Excerpt: The Invention of Capitalism - Michael Perelman --- Primitive Accumulation and the Eradication of Holidays Although their standard of living may not have been particularly lavish, the people of precapitalistic northern Europe, like most traditional people, enjoyed a great deal of free time (see Ashton 1972, 204; see also V. Smith 1992; Wisman 1989). The common people maintained innumerable religious holidays that punctuated the tempo of work. Joan Thirsk estimated that in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, about one-third of the working days, including Sundays, were spent in leisure (cited in K. Thomas 1964, 63; see also Wilensky 1961). Karl Kautsky (1899, 107) offered a much more extravagant estimate that 204 annual holidays were celebrated in medieval Lower Bavaria. Despite these frequent holidays, the peasants still managed to produce a significant surplus. In English feudal society, for example, the peasants survived even though the gentry was powerful enough to extract something on the order of 50 percent of the produce (see Postan 1966, 603). As markets evolved, the claims on the peasants’ labors multiplied. For instance, in southern France, rents appear to have grown from about one fourth of the yield in 1540 to one-half by 1665 (LeRoy Ladurie 1974, 117). Although people increasingly had to curtail their leisure in order to meet the growing demands of nonproducers, many observers still railed against the excessive celebration of holidays. Protestant clergy were especially vocal in this regard (Hill 1967, 145–218; see also Marx 1977, 387; Freudenberger and Cummins 1976). Even as late as the 1830s, we hear the complaint that the Irish working year contained only 200 days after all holidays had been subtracted (Great Britain 1840, 570; cited in Mokyr 1983, 222). Time, in a market society, is money. As Sir Henry Pollexfen (1700, 45; cited in Furniss 1965, 44) calculated: ‘‘For if but 2 million of working people at 6d. a day comes to 500,000£ which upon due inquiry whence our riches must arise, will appear to be so much lost to the nation by every holiday that is kept.’’ Zeal in the suppression of religious festivals was not an indication that representatives of capital took working-class devotion lightly. In some rural districts of nineteenth-century England, tending to one’s garden on the Sabbath was a punishable offense. Some workers were even imprisoned for this crime (Marx 1977, 375–76n). Piety, however, also had its limits. The same worker might be charged with breach of contract should he prefer to attend church on the Sabbath rather than report for work when called to do so (ibid.). In France, where capital was slower to take charge, the eradication of holidays was likewise slower. Tobias Smollett (1766, 38) complained of the French: ‘‘Very nearly half of their time, which might be profitably employed in the exercise of industry, is lost to themselves and the community, in attendance upon the different exhibitions of religious mummery.’’ Voltaire called for the shifting of holidays to the following Sunday. Since Sunday was a day of rest in any case, employers could enjoy approximately forty additional working days per year. This proposal caused the naive Abbe Baudeau to wonder about the wisdom of intensifying work when the countryside was already burdened with an excess population (cited in Weulersse 1959, 28). How could the dispossessed be employed? Of course, changes in the religious practices of Europe were not induced by a shortage of people but by people’s willingness to conform to the needs of capital. For example, the leaders of the French Revolution, who prided themselves on their rationality, decreed a ten-day week with only a single day off. Classical political economists enthusiastically joined in the condemnation of the celebration of an excessive number of holidays (see Cantillon 1755, 95; Senior 1831, 9). The suppression of religious holidays was but a small part of the larger process of primitive accumulation. --- Classical Political Economy and the Ideal Working Day Once capital began to dislodge the traditional moorings of society, the bourgeoisie sought every possible opportunity to engage people in productive work that would turn a profit for employers. Accordingly, classical political economists advocated actions to shape society around the logic of accumulation in order to strengthen the dependency on wage labor. In the utopia of early classical political economy, the poor would work every waking hour. One writer suggested that the footmen of the gentry could rise early to employ their idle hours making fishing nets along with ‘‘disbanded soldiers, poor prisoners, widows and orphans, all poor tradesmen, artificers, and labourers, their wives, children, and servants’’ (Puckle 1700, 2:380; cited in Appleby 1976, 501). Joseph Townsend (1786, 442) proposed that when farm workers returned in the evenings from threshing or ploughing, ‘‘they might card, they might spin, or they might knit.’’ Many were concerned that children’s time might go to waste. William Temple called for the addition of four-year-old children to the labor force. Anticipating modern Skinnerian psychology, Temple (1770, 266; see also Furniss 1965, 114–15) speculated, ‘‘for by these means, we hope that the rising generation will be so habituated to constant employment that it would at length prove agreeable and entertaining to them.’’ Not to be outdone, John Locke, often seen as a philosopher of liberty, called for the commencement of work at the ripe age of three (Cranston 1957, 425). Others called for new institutional arrangements to ensure a steadily increasing flow of wage labor. Fletcher of Saltoun recommended perpetual slavery as the appropriate fate of all who would fail to respond to less harsh measures to integrate them into the labor force (see Marx 1977, 882). Hutcheson, as we have seen, followed suit. Always the idealist, Bishop George Berkeley (1740, 456) preferred that such slavery be limited to ‘‘a certain term of years.’’ No source of labor was to be overlooked. For example, in a movement that Foucault has termed ‘‘the great confinement,’’ institutions were founded to take charge indiscriminately of the sick, criminal, and poor (Foucault 1965, 38–65). The purpose was not to better the conditions of the inmates but rather to force them to contribute more to the national wealth (for a selection of citations that reflect more charitably on the early political economists, see Wiles 1968). Occasionally, writers of the time found signs of progress. By 1723, Daniel Defoe (1724–26, 86; see also 493) was delighted to discover that so much progress had taken place in Norwich that ‘‘the very children after four or five years of age, could every one earn their own bread.’’ For classical political economy such edifying scenes of hard labor were not common enough. To his credit, Jean-Baptiste Say (1821, 50–51; see also Ricardo 1951–73, 8:184), generally a strong proponent of capitalist development, penned one of the few protests of the state of affairs in Britain in a letter to Robert Malthus: I shall not attempt to point out the parts of this picture which apply to your country, Sir. . . . But if social life [a term that Say used almost like the social division of labor] were a galley, in which after rowing with all their strength for sixteen hours out of the twenty-four, they might indeed be excused for disliking social life. . . . I maintain no other doctrine when I say that the utility of productions is no longer worth the productive services, at the rate at which we are compelled to pay for them. Sadly, no other classical political economist was willing to side with Say in this regard. --- https://facebook/groups/642818085789837
Posted on: Fri, 03 Oct 2014 01:47:12 +0000
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