Chapter 28: Bloody Legislation Against the
Expropriated, from the End of the 15th Century.
Forcing Down of Wages by Acts of Parliament
The proletariat created by the breaking up of the bands of feudal retainers and by the forcible
expropriation of the people from the soil, this “free” proletariat could not possibly be absorbed by
the nascent manufactures as fast as it was thrown upon the world. On the other hand, these men,
suddenly dragged from their wonted mode of life, could not as suddenly adapt themselves to the
discipline of their new condition. They were turned en masse into beggars, robbers, vagabonds,
partly from inclination, in most cases from stress of circumstances. Hence at the end of the 15th
and during the whole of the 16th century, throughout Western Europe a bloody legislation against
vagabondage. The fathers of the present working class were chastised for their enforced
transformation into vagabonds and paupers. Legislation treated them as “voluntary” criminals,
and assumed that it depended on their own good will to go on working under the old conditions
that no longer existed.
In England this legislation began under Henry VII.
Henry VIII. 1530: Beggars old and unable to work receive a beggar’s licence. On the other hand,
whipping and imprisonment for sturdy vagabonds. They are to be tied to the cart-tail and whipped
until the blood streams from their bodies, then to swear an oath to go back to their birthplace or to
where they have lived the last three years and to “put themselves to labour.” What grim irony! In
27 Henry VIII. the former statute is repeated, but strengthened with new clauses. For the second
arrest for vagabondage the whipping is to be repeated and half the ear sliced off; but for the third
relapse the offender is to be executed as a hardened criminal and enemy of the common weal.
Edward VI.: A statute of the first year of his reign, 1547, ordains that if anyone refuses to work,
he shall be condemned as a slave to the person who has denounced him as an idler. The master
shall feed his slave on bread and water, weak broth and such refuse meat as he thinks fit. He has
the right to force him to do any work, no matter how disgusting, with whip and chains. If the
slave is absent a fortnight, he is condemned to slavery for life and is to be branded on forehead or
back with the letter S; if he runs away thrice, he is to be executed as a felon. The master can sell
him, bequeath him, let him out on hire as a slave, just as any other personal chattel or cattle. If the
slaves attempt anything against the masters, they are also to be executed. Justices of the peace, on
information, are to hunt the rascals down. If it happens that a vagabond has been idling about for
three days, he is to be taken to his birthplace, branded with a red-hot iron with the letter V on the
breast and be set to work, in chains, in the streets or at some other labour. If the vagabond gives a
false birthplace, he is then to become the slave for life of this place, of its inhabitants, or its
corporation, and to be branded with an S. All persons have the right to take away the children of
the vagabonds and to keep them as apprentices, the young men until the 24th year, the girls until
the 20th. If they run away, they are to become up to this age the slaves of their masters, who can
put them in irons, whip them, &c., if they like. Every master may put an iron ring round the neck,
arms or legs of his slave, by which to know him more easily and to be more certain of him.
1
The
last part of this statute provides, that certain poor people may be employed by a place or by
persons, who are willing to give them food and drink and to find them work. This kind of parish
slaves was kept up in England until far into the 19th century under the name of “roundsmen.”
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Chapter 28
Elizabeth, 1572: Unlicensed beggars above 14 years of age are to be severely flogged and
branded on the left ear unless some one will take them into service for two years; in case of a
repetition of the offence, if they are over 18, they are to be executed, unless some one will take
them into service for two years; but for the third offence they are to be executed without mercy as
felons. Similar statutes: 18 Elizabeth, c. 13, and another of 1597.
2
James 1: Any one wandering about and begging is declared a rogue and a vagabond. Justices of
the peace in petty sessions are authorised to have them publicly whipped and for the first offence
to imprison them for 6 months, for the second for 2 years. Whilst in prison they are to be whipped
as much and as often as the justices of the peace think fit... Incorrigible and dangerous rogues are
to be branded with an R on the left shoulder and set to hard labour, and if they are caught begging
again, to be executed without mercy. These statutes, legally binding until the beginning of the
18th century, were only repealed by 12 Anne, c. 23.
Similar laws in France, where by the middle of the 17th century a kingdom of vagabonds
(truands) was established in Paris. Even at the beginning of Louis XVI.’s reign (Ordinance of
July 13th, 1777) every man in good health from 16 to 60 years of age, if without means of
subsistence and not practising a trade, is to be sent to the galleys. Of the same nature are the
statute of Charles V. for the Netherlands (October, 1537), the first edict of the States and Towns
of Holland (March 10, 1614), the “Plakaat” of the United Provinces (June 26, 1649), &c.
Thus were the agricultural people, first forcibly expropriated from the soil, driven from their
homes, turned into vagabonds, and then whipped, branded, tortured by laws grotesquely terrible,
into the discipline necessary for the wage system.
It is not enough that the conditions of labour are concentrated in a mass, in the shape of capital, at
the one pole of society, while at the other are grouped masses of men, who have nothing to sell
but their labour-power. Neither is it enough that they are compelled to sell it voluntarily. The
advance of capitalist production develops a working class, which by education, tradition, habit,
looks upon the conditions of that mode of production as self-evident laws of Nature. The
organisation of the capitalist process of production, once fully developed, breaks down all
resistance. The constant generation of a relative surplus-population keeps the law of supply and
demand of labour, and therefore keeps wages, in a rut that corresponds with the wants of capital.
The dull compulsion of economic relations completes the subjection of the labourer to the
capitalist. Direct force, outside economic conditions, is of course still used, but only
exceptionally. In the ordinary run of things, the labourer can be left to the “natural laws of
production,” i.e., to his dependence on capital, a dependence springing from, and guaranteed in
perpetuity by, the conditions of production themselves. It is otherwise during the historic genesis
of capitalist production. The bourgeoisie, at its rise, wants and uses the power of the state to
“regulate” wages, i.e., to force them within the limits suitable for surplus-value making, to
lengthen the working day and to keep the labourer himself in the normal degree of dependence.
This is an essential element of the so-called primitive accumulation.
The class of wage labourers, which arose in the latter half of the 14th century, formed then and in
the following century only a very small part of the population, well protected in its position by the
independent peasant proprietary in the country and the guild-organisation in the town. In country
and town master and workmen stood close together socially. The subordination of labour to
capital was only formal – i.e., the mode of production itself had as yet no specific capitalistic
character. Variable capital preponderated greatly over constant. The demand for wage labour
grew, therefore, rapidly with every accumulation of capital, whilst the supply of wage labour
followed but slowly. A large part of the national product, changed later into a fund of capitalist
accumulation, then still entered into the consumption-fund of the labourer.