From Marxists Internet Archive
Karl Marx. Capital Volume One
Chapter Twenty-Eight: 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.”
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.
Legislation on wage-labour (from the first, aimed at the exploitation of the
labourer and, as it advanced, always equally hostile to him), [3]
is started in England by the Statute of Labourers, of Edward III., 1349. The
ordinance of 1350 in France, issued in the name of King John, corresponds with
it. English and French legislation run parallel and are
identical in purport. So far as the labour-statutes aim at compulsory extension
of the working-day, I do not return to them, as this point was treated earlier (Chap.
X., Section 5).
The Statute of Labourers was passed at the urgent instance of the House of
Commons. A Tory says naively:
“Formerly the poor demanded such high wages as to
threaten industry and wealth. Next, their wages are so low as to
threaten industry and wealth equally and perhaps more, but in another way.” [4]
A tariff of wages was fixed by law for town and country, for piece-work and
day-work. The agricultural labourers were to hire themselves out by the year,
the town ones “in open market.” It was forbidden, under pain of
imprisonment, to pay higher wages than those fixed by the statute, but the
taking of higher wages was more severely punished than the giving them. [So also
in Sections 18 and 19 of the Statute of Apprentices of Elizabeth, ten days’
imprisonment is decreed for him that pays the higher wages, but twenty-one days
for him that receives them.] A statute of 1360 increased the penalties and
authorised the masters to extort labour at the legal rate of wages by corporal
punishment. All combinations, contracts, oaths, &c., by which masons and
carpenters reciprocally bound themselves, were declared null and void. Coalition
of the labourers is treated as a heinous crime from the 14th century to 1825,
the year of the repeal of the laws against Trades’ Unions. The spirit of the
Statute of Labourers of 1349 and of its offshoots, comes out clearly in the
fact, that indeed a maximum of wages is dictated by the State, but on no account
a minimum.
In the 16th century, the condition of the labourers had, as we know, become
much worse. The money wage rose, but not in proportion to the depreciation of
money and the corresponding rise in the prices of commodities. Wages, therefore,
in reality fell. Nevertheless, the laws for keeping them down remained in force,
together with the ear-clipping and branding of those “whom no one was willing
to take into service.” By the Statute of Apprentices 5 Elizabeth, c. 3, the
justices of the peace were empowered to fix certain wages and to modify them
according to the time of the year and the price of commodities. James I.
extended these regulations of labour also to weavers, spinners, and all possible
categories of workers. [5] George II.
extended the laws against coalitions
of labourers to manufactures. In the manufacturing period par excellence,
the capitalist mode of production had become sufficiently strong to render legal
regulation of wages as impracticable as it was unnecessary; but the ruling
classes were unwilling in case of necessity to be without the weapons of the old
arsenal. Still, 8 George II. forbade a higher day’s wage than 2s. 7 1/2d. for
journeymen tailors in and around London, except in cases of general mourning;
still, 13 George III., c. 68, gave the regulation of the wages of silk-weavers
to the justices of the peace; still, in 1706, it required two judgments of the
higher courts to decide, whether the mandates of justices of the peace as to
wages held good also for non-agricultural labourers; still, in 1799, an act of
Parliament ordered that the wages of the Scotch miners should continue to be
regulated by a statute of Elizabeth and two Scotch acts of 1661 and 1671. How
completely in the meantime circumstances had changed, is proved by an occurrence
unheard-of before in the English Lower House. In that place, where for more than
400 years laws had been made for the maximum, beyond which wages absolutely must
not rise, Whitbread in 1796 proposed a legal minimum wage for agricultural
labourers. Pitt opposed this, but confessed that the “condition of the poor
was cruel.” Finally, in 1813, the laws for the regulation of wages were
repealed. They were an absurd anomaly, since the capitalist regulated his
factory by his private legislation, and could by the poor-rates make up the wage
of the agricultural labourer to the indispensable minimum. The provisions of the
labour statutes as to contracts between master and workman, as to giving notice
and the like, which only allow of a civil action against the contract-breaking
master, but on the contrary permit a criminal action against the
contract-breaking workman, are to this hour (1873) in full force. The barbarous
laws against Trades’ Unions fell in 1825 before the threatening bearing of the
proletariat. Despite this, they fell only in part. Certain beautiful fragments
of the old statute vanished only in 1859. Finally, the act of Parliament of June
29, 1871, made a pretence of removing the last traces of this class of
legislation
by legal recognition of Trades’ Unions. But an act of Parliament of the same
date (an act to amend the criminal law relating to violence, threats, and
molestation), re-established, in point of fact, the former state of things in a
new shape. By this Parliamentary escamotage the means which the labourers could
use in a strike or lock-out were withdrawn from the laws common to all citizens,
and placed under exceptional penal legislation, the interpretation of which fell
to the masters themselves in their capacity as justices of the peace. Two years
earlier, the same House of Commons and the same Mr. Gladstone in the well-known
straightforward fashion brought in a bill for the abolition of all exceptional
penal legislation against the working-class. But this was never allowed to go
beyond the second reading, and the matter was thus protracted until at last the
“great Liberal party,” by an alliance with the Tories, found courage to turn
against the very proletariat that had carried it into power. Not content with
this treachery, the “great Liberal party” allowed the English judges, ever
complaisant in the service of the ruling classes, to dig up again the earlier
laws against “conspiracy,” and to apply them to coalitions of labourers. We
see that only against its will and under the pressure of the masses did the
English Parliament give up the laws against Strikes and Trades’ Unions, after
it had itself, for 500 years, held, with shameless egoism, the position of a
permanent Trades’ Union of the capitalists against the labourers.
During the very first storms of the revolution, the French bourgeoisie dared
to take away from the workers the right of association but just acquired. By a
decree of June 14, 1791, they declared all coalition of the workers as “an
attempt against liberty and the declaration of the rights of man,” punishable
by a fine of 500 livres, together with deprivation of the rights of an active
citizen for one year. [6] This law
which, by means of State compulsion, confined the struggle between capital and
labour within limits comfortable for capital, has outlived revolutions and
changes of dynasties. Even the Reign of Terror left it untouched. It was but
quite recently struck out of the Penal Code. Nothing is more characteristic than
the pretext for this bourgeois coup d’état. “Granting,” says
Chapelier, the reporter of the Select Committee on this law, “that wages ought
to be a little higher than they are, ... that they ought to be
high enough for him that receives them, to be free from that state of absolute
dependence due to the want of the necessaries of life, and which is almost that
of slavery,” yet the workers must not be allowed to come to any understanding
about their own interests, nor to act in common and thereby lessen their
“absolute dependence, which is almost that of slavery;” because, forsooth,
in doing this they injure “the freedom of their cidevant masters, the present
entrepreneurs,” and because a coalition against the despotism of the quondam
masters of the corporations is — guess what! — is a restoration of the
corporations abolished by the French constitution.[7]
Footnotes
1.
The author of the “Essay on Trade, etc.,” 1770, says, “In the reign of
Edward VI. indeed the English seem to have set, in good earnest, about
encouraging manufactures and employing the poor. This we learn from a remarkable
statute which runs thus: ‘That all vagrants shall be branded, &c.’” l.
c., p. 5.
2.
Thomas More says in his “Utopia": “Therfore that on covetous and
unsatiable cormaraunte and very plage of his native contrey maye compasse aboute
and inclose many thousand akers of grounde together within one pale or hedge,
the husbandman be thrust owte of their owne, or els either by coneyne and fraude,
or by violent oppression they be put besydes it, or by wrongs and iniuries thei
be so weried that they be compelled to sell all: by one meanes, therfore, or by
other, either by hooke or crooke they muste needes departe awaye, poore, selye,
wretched soules, men, women, husbands, wiues, fatherlesse children, widowes,
wofull mothers with their yonge babes, and their whole household smal in
substance, and muche in numbre, as husbandrye requireth many handes. Awaye thei
trudge, I say, owte of their knowen accustomed houses, fyndynge no place to
reste in. All their housholde stuffe, which is very little woorthe, thoughe it
might well abide the sale: yet beeynge sodainely thruste owte, they be
constrayned to sell it for a thing of nought. And when they haue wandered abrode
tyll that be spent, what cant they then els doe but steale, and then iustly
pardy be hanged, or els go about beggyng. And yet then also they be caste in
prison as vagaboundes, because they go aboute and worke not: whom no man wyl set
a worke though thei neuer so willyngly profre themselues therto.” Of these
poor fugitives of whom Thomas More says that they were forced to thieve,
“7,200 great and petty thieves were put to death,” in the reign of Henry
VIII. (Holinshed, “Description of England,” Vol. 1, p. 186.) In
Elizabeth’s time, “rogues were trussed up apace, and that there was not one
year commonly wherein three or four hundred were not devoured and eaten up by
the gallowes.” (Strype’s “Annals of the Reformation and Establishment of
Religion and other Various Occurrences in the Church of England during Queen
Elizabeth’s Happy Reign.” Second ed., 1725, Vol. 2.) According to this same
Strype, in Somersetshire, in one year, 40 persons were executed, 35 robbers
burnt in the hand, 37 whipped, and 183 discharged as “incorrigible
vagabonds.” Nevertheless, he is of opinion that this large number of prisoners
does not comprise even a fifth of the actual criminals, thanks to the negligence
of the justices and the foolish compassion of the people; and the other counties
of England were not better off in this respect than Somersetshire, while some
were even worse.
3.
“Whenever the legislature attempts to regulate the differences between masters
and their workmen, its counsellors are always the masters,” says A. Smith.
“L’esprit des lois, c’est la propriété,” says Linguet.
4.
“Sophisms of Free Trade.” By a Barrister. Lond., 1850, p. 206. He adds
maliciously: “We were ready enough to interfere for the employer, can nothing
now be done for the employed?”
5.
From a clause of Statute 2 James I., c. 6, we see that certain clothmakers took
upon themselves to dictate, in their capacity of justices of the peace, the
official tariff of wages in their own shops. In Germany, especially after the
Thirty Years’ War, statutes for keeping down wages were general. “The want
of servants and labourers was very troublesome to the landed proprietors in the
depopulated districts. All villagers were forbidden to let rooms to single men
and women; all the latter were to be reported to the authorities and cast into
prison if they were unwilling to become servants, even if they were employed at
any other work, such as sowing seeds for the peasants at a daily wage, or even
buying and selling corn. (Imperial privileges and sanctions for Silesia, I.,
25.) For a whole century in the decrees of the small German potentates a bitter
cry goes up attain and again about the wicked and impertinent rabble that will
not reconcile itself to its hard lot, will not be content with the legal wage;
the individual landed proprietors are forbidden to pay more than the State had
fixed by a tariff. And yet the conditions of service were at times better after
war than 100 years later; the farm servants of Silesia had, in 1652, meat twice
a week, whilst even in our century, districts are known where they have it only
three times a year. Further, wages after the war were higher than in the
following century.” (G. Freytag.)
6.
Article I. of this law runs: “L’anéantissement de toute espèce de
corporations du même état et profession étant l’une des bases fondamentales
de la constitution française, il est défendu de les rétablir de fait sous
quelque prétexte et sous quelque forme que ce soit.” Article IV. declares,
that if “des citoyens attachés aux mêmes professions, arts et métiers
prenaient des délibérations, faisaient entre eux des conventions tendantes à
refuser de concert ou à n’accorder qu’à un prix déterminé le secours de
leur industrie ou de leurs travaux, les dites délibérations et conventions...
seront déclarées inconstitutionnelles, attentatoires à la liberté et à la
declaration des droits de l’homme, &c.;” felony, therefore, as in the
old labour-statutes. [As the abolition of any form of
association between citizens of the same estate and profession is one of the
foundations of the French constitution, it is forbidden to re-establish them
under any pretext or in any form, whatever they might be. ... citizens belonging
to the same profession, craft or trade have joint discussions and make joint
decisions with the intention of refusing together to perform their trade or
insisting together on providing the services of their trade or their labours
only at a particular price, then the said deliberations and agreements ... shall
be declared unconstitutional, derogatory to liberty and the declaration of the
rights of man, etc.] (“Révolutions de Paris,” Paris, 1791, t. III,
p. 523.)
7.
Buchez et Roux: “Histoire Parlementaire,” t. x., p. 195.
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