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> Initially, it was a big step down Is this really true though? Being an agricultural feudal society is much much worse than the dreamy view we have of farming

by zpeti 1y ago

> Initially, it was a big step down Is this really true though? Being an agricultural feudal society is much much worse than the dreamy view we have of farming these days, and almost everyone even today chooses to work in a factory rather than a farm if they have that choice, in china, Africa, everywhere. We have this image of gloomy coal powered cities being the worst place possible but in fact it was still better than the alternatives

zmgsabst 1y ago
It was worse for people like the Luddites, who had artisanal jobs replaced by machinery. They were so angry about their fall in circumstance they revolted (and have been slandered by capitalists since).
achierius 1y ago
They were not. In brief, we know this because of both individual accounts -- people were quite verbal about preferring the life of an independent peasant to that of the 'servant-like' factory worker -- and aggregate demographic trends, which show that peasants primarily moved into the cities during hard times, when famine and economic woes made their previous lifestyle impossible. Cities at the time were charnel houses -- even worse, I think, than the popular imagining of them today. The rate of death in London, as well as in other cities during the revolution, was so high that it needed a constant inward flow of immigrants to even maintain its population. Without the safer, more livable countryside to provide a continuous supply of fresh meat for the mills, those cities would have depopulated through a combination of plague, malnutrition, violence, and workplace injury.
- beloch 1y ago
  Labour laws were a big problem. e.g. In the early stages of the revolution in England, it was illegal to leave your job and take another one. It was a choice between poor pay/unsafe working conditions and jail. Even once workers won the right to find jobs elsewhere, pay was still so poor that entire families, including children, had to work for families to stay afloat.
- zpeti 1y ago
  > which show that peasants primarily moved into the cities during hard times, when famine and economic woes made their previous lifestyle impossible this is exactly the point. Your children might only starve every 10 years, but when they do, a consistent factory work seems like a much better life. Just because you had 9/10 non-starving years doesn't mean the starving year is ok.
anigbrowl 1y ago
Feudalism isn't necessarily that bad if your environment is stable. A lot of people moved into industry during the 18th and 19th centuries not because working the land was so awful to begin with, but because it became increasingly untenable as formerly public lands were privatized by legal fiat, and private landholdings were aggressively consolidated. Around the beginning of the Industrial revolution, the number of private landowners in the UK fell by over 80%, from about 1 person out of every 60 to 1 in 600 or so (the population grew about 25% over the same period). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inclosure_act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inclosure_act has an OK overview but is a bit thin and just a starting point. The political upheavals still echo in British politics today. I think it's fair to say that some of the changes were driven by the lure of profit (and associated national revenue) and some out of a desire to avert a domestic repeat of the American and French revolutions.
BugheadTorpeda5 1y ago
[flagged]
keybored 1y ago
You talk about dreamy and “this image of”. What are you sources for these views? Your own images?

by zpeti 1y ago

zmgsabst 1y ago

It was worse for people like the Luddites, who had artisanal jobs replaced by machinery. They were so angry about their fall in circumstance they revolted (and have been slandered by capitalists since).

achierius 1y ago

They were not. In brief, we know this because of both individual accounts -- people were quite verbal about preferring the life of an independent peasant to that of the 'servant-like' factory worker -- and aggregate demographic trends, which show that peasants primarily moved into the cities during hard times, when famine and economic woes made their previous lifestyle impossible. Cities at the time were charnel houses -- even worse, I think, than the popular imagining of them today. The rate of death in London, as well as in other cities during the revolution, was so high that it needed a constant inward flow of immigrants to even maintain its population. Without the safer, more livable countryside to provide a continuous supply of fresh meat for the mills, those cities would have depopulated through a combination of plague, malnutrition, violence, and workplace injury.

beloch 1y ago
Labour laws were a big problem. e.g. In the early stages of the revolution in England, it was illegal to leave your job and take another one. It was a choice between poor pay/unsafe working conditions and jail. Even once workers won the right to find jobs elsewhere, pay was still so poor that entire families, including children, had to work for families to stay afloat.
zpeti 1y ago
> which show that peasants primarily moved into the cities during hard times, when famine and economic woes made their previous lifestyle impossible this is exactly the point. Your children might only starve every 10 years, but when they do, a consistent factory work seems like a much better life. Just because you had 9/10 non-starving years doesn't mean the starving year is ok.

anigbrowl 1y ago

Feudalism isn't necessarily that bad if your environment is stable. A lot of people moved into industry during the 18th and 19th centuries not because working the land was so awful to begin with, but because it became increasingly untenable as formerly public lands were privatized by legal fiat, and private landholdings were aggressively consolidated. Around the beginning of the Industrial revolution, the number of private landowners in the UK fell by over 80%, from about 1 person out of every 60 to 1 in 600 or so (the population grew about 25% over the same period). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inclosure_act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inclosure_act has an OK overview but is a bit thin and just a starting point. The political upheavals still echo in British politics today. I think it's fair to say that some of the changes were driven by the lure of profit (and associated national revenue) and some out of a desire to avert a domestic repeat of the American and French revolutions.

BugheadTorpeda5 1y ago

[flagged]

keybored 1y ago

You talk about dreamy and “this image of”. What are you sources for these views? Your own images?