That was partly as a result of the Black Death reducing the workforce so much that it put the remaining population in a great bargaining position.
Given Trumps pick of RFK for HSS, I’d say give it a few years and you’ll be in a great position too.
You're describing a few decades out of almost a thousand years of feudalism, in Europe specifically, and it wasn't ever universally true.
A lot of things contributed to that. Not the least of which is the difference between what we'd consider a day off and what they'd consider a day off. Not to mention how they paid taxes and what was actually required of the medieval peasant.
Taxes could be paid in labor or produce. The guys doing the manual labor building a castle were likely to be paying taxes. They did that for up to a third of the year. The rest of the year was theirs to do with as they pleased, and the majority of that time would have been spent growing, gathering, hunting, or maintaining. Guild artisans had the closest thing to jobs that we'd think of them. Coopers made barrels, ropers roped. You had masons and blacksmiths and carpenters sure. Most people were growing and raising food, and maintaining their home. A day off was likely spent doing those things. They had so many partially because that time was needed intermittently.
They worked harder than we do. Every part of their life was harder, required more energy, and took more time.
Taking a day off to relax would have been exceedingly rare and probably maddeningly boring. Though they did party hard.
This is a misinterpretation of a study on peasant life. It called certain religious days "holidays". What it meant was those days were days they didn't have to work for their lord. Peasants were obligated to work a certain number of days per year on the lord's land. The other days they still had to work their own land. Agriculture was back breaking work and if you weren't working in the fields you were constantly working on things like making cloth, repairing things, preparing food, etc.
I understand the point being made, but don't knock gruel.
You are a serf. removed, you live in Alsace. You are a peasant. You need to give your fuckin' lord the grain. Your fucking children, you've had 15 children. You've never taken a bath. You've literally never. washed. your. penis. You've never used toilet paper. Motherfucker, you have worms. You are dying. You've had 40 children, 3 of them are alive. 2 of them are child soldiers in the Duke's army.
removed, the greatest thing you can hope for is to die at the ripe old age of 36. You fucking can't read. You don't know what TV is. If you were transported into today, you would be the worst gamer of all time. You don't know shit. You literally probably don't even know what the direction 'left' is. I'm sure some Medieval guy is gonna get mad at me for this, removed I've been to the Renaissance Fair. I've eaten a large turkey wing, which the Juggalos call 'removed beaters', which I think is problematic but a funny thing to call them.
Motherfucker, you gotta recognize where you are, and then you gotta get past that. You gotta be unemotional. You can't sink into this hole. You live in the oubliette. Your job is to crawl up the ladder, motherfucker. You live in the HOLE. You're in the HOLE. You are a RAT. And the rat, when he's in the hole gets fucked. People only throw trash in the hole.
You need to eat a body. And you need to carry the plague. And you need to carry a plague around this whole world, that will change this whole fuckin world. And all your enemies will vomit black bile and will choke on blood and will grow boils and die. But only if you get together with your other RATS. And you come up with some kind of super plague, to fuckin end your enemies and... END THIS NIGHTMARE
The dark cowboy rides again.
Marx's analysis of Capitalism and predictions of where it heads are proven more correct with the passage of time. The reason the Proletarian is exploited to a greater degree than the serf is due to the nature of commodity production. As the M-C-M' circuit, whereby M is an initial sum of money, C the commodity produced with M, and M' the greater sum of money after selling said commodity is the basis of Capitalist production, said process is incentivized to be maximized. In Feudalism, rent is extracted and the rest kept for subsistence, in Capitalism wages are set by cost of continued existence and replacement, moving up or down mostly by societal norms.
Question 8 : In what way does the proletarian differ from the serf?
Answer : The serf enjoys the possession and use of an instrument of production, a piece of land, in exchange for which he hands over a part of his product or performs labour. The proletarian works with the instruments of production of another for the account of this other, in exchange for a part of the product. The serf gives up, the proletarian receives. The serf has an assured existence, the proletarian has not. The serf is outside competition, the proletarian is in it. The serf frees himself either by running away to the town and there becoming a handicraftsman or by giving his landlord money instead of labour and products, thereby becoming a free tenant; or by driving his feudal lord away and himself becoming a proprietor, in short, by entering in one way or another into the owning class and into competition. The proletarian frees himself by abolishing competition, private property and all class differences.
-The Principles of Communism
The serfs did not have it better, of course. However, the nature of their production was limited to the low technological development of the time. With mass factories Capitalism was transitioned to, and now with complex development of production in the hands of massive, monopolist syndicates and cartels, we can move beyond Capitalism to Socialized prodiction, central planning and public ownership, far easier than ever before.
I highly recommend those interested to check out my Introductory Reading List on Marxism.
What went wrong with the Soviet Union?
What, specifically, are you asking about? Are you asking about why it was dissolved from the top down and sold for parts to the west? Or is this about something more specific?
For clarity, the Soviet Union marked dramatic improvements for the lives of the Working Class, and showed that Socialism is a working economic model. Asking what went "wrong" without asking specifics helps nobody, the best answer to that is just directing you to Blackshirts and Reds, which took a critical look at what went right and what didn't in the Soviet Union and how it collapsed, along with the brutal reintroduction of Capitalism that killed 7 million people.
We don't even get gruel, just Krusty brand imitation gruel. 9 out of 10 orphans can't tell the difference.
My bones are so brittle. But I always drink plenty of… Malk?
I live for that imitation gruel. It's what keeps me going with producing Gucci wallets for the streets of Hong Kong.
Yeah but we gots fraydum!
It's polyworking now, get with the times!
We better at least get off for a national dictator day out of this whole debacle.
Just banks and federal employees.
You will of course be required to be in the office that day.
Well hopefully Susan will bring in some dictator shaped cupcakes at least.
Nah, it would be more like Dictator Beatings.
I could do a trump day celebration. I'll paint my face orange and cuss out my family. Win win win.
You don't know how bad peasants actually had it.
I usually take these post less as 'look how great peasants had it' and more 'look how much better we could have it'.
EPA and revitalize auto industry is obviously a conflict of interest.
More dysentery also.. like a LOT more dysentery. So much so that people often believed their soul exists in their lower abdomen because when you feel pain there you die shortly after.
Wow that's a lot of dysentery.
Sorry your point lacks proper context based on reality.
So you're not really a serf if you've got plumbing? The labor relationship with your employers isn't the issue?
Well we could argue your whole comment lacks connection to the original post
"Oh, you're mad that you have to work 12/7 to stay alive? Well, have you considered that peasants didn't have good healthcare?!? Hah, I bet you didn't... Wait, you can't afford healthcare either?...well, you'll suffer and die from a modern illness rather than shitting yourself so you still aren't allowed to complain! It's all perfect now!"
I don't think that peasant economy was exploitative in the same way capitalism is. Peasants were largely farmers who grew food and provided the landowner with a percentage of their crop. They were integral to human survival and as far as I know the percentage taken by landowners was not comparable to the wealth extracted from workers today.
Ah, the good old days of serfdom when peasants were tied to the land/manor and its Lord in a slave-like state.
You see some wild shit on Lemmy apparently.
Now we are tied to corporations and state as slave-likes
Almost. We are proletarians working under late-stage Capitalism, where markets have largely coalesced into monopolist syndicates and cartels, and competition is rapidly dying out. The conditions are ripe for siezure, public ownership, and central planning, ie Socialism.
You see wild shit on lemmy .world
