which operates
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two transformations, whereby the social means of subsistence and
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production are turned into capital, and the immediate producers are
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turned into wage-labourers. So-called primitive accumulation, therefore, is
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nothing else than the historical process of divorcing the producer from the
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means of production."</i> [Marx, <b>Op. Cit.</b>, pp. 874-5] So to claim
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that <b>now</b> (after capitalism has been created) we get the chance to
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try and live as we like is insulting in the extreme. The available options
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we have are not independent of the society we live in and are decisively
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shaped by the past. To claim we are "free" to live as we like (within the
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laws of capitalism, of course) is basically to argue that we are able (in
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theory) to "buy" the freedom that every individual is due from those who
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have stolen it from us in the first place. It ignores the centuries of
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state violence required to produce the "free" worker who makes a "voluntary"
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agreement which is compelled by the social conditions that this created.
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</p><p>
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The history of state coercion and intervention is inseparable from the history
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of capitalism: it is contradictory to celebrate the latter while claiming to
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condemn the former. In practice capitalism has <b>always</b> meant intervention
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in markets to aid business and the rich. That is, what has been called by
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supporters of capitalism "laissez-faire" was nothing of the kind and represented
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the political-economic program of a specific fraction of the capitalist class
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rather than a set of principles of "hands off the market." As individualist
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anarchist Kevin Carson summaries, <i>"what is nostalgically called 'laissez-faire'
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was in fact a system of continuing state intervention to subsidise accumulation,
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guarantee privilege, and maintain work discipline."</i> [<b>The Iron Fist behind the
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Invisible Hand</b>] Moreover, there is the apparent unwillingness by such "free
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market" advocates (i.e. supporters of "free market" capitalism) to distinguish
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between historically and currently unfree capitalism and the other truly
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free market economy that they claim to desire. It is common to hear
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"anarcho"-capitalists point to the state-based capitalist system as vindication
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of their views (and even more surreal to see them point to <b>pre</b>-capitalist
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systems as examples of their ideology). It should be obvious that they cannot
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have it both ways.
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</p><p>
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In other words, Rothbard and other "anarcho"-capitalists treat capitalism as if
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it were the natural order of things rather than being the product of centuries
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of capitalist capture and use of state power to further their own interests. The
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fact that past uses of state power have allowed capitalist norms and assumptions
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to become the default system by their codification in property law and justified
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by bourgeois economic does not make it natural. The role of the state in the
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construction of a capitalist economy cannot be ignored or downplayed as
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government has always been an instrument in creating and developing such
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a system. As one critic of right-"libertarian" ideas put it, Rothbard
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<i>"completely overlooks the role of the state in building and maintaining
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a capitalist economy in the West. Privileged to live in the twentieth
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century, long after the battles to establish capitalism have been fought and won,
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Rothbard sees the state solely as a burden on the market and a vehicle for
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imposing the still greater burden of socialism. He manifests a kind of historical
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nearsightedness that allows him to collapse many centuries of human experience
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into one long night of tyranny that ended only with the invention of the free
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market and its 'spontaneous' triumph over the past. It is pointless to argue,
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as Rothbard seems ready to do, that capitalism would have succeeded without the
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bourgeois state; the fact is that all capitalist nations have relied on the
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machinery of government to create and preserve the political and legal environments
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required by their economic system."</i> That, of course, has not stopped him
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<i>"critis[ing] others for being unhistorical."</i> [Stephen L. Newman, <b>Liberalism
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at Wit's End</b>, pp. 77-8 and p. 79]
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</p><p>
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Thus we have a key contradiction within "anarcho"-capitalism. While they bemoan
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state intervention in the market, their underlying assumption is that it had no
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real effect on how society has evolved over the centuries. By a remarkable
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coincidence, the net effect of all this state intervention was to produce a
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capitalist economy identical in all features as one which would have been
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produced if society had been left alone to evolve naturally. It does seem
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strange that state violence would happen to produce the same economic system
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as that produced by right-"libertarians" and Austrian economists logically
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deducing concepts from a few basic axioms and assumptions. Even more of a
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coincidence, these conclusions also happen to be almost exactly the same as
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what those who have benefited from previous state coercion want to hear --
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namely, the private property is good, trade unions and strikes are bad, that
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the state should not interfere with the power of the bosses and should not even
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think about helping the working class (employed or unemployed). As such, while
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their advice and rhetoric may have changed, the social role of economists has not.
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State action was required to dispossess the direct producers from the means of
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life (particularly the land) and to reduce the real wage of workers so that
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they have to provide regular work in a obedient manner. In this, it and the
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capitalists received much advice from the earliest economists as Marxist
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economic historian Michael Perelman documents in great detail. As he summarises,
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<i>"classical political economy was concerned with promoting primitive accumulation
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in order to foster capitalist development, even though the logic of
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primitive accumulation was in direct conflict with the classical political
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economists' purported adherence to the values of laissez-faire."</i> [<b>The
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Invention of Capitalism</b>, p. 12] The turn to "laissez-faire" was possible
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because direct state power could be mostly replaced by economic power to ensure
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the dependency of the working class.
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</p><p>
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Needless to say, some right-"libertarians" recognise that the state played
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<b>some</b> role in economic life in the rise and development of capitalism.
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So they contrast "bad" business people (who took state aid) and "good" ones
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(who did not). Thus Rothbard's comment that Marxists have <i>"made no particular
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distinction between 'bourgeoisie' who made use of the state, and bourgeoisie who
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acted on the free market."</i> [<b>The Ethics of Liberty</b>, p. 72] But such
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an argument is nonsense as it ignores the fact that the "free market" is a
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network (and defined by the state by the property rights it enforces). This
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means that state intervention in one part of the economy will have ramifications
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in other parts, particularly if the state action in question is the expropriation
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and/or protection of productive resources (land and workplaces) or the skewing
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of the labour market in favour of the bosses. In other words, the individualistic
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perspective of "anarcho"-capitalism blinds its proponents to the obvious
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collective nature of working class exploitation and oppression which flows from
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the collective and interconnected nature of production and investment in any
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real economy. State action supported by sectors of the capitalist class has,
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to use economic jargon, positive externalities for the rest. They, in general,
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benefit from it <b><i>as a class</i></b> just as working class people suffers
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from it collectively as it limits their available choices to those desired by
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their economic and political masters (usually the same people). As such, the
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right-"libertarian" fails to understand the <b>class</b> basis of state
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intervention.
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</p><p>
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For example, the owners of the American steel and other companies who grew rich
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and their companies big behind protectionist walls were obviously "bad" bourgeoisie.
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But were the bourgeoisie who supplied the steel companies with coal, machinery, food,
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"defence" and so on not also benefiting from state action? And the suppliers of the
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luxury goods to the wealthy steel company owners, did they not benefit from state
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action? Or the suppliers of commodities to the workers that laboured in the steel
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factories that the tariffs made possible, did they not benefit? And the suppliers
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to these suppliers? And the suppliers to these suppliers? Did not the users of
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technology first introduced into industry by companies protected by state orders
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also not benefit? Did not the capitalists who had a large pool of landless working
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class people to select from benefit from the "land monopoly" even though they may
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not have, unlike other capitalists, directly advocated it? It increased the pool of
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wage labour for <b>all</b> capitalists and increased their bargaining position/power
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in the labour market at the expense of the working class. In other words, such a
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policy helped maintain capitalist market power, irrespective of whether individual
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capitalists encouraged politicians to vote to create/maintain it. And, similarly,
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<b>all</b> American capitalists benefited from the changes in common law to recognise
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and protect capitalist private property and rights that the state enforced during the
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19th century (see <a href="secB2.html#secb25">section B.2.5</a>).
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</p><p>
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Rothbard, in other words, ignores class theft and the accumulative effect of
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stealing both productive property and the products of the workers who use it.
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He considered the <i>"moral indignation"</i> of socialism arose from the argument
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<i>"that the capitalists have stolen the rightful property of the workers, and
244
therefore that existing titles to accumulated capital are unjust."</i> He argued
245
that given <i>"this hypothesis, the remainder of the impetus for both Marxism and
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anarchosyndicalism follow quite logically."</i> However, Rothbard's "solution" to
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the problem of past force seems to be (essentially) a justification of existing
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property titles and not a serious attempt to understand or correct past
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initiations of force that have shaped society into a capitalist one and still
250
shape it today. This is because he is simply concerned with returning property
251
which has been obviously stolen and can be returned to those who have been
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directly dispossessed or their descendants (for example, giving land back to
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peasants or tenant farmers). If this cannot be done then the <i>"title to that
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property, belongs properly, justly and ethically to its current possessors."</i>
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[<b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 52 and p. 57] At best, he allows nationalised property and
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any corporation which has the bulk of its income coming from the state to
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be "homesteaded" by their workers (which, according to Rothbard's arguments
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for the end of Stalinism, means they will get shares in the company). The end
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result of his theory is to leave things pretty much as they are. This is because
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he could not understand that the exploitation of the working class was/is collective
261
in nature and, as such, is simply impossible to redress it in his individualistic
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term of reference.
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</p><p>
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To take an obvious example, if the profits of slavery in the Southern states of
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America were used to invest in factories in the Northern states (as they were),
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does giving the land to the freed slaves in 1865 <b>really</b> signify the end
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of the injustice that situation produced? Surely the products of the slaves work were
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stolen property just as much as the land was and, as a result, so is any investment
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made from it? After all, investment elsewhere was based on the profits extracted
270
from slave labour and <i>"much of the profits earned in the northern states were
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derived from the surplus originating on the southern plantations."</i> [Perelman,
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<b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 246] In terms of the wage workers in the North, they have been
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indirectly exploited by the existence of slavery as the investment this allowed
274
reduced their bargaining power on the market as it reduced their ability to set
275
up business for themselves by increasing the fixed costs of so doing. And what of
276
the investment generated by the exploitation of these wage workers? As Mark Leier
277
points out, the capitalists and landlords <i>"may have purchased the land and
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machinery, but this money represented nothing more than the expropriated labour
279
of others."</i> [<b>Bakunin</b>, p. 111] If the land should be returned to those
280
who worked it as Rothbard suggests, why not the industrial empires that were
281
created on the backs of the generations of slaves who worked it? And what of
282
the profits made from the generations of wage slaves who worked on these
283
investments? And what of the investments which these profits allowed? Surely
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if the land should be given to those who worked it then so must any investments
285
it generated? And assuming that those currently employed can rightly seize their
286
workplaces, what about those previously employed and <b>their</b> descendants?
287
Why should they be excluded from the riches their ancestors helped create?
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</p><p>
289
To talk in terms of individuals misses all this and the net result is to ensure
290
that the results of centuries of coercion and theft are undisturbed. This is
291
because it is the working class <b>as a whole</b> who have been expropriated and whose
292
labour has been exploited. The actual individuals involved and their descendants
293
would be impossible to identify nor would it be possible to track down how the
294
stolen fruits of their labour were invested. In this way, the class theft of
295
our planet and liberty as well as the products of generations of working class
296
people will continue safely.
297
</p><p>
298
Needless to say, some governments interfere in the economy more than others.
299
Corporations do not invest in or buy from suppliers based in authoritarian
300
regimes by accident. They do not just happen to be here, passively
301
benefiting from statism and authoritarianism. Rather they choose <b>between</b>
302
states to locate in based precisely on the cheapness of the labour supply. In
303
other words, they prefer to locate in dictatorships and authoritarian regimes
304
in Central America and Southeast Asia <b>because</b> those regimes interfere
305
in the labour market the most -- while, of course, talking about the very
306
"free market" and "economic liberty" those regimes deny to their subjects.
307
For Rothbard, this seems to be just a coincidence or a correlation rather
308
than systematic for the collusion between state and business is the fault, not
309
of capitalism, but simply of particular capitalists. The system, in other words,
310
is pure; only individuals are corrupt. But, for anarchists, the origins of the
311
modern capitalist system lies not in the individual qualities of capitalists
312
as such but in the dynamic and evolution of capitalism itself -- a complex
313
interaction of class interest, class struggle, social defence against the
314
destructive actions of the market, individual qualities and so forth. In
315
other words, Rothbard's claims are flawed -- they fail to understand
316
capitalism as a <b>system</b>, its dynamic nature and the authoritarian
317
social relationships it produces and the need for state intervention these
318
produce and require.
319
</p><p>
320
So, when the right suggests that "we" be "left alone," what they mean by "we"
321
comes into clear focus when we consider how capitalism developed. Artisans and
322
peasants were only "left alone" to starve (sometimes not even that, as the
323
workhouse was invented to bring vagabonds to the joy of work), and the working
324
classes of industrial capitalism were only "left alone" outside work and for
325
only as long as they respected the rules of their "betters." As Marx memorably
326
put it, the <i>"newly freed men became sellers of themselves only after they had
327
been robbed of all their own means of production, and all the guarantees
328
of existence afforded by the old feudal arrangements. And this history, the
329
history of their expropriation, is written in the annals of mankind in
330
letters of blood and fire."</i> [<b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 875] As for the other
331
side of the class divide, they desired to be "left alone" to exercise their
332
power over others as we will see. That modern "capitalism" is, in effect, a
333
kind of "corporate mercantilism," with states providing the conditions that
334
allow corporations to flourish (e.g. tax breaks, subsidies, bailouts, anti-labour
335
laws, etc.) says more about the statist roots of capitalism than the ideologically
336
correct definition of capitalism used by its supporters.
337
</p><p>
338
In fact, if we look at the role of the state in creating capitalism we could be
339
tempted to rename "anarcho"-capitalism "marxian-capitalism". This is because,
340
given the historical evidence, a political theory can be developed by which the
341
"dictatorship of the bourgeoisie" is created and that this capitalist state
342
"withers away" into "anarchy". That this means replacing the economic and social
343
ideas of Marxism and their replacement by their direct opposite should not mean
344
that we should reject the idea (after all, that is what "anarcho"-capitalism
345
has done to Individualist Anarchism!). But we doubt that many "anarcho"-capitalists
346
will accept such a name change (even though this would reflect their politics far
347
better; after all they do not object to past initiations of force, just current
348
ones and many do seem to think that the modern state <b>will</b> wither away due
349
to market forces).
350
</p><p>
351
This is suggested by the fact that Rothbard did not advocate change from below
352
as the means of creating "anarchy." He helped found the so-called Libertarian
353
Party in 1971 which, like Marxists, stands for political office. With the fall
354
of Stalinism in 1989, Rothbard faced whole economies which could be "homesteaded"
355
and he argued that <i>"desocialisation"</i> (i.e., de-nationalisation as, like Leninists,
356
he confused socialisation with nationalisation) <i>"necessarily involves the action
357
of that government surrendering its property to its private subjects . . . In a
358
deep sense, getting rid of the socialist state requires that state to perform
359
one final, swift, glorious act of self-immolation, after which it vanishes from
360
the scene."</i> (compare to Engels' comment that <i>"the taking possession of the
361
means of production in the name of society"</i> is the state's <i>"last independent
362
act as a state."</i> [<b>Selected Works</b>, p. 424]). He considered the <i>"capital
363
goods built by the State"</i> as being <i>"philosophically unowned"</i> yet failed to
364
note whose labour was exploited and taxed to build them in the first place (needless
365
to say, he rejected the ideas of shares to all as this would be <i>"egalitarian handouts
366
. . . to undeserving citizens,"</i> presumably the ill, the unemployed, retirees,
367
mothers, children, and future generations). [<b>The Logic of Action II</b>,
368
p. 213, p. 212 and p. 209]
369
</p><p>
370
Industrial plants would be transferred to workers currently employed there,
371
but not by their own direct action and direct expropriation. Rather, the
372
state would do so. This is understandable as, left to themselves, the workers
373
may not act quite as he desired. Thus we see him advocating the transfer
374
of industry from the state bureaucracy to workers by means of <i>"private,
375
negotiable shares"</i> as ownership was <i>"not to be granted to collectives or
376
co-operatives or workers or peasants holistically, which would only bring
377
back the ills of socialism in a decentralised and chaotic syndicalist
378
form."</i> His "homesteading" was not to be done by the workers themselves
379
rather it was a case of <i>"granting shares to workers"</i> by the state. He
380
also notes that it should be a <i>"priority"</i> for the government <i>"to return
381
all stolen, confiscated property to its original owners, or to their
382
heirs."</i> This would involve <i>"finding original landowners"</i> -- i.e., the
383
landlord class whose wealth was based on exploiting the serfs and peasants.
384
[<b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 210 and pp. 211-2] Thus expropriated peasants would have
385
their land returned but not, apparently, any peasants working land which had
386
been taken from their feudal and aristocratic overlords by the state. Thus those
387
who had just been freed from Stalinist rule would have been subjected to
388
"libertarian" rule to ensure that the transition was done in the economically
389
correct way. As it was, the neo-classical economists who did oversee the
390
transition ensured that ownership and control transferred directly to a
391
new ruling class rather than waste time issuing "shares" which would
392
eventually end up in a few hands due to market forces (the actual way it
393
was done could be considered a modern form of "primitive accumulation" as
394
it ensured that capital goods did not end up in the hands of the workers).
395
</p><p>
396
But this is beside the point. The fact remains that state action was required
397
to create and maintain capitalism. Without state support it is doubtful that
398
capitalism would have developed at all. So the only "capitalism" that has
399
existed is a product of state support and intervention, and it has been
400
characterised by markets that are considerably less than free. Thus, serious
401
supporters of truly free markets (like the American Individualist Anarchists)
402
have not been satisfied with "capitalism" -- have, in fact, quite rightly and
403
explicitly opposed it. Their vision of a free society has always been at odds
404
with the standard capitalist one, a fact which "anarcho"-capitalists bemoan
405
and dismiss as "mistakes" and/or the product of "bad economics." Apparently
406
the net effect of all this state coercion has been, essentially, null. It
407
has <b>not</b>, as the critics of capitalism have argued, fundamentally shaped
408
the development of the economy as capitalism would have developed naturally by
409
itself. Thus an economy marked by inequalities of wealth and power, where the
410
bulk of the population are landless and resourceless and where interest, rent
411
and profits are extracted from the labour of working people would have developed
412
anyway regardless of the state coercion which marked the rise of capitalism and
413
the need for a subservient and dependent working class by the landlords and
414
capitalists which drove these policies simply accelerated the process towards
415
"economic liberty." However, it is more than mere coincidence that capitalism
416
and state coercion are so intertwined both in history and in current practice.
417
</p><p>
418
In summary, like other apologists for capitalism, right-wing "libertarians"
419
advocate that system without acknowledging the means that were necessary to
420
create it. They tend to equate it with any market system, failing to understand
421
that it is a specific kind of market system where labour itself is a commodity.
422
It is ironic, of course, that most defenders of capitalism stress the importance
423
of markets (which have pre-dated capitalism) while downplaying the importance of
424
wage labour (which defines it) along with the violence which created it. Yet
425
as both anarchists and Marxists have stressed, money and commodities do not
426
define capitalism any more than private ownership of the means of production.
427
So it is important to remember that from a socialist perspective capitalism is
428
<b>not</b> identical to the market. As we stressed in <a href="secC2.html">section C.2</a>,
429
both anarchists and Marxists argue that where people produce for themselves,
430
is not capitalist production, i.e. when a worker sells commodities this is not
431
capitalist production. Thus the supporters of capitalism fail to understand that
432
a great deal of state coercion was required to transform pre-capitalist societies
433
of artisans and peasant farmers selling the produce of their labour into a capitalist
434
society of wage workers selling themselves to bosses, bankers and landlords.
435
</p><p>
436
Lastly, it should be stressed that this process of primitive accumulation is not
437
limited to private capitalism. State capitalism has also had recourse to such
438
techniques. Stalin's forced collectivisation of the peasantry and the brutal
439
industrialisation involved in five-year plans in the 1930s are the most obvious
440
example). What took centuries in Britain was condensed into decades in the
441
Soviet Union and other state capitalist regimes, with a corresponding impact
442
on its human toil. However, we will not discuss these acts of state coercion here
443
as we are concerned primarily with the actions required to create the conditions
444
required for private capitalism.
445
</p><p>
446
Needless to say, this section cannot hope to go into all the forms of
447
state intervention across the globe which were used to create or impose
448
capitalism onto an unwilling population. All we can do is provide a
449
glimpse into the brutal history of capitalism and provide enough
450
references for those interested to pursue the issue further. The first
451
starting point should be Part VIII (<i>"So-Called Primitive Accumulation"</i>)
452
of volume 1 of Marx's <b>Capital</b>. This classic account of the origins of
453
capitalism should be supplemented by more recent accounts, but its basic
454
analysis is correct. Marxist writers have expanded on Marx's analysis, with
455
Maurice Dobb's <b>Studies in the Development of Capitalism</b> and David McNally's
456
<b>Against the Market</b> are worth consulting, as is Michael Perelman's <b>The
457
Invention of Capitalism</b>. Kropotkin's <b>Mutual Aid</b> has a short
458
summary of state action in destroying communal institutions and common ownership
459
of land, as does his <b>The State: It's Historic Role</b>. Rudolf Rocker's
460
<b>Nationalism and Culture</b> is also essential reading. Individualist Anarchist
461
Kevin Carson's <b>Studies in Mutualist Political Economy</b> provides an
462
excellent summary (see part 2, <i>"Capitalism and the State: Past, Present
463
and Future"</i>) as does his essay <b>The Iron Fist behind the Invisible
464
Hand</b>.</p>
465
466
<a name="secf81"><h2>F.8.1 What social forces lay behind the rise of capitalism?</h2></a>
467
468
<p>
469
Capitalist society is a relatively recent development. For Marx, while
470
markets have existed for millennium <i>"the capitalist era dates from the
471
sixteenth century."</i> [<b>Capital</b>, vol. 1, p. 876] As Murray Bookchin
472
pointed out, for a <i>"long era, perhaps spanning more than five centuries,"</i>
473
capitalism <i>"coexisted with feudal and simple commodity relationships"</i>
474
in Europe. He argues that this period <i>"simply cannot be treated as
475
'transitional' without reading back the present into the past."</i> [<b>From
476
Urbanisation to Cities</b>, p. 179] In other words, capitalism was not
477
a inevitable outcome of "history" or social evolution.
478
</p><p>
479
Bookchin went on to note that capitalism existed <i>"with growing significance
480
in the mixed economy of the West from the fourteenth century up to the
481
seventeenth"</i> but that it <i>"literally exploded into being in Europe,
482
particularly England, during the eighteenth and especially nineteenth
483
centuries."</i> [<b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 181] The question arises, what lay behind
484
this <i>"growing significance"</i>? Did capitalism <i>"explode"</i> due to its
485
inherently more efficient nature or where there other, non-economic, forces at
486
work? As we will show, it was most definitely the second -- capitalism was
487
born not from economic forces but from the political actions of the social
488
elites which its usury enriched. Unlike artisan (simple commodity) production,
489
wage labour generates inequalities and wealth for the few and so will be
490
selected, protected and encouraged by those who control the state in their
491
own economic and social interests.
492
</p><p>
493
The development of capitalism in Europe was favoured by two social elites,
494
the rising capitalist class within the degenerating medieval cities and
495
the absolutist state. The medieval city was <i>"thoroughly changed by the
496
gradual increase in the power of commercial capital, due primarily to
497
foreign trade . . . By this the inner unity of the commune was loosened,
498
giving place to a growing caste system and leading necessarily to a
499
progressive inequality of social interests. The privileged minorities
500
pressed ever more definitely towards a centralisation of the political
501
forces of the community. . . Mercantilism in the perishing city republics
502
led logically to a demand for larger economic units [i.e. to nationalise
503
the market]; and by this the desire for stronger political forms was
504
greatly strengthened . . . Thus the city gradually became a small
505
state, paving the way for the coming national state."</i> [Rudolf Rocker,
506
<b>Nationalism and Culture</b>, p. 94] Kropotkin stressed that in this
507
destruction of communal self-organisation the state not only served the
508
interests of the rising capitalist class but also its own. Just as the
509
landlord and capitalist seeks a workforce and labour market made up of
510
atomised and isolated individuals, so does the state seek to eliminate
511
all potential rivals to its power and so opposes <i>"all coalitions and
512
all private societies, whatever their aim."</i> [<b>The State: It's
513
Historic role</b>, p. 53]
514
</p><p>
515
The rising economic power of the proto-capitalists conflicted with that of
516
the feudal lords, which meant that the former required help to consolidate
517
their position. That aid came in the form of the monarchical state which,
518
in turn, needed support against the feudal lords. With the force of
519
absolutism behind it, capital could start the process of increasing its
520
power and influence by expanding the "market" through state action.
521
This use of state coercion was required because, as Bookchin noted,
522
<i>"[i]n every pre-capitalist society, countervailing forces . . .
523
existed to restrict the market economy. No less significantly, many
524
pre-capitalist societies raised what they thought were insuperable obstacles
525
to the penetration of the State into social life."</i> He noted the <i>"power
526
of village communities to resist the invasion of trade and despotic political
527
forms into society's abiding communal substrate."</i> State violence was
528
required to break this resistance and, unsurprisingly the <i>"one class to
529
benefit most from the rising nation-state was the European bourgeoisie . . .
530
This structure . . . provided the basis for the next great system of labour
531
mobilisation: the factory."</i> [<b>The Ecology of Freedom</b>, pp. 207-8
532
and p. 336] The absolutist state, noted Rocker, <i>"was dependent upon the
533
help of these new economic forces, and vice versa</i> and so it <i>"at first
534
furthered the plans of commercial capital"</i> as its
535
coffers were filled by the expansion of commerce. Its armies and fleets
536
<i>"contributed to the expansion of industrial production because they
537
demanded a number of things for whose large-scale production the shops
538
of small tradesmen were no longer adapted. Thus gradually arose the
539
so-called manufactures, the forerunners of the later large industries."</i>
540
[<b>Op. Cit.</b>, pp. 117-8] As such, it is impossible to underestimate
541
the role of state power in creating the preconditions for both agricultural
542
and industrial capitalism.
543
</p><p>
544
Some of the most important state actions from the standpoint of early
545
industry were the so-called Enclosure Acts, by which the "commons" -- the
546
free farmland shared communally by the peasants in most rural villages --
547
was "enclosed" or incorporated into the estates of various landlords as
548
private property (see <a href="secF8.html#secf83">section F.8.3</a>). This
549
ensured a pool of landless workers who had no option but to sell their labour
550
to landlords and capitalists. Indeed, the widespread independence caused by the
551
possession of the majority of households of land caused the rising class of
552
capitalists to complain, as one put it, <i>"that men who should work as
553
wage-labourers cling to the soil, and in the naughtiness of their hearts
554
prefer independence as squatters to employment by a master."</i> [quoted by
555
Allan Engler, <b>The Apostles of Greed</b>, p. 12] Once in service to a
556
master, the state was always on hand to repress any signs of <i>"naughtiness"</i>
557
and <i>"independence"</i> (such as strikes, riots, unions and the like).
558
For example, Seventeenth century France saw a <i>"number of decrees . . . which forbade
559
workers to change their employment or which prohibited assemblies of
560
workers or strikes on pain of corporal punishment or even death. (Even
561
the Theological Faculty of the University of Paris saw fit to pronounce
562
solemnly against the sin of workers' organisation)."</i> [Maurice Dobb,
563
<b>Studies in Capitalism Development</b>, p. 160]
564
</p><p>
565
In addition, other forms of state aid ensured that capitalist firms got
566
a head start, so ensuring their dominance over other forms of work (such
567
as co-operatives). A major way of creating a pool of resources that could
568
be used for investment was the use of mercantilist policies which
569
used protectionist measures to enrich capitalists and landlords at the
570
expense of consumers and their workers. For example, one of most common
571
complaints of early capitalists was that workers could not turn up to
572
work regularly. Once they had worked a few days, they disappeared as
573
they had earned enough money to live on. With higher prices for food,
574
caused by protectionist measures, workers had to work longer and harder
575
and so became accustomed to factory labour. In addition, mercantilism
576
allowed native industry to develop by barring foreign competition and
577
so allowed industrialists to reap excess profits which they could then
578
use to increase their investments. In the words of Marxist economic
579
historian Maurice Dobb:
580
</p><p><blockquote>
581
<i>"In short, the Mercantile System was a system of State-regulated exploitation
582
through trade which played a highly important rule in the adolescence of
583
capitalist industry: it was essentially the economic policy of an age of
584
primitive accumulation."</i> [<b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 209]
585
</blockquote></p><p>
586
As Rocker summarises, <i>"when absolutism had victoriously overcome all
587
opposition to national unification, by its furthering of mercantilism
588
and economic monopoly it gave the whole social evolution a direction
589
which could only lead to capitalism."</i> [<b>Op. Cit.</b>, pp. 116-7]
590
</p><p>
591
Mercantilist policies took many forms, including the state providing capital
592
to new industries, exempting them from guild rules and taxes, establishing
593
monopolies over local, foreign and colonial markets, and granting titles and
594
pensions to successful capitalists. In terms of foreign trade, the state
595
assisted home-grown capitalists by imposing tariffs, quotas, and prohibitions
596
on imports. They also prohibited the export of tools and technology as well
597
as the emigration of skilled workers to stop competition (this applied to
598
any colonies a specific state may have had). Other policies were applied
599
as required by the needs of specific states. For example, the English state
600
imposed a series of Navigation Acts which forced traders to use English ships to
601
visit its ports and colonies (this destroyed the commerce of Holland, its chief
602
rival). Nor should the impact of war be minimised, with the demand for weapons
603
and transportation (including ships) injecting government spending into the
604
economy. Unsurprisingly, given this favouring of domestic industry at the expense
605
of its rivals and the subject working class population the mercantilist period
606
was one of generally rapid growth, particularly in England.
607
</p><p>
608
As we discussed in <a href="secC10.html">section C.10</a>, some kind of
609
mercantilism has always been required for a country to industrialise.
610
Over all, as economist Paul Ormerod puts it, the <i>"advice to follow pure
611
free-market polices seems . . . to be contrary to the lessons of virtually
612
the whole of economic history since the Industrial Revolution . . . every
613
country which has moved into . . . strong sustained growth . . . has done so
614
in outright violation of pure, free-market principles."</i> These interventions
615
include the use of <i>"tariff barriers"</i> to protect infant industries,
616
<i>"government subsidies"</i> and <i>"active state intervention in the
617
economy."</i> He summarises: <i>"The model of entrepreneurial activity in
618
the product market, with judicious state support plus repression in the
619
labour market, seems to be a good model of economic development."</i>
620
[<b>The Death of Economics</b>, p. 63]
621
</p><p>
622
Thus the social forces at work creating capitalism was a combination of
623
capitalist activity and state action. But without the support of the
624
state, it is doubtful that capitalist activity would have been enough
625
to generate the initial accumulation required to start the economic
626
ball rolling. Hence the necessity of Mercantilism in Europe and its
627
modified cousin of state aid, tariffs and "homestead acts" in America.
628
</p>
629
630
<a name="secf82"><h2>F.8.2 What was the social context of the statement "laissez-faire?"</h2></a>
631
632
<p>
633
The honeymoon of interests between the early capitalists and autocratic
634
kings did not last long. <i>"This selfsame monarchy, which for weighty
635
reasons sought to further the aims of commercial capital and was. . .
636
itself aided in its development by capital, grew at last into a
637
crippling obstacle to any further development of European industry."</i>
638
[Rudolf Rocker, <b>Nationalism and Culture</b>, p. 117]
639
</p><p>
640
This is the social context of the expression <i>"laissez-faire"</i> -- a
641
system which has outgrown the supports that protected it in its early
642
stages. Just as children eventually rebel against the protection and
643
rules of their parents, so the capitalists rebelled against the
644
over-bearing support of the absolutist state. Mercantilist policies
645
favoured some industries and harmed the growth of others. The rules
646
and regulations imposed upon those it did favour reduced the flexibility
647
of capitalists to changing environments. As Rocker argues, <i>"no matter
648
how the absolutist state strove, in its own interest, to meet the demands
649
of commerce, it still put on industry countless fetters which became gradually
650
more and more oppressive . . . [it] became an unbearable burden . . .
651
which paralysed all economic and social life."</i> [<b>Op. Cit.</b>,
652
p. 119] All in all, mercantilism became more of a hindrance than a
653
help and so had to be replaced. With the growth of economic and
654
social power by the capitalist class, this replacement was made easier. As
655
Errico Malatesta notes:
656
</p><p><blockquote>
657
<i>"The development of production, the vast expansion of commerce, the
658
immeasurable power assumed by money . . . have guaranteed this supremacy
659
[of economic power over political power] to the capitalist class which,
660
no longer content with enjoying the support of the government,
661
demanded that government arise from its own ranks. A government
662
which owed its origin to the right of conquest . . . though
663
subject by existing circumstances to the capitalist class, went on
664
maintaining a proud and contemptuous attitude towards its now wealthy
665
former slaves, and had pretensions to independence of domination. That
666
government was indeed the defender, the property owners' gendarme, but
667
the kind of gendarmes who think they are somebody, and behave in an
668
arrogant manner towards the people they have to escort and defend, when
669
they don't rob or kill them at the next street corner; and the capitalist
670
class got rid of it . . . and replac[ed] it by a government of its own
671
choosing, at all times under its control and specifically organised to
672
defend that class against any possible demands by the disinherited."</i>
673
[<b>Anarchy</b>, pp. 22-3]
674
</blockquote></p><p>
675
Malatesta here indicates the true meaning of <i>"leave us alone,"</i> or
676
<i>"laissez-faire."</i> The <b>absolutist</b> state (not "the state" per se)
677
began to interfere with capitalists' profit-making activities and authority,
678
so they determined that it had to go -- which the rising capitalist class
679
did when they utilised such popular movements as the English, French and
680
American revolutions. In such circumstances, when the state is not fully
681
controlled by the capitalist class, then it makes perfect sense to oppose
682
state intervention no matter how useful it may have been in the past -- a
683
state run by aristocratic and feudal landlords does not produce class
684
legislation in quite the right form. That changes when members of the
685
capitalist class hold state power and when the landlords start acting more
686
like rural capitalists and, unsurprisingly, laissez-faire was quickly
687
modified and then abandoned once capitalists could rely on a <b><i>capitalist</i></b>
688
state to support and protect its economic power within society.
689
</p><p>
690
When capitalism had been rid of unwanted interference by the hostile use of
691
state power by non-capitalist classes then laissez-faire had its utility
692
(just as it has its utility today when attacking social welfare). Once
693
this had been accomplished then state intervention in society was encouraged
694
and applauded by capitalists. <i>"It is ironic that the main protagonists of
695
the State, in its political and administrative authority, were the middle-class
696
Utilitarians, on the other side of whose Statist banner were inscribed the
697
doctrines of economic Laissez Faire."</i> [E.P. Thompson, <b>The Making of
698
the English Working Class</b>, p. 90] Capitalists simply wanted <b>capitalist</b>
699
states to replace monarchical states, so that heads of government would follow
700
state economic policies regarded by capitalists as beneficial to their
701
class as a whole. And as development economist Lance Taylor argues:
702
</p><p><blockquote>
703
<i>"In the long run, there are no laissez-faire transitions to modern
704
economic growth. The state has always intervened to create a capitalist
705
class, and then it has to regulate the capitalist class, and then the
706
state has to worry about being taken over by the capitalist class,
707
but the state has always been there."</i> [quoted by Noam Chomsky, <b>Year
708
501</b>, p. 104]
709
</blockquote></p><p>
710
In order to attack mercantilism, the early capitalists had to ignore
711
the successful impact of its policies in developing industry and
712
a "store of wealth" for future economic activity. As William Lazonick
713
points out, <i>"the political purpose of [Adam Smith's] the <b>Wealth of
714
Nations</b> was to attack the mercantilist institutions that the British
715
economy had built up over the previous two hundred years. Yet in proposing
716
institutional change, Smith lacked a dynamic historical analysis. In
717
his attack on these institutions, Smith might have asked why the
718
extent of the world market available to Britain in the late eighteenth
719
century was <b>so uniquely under British control.</b> If Smith had
720
asked this 'big question,' he might have been forced to grant credit
721
for Britain's extent of the world market to the very mercantilist
722
institutions he was attacking."</i> Moreover, he <i>"might have recognised
723
the integral relation between economic and political power in the rise of
724
Britain to international dominance."</i> Overall, <i>"[w]hat the British
725
advocates of laissez-faire neglected to talk about was the role that a
726
system of national power had played in creating conditions for Britain to
727
embark on its dynamic development path . . . They did not bother to
728
ask how Britain had attained th[e] position [of 'workshop of the
729
world'], while they conveniently ignored the on going system of
730
national power -- the British Empire -- that . . . continued to
731
support Britain's position."</i> [<b>Business Organisation and the Myth
732
of the Market Economy</b>, p. 2, p. 3 and p.5]
733
</p><p>
734
Similar comments are applicable to American supporters of laissez faire who
735
fail to notice that the "traditional" American support for world-wide free
736
trade is quite a recent phenomenon. It started only at the end of the Second
737
World War (although, of course, <b>within</b> America military Keynesian
738
policies were utilised). While American industry was developing, the state
739
and capitalist class had no time for laissez-faire (see
740
<a href="secF8.html#secf85">section F.8.5</a> for details). After it had grown
741
strong, the United States began preaching laissez-faire to the rest of the
742
world -- and began to kid itself about its own history, believing its slogans
743
about laissez-faire as the secret of its success. Yet like all other successful
744
industrialisers, the state could aid capitalists directly and indirectly (via
745
tariffs, land policy, repression of the labour movement, infrastructure subsidy
746
and so on) and it would "leave them alone" to oppress and exploit workers, exploit
747
consumers, build their industrial empires and so forth.
748
</p><p>
749
Takis Fotopoules indicates that the social forces at work in "freeing" the market
750
did not represent a "natural" evolution towards freedom:
751
</p><p><blockquote>
752
<i>"Contrary to what liberals and Marxists assert, marketisation of the
753
economy was not just an evolutionary process, following the expansion of
754
trade under mercantilism . . . modern [i.e. capitalist] markets did not
755
evolve out of local markets and/or markets for foreign goods . . . the
756
nation-state, which was just emerging at the end of the Middle Ages,
757
played a crucial role creating the conditions for the 'nationalisation'
758
of the market . . . and . . . by freeing the market from effective social
759
control."</i> [<i>"The Nation-state and the Market"</i>, pp. 37-80
760
<b>Society and Nature</b>, Vol. 2, No. 2, pp. 44-45]
761
</blockquote></p><p>
762
The "freeing" of the market means freeing those who "own" most of
763
the market (i.e. the wealthy elite) from <i>"effective social control,"</i> but
764
the rest of society was not as lucky. Kropotkin makes a similar point: <i>"While
765
giving the capitalist any degree of free scope to amass his wealth at the expense
766
of the helpless labourers, the government has <b>nowhere</b> and <b>never</b> . . .
767
afforded the labourers the opportunity 'to do as they pleased'."</i> [<b>Anarchism</b>,
768
p. 182]
769
</p><p>
770
So, the expression "laissez-faire" dates from the period when capitalists were
771
objecting to the restrictions that helped create them in the first place. It has
772
little to do with freedom as such and far more to do with the needs of capitalist
773
power and profits. It should also be remembered that at this time the state was
774
run by the rich and for the rich. Elections, where they took place, involved the
775
wealthiest of male property owners. This meant there were two aspects in
776
the call for laissez-faire. On the one hand, by the elite to eliminate
777
regulations and interventions they found burdensome and felt unnecessary
778
as their social position was secure by their economic power (mercantilism
779
evolved into capitalism proper when market power was usually sufficient
780
to produce dependency and obedience as the working class had been successfully
781
dispossessed from the land and the means of production). On the other,
782
serious social reformers (like Adam Smith) who recognised that the
783
costs of such elite inspired state regulations generally fell on working
784
class people. The moral authority of the latter was used to bolster the
785
desire of the former to maximise their wealth by imposing costs of others
786
(workers, customers, society and the planet's eco-system) with the state
787
waiting in the wings to support them as and when required.
788
</p><p>
789
Unsurprising, working class people recognised the hypocrisy of this
790
arrangement (even if most modern-day right-"libertarians" do not and
791
provide their services justifying the actions and desires of repressive
792
and exploitative oligarchs seeking monopolistic positions). They turned
793
to political and social activism seeking to change a system which saw
794
economic and political power reinforce each other. Some (like the Chartists
795
and Marxists) argued for political reforms to generalise democracy into
796
genuine one person, one vote. In this way, political liberty would be
797
used to end the worse excesses of so-called "economic liberty" (i.e.,
798
capitalist privilege and power). Others (like mutualists) aimed at
799
economic reforms which ensure that the capitalist class would be
800
abolished by means of genuine economic freedom. Finally, most other
801
anarchists argued that revolutionary change was required as the state
802
and capitalism were so intertwined that both had to be ended at the
803
same time. However, the struggle against state power always came from
804
the general population. As Murray Bookchin argued, it is an error to
805
depict this <i>"revolutionary era and its democratic aspirations as
806
'bourgeois,' an imagery that makes capitalism a system more committed to
807
freedom, or even ordinary civil liberties, than it was historically."</i>
808
[<b>From Urbanisation to Cities</b>, p. 180f] While the capitalist class
809
may have benefited from such popular movements as the English, American
810
and French revolutions but these revolutions were not led, never mind
811
started or fought, by the bourgeoisie.
812
</p><p>
813
Not much as changed as capitalists are today seeking maximum freedom from
814
the state to ensure maximum authority over their wage slaves and society.
815
The one essential form of support the "Libertarian" right wants the state
816
(or "defence" firms) to provide capitalism is the enforcement of property
817
rights -- the right of property owners to "do as they like" on their own
818
property, which can have obvious and extensive social impacts. What
819
"libertarian" capitalists object to is attempts by others -- workers,
820
society as a whole, the state, etc. -- to interfere with the authority
821
of bosses. That this is just the defence of privilege and power (and
822
<b>not</b> freedom) has been discussed in <a href="secBcon.html">section B</a>
823
and elsewhere in <a href="secFcon.html">section F</a>, so we will not repeat
824
ourselves here. Samuel Johnson once observed that <i>"we hear the loudest
825
<b>yelps</b> for liberty among the drivers of Negroes."</i> [quoted by Noam
826
Chomsky, <b>Year 501</b>, p. 141] Our modern "libertarian" capitalist drivers
827
of wage-slaves are yelping for exactly the same kind of "liberty."</p>
828
829
<a name="secf83"><h2>F.8.3 What other forms did state intervention in creating capitalism take?</h2></a>
830
831
<p>
832
Beyond being a paymaster for new forms of production and social relations
833
as well as defending the owners' power, the state intervened economically in
834
other ways as well. As we noted in <a href="secB2.html#secb25">section B.2.5</a>,
835
the state played a key role in transforming the law codes of society in a capitalistic
836
fashion, ignoring custom and common law when it was convenient to do so. Similarly,
837
the use of tariffs and the granting of monopolies to companies played an important
838
role in accumulating capital at the expense of working people, as did the
839
breaking of unions and strikes by force.
840
</p><p>
841
However, one of the most blatant of these acts was the enclosure of
842
common land. In Britain, by means of the Enclosure Acts, land that
843
had been freely used by poor peasants was claimed by large landlords as
844
private property. As socialist historian E.P. Thompson summarised, <i>"the
845
social violence of enclosure consisted . . . in the drastic, total imposition
846
upon the village of capitalist property-definitions."</i> [<b>The Making of the
847
English Working Class</b>, pp. 237-8] Property rights, which favoured
848
the rich, replaced the use rights and free agreement that had governed
849
peasants use of the commons. Unlike use rights, which rest in the
850
individual, property rights require state intervention to create and
851
maintain. <i>"Parliament and law imposed capitalist definitions to
852
exclusive property in land,"</i> Thompson notes. This process involved
853
ignoring the wishes of those who used the commons and repressing those
854
who objected. Parliament was, of course, run by and for the rich who
855
then simply <i>"observed the rules which they themselves had made."</i>
856
[<b>Customs in Common</b>, p. 163]
857
</p><p>
858
Unsurprisingly, many landowners would become rich through the enclosure
859
of the commons, heaths and downland while many ordinary people had a
860
centuries old right taken away. Land enclosure was a gigantic swindle
861
on the part of large landowners. In the words of one English folk poem
862
written in 1764 as a protest against enclosure:
863
</p><p><div align="center"><i>
864
They hang the man, and flog the woman,<br>
865
That steals the goose from off the common;<br>
866
But let the greater villain loose,<br>
867
That steals the common from the goose.<br></i>
868
</p><p></div>
869
It should be remembered that the process of enclosure was not limited
870
to just the period of the industrial revolution. As Colin Ward notes,
871
<i>"in Tudor times, a wave of enclosures by land-owners who sought to
872
profit from the high price of wool had deprived the commoners of
873
their livelihood and obliged them to seek work elsewhere or become
874
vagrants or squatters on the wastes on the edges of villages."</i>
875
[<b>Cotters and Squatters</b>, p. 30] This first wave increased the
876
size of the rural proletariat who sold their labour to landlords. Nor
877
should we forget that this imposition of capitalist property rights
878
did not imply that it was illegal. As Michael Perelman notes,<i>"[f]ormally,
879
this dispossession was perfectly legal. After all, the peasants did not
880
have property rights in the narrow sense. They only had traditional rights.
881
As markets evolved, first land-hungry gentry and later the bourgeoisie used
882
the state to create a legal structure to abrogate these traditional rights."</i>
883
[<b>The Invention of Capitalism</b>, pp. 13-4]
884
</p><p>
885
While technically legal as the landlords made the law, the impact of this
886
stealing of the land should not be under estimated. Without land,
887
you cannot live and have to sell your liberty to others. This places
888
those with capital at an advantage, which will tend to increase,
889
rather than decrease, the inequalities in society (and so place the
890
landless workers at an increasing disadvantage over time). This
891
process can be seen from early stages of capitalism. With the
892
enclosure of the land an agricultural workforce was created which
893
had to travel where the work was. This influx of landless ex-peasants
894
into the towns ensured that the traditional guild system crumbled
895
and was transformed into capitalistic industry with bosses and wage
896
slaves rather than master craftsmen and their journeymen. Hence the
897
enclosure of land played a key role, for <i>"it is clear that economic
898
inequalities are unlikely to create a division of society into an
899
employing master class and a subject wage-earning class, unless
900
access to the means of production, including land, is by some means
901
or another barred to a substantial section of the community."</i>
902
[Maurice Dobb, <b>Studies in Capitalist Development</b>, p. 253]
903
</p><p>
904
The importance of access to land is summarised by this limerick
905
by the followers of Henry George (a 19th century writer who argued
906
for a <i>"single tax"</i> and the nationalisation of land). The Georgites
907
got their basic argument on the importance of land down these few,
908
excellent, lines:
909
</p><p><div align="center"><i>
910
A college economist planned<br>
911
To live without access to land<br>
912
He would have succeeded<br>
913
But found that he needed<br>
914
Food, shelter and somewhere to stand.<br></i>
915
</p><p></div>
916
Thus anarchists concern over the <i>"land monopoly"</i> of which the Enclosure
917
Acts were but one part. The land monopoly, to use Tucker's words, <i>"consists
918
in the enforcement by government of land titles which do not rest upon personal
919
occupancy and cultivation."</i> [<b>The Anarchist Reader</b>, p. 150] So it
920
should be remembered that common land did <b>not</b> include the large holdings of
921
members of the feudal aristocracy and other landlords. This helped to artificially
922
limit available land and produce a rural proletariat just as much as enclosures.
923
</p><p>
924
It is important to remember that wage labour first developed on the land and it
925
was the protection of land titles of landlords and nobility, combined with
926
enclosure, that meant people could not just work their own land. The pressing
927
economic circumstances created by enclosing the land and enforcing property
928
rights to large estates ensured that capitalists did not have to point a gun at
929
people's heads to get them to work long hours in authoritarian, dehumanising
930
conditions. In such circumstances, when the majority are dispossessed and face
931
the threat of starvation, poverty, homelessness and so on, "initiation of force"
932
is <b>not required.</b> But guns <b>were</b> required to enforce the system of
933
private property that created the labour market in the first place, to enclosure
934
common land and protect the estates of the nobility and wealthy.
935
</p><p>
936
By decreasing the availability of land for rural people, the enclosures destroyed
937
working-class independence. Through these Acts, innumerable peasants were excluded
938
from access to their former means of livelihood, forcing them to seek work from
939
landlords or to migrate to the cities to seek work in the newly emerging factories
940
of the budding industrial capitalists who were thus provided with a ready source
941
of cheap labour. The capitalists, of course, did not describe the results this way,
942
but attempted to obfuscate the issue with their usual rhetoric about civilisation
943
and progress. Thus John Bellers, a 17th-century supporter of enclosures, claimed
944
that commons were <i>"a hindrance to Industry, and . . . Nurseries of Idleness
945
and Insolence."</i> The <i>"forests and great Commons make the Poor that are upon
946
them too much like the <b>indians.</b>"</i> [quoted by Thompson, <b>Op. Cit.</b>,
947
p. 165] Elsewhere Thompson argues that the commons <i>"were now seen as a dangerous
948
centre of indiscipline . . . Ideology was added to self-interest. It became a
949
matter of public-spirited policy for gentlemen to remove cottagers from the
950
commons, reduce his labourers to dependence."</i> [<b>The Making of the English
951
Working Class</b>, pp. 242-3] David McNally confirms this, arguing <i>"it was
952
precisely these elements of material and spiritual independence that many of the
953
most outspoken advocates of enclosure sought to destroy."</i> Eighteenth-century
954
proponents of enclosure <i>"were remarkably forthright in this respect. Common
955
rights and access to common lands, they argued, allowed a degree of social and
956
economic independence, and thereby produced a lazy, dissolute mass of rural poor
957
who eschewed honest labour and church attendance . . . Denying such people common
958
lands and common rights would force them to conform to the harsh discipline
959
imposed by the market in labour."</i> [<b>Against the Market</b>, p. 19]
960
</p><p>
961
The commons gave working-class people a degree of independence which
962
allowed them to be "insolent" to their betters. This had to be stopped,
963
as it undermined to the very roots of authority relationships within
964
society. The commons <b>increased</b> freedom for ordinary people and made
965
them less willing to follow orders and accept wage labour. The reference
966
to "Indians" is important, as the independence and freedom of Native
967
Americans is well documented. The common feature of both cultures was
968
communal ownership of the means of production and free access to it
969
(usufruct). This is discussed further in section I.7
970
(<a href="secI7.html">Won't Libertarian Socialism destroy individuality?</a>).
971
As Bookchin stressed, the factory <i>"was not born from a need to integrate
972
labour with modern machinery,"</i> rather it was to regulate labour and make
973
it regular. For the <i>"irregularity, or 'naturalness,' in the rhythm and
974
intensity of traditional systems of work contributed more towards the
975
bourgeoisie's craze for social control and its savagely anti-naturalistic
976
outlook than did the prices or earnings demanded by its employees. More
977
than any single technical factor, this irregularity led to the rationalisation
978
of labour under a single ensemble of rule, to a discipline of work and
979
regulation of time that yielded the modern factory . . . the initial
980
goal of the factory was to dominate labour and destroy the worker's
981
independence from capital."</i> [<b>The Ecology of Freedom</b> p. 406]
982
</p><p>
983
Hence the pressing need to break the workers' ties with the land and so
984
the <i>"loss of this independence included the loss of the worker's contact
985
with food cultivation . . . To live in a cottage . . . often meant to
986
cultivate a family garden, possibly to pasture a cow, to prepare one's
987
own bread, and to have the skills for keeping a home in good repair. To
988
utterly erase these skills and means of a livelihood from the worker's
989
life became an industrial imperative."</i> Thus the worker's <i>"complete
990
dependence on the factory and on an industrial labour market was a
991
compelling precondition for the triumph of industrial society . . . The
992
need to destroy whatever independent means of life the worker could garner
993
. . . all involved the issue of reducing the proletariat to a condition of
994
total powerlessness in the face of capital. And with that powerlessness
995
came a supineness, a loss of character and community, and a decline in
996
moral fibre."</i> [Bookchin, <b>Op. Cit.,</b>, pp. 406-7] Unsurprisingly, there was
997
a positive association between enclosure and migration out of villages and
998
a <i>"definite correlation . . . between the extent of enclosure and reliance
999
on poor rates . . . parliamentary enclosure resulted in out-migration and a
1000
higher level of pauperisation."</i> Moreover, <i>"the standard of living was
1001
generally much higher in those areas where labourer managed to combine
1002
industrial work with farming . . . Access to commons meant that labourers
1003
could graze animals, gather wood, stones and gravel, dig coal, hunt and
1004
fish. These rights often made the difference between subsistence and
1005
abject poverty."</i> [David McNally, <b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 14 and p. 18]
1006
Game laws also ensured that the peasantry and servants could not legally
1007
hunt for food as from the time of Richard II (1389) to 1831, no person
1008
could kill game unless qualified by estate or social standing.
1009
</p><p>
1010
The enclosure of the commons (in whatever form it took -- see
1011
<a href="secF8.html#secf85">section F.8.5</a> for the US equivalent) solved both
1012
problems -- the high cost of labour, and the freedom and dignity of the worker.
1013
The enclosures perfectly illustrate the principle that capitalism requires a
1014
state to ensure that the majority of people do not have free access to any
1015
means of livelihood and so must sell themselves to capitalists in order to
1016
survive. There is no doubt that if the state had "left alone" the European
1017
peasantry, allowing them to continue their collective farming practices
1018
("collective farming" because, as Kropotkin shows, the peasants not only
1019
shared the land but much of the farm labour as well), capitalism could not
1020
have taken hold (see <b>Mutual Aid</b> for more on the European enclosures
1021
[pp. 184-189]). As Kropotkin notes, <i>"[i]nstances of commoners themselves
1022
dividing their lands were rare, everywhere the State coerced them to enforce
1023
the division, or simply favoured the private appropriation of their lands"</i>
1024
by the nobles and wealthy. Thus <i>"to speak of the natural death of the village
1025
community [or the commons] in virtue of economical law is as grim a joke as to
1026
speak of the natural death of soldiers slaughtered on a battlefield."</i>
1027
[<b>Mutual Aid</b>, p. 188 and p. 189]
1028
</p><p>
1029
Once a labour market <b>was</b> created by means of enclosure and the land monopoly,
1030
the state did <b>not</b> passively let it work. When market conditions favoured the
1031
working class, the state took heed of the calls of landlords and capitalists and
1032
intervened to restore the "natural" order. The state actively used the law to lower
1033
wages and ban unions of workers for centuries. In Britain, for example, after the
1034
Black Death there was a "servant" shortage. Rather than allow the market to work
1035
its magic, the landlords turned to the state and the result was <b><i>"the Statute
1036
of Labourers"</i></b> of 1351:
1037
</p><p><blockquote><i>
1038
"Whereas late against the malice of servants, which were idle, and not willing
1039
to serve after the pestilence, without taking excessive wages, it was ordained
1040
by our lord the king . . . that such manner of servants . . . should be bound
1041
to serve, receiving salary and wages, accustomed in places where they ought to
1042
serve in the twentieth year of the reign of the king that now is, or five or
1043
six years before; and that the same servants refusing to serve in such manner
1044
should be punished by imprisonment of their bodies . . . now forasmuch as it
1045
is given the king to understand in this present parliament, by the petition of
1046
the commonalty, that the said servants having no regard to the said ordinance,
1047
. . to the great damage of the great men, and impoverishing of all the said
1048
commonalty, whereof the said commonalty prayeth remedy: wherefore in the said
1049
parliament, by the assent of the said prelates, earls, barons, and other great
1050
men, and of the same commonalty there assembled, to refrain the malice of the
1051
said servants, be ordained and established the things underwritten."</i>
1052
</blockquote></p><p>
1053
Thus state action was required because labourers had increased bargaining power
1054
and commanded higher wages which, in turn, led to inflation throughout the economy.
1055
In other words, an early version of the NAIRU (see <a href="secC9.html">section C.9</a>).
1056
In one form or another this statute remained in force right through to the 19th
1057
century (later versions made it illegal for employees to "conspire" to fix wages,
1058
i.e., to organise to demand wage increases). Such measures were particularly sought
1059
when the labour market occasionally favoured the working class. For example,
1060
<i>"[a]fter the Restoration [of the English Monarchy],"</i> noted Dobb, <i>"when
1061
labour-scarcity had again become a serious complaint and the propertied class had
1062
been soundly frightened by the insubordination of the Commonwealth years, the
1063
clamour for legislative interference to keep wages low, to drive the poor into
1064
employment and to extend the system of workhouses and 'houses of correction' and
1065
the farming out of paupers once more reached a crescendo."</i> The same occurred
1066
on Continental Europe. [<b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 234]
1067
</p><p>
1068
So, time and again employers called on the state to provide force to suppress
1069
the working class, artificially lower wages and bolster their economic power and
1070
authority. While such legislation was often difficult to enforce and
1071
often ineffectual in that real wages did, over time, increase, the threat and use
1072
of state coercion would ensure that they did not increase as fast as they may
1073
otherwise have done. Similarly, the use of courts and troops to break unions and
1074
strikes helped the process of capital accumulation immensely. Then there were
1075
the various laws used to control the free movement of workers. <i>"For centuries,"</i>
1076
notes Colin Ward, <i>"the lives of the poor majority in rural England were dominated
1077
by the Poor law and its ramifications, like the Settlement Act of 1697 which debarred
1078
strangers from entering a parish unless they had a Settlement Certificate in which
1079
their home parish agreed to take them back if they became in need of poor relief.
1080
Like the Workhouse, it was a hated institution that lasted into the 20th century."</i>
1081
[<b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 31]
1082
</p><p>
1083
As Kropotkin stressed, <i>"it was the State which undertook to settle . . . griefs"</i>
1084
between workers and bosses <i>"so as to guarantee a 'convenient' livelihood"</i>
1085
(convenient for the masters, of course). It also acted <i>"severely to prohibit
1086
all combinations . . . under the menace of severe punishments . . . Both in the
1087
town and in the village the State reigned over loose aggregations of individuals,
1088
and was ready to prevent by the most stringent measures the reconstitution of any sort
1089
of separate unions among them."</i> Workers who formed unions <i>"were prosecuted
1090
wholesale under the Master and Servant Act -- workers being summarily arrested and
1091
condemned upon a mere complaint of misbehaviour lodged by the master. Strikes were
1092
suppressed in an autocratic way . . . to say nothing of the military suppression of strike
1093
riots . . . To practice mutual support under such circumstances was anything but an
1094
easy task . . . After a long fight, which lasted over a hundred years, the right of
1095
combing together was conquered."</i> [<b>Mutual Aid</b>, p. 210 and p. 211] It took
1096
until 1813 until the laws regulating wages were repealed while the laws against
1097
combinations remained until 1825 (although that did not stop the Tolpuddle Martyrs
1098
being convicted of "administering an illegal oath" and deported to Tasmania in 1834).
1099
Fifty years later, the provisions of the statues of labourers which made it a civil
1100
action if the boss broke his contract but a criminal action if the worker broke it
1101
were repealed. Trade unions were given legal recognition in 1871 while, at the same
1102
time, another law limited what the workers could do in a strike or lockout. The British
1103
ideals of free trade never included freedom to organise.
1104
</p><p>
1105
(Luckily, by then, economists were at hand to explain to the workers that organising
1106
to demand higher wages was against their own self-interest. By a strange coincidence,
1107
all those laws against unions had actually <b>helped</b> the working class by enforcing
1108
the necessary conditions for perfect competition in labour market! What are the chances
1109
of that? Of course, while considered undesirable from the perspective of mainstream
1110
economists -- and, by strange co-incidence, the bosses -- unions are generally not
1111
banned these days but rather heavily regulated. The freedom loving, deregulating
1112
Thatcherites passed six Employment Acts between 1980 and 1993 restricting industrial
1113
action by requiring pre-strike ballots, outlawing secondary action, restricting
1114
picketing and giving employers the right to seek injunctions where there is doubt
1115
about the legality of action -- in the workers' interest, of course as, for some
1116
reason, politicians, bosses and economists have always known what best for
1117
trade unionists rather than the trade unionists themselves. And if they objected,
1118
well, that was what the state was for.)
1119
</p><p>
1120
So to anyone remotely familiar with working class history the notion that there could
1121
be an economic theory which ignores power relations between bosses and workers is a
1122
particularly self-serving joke. Economic relations always have a power element,
1123
even if only to protect the property and power of the wealthy -- the Invisible Hand
1124
always counts on a very visible Iron Fist when required. As Kropotkin memorably put
1125
it, the rise of capitalism has always seen the State <i>"tighten the screw for
1126
the worker"</i> and <i>"impos[ing] industrial serfdom."</i> So what the bourgeoisie
1127
<i>"swept away as harmful to industry"</i> was anything considered as <i>"useless and
1128
harmful"</i> but that class <i>"was at pains not to sweep away was the power
1129
of the State over industry, over the factory serf."</i> Nor should the role of public
1130
schooling be overlooked, within which <i>"the spirit of voluntary servitude was
1131
always cleverly cultivated in the minds of the young, and still is, in order to
1132
perpetuate the subjection of the individual to the State."</i> [<b>The
1133
State: Its Historic Role</b>, pp. 52-3 and p. 55] Such education also ensured that
1134
children become used to the obedience and boredom required for wage slavery.
1135
</p><p>
1136
Like the more recent case of fascist Chile, "free market" capitalism was
1137
imposed on the majority of society by an elite using the authoritarian
1138
state. This was recognised by Adam Smith when he opposed state
1139
intervention in <b>The Wealth of Nations</b>. In Smith's day, the government
1140
was openly and unashamedly an instrument of wealth owners. Less than
1141
10 per cent of British men (and no women) had the right to vote. When
1142
Smith opposed state interference, he was opposing the imposition of
1143
wealth owners' interests on everybody else (and, of course, how "liberal",
1144
never mind "libertarian", is a political system in which the many follow
1145
the rules and laws set-down in the so-called interests of all by the
1146
few? As history shows, any minority given, or who take, such power <b>will</b>
1147
abuse it in their own interests). Today, the situation is reversed, with
1148
neo-liberals and right-"libertarians" opposing state interference in the
1149
economy (e.g. regulation of Big Business) so as to prevent the public
1150
from having even a minor impact on the power or interests of the elite.
1151
The fact that "free market" capitalism always requires introduction by an
1152
authoritarian state should make all honest "Libertarians" ask: How "free"
1153
is the "free market"? </p>
1154
1155
<a name="secf84"><h2>F.8.4 Aren't the enclosures a socialist myth?</h2></a>
1156
1157
<p>
1158
The short answer is no, they are not. While a lot of historical analysis
1159
has been spent in trying to deny the extent and impact of the enclosures,
1160
the simple fact is (in the words of noted historian E.P. Thompson)
1161
enclosure <i>"was a plain enough case of class robbery, played according
1162
to the fair rules of property and law laid down by a parliament of
1163
property-owners and lawyers."</i> [<b>The Making of the English Working Class</b>,
1164
pp. 237-8]
1165
</p><p>
1166
The enclosures were one of the ways that the <i>"land monopoly"</i> was created.
1167
The land monopoly referred to feudal and capitalist property rights and ownership
1168
of land by (among others) the Individualist Anarchists. Instead of an
1169
<i>"occupancy and use"</i> regime advocated by anarchists, the land monopoly
1170
allowed a few to bar the many from the land -- so creating a class of people with
1171
nothing to sell but their labour. While this monopoly is less important these
1172
days in developed nations (few people know how to farm) it was essential as a
1173
means of consolidating capitalism. Given the choice, most people preferred to
1174
become independent farmers rather than wage workers (see
1175
<a href="secF8.html#secf85">next section</a>). As such, the <i>"land monopoly"</i>
1176
involves more than simply enclosing common land but also enforcing the claims
1177
of landlords to areas of land greater than they can work by their own labour.
1178
</p><p>
1179
Needless to say, the titles of landlords and the state are generally ignored
1180
by supporters of capitalism who tend to concentrate on the enclosure movement
1181
in order to downplay its importance. Little wonder, for it is something of an
1182
embarrassment for them to acknowledge that the creation of capitalism
1183
was somewhat less than "immaculate" -- after all, capitalism is portrayed
1184
as an almost ideal society of freedom. To find out that an idol has
1185
feet of clay and that we are still living with the impact of its
1186
origins is something pro-capitalists must deny. So <b>are</b> the enclosures
1187
a socialist myth? Most claims that it is flow from the work of the
1188
historian J.D. Chambers' famous essay <i>"Enclosures and the Labour Supply
1189
in the Industrial Revolution."</i> [<b>Economic History Review</b>, 2nd series,
1190
no. 5, August 1953] In this essay, Chambers attempts to refute Karl
1191
Marx's account of the enclosures and the role it played in what Marx
1192
called <i>"primitive accumulation."</i>
1193
</p><p>
1194
We cannot be expected to provide an extensive account of the debate that has
1195
raged over this issue (Colin Ward notes that <i>"a later series of scholars
1196
have provided locally detailed evidence that reinforces"</i> the traditional
1197
socialist analysis of enclosure and its impact. [<b>Cotters and Squatters</b>, p. 143]).
1198
All we can do is provide a summary of the work of William Lazonick who presented
1199
an excellent reply to those who claim that the enclosures were an unimportant
1200
historical event (see his <i>"Karl Marx and Enclosures in England."</i> [<b>Review
1201
of Radical Political Economy</b>, no. 6, pp. 1-32]). Here, we draw upon his
1202
subsequent summarisation of his critique provided in his books <b>Competitive
1203
Advantage on the Shop Floor</b> and <b>Business Organisation and the Myth of
1204
the Market Economy</b>.
1205
</p><p>
1206
There are three main claims against the socialist account of the enclosures.
1207
We will cover each in turn.
1208
</p><p>
1209
Firstly, it is often claimed that the enclosures drove the uprooted cottager
1210
and small peasant into industry. However, this was never claimed. As Lazonick
1211
stresses while some economic historians <i>"have attributed to Marx the notion
1212
that, in one fell swoop, the enclosure movement drove the peasants off the soil
1213
and into the factories. Marx did not put forth such a simplistic view of the
1214
rise of a wage-labour force . . . Despite gaps and omission in Marx's historical
1215
analysis, his basic arguments concerning the creation of a landless proletariat
1216
are both important and valid. The transformations of social relations of production
1217
and the emergence of a wage-labour force in the agricultural sector were the
1218
critical preconditions for the Industrial Revolution."</i> [<b>Competitive
1219
Advantage on the Shop Floor</b>, pp. 12-3]
1220
</p><p>
1221
It is correct, as the critics of Marx stress, that the agricultural revolution
1222
associated with the enclosures <b>increased</b> the demand for farm labour as
1223
claimed by Chambers and others. And this is the whole point -- enclosures
1224
created a pool of dispossessed labourers who had to sell their time/liberty to
1225
survive and whether this was to a landlord or an industrialist is irrelevant
1226
(as Marx himself stressed). As such, the account by Chambers, ironically,
1227
<i>"confirms the broad outlines of Marx's arguments"</i> as it implicitly
1228
acknowledges that <i>"over the long run the massive reallocation of access
1229
to land that enclosures entailed resulted in the separation of the mass of
1230
agricultural producers from the means of production."</i> So the <i>"critical
1231
transformation was not the level of agricultural employment before and after
1232
enclosure but the changes in employment relations caused by the reorganisation
1233
of landholdings and the reallocation of access to land."</i> [<b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 29,
1234
pp. 29-30 and p. 30] Thus the key feature of the enclosures was that it created
1235
a supply for farm labour, a supply that had no choice but to work for another.
1236
Once freed from the land, these workers could later move to the towns in search
1237
for better work:
1238
</p><p><blockquote><i>
1239
"Critical to the Marxian thesis of the origins of the industrial labour
1240
force is the transformation of the social relations of agriculture and the
1241
creation, in the first instance, of an agricultural wage-labour force that
1242
might eventually, perhaps through market incentives, be drawn into the
1243
industrial labour force."</i> [<b>Business Organisation and the Myth of
1244
the Market Economy</b>, p. 273]
1245
</blockquote></p><p>
1246
In summary, when the critics argue that enclosures increased the demand for farm
1247
labour they are not refuting Marx but confirming his analysis. This is because
1248
the enclosures had resulted in a transformation in employment relations in
1249
agriculture with the peasants and farmers turned into wage workers for landlords
1250
(i.e., rural capitalists). For if wage labour is the defining characteristic of
1251
capitalism then it matters little if the boss is a farmer or an industrialist.
1252
This means that the <i>"critics, it turns out, have not differed substantially
1253
with Marx on the facts of agricultural transformation. But by ignoring the
1254
historical and theoretical significance of the resultant changes in the social
1255
relations of <b>agricultural</b> production, the critics have missed Marx's
1256
main point."</i> [<b>Competitive Advantage on the Shop Floor</b>, p. 30]
1257
</p><p>
1258
Secondly, it is argued that the number of small farm owners increased,
1259
or at least did not greatly decline, and so the enclosure movement was
1260
unimportant. Again, this misses the point. Small farm owners can still
1261
employ wage workers (i.e. become capitalist farmers as opposed to
1262
"yeomen" -- an independent peasant proprietor). As Lazonick notes, <i>"[i]t
1263
is true that after 1750 some petty proprietors continued to occupy and work
1264
their own land. But in a world of capitalist agriculture, the yeomanry no
1265
longer played an important role in determining the course of capitalist
1266
agriculture. As a social class that could influence the evolution of British
1267
economy society, the yeomanry had disappeared."</i> Moreover, Chambers himself
1268
acknowledged that for the poor without legal rights in land, then enclosure
1269
injured them. For <i>"the majority of the agricultural population . . . had
1270
only customary rights. To argue that these people were not treated unfairly
1271
because they did not possess legally enforceable property rights is irrelevant
1272
to the fact that they were dispossessed by enclosures. Again, Marx's critics
1273
have failed to address the issue of the transformation of access to the means
1274
of production as a precondition for the Industrial Revolution."</i> [<b>Op. Cit.</b>,
1275
p. 32 and p. 31]
1276
</p><p>
1277
Thirdly, it is often claimed that it was population growth, rather than
1278
enclosures, that caused the supply of wage workers. So was population
1279
growth more important than enclosures? Given that enclosure impacted on
1280
the individuals and social customs of the time, it is impossible to separate
1281
the growth in population from the social context in which it happened. As
1282
such, the population argument ignores the question of whether the changes
1283
in society caused by enclosures and the rise of capitalism have an
1284
impact on the observed trends towards earlier marriage and larger
1285
families after 1750. Lazonick argues that <i>"[t]here is reason
1286
to believe that they did."</i> [<b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 33] Overall,
1287
Lazonick notes that <i>"[i]t can even be argued that the changed
1288
social relations of agriculture altered the constraints on early
1289
marriage and incentives to childbearing that contributed to the growth in
1290
population. The key point is that transformations in social relations in
1291
production can influence, and have influenced, the quantity of wage labour
1292
supplied on both agricultural and industrial labour markets. To argue that
1293
population growth created the industrial labour supply is to ignore these
1294
momentous social transformations"</i> associated with the rise of capitalism.
1295
[<b>Business Organisation and the Myth of the Market Economy</b>, p. 273]
1296
</p><p>
1297
In other words, there is good reason to think that the enclosures, far
1298
from being some kind of socialist myth, in fact played a key role in
1299
the development of capitalism. As Lazonick notes, <i>"Chambers misunderstood"</i>
1300
the <i>"argument concerning the 'institutional creation' of a proletarianised
1301
(i.e. landless) workforce. Indeed, Chamber's own evidence and logic tend to
1302
support the Marxian [and anarchist!] argument, when it is properly understood."</i>
1303
[<b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 273]
1304
</p><p>
1305
Lastly, it must be stressed that this process of dispossession happened over
1306
hundreds of years. It was not a case of simply driving peasants off their land
1307
and into factories. In fact, the first acts of expropriation took place in
1308
agriculture and created a rural proletariat which had to sell their labour/liberty
1309
to landlords and it was the second wave of enclosures, in the eighteenth and
1310
nineteenth centuries, that was closely connected with the process of
1311
industrialisation. The enclosure movement, moreover, was imposed in an uneven way,
1312
affecting different areas at different times, depending on the power of peasant
1313
resistance and the nature of the crops being grown (and other objective conditions).
1314
Nor was it a case of an instant transformation -- for a long period this rural
1315
proletariat was not totally dependent on wages, still having some access to the
1316
land and wastes for fuel and food. So while rural wage workers did exist
1317
throughout the period from 1350 to the 1600s, capitalism was not fully established
1318
in Britain yet as such people comprised only a small proportion of the labouring
1319
classes. The acts of enclosure were just one part of a long process by which a
1320
proletariat was created.</p>
1321
1322
<a name="secf85"><h2>F.8.5 What about the lack of enclosures in the Americas?</h2></a>
1323
1324
<p>
1325
The enclosure movement was but one part of a wide-reaching process of state
1326
intervention in creating capitalism. Moreover, it is just one way of creating
1327
the <i>"land monopoly"</i> which ensured the creation of a working class. The
1328
circumstances facing the ruling class in the Americas were distinctly different
1329
than in the Old World and so the "land monopoly" took a different form there.
1330
In the Americas, enclosures were unimportant as customary land rights did not
1331
really exist (at least once the Native Americans were eliminated by violence).
1332
Here the problem was that (after the original users of the land were eliminated)
1333
there were vast tracts of land available for people to use. Other forms of
1334
state intervention were similar to that applied under mercantilism in Europe
1335
(such as tariffs, government spending, use of unfree labour and state
1336
repression of workers and their organisations and so on). All had one aim, to
1337
enrich and power the masters and dispossess the actual producers of the means
1338
of life (land and means of production).
1339
</p><p>
1340
Unsurprisingly, due to the abundance of land, there was a movement towards
1341
independent farming in the early years of the American colonies and subsequent
1342
Republic and this pushed up the price of remaining labour on the market by
1343
reducing the supply. Capitalists found it difficult to find workers willing
1344
to work for them at wages low enough to provide them with sufficient profits.
1345
It was due to the difficulty in finding cheap enough labour that capitalists in
1346
America turned to slavery. All things being equal, wage labour <b>is</b> more
1347
productive than slavery but in early America all things were <b>not</b>
1348
equal. Having access to cheap (indeed, free) land meant that working
1349
people had a choice, and few desired to become wage slaves and so because
1350
of this, capitalists turned to slavery in the South and the "land monopoly"
1351
in the North.
1352
</p><p>
1353
This was because, in the words of Maurice Dobb, it <i>"became clear to
1354
those who wished to reproduce capitalist relations of production in
1355
the new country that the foundation-stone of their endeavour must be
1356
the restriction of land-ownership to a minority and the exclusion of
1357
the majority from any share in [productive] property."</i> [<b>Studies in
1358
Capitalist Development</b>, pp. 221-2] As one radical historian puts
1359
it, <i>"[w]hen land is 'free' or 'cheap'. as it was in different regions
1360
of the United States before the 1830s, there was no compulsion for farmers
1361
to introduce labour-saving technology. As a result, 'independent household
1362
production' . . . hindered the development of capitalism . . . [by] allowing
1363
large portions of the population to escape wage labour."</i> [Charlie Post,
1364
<i>"The 'Agricultural Revolution' in the United States"</i>, pp. 216-228,
1365
<b>Science and Society</b>, vol. 61, no. 2, p. 221]
1366
</p><p>
1367
It was precisely this option (i.e. of independent production) that had to be
1368
destroyed in order for capitalist industry to develop. The state had to violate
1369
the holy laws of "supply and demand" by controlling the access to land in order
1370
to ensure the normal workings of "supply and demand" in the labour market (i.e.
1371
that the bargaining position favoured employer over employee). Once this situation
1372
became the typical one (i.e., when the option of self-employment was effectively
1373
eliminated) a more (protectionist based) "laissez-faire" approach could be adopted,
1374
with state action used indirectly to favour the capitalists and landlords (and
1375
readily available to protect private property from the actions of the dispossessed).
1376
</p><p>
1377
So how was this transformation of land ownership achieved?
1378
</p><p>
1379
Instead of allowing settlers to appropriate their own farms as was often the case
1380
before the 1830s, the state stepped in once the army had cleared out (usually
1381
by genocide) the original users. Its first major role was to enforce legal
1382
rights of property on unused land. Land stolen from the Native Americans
1383
was sold at auction to the highest bidders, namely speculators, who then
1384
sold it on to farmers. This process started right <i>"after the revolution,
1385
[when] huge sections of land were bought up by rich speculators"</i> and
1386
their claims supported by the law. [Howard Zinn, <b>A People's History of
1387
the United States</b>, p. 125] Thus land which should have been free was
1388
sold to land-hungry farmers and the few enriched themselves at the expense
1389
of the many. Not only did this increase inequality within society, it also
1390
encouraged the development of wage labour -- having to pay for land would
1391
have ensured that many immigrants remained on the East Coast until they had
1392
enough money. Thus a pool of people with little option but to sell their
1393
labour was increased due to state protection of unoccupied land. That the
1394
land usually ended up in the hands of farmers did not (could not) countermand
1395
the shift in class forces that this policy created.
1396
</p><p>
1397
This was also the essential role of the various "Homesteading Acts" and,
1398
in general, the <i>"Federal land law in the 19th century provided for the
1399
sale of most of the public domain at public auction to the higher bidder
1400
. . . Actual settlers were forced to buy land from speculators, at
1401
prices considerably above the federal minimal price."</i> (which few people
1402
could afford anyway). [Charlie Post, <b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 222] This is
1403
confirmed by Howard Zinn who notes that 1862 Homestead Act <i>"gave
1404
160 acres of western land, unoccupied and publicly owned, to anyone who
1405
would cultivate it for five years . . . Few ordinary people had the
1406
$200 necessary to do this; speculators moved in and bought up much of
1407
the land. Homestead land added up to 50 million acres. But during the
1408
Civil War, over 100 million acres were given by Congress and the President
1409
to various railroads, free of charge."</i> [<b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 233] Little wonder
1410
the Individualist Anarchists supported an <i>"occupancy and use"</i> system
1411
of land ownership as a key way of stopping capitalist and landlord
1412
usury as well as the development of capitalism itself.
1413
</p><p>
1414
This change in the appropriation of land had significant effects on
1415
agriculture and the desirability of taking up farming for immigrants.
1416
As Post notes, <i>"[w]hen the social conditions for obtaining and maintaining
1417
possession of land change, as they did in the Midwest between 1830 and
1418
1840, pursuing the goal of preserving [family ownership and control] . . .
1419
produced very different results. In order to pay growing mortgages,
1420
debts and taxes, family farmers were compelled to specialise production
1421
toward cash crops and to market more and more of their output."</i>
1422
[<b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 221-2]
1423
</p><p>
1424
So, in order to pay for land which was formerly free, farmers got themselves
1425
into debt and increasingly turned to the market to pay it off. Thus, the
1426
<i>"Federal land system, by transforming land into a commodity and stimulating
1427
land speculation, made the Midwestern farmers dependent upon markets for the
1428
continual possession of their farms."</i> Once on the market, farmers had to
1429
invest in new machinery and this also got them into debt. In the face of a bad
1430
harvest or market glut, they could not repay their loans and their farms had
1431
to be sold to so do so. By 1880, 25% of all farms were rented by tenants,
1432
and the numbers kept rising. In addition, the <i>"transformation of social
1433
property relations in northern agriculture set the stage for the
1434
'agricultural revolution' of the 1840s and 1850s . . . [R]ising debts and
1435
taxes forced Midwestern family farmers to compete as commodity producers
1436
in order to maintain their land-holding . . . The transformation . . . was
1437
the central precondition for the development of industrial capitalism in
1438
the United States."</i> [Charlie Post, <b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 223 and p. 226]
1439
</p><p>
1440
It should be noted that feudal land owning was enforced in many areas
1441
of the colonies and the early Republic. Landlords had their holdings
1442
protected by the state and their demands for rent had the full backing
1443
of the state. This lead to numerous anti-rent conflicts. [Howard Zinn,
1444
<b>A People's History of the United States</b>, p. 84 and pp. 206-11] Such
1445
struggles helped end such arrangements, with landlords being "encouraged"
1446
to allow the farmers to buy the land which was rightfully theirs. The
1447
wealth appropriated from the farmers in the form of rent and the price
1448
of the land could then be invested in industry so transforming feudal
1449
relations on the land into capitalist relations in industry (and,
1450
eventually, back on the land when the farmers succumbed to the
1451
pressures of the capitalist market and debt forced them to sell).
1452
</p><p>
1453
This means that Murray Rothbard's comment that <i>"once the land was purchased
1454
by the settler, the injustice disappeared"</i> is nonsense -- the injustice was
1455
transmitted to other parts of society and this, the wider legacy of the
1456
original injustice, lived on and helped transform society towards capitalism.
1457
In addition, his comment about <i>"the establishment in North America of a
1458
truly libertarian land system"</i> would be one the Individualist Anarchists
1459
of the period would have seriously disagreed with! [<b>The Ethics of Liberty</b>,
1460
p. 73] Rothbard, at times, seems to be vaguely aware of the importance of land
1461
as the basis of freedom in early America. For example, he notes in passing
1462
that <i>"the abundance of fertile virgin land in a vast territory enabled
1463
individualism to come to full flower in many areas."</i> [<b>Conceived in Liberty</b>,
1464
vol. 2, p. 186] Yet he did not ponder the transformation in social relationships
1465
which would result when that land was gone. In fact, he was blas� about it. <i>"If
1466
latecomers are worse off,"</i> he opined, <i>"well then that is their proper
1467
assumption of risk in this free and uncertain world. There is no longer a vast
1468
frontier in the United States, and there is no point crying over the fact."</i>
1469
[<b>The Ethics of Liberty</b>, p. 240] Unsurprisingly we also find Murray Rothbard
1470
commenting that Native Americans <i>"lived under a collectivistic regime that,
1471
for land allocation, was scarcely more just than the English governmental
1472
land grab."</i> [<b>Conceived in Liberty</b>, vol. 1, p. 187] That such a regime
1473
made for <b>increased</b> individual liberty and that it was precisely the
1474
independence from the landlord and bosses this produced which made enclosure
1475
and state land grabs such appealing prospects for the ruling class was lost on
1476
him.
1477
</p><p>
1478
Unlike capitalist economists, politicians and bosses at the time, Rothbard seemed
1479
unaware that this <i>"vast frontier"</i> (like the commons) was viewed as a major
1480
problem for maintaining labour discipline and appropriate state action was taken
1481
to reduce it by restricting free access to the land in order to ensure that workers
1482
were dependent on wage labour. Many early economists recognised this and
1483
advocated such action. Edward Wakefield was typical when he complained that
1484
<i>"where land is cheap and all are free, where every one who so pleases can
1485
easily obtain a piece of land for himself, not only is labour dear, as respects
1486
the labourer's share of the product, but the difficulty is to obtain
1487
combined labour at any price."</i> This resulted in a situation were few
1488
<i>"can accumulate great masses of wealth"</i> as workers <i>"cease . . .
1489
to be labourers for hire; they . . . become independent landowners, if
1490
not competitors with their former masters in the labour market."</i>
1491
Unsurprisingly, Wakefield urged state action to reduce this option and
1492
ensure that labour become cheap as workers had little choice but to seek
1493
a master. One key way was for the state to seize the land and then sell
1494
it to the population. This would ensure that <i>"no labourer would be
1495
able to procure land until he had worked for money"</i> and this <i>"would
1496
produce capital for the employment of more labourers."</i> [quoted by
1497
Marx, <b>Op. Cit., </b>, p. 935, p. 936 and p. 939] Which is precisely what
1498
did occur.
1499
</p><p>
1500
At the same time that it excluded the working class from virgin land, the state
1501
granted large tracts of land to the privileged classes: to land speculators,
1502
logging and mining companies, planters, railroads, and so on. In addition to
1503
seizing the land and distributing it in such a way as to benefit capitalist
1504
industry, the <i>"government played its part in helping the bankers and hurting
1505
the farmers; it kept the amount of money -- based in the gold supply -- steady
1506
while the population rose, so there was less and less money in circulation. The
1507
farmer had to pay off his debts in dollars that were harder to get. The bankers,
1508
getting loans back, were getting dollars worth more than when they loaned them
1509
out -- a kind of interest on top of interest. That was why so much of the talk
1510
of farmers' movements in those days had to do with putting more money in
1511
circulation."</i> [Zinn, <b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 278] This was the case with the
1512
Individualist Anarchists at the same time, we must add.
1513
</p><p>
1514
Overall, therefore, state action ensured the transformation of America from a
1515
society of independent workers to a capitalist one. By creating and enforcing
1516
the "land monopoly" (of which state ownership of unoccupied land and its
1517
enforcement of landlord rights were the most important) the state ensured
1518
that the balance of class forces tipped in favour of the capitalist class.
1519
By removing the option of farming your own land, the US government created its
1520
own form of enclosure and the creation of a landless workforce with little
1521
option but to sell its liberty on the "free market". They was nothing "natural"
1522
about it. Little wonder the Individualist Anarchist J.K. Ingalls attacked
1523
the "land monopoly" with the following words:
1524
</p><p><blockquote>
1525
<i>"The earth, with its vast resources of mineral wealth, its spontaneous
1526
productions and its fertile soil, the free gift of God and the common
1527
patrimony of mankind, has for long centuries been held in the grasp of
1528
one set of oppressors by right of conquest or right of discovery; and
1529
it is now held by another, through the right of purchase from them.
1530
All of man's natural possessions . . . have been claimed as property;
1531
nor has man himself escaped the insatiate jaws of greed. The invasion
1532
of his rights and possessions has resulted . . . in clothing property
1533
with a power to accumulate an income."</i> [quoted by James Martin, <b>Men
1534
Against the State</b>, p. 142]
1535
</blockquote>
1536
Marx, correctly, argued that <i>"the capitalist mode of production and accumulation,
1537
and therefore capitalist private property, have for their fundamental condition the
1538
annihilation of that private property which rests on the labour of the individual
1539
himself; in other words, the expropriation of the worker."</i> [<b>Capital</b>, Vol. 1,
1540
p. 940] He noted that to achieve this, the state is used:
1541
</p><p><blockquote>
1542
<i>"How then can the anti-capitalistic cancer of the colonies be healed?
1543
. . . Let the Government set an artificial price on the virgin soil,
1544
a price independent of the law of supply and demand, a price that compels
1545
the immigrant to work a long time for wages before he can earn enough
1546
money to buy land, and turn himself into an independent farmer."</i>
1547
[<b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 938]
1548
</blockquote></p><p>
1549
Moreover, tariffs were introduced with <i>"the objective of manufacturing
1550
capitalists artificially"</i> for the <i>"system of protection was an
1551
artificial means of manufacturing manufacturers, or expropriating independent
1552
workers, of capitalising the national means of production and subsistence,
1553
and of forcibly cutting short the transition . . . to the modern mode of
1554
production,"</i> to capitalism [<b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 932 and pp. 921-2]
1555
</p><p>
1556
So mercantilism, state aid in capitalist development, was also seen in the
1557
United States of America. As Edward Herman points out, the <i>"level of
1558
government involvement in business in the United States from the late
1559
eighteenth century to the present has followed a U-shaped pattern: There
1560
was extensive government intervention in the pre-Civil War period (major
1561
subsidies, joint ventures with active government participation and direct
1562
government production), then a quasi-laissez faire period between the
1563
Civil War and the end of the nineteenth century [a period marked by
1564
"the aggressive use of tariff protection" and state supported railway
1565
construction, a key factor in capitalist expansion in the USA], followed
1566
by a gradual upswing of government intervention in the twentieth century,
1567
which accelerated after 1930."</i> [<b>Corporate Control, Corporate Power</b>,
1568
p. 162]
1569
</p><p>
1570
Such intervention ensured that income was transferred from workers to
1571
capitalists. Under state protection, America industrialised by forcing
1572
the consumer to enrich the capitalists and increase their capital stock.
1573
<i>"According to one study, if the tariff had been removed in the 1830s
1574
'about half the industrial sector of New England would have been
1575
bankrupted' . . . the tariff became a near-permanent political
1576
institution representing government assistance to manufacturing. It
1577
kept price levels from being driven down by foreign competition and
1578
thereby shifted the distribution of income in favour of owners of
1579
industrial property to the disadvantage of workers and customers."</i>
1580
This protection was essential, for the <i>"end of the European wars in
1581
1814 . . . reopened the United States to a flood of British imports
1582
that drove many American competitors out of business. Large portions
1583
of the newly expanded manufacturing base were wiped out, bringing a
1584
decade of near-stagnation."</i> Unsurprisingly, the <i>"era of protectionism
1585
began in 1816, with northern agitation for higher tariffs."</i> [Richard
1586
B. Du Boff, <b>Accumulation and Power</b>, p. 56, p. 14 and p. 55]
1587
Combined with ready repression of the labour movement and government
1588
"homesteading" acts (see <a href="secF8.html#secf85">section F.8.5</a>),
1589
tariffs were the American equivalent of mercantilism (which, after all, was
1590
above all else a policy of protectionism, i.e. the use of government to
1591
stimulate the growth of native industry). Only once America was at the top
1592
of the economic pile did it renounce state intervention (just as Britain
1593
did, we must note).
1594
</p><p>
1595
This is <b>not</b> to suggest that government aid was limited to tariffs.
1596
The state played a key role in the development of industry and
1597
manufacturing. As John Zerzan notes, the <i>"role of the State is
1598
tellingly reflected by the fact that the 'armoury system' now rivals
1599
the older 'American system of manufactures' term as the more
1600
accurate to describe the new system of production methods"</i> developed
1601
in the early 1800s. [<b>Elements of Refusal</b>, p. 100] By the
1602
middle of the nineteenth century <i>"a distinctive 'American system of
1603
manufactures' had emerged . . . The lead in technological innovation
1604
[during the US Industrial Revolution] came in armaments where assured
1605
government orders justified high fixed-cost investments in special-pursue
1606
machinery and managerial personnel. Indeed, some of the pioneering effects
1607
occurred in government-owned armouries."</i> Other forms of state aid
1608
were used, for example the textile industry <i>"still required tariffs
1609
to protect [it] from . . . British competition."</i> [William Lazonick,
1610
<b>Competitive Advantage on the Shop Floor</b>, p. 218 and p. 219] The
1611
government also <i>"actively furthered this process [of 'commercial
1612
revolution'] with public works in transportation and communication."</i>
1613
In addition to this "physical" aid, <i>"state government provided critical
1614
help, with devices like the chartered corporation"</i> [Richard B. Du Boff,
1615
<b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 15] As we noted in <a href="secB2.html#secb25">section
1616
B.2.5</a>, there were changes in the legal system which favoured capitalist
1617
interests over the rest of society.
1618
</p><p>
1619
Nineteenth-century America also went in heavily for industrial planning --
1620
occasionally under that name but more often in the name of national defence.
1621
The military was the excuse for what is today termed rebuilding infrastructure,
1622
picking winners, promoting research, and co-ordinating industrial growth (as
1623
it still is, we should add). As Richard B. Du Boff points out, the "anti-state"
1624
backlash of the 1840s onwards in America was highly selective, as the general
1625
opinion was that <i>"[h]enceforth, if governments wished to subsidise
1626
private business operations, there would be no objection. But if public
1627
power were to be used to control business actions or if the public sector
1628
were to undertake economic initiatives on its own, it would run up against
1629
the determined opposition of private capital."</i> [<b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 26]
1630
</p><p>
1631
State intervention was not limited to simply reducing the amount of available
1632
land or enforcing a high tariff. <i>"Given the independent spirit of workers in
1633
the colonies, capital understood that great profits required the use of unfree
1634
labour."</i> [Michael Perelman, <b>The Invention of Capitalism</b>, p. 246] It
1635
was also applied in the labour market as well. Most obviously, it enforced the
1636
property rights of slave owners (until the civil war, produced when the pro-free
1637
trade policies of the South clashed with the pro-tariff desires of the capitalist
1638
North). The evil and horrors of slavery are well documented, as is its key role
1639
in building capitalism in America and elsewhere so we will concentrate on other
1640
forms of obviously unfree labour. Convict labour in Australia, for example, played
1641
an important role in the early days of colonisation while in America indentured
1642
servants played a similar role.
1643
</p><p>
1644
Indentured service was a system whereby workers had to labour for a specific
1645
number of years usually in return for passage to America with the law requiring
1646
the return of runaway servants. In theory, of course, the person was only
1647
selling their labour. In practice, indentured servants were basically slaves
1648
and the courts enforced the laws that made it so. The treatment of servants
1649
was harsh and often as brutal as that inflicted on slaves. Half the servants
1650
died in the first two years and unsurprisingly, runaways were frequent. The
1651
courts realised this was a problem and started to demand that everyone have
1652
identification and travel papers.
1653
</p><p>
1654
It should also be noted that the practice of indentured servants also shows
1655
how state intervention in one country can impact on others. This is because
1656
people were willing to endure indentured service in the colonies because of
1657
how bad their situation was at home. Thus the effects of primitive accumulation
1658
in Britain impacted on the development of America as most indentured servants
1659
were recruited from the growing number of unemployed people in urban areas
1660
there. Dispossessed from their land and unable to find work in the cities,
1661
many became indentured servants in order to take passage to the Americas.
1662
In fact, between one half to two thirds of all immigrants to Colonial America
1663
arrived as indentured servants and, at times, three-quarters of the population
1664
of some colonies were under contracts of indenture. That this allowed the
1665
employing class to overcome their problems in hiring "help" should go without
1666
saying, as should its impact on American inequality and the ability of
1667
capitalists and landlords to enrich themselves on their servants labour and
1668
to invest it profitably.
1669
</p><p>
1670
As well as allowing unfree labour, the American state intervened to ensure that
1671
the freedom of wage workers was limited in similar ways as we indicated in
1672
<a href="secF8.html#secf83">section F.8.3</a>. <i>"The changes in social relations of
1673
production in artisan trades that took place in the thirty years after 1790,"</i>
1674
notes one historian, <i>"and the . . . trade unionism to which . . . it gave rise,
1675
both replicated in important respects the experience of workers in the artisan
1676
trades in Britain over a rather longer period . . . The juridical responses they
1677
provoked likewise reproduced English practice. Beginning in 1806, American courts
1678
consciously seized upon English common law precedent to combat journeymen's
1679
associations."</i> Capitalists in this era tried to <i>"secure profit . . . through
1680
the exercise of disciplinary power over their employees."</i> To achieve this
1681
<i>"employers made a bid for legal aid"</i> and it is here <i>"that the key to
1682
law's role in the process of creating an industrial economy in America lies."</i>
1683
As in the UK, the state invented laws and issues proclamations against workers'
1684
combinations, calling them conspiracies and prosecuting them as such. Trade unionists
1685
argued that laws which declared unions as illegal combinations should be repealed
1686
as against the Constitution of the USA while <i>"the specific cause of trademens
1687
protestations of their right to organise was, unsurprisingly, the willingness of
1688
local authorities to renew their resort to conspiracy indictments to countermand
1689
the growing power of the union movement."</i> Using criminal conspiracy to counter
1690
combinations among employees was commonplace, with the law viewing a <i>"collective
1691
quitting of employment [as] a criminal interference"</i> and combinations to raise
1692
the rate of labour <i>"indictable at common law."</i> [Christopher L. Tomlins,
1693
<b>Law, Labor, and Ideology in the Early American Republic</b>, p. 113, p. 295,
1694
p. 159 and p. 213] By the end of the nineteenth century, state repression for
1695
conspiracy was replaced by state repression for acting like a trust while actual
1696
trusts were ignored and so laws, ostensibly passed (with the help of the unions
1697
themselves) to limit the power of capital, were turned against labour (this
1698
should be unsurprising as it was a capitalist state which passed them). [Howard
1699
Zinn, <b>A People's History of the United States</b>, p. 254]
1700
</p><p>
1701
Another key means to limit the freedom of workers was denying departing workers
1702
their wages for the part of the contract they had completed. This <i>"underscored
1703
the judiciary's tendency to articulate their approval"</i> of the hierarchical
1704
master/servant relationship in terms of its <i>"social utility: It was a necessary
1705
and desirable feature of the social organisation of work . . . that the employer's
1706
authority be reinforced in this way."</i> Appeals courts held that <i>"an employment
1707
contract was an entire contract, and therefore that no obligation to pay wages existed
1708
until the employee had completed the agreed term."</i> Law suits <i>"by employers seeking
1709
damages for an employee's departure prior to the expiry of an agreed term or for other
1710
forms of breach of contract constituted one form of legally sanctioned economic discipline
1711
of some importance in shaping the employment relations of the nineteenth century."</i>
1712
Thus the boss could fire the worker without paying their wages while if the worker
1713
left the boss he would expect a similar outcome. This was because the courts had
1714
decided that the <i>"employer was entitled not only to receipt of the services contracted
1715
for in their entirety prior to payment but also to the obedience of the employee in the
1716
process of rendering them."</i> [Tomlins, <b>Op. Cit.</b>, pp. 278-9, p. 274, p. 272
1717
and pp. 279-80] The ability of workers to seek self-employment on the farm or
1718
workplace or even better conditions and wages were simply abolished by employers
1719
turning to the state.
1720
</p><p>
1721
So, in summary, the state could remedy the shortage of cheap wage labour by controlling
1722
access to the land, repressing trade unions as conspiracies or trusts and ensuring that
1723
workers had to obey their bosses for the full term of their contract (while the bosses
1724
could fire them at will). Combine this with the extensive use of tariffs, state
1725
funding of industry and infrastructure among many other forms of state aid to capitalists
1726
and we have a situation were capitalism was imposed on a pre-capitalist nation at the
1727
behest of the wealthy elite by the state, as was the case with all other countries.
1728
</p>
1729
1730
<a name="secf86"><h2>F.8.6 How did working people view the rise of capitalism?</h2></a>
1731
1732
<p>
1733
The best example of how hated capitalism was can be seen by the rise and
1734
spread of the labour and socialist movements, in all their many forms, across
1735
the world. It is no coincidence that the development of capitalism also saw
1736
the rise of socialist theories. Nor was it a coincidence that the rising
1737
workers movement was subjected to extensive state repression, with unions,
1738
strikes and other protests being systematically repressed. Only once
1739
capital was firmly entrenched in its market position could economic
1740
power come to replace political force (although, of course, that always
1741
remained ready in the background to defend capitalist property and power).
1742
</p><p>
1743
The rise of unions, socialism and other reform movements and their repression
1744
was a feature of <b>all</b> capitalist countries. While America is sometime
1745
portrayed as an exception to this, in reality that country was also marked by
1746
numerous popular movements which challenged the rise of capitalism and the
1747
transformation of social relationships within the economy from artisanal
1748
self-management to capitalist wage slavery. As in other countries, the state
1749
was always quick to support the capitalist class against their rebellious
1750
wage slaves, using first conspiracy and then anti-trust laws against working
1751
class people and their organisations. So, in order to fully understand how
1752
different capitalism was from previous economic systems, we will consider
1753
early capitalism in the US, which for many right-"libertarians" is <b>the</b>
1754
example of the "capitalism-equals-freedom" argument.
1755
</p><p>
1756
Early America was pervaded by artisan production -- individual ownership
1757
of the means of production. Unlike capitalism, this system is <b>not</b>
1758
marked by the separation of the worker from the means of life. Most
1759
people did not have to work for another, and so did not. As Jeremy
1760
Brecher notes, in 1831 the <i>"great majority of Americans were farmers
1761
working their own land, primarily for their own needs. Most of the rest
1762
were self-employed artisans, merchants, traders, and professionals.
1763
Other classes -- employees and industrialists in the North, slaves and
1764
planters in the South -- were relatively small. The great majority of
1765
Americans were independent and free from anybody's command."</i> [<b>Strike!</b>,
1766
p. xxi] So the availability of land ensured that in America, slavery and
1767
indentured servants were the only means by which capitalists could get
1768
people to work for them. This was because slaves and servants were not
1769
able to leave their masters and become self-employed farmers or artisans. As
1770
noted in the <a href="secF8.html#secf85">last section</a> this material base was,
1771
ironically, acknowledged by Rothbard but the implications for freedom when it
1772
disappeared was not. While he did not ponder what would happen when that supply
1773
of land ended and whether the libertarian aspects of early American society would
1774
survive, contemporary politicians, bosses, and economists did. Unsurprisingly,
1775
they turned to the state to ensure that capitalism grew on the grave of artisan
1776
and farmer property.
1777
</p><p>
1778
Toward the middle of the 19th century the economy began to change. Capitalism
1779
began to be imported into American society as the infrastructure was improved
1780
by state aid and tariff walls were constructed which allowed home-grown
1781
manufacturing companies to develop. Soon, due to (state-supported) capitalist
1782
competition, artisan production was replaced by wage labour. Thus "evolved"
1783
modern capitalism. Many workers understood, resented, and opposed their
1784
increasing subjugation to their employers, which could not be reconciled
1785
with the principles of freedom and economic independence that had marked
1786
American life and had sunk deeply into mass consciousness during the days of the
1787
early economy. In 1854, for example, a group of skilled piano makers hoped
1788
that <i>"the day is far distant when they [wage earners] will so far forget
1789
what is due to manhood as to glory in a system forced upon them by their
1790
necessity and in opposition to their feelings of independence and self-respect.
1791
May the piano trade be spared such exhibitions of the degrading power of the day
1792
[wage] system."</i> [quoted by Brecher and Costello, <b>Common Sense for Hard
1793
Times</b>, p. 26]
1794
</p><p>
1795
Clearly the working class did not consider working for a daily wage, in
1796
contrast to working for themselves and selling their own product, to be
1797
a step forward for liberty or individual dignity. The difference between
1798
selling the product of one's labour and selling one's labour (i.e. oneself)
1799
was seen and condemned (<i>"[w]hen the producer . . . sold his product, he
1800
retained himself. But when he came to sell his labour, he sold himself . . .
1801
the extension [of wage labour] to the skilled worker was regarded by him
1802
as a symbol of a deeper change."</i> [Norman Ware, <b>The Industrial Worker,
1803
1840-1860</b>, p. xiv]). Indeed, one group of workers argued that they were
1804
<i>"slaves in the strictest sense of the word"</i> as they had <i>"to toil
1805
from the rising of the sun to the going down of the same for our masters --
1806
aye, masters, and for our daily bread."</i> [quoted by Ware, <b>Op. Cit.</b>,
1807
p. 42] Another group argued that <i>"the factory system contains in itself
1808
the elements of slavery, we think no sound reasoning can deny, and everyday
1809
continues to add power to its incorporate sovereignty, while the sovereignty
1810
of the working people decreases in the same degree."</i> [quoted by Brecher and
1811
Costello, <b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 29] For working class people, free labour meant
1812
something radically different than that subscribed to by employers and economists.
1813
For workers, free labour meant economic independence through the ownership of
1814
productive equipment or land. For bosses, it meant workers being free of
1815
any alternative to consenting to authoritarian organisations within their
1816
workplaces -- if that required state intervention (and it did), then so be
1817
it.
1818
</p><p>
1819
The courts, of course, did their part in ensuring that the law reflected and
1820
bolstered the power of the boss rather than the worker. <i>"Acting piecemeal,"</i>
1821
summarises Tomlins, <i>"the law courts and law writers of the early republic
1822
built their approach to the employment relationship on the back of English
1823
master/servant law. In the process, they vested in the generality of
1824
nineteenth-century employers a controlling authority over the employees founded
1825
upon the pre-industrial master's claim to property in his servant's personal
1826
services."</i> Courts were <i>"having recourse to master/servant's language of
1827
power and control"</i> as the <i>"preferred strategy for dealing with the
1828
employment relation"</i> and so advertised their conclusion that <i>"employment
1829
relations were properly to be conceived of as generically hierarchical."</i>
1830
[<b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 231 and p. 225] As we noted in <a href="secF8.html#secf85">
1831
last section</a> the courts, judges and jurists acted to outlaw unions as
1832
conspiracies and force workers to work the full length of their contracts. In
1833
addition, they also reduced employer liability in industrial accidents (which,
1834
of course, helped lower the costs of investment as well as operating costs).
1835
</p><p>
1836
Artisans and farmers correctly saw this as a process of downward mobility toward
1837
wage labour and almost as soon as there were wage workers, there were strikes,
1838
machine breaking, riots, unions and many other forms of resistance. John Zerzan's
1839
argument that there was a <i>"relentless assault on the worker's historical
1840
rights to free time, self-education, craftsmanship, and play was at the heart
1841
of the rise of the factory system"</i> is extremely accurate. [<b>Elements of
1842
Refusal</b>, p. 105] And it was an assault that workers resisted with all
1843
their might. In response to being subjected to the wage labour, workers
1844
rebelled and tried to organise themselves to fight the powers that be and to
1845
replace the system with a co-operative one. As the printer's union argued,
1846
its members <i>"regard such an organisation [a union] not only as an agent
1847
of immediate relief, but also as an essential to the ultimate destruction of
1848
those unnatural relations at present subsisting between the interests of the
1849
employing and the employed classes . . . when labour determines to sell itself
1850
no longer to speculators, but to become its own employer, to own and enjoy
1851
itself and the fruit thereof, the necessity for scales of prices will have
1852
passed away and labour will be forever rescued from the control of the
1853
capitalist."</i> [quoted by Brecher and Costello, <b>Op. Cit.</b>, pp. 27-28]
1854
</p><p>
1855
Little wonder, then, why wage labourers considered capitalism as a modified
1856
form of slavery and why the term <i>"wage slavery"</i> became so popular
1857
in the labour and anarchist movements. It was just reflecting the feelings of
1858
those who experienced the wages system at first hand and who created the
1859
labour and socialist movements in response. As labour historian Norman Ware
1860
notes, the <i>"term 'wage slave' had a much better standing in the forties
1861
[of the 19th century] than it has today. It was not then regarded as an empty
1862
shibboleth of the soap-box orator. This would suggest that it has
1863
suffered only the normal degradation of language, has become a <b>cliche</b>,
1864
not that it is a grossly misleading characterisation."</i> [<b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. xvf]
1865
It is no coincidence that, in America, the first manufacturing complex in
1866
Lowell was designed to symbolise its goals and its hierarchical structure
1867
nor that its design was emulated by many of the penitentiaries, insane asylums,
1868
orphanages and reformatories of the period. [Bookchin, <b>The Ecology of
1869
Freedom</b>, p. 392]
1870
</p><p>
1871
These responses of workers to the experience of wage labour is important
1872
as they show that capitalism is by no means "natural." The fact is the first
1873
generation of workers tried to avoid wage labour is at all possible --
1874
they hated the restrictions of freedom it imposed upon them. Unlike the
1875
bourgeoisie, who positively eulogised the discipline they imposed on others.
1876
As one put it with respect to one corporation in Lowell, New England, the
1877
factories at Lowell were <i>"a new world, in its police it is <b>imperium in
1878
imperio</b>. It has been said that an absolute despotism, justly administered
1879
. . . would be a perfect government . . . For at the same time that it is
1880
an absolute despotism, it is a most perfect democracy. Any of its subjects
1881
can depart from it at pleasure . . . Thus all the philosophy of mind which
1882
enter vitally into government by the people . . . is combined with a set
1883
of rule which the operatives have no voice in forming or administering, yet
1884
of a nature not merely perfectly just, but human, benevolent, patriarchal
1885
in a high degree."</i> Those actually subjected to this <i>"benevolent"</i>
1886
dictatorship had a somewhat different perspective. Workers, in contrast,
1887
were perfectly aware that wage labour was wage slavery -- that they were
1888
decidedly <b>unfree</b> during working hours and subjected to the will of
1889
another. The workers therefore attacked capitalism precisely because it
1890
was despotism (<i>"monarchical principles on democratic soil"</i>) and
1891
thought they <i>"who work in the mills ought to own them."</i> Unsurprisingly,
1892
when workers did revolt against the benevolent despots, the workers noted
1893
how the bosses responded by marking <i>"every person with intelligence and
1894
independence . . . He is a suspected individual and must be either got rid
1895
of or broken in. Hundreds of honest labourers have been dismissed from
1896
employment . . . because they have been suspected of knowing their rights
1897
and daring to assert them."</i> [quoted by Ware, <b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 78, p. 79
1898
and p. 110]
1899
</p><p>
1900
While most working class people now are accustomed to wage labour (while often
1901
hating their job) the actual process of resistance to the development of
1902
capitalism indicates well its inherently authoritarian nature and that
1903
people were not inclined to accept it as "economic freedom." Only once
1904
other options were closed off and capitalists given an edge in the "free"
1905
market by state action did people accept and become accustomed to wage labour.
1906
As E. P. Thompson notes, for British workers at the end of the 18th and beginning of the 19th centuries,
1907
the <i>"gap in status between a 'servant,' a hired wage-labourer subject to the orders and
1908
discipline of the master, and an artisan, who might 'come and go' as he pleased, was wide
1909
enough for men to shed blood rather than allow themselves to be pushed from one side to
1910
the other. And, in the value system of the community, those who resisted degradation were
1911
in the right."</i> [<b>The Making of the English Working Class</b>, p. 599]
1912
1913
</p><p>
1914
Opposition to wage labour and factory fascism was/is widespread and seems
1915
to occur wherever it is encountered. <i>"Research has shown"</i>, summarises
1916
William Lazonick, <i>"that the 'free-born Englishman' of the eighteenth
1917
century -- even those who, by force of circumstance, had to submit to
1918
agricultural wage labour -- tenaciously resisted entry into the capitalist
1919
workshop."</i> [<b>Competitive Advantage on the Shop Floor</b>, p. 37]
1920
British workers shared the dislike of wage labour of their American cousins.
1921
A <i>"Member of the Builders' Union"</i> in the 1830s argued that the trade
1922
unions <i>"will not only strike for less work, and more wages, but will
1923
ultimately <b>abolish wages</b>, become their own masters and work for each
1924
other; labour and capital will no longer be separate but will be indissolubly
1925
joined together in the hands of workmen and work-women."</i> [quoted by
1926
E. P. Thompson, <b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 912] This
1927
perspective inspired the <b>Grand National Consolidated Trades Union</b> of
1928
1834 which had the <i>"two-fold purpose of syndicalist unions -- the protection
1929
of the workers under the existing system and the formation of the nuclei of
1930
the future society"</i> when the unions <i>"take over the whole industry of
1931
the country."</i> [Geoffrey Ostergaard, <B>The Tradition of Workers' Control</b>,
1932
p. 133] As Thompson noted, <i>"industrial syndicalism"</i> was a major theme of this
1933
time in the labour movement. <i>"When Marx was still in his teens,"</i> he noted,
1934
British trade unionists had <i>"developed, stage by stage, a theory of
1935
syndicalism"</i> in which the <i>"unions themselves could solve the problem
1936
of political power"</i> along with wage slavery. This vision was lost <i>"in
1937
the terrible defeats of 1834 and 1835."</i> [<b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 912 and p. 913]
1938
In France, the mutualists of Lyons had come to the same conclusions, seeking
1939
<i>"the formation of a series of co-operative associations"</i> which would
1940
<i>"return to the workers control of their industry."</i> Proudhon would take
1941
up this theme, as would the anarchist movement he helped create. [K. Steven
1942
Vincent, <b>Pierre-Jospeh Proudhon and the Rise of French Republican Socialism</b>,
1943
pp. 162-3] Similar movements and ideas developed elsewhere, as capitalism was
1944
imposed (subsequent developments were obviously influenced by the socialist
1945
ideas which had arisen earlier and so were more obviously shaped by anarchist
1946
and Marxist ideas).
1947
</p><p>
1948
This is unsurprising, the workers then, who had not been swallowed up whole by
1949
the industrial revolution, could make critical comparisons between the factory
1950
system and what preceded it. <i>"Today, we are so accustomed to this method of
1951
production [capitalism] and its concomitant, the wage system, that it requires
1952
quite an effort of imagination to appreciate the significance of the change in
1953
terms of the lives of ordinary workers . . . the worker became <b>alienated</b>
1954
. . . from the means of production and the products of his labour . . . In
1955
these circumstances, it is not surprising that the new socialist theories
1956
proposed an alternative to the capitalist system which would avoid this
1957
alienation."</i> While wage slavery
1958
may seem "natural" today, the first generation of wage labourers saw the
1959
transformation of the social relationships they experienced in work, from a
1960
situation in which they controlled their own work (and so themselves) to one
1961
in which <b>others</b> controlled them, and they did not like it. However,
1962
while many modern workers instinctively hate wage labour and having bosses,
1963
without the awareness of some other method of working, many put up with it as
1964
"inevitable." The first generation of wage labourers had the awareness of
1965
something else (although a flawed and limited something else as it existed
1966
in a hierarchical and class system) and this gave then a deep insight into
1967
the nature of capitalism and produced a deeply radical response to it and
1968
its authoritarian structures. Anarchism (like other forms of socialism) was
1969
born of the demand for liberty and resistance to authority which capitalism
1970
had provoked in its wage slaves. With our support for workers' self-management
1971
of production, <i>"as in so many others, the anarchists remain guardians of
1972
the libertarian aspirations which moved the first rebels against the slavery
1973
inherent in the capitalist mode of production."</i> [Ostergaard, <b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 27
1974
and p. 90]
1975
</p><p>
1976
State action was required produce and protect the momentous changes in social
1977
relations which are central to the capitalist system. However, once capital <b>has</b>
1978
separated the working class from the means of life, then it no longer had to rely
1979
as much on state coercion. With the choice now between wage slavery or starving,
1980
then the appearance of voluntary choice could be maintained as economic power
1981
was/is usually effective enough to ensure that state violence could be used as
1982
a last resort. Coercive practices are still possible, of course, but market
1983
forces are usually sufficient as the market is usually skewed against the working
1984
class. However, the role of the state remains a key to understanding capitalism
1985
as a system rather than just specific periods of it. This is because, as we stressed
1986
in <a href="secD1.html">section D.1</a>, state action is not associated only with
1987
the past, with the transformation from feudalism to capitalism. It happens today
1988
and it will continue to happen as long as capitalism continues.
1989
</p><p>
1990
Far from being a "natural" development, then, capitalism was imposed on
1991
a society by state action, by and on behalf of ruling elites. Those working
1992
class people alive at the time viewed it as <i>"unnatural relations"</i> and
1993
organised to overcome it. It is from such movements that all the many forms
1994
of socialism sprang, including anarchism. This is the case with the European
1995
anarchism associated with Proudhon, Bakunin and Kropotkin as well as the
1996
American individualist anarchism of Warren and Tucker. The links between
1997
anarchism and working class rebellion against the autocracy of capital and
1998
the state is reflected not only in our theory and history, but also in our
1999
anarchist symbols. The Black Flag, for example, was first raised by rebel
2000
artisans in France and its association with labour insurrection was the
2001
reason why anarchists took it up as our symbol (see the appendix on <a href="append2.html">"The
2002
Symbols of Anarchy"</a>). So given both the history of capitalism and anarchism,
2003
it becomes obvious any the latter has always opposed the former. It is why
2004
anarchists today still seek to encourage the desire and hope for political
2005
<b>and</b> economic freedom rather than the changing of masters we have
2006
under capitalism. Anarchism will continue as long as these feelings and hopes
2007
still exist and they will remain until such time as we organise and abolish
2008
capitalism and the state.
2009
</p>
2010
2011
</body>
2012
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