General political philosophy discussion
- Thread starter Aldarion
- Start date
True.We would be happy if modern states treated us as serfs in every country except Moscov and Prussia.
Bear Ribs
Well-known member
Yeah, way too many people look at "Tied to the land" and think "How horrible, those people weren't allowed to travel as they wished." Said people don't realize that was a huge step up from previous levels of servitude and provided the Serfs a tremendous amount of protection from having land forcibly taken away, from being forcibly moved or deported, and a number of other abuses.
Bear Ribs
Well-known member
Actually they got significantly more vacation time and days off than we do today... so yeah...
Curious Historian
curioushistorian.com
Agent23
Ни шагу назад!
Actually they got significantly more vacation time and days off than we do today... so yeah...
Curious Historian
Well, you really can't till the wheat fields of the Baron or plant and harvest cotton for Massa 24/7.
That shit has growing seasons and it actually takes time to grow and be ready for harvesting.
Also, while subsistence-level farming has some appeal to minimalists such as myself there is the simple fact that your average low-paid 9-18 cashier at Lidl enjoys much better healthcare and a higher living standard where technology and amenities and infrastructure are concerned than all of Europe's absolute monarchs and all of the USA's robber barons.
Don't get me wrong, there are downsides to that required added complexity, too but the benefits of having antibiotics, vaccines, computers, cars, running hot and cold water, air conditioning, cheap food and washing machines probably outweigh the negatives.
Can we all agree that serfdom was shit, that people under it weren't really free and that the whole whites as a group benefitting from the plight of minorities mythos is racist bullshit?
Your average serf or corvee laborare for that matter, didn't have it that much better than your average black slave in Brazil and the southern USA, serfs were subjected to corporeal punishment and forced to inhabit somebody else's land, pay for the privilege with their labor, and were captured and dragged back if they ran away.
Improvements only happened in the 19th century for both groups.
This tbh ties well with the other important topic we should discuss, that of populism:
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Actually they got significantly more vacation time and days off than we do today... so yeah...
Curious Historian
This might sound like a really stupid question, and it is somewhat off-topic, but just how much did Medieval serfs actually know about the world around them? Did they know that they had a King, for instance? A Queen? Did they know who their dominant lord was? Did any of them ever actually get any opportunities to meet their dominant lord, such as perhaps at some kind of festivity/celebration?
Simonbob
Well-known member
Generally?
They knew a bit about their leaders, yes, but they were quite unlikely to ever meet them. Their immediate Lord, perhaps, but the way the system worked was a chain, and you usually only were in contact with the step above.
The main exceptions would be servants, or people with unusual skills (A master craftsman, for example.).
She was born a peasant, IIRC.
Bear Ribs
Well-known member
Peasants knew significantly more and did a lot more travel than is typically assumed in pop culture. F'rex the Canterbury Tales is framed as a grand pilgrimage across the country and the pilgrims traveling together include any number of peasants: a cook, a barge sailor, a physician, an alchemist, a plowman, and a miller off the top of my head along with several clergy and a knight, and lastly a writer in the form of Geoffry Chaucer's self-insert. It's apparent from what we do know that vacations and pilgrimages were in fact a thing peasants did and learning about the world was something they partook in. However literacy was not particularly widespread and a great deal of the oral histories and knowledge they did have has been lost.
The Medieval era was no dark age where there was no science going on, an enormous amount of research and ideas came about in that era with a number of breakthroughs. However much of the documentation we have is basically written by the clergy and nobility and, needless to say, lionizes the efforts of the clergy and nobility at the expense of the peasantry.
It's worth noting that medieval peasants had very different priorities than we do today. A modern worker will try to maximize gains and profits in order to move up in the world. However this was risky for peasants; you couldn't really stockpile food because it would rot, and turning said food into money for long-term savings invited robbers and increased the chance of getting shanked, if the church and local lord didn't just find a reason to confiscate the money anyway. In general, peasants tried to minimize risk and maximize leisure time, because trying to maximize monetary gain just meant the local lord was going to raise their taxes and all that hard work would line his pockets instead of their own. The "Lazy Peasant" stereotype from a great deal of the literature of that time has a certain amount of truth, because the Lords were constantly trying to extract as much surplus from the peasants as they could while the peasants were constantly trying to have more days off instead of producing surplus they didn't benefit from. Of course, since the books were written by the Lords or rather their paid lackeys, the peasants are portrayed in a bad light in those works rather than their fairly reasonable actual attitude towards doing more work.
Because of this, serfdom and being "tied to the land" were a tremendous boon to the peasantry because the threat of being evicted for not producing enough surplus goods was removed and they were able to take even more days off.
bintananth
behind a desk
I don't think of it like you do.
Peasants and serfs did not get overtime pay or many - if any - chances for promotion so there was absolutely no point for them to work any harder than they were required to.
TheRejectionist
TheRejectionist
I went from Communistic before 19, from there went politically and historically Wehraboo, to borderline far right conservative traditionalist with strong like punch in the gut humour like Jewish jokes, Armenian/Greek Genocide jokes, about Black people despite most of my friends either being the politically correct definition of POC ( I will sound like an SJW but : one is Italo-French-Greek-Lebanese, two from Nigeria, one from Syrian-Arab-Armenian, another half Brazilian and Italian and so on) and monarchist, now I wouldn't go with any label but I really have to use one would be : culturally nationalist and economically leftist. Social nationalist but that will get me weird looks from anyone.
Which meaning I don't want the fucking blue haired weirdo guys girls or similar man ilk or progressive undermining my nation states with their free open border, welcome rapists from other countries when ours are barely punished or false accusations can land innocent men in jail and the concept of free love as they intend it is disgusts me because many of them wouldn't take responsibility for their promiscuos behaviour when it comes to abortions or getting and transmitting STDs.
Unlike the generation younger than me or those 5 or 7 years older than me, I can vote for both "far right" leaders as Bolsonaro and for leftist nationalist coalitions like the one was for the non-mainstream Italia Sovrana Popolare coalitions with people like Marco Rizzo.
I used to be very much pro-Israel too and visited during my Wehraboo period. My personal stance now on the state is "You do something objectively good you be praised. If you do something bad you should be criticized objectively". I personally think the shared Judeo-Christian values has been mostly a well argued smoke and mirrors that has a point to a degree but sometimes it feels like a charade to my eyes.
I am also pro-gun ownership if there's not an historical record of mental illnesses or criminal record, even light as a DUI. False accusations of rape should be charged with the same amount the falsely accused got it.
Which meaning I don't want the fucking blue haired weirdo guys girls or similar man ilk or progressive undermining my nation states with their free open border, welcome rapists from other countries when ours are barely punished or false accusations can land innocent men in jail and the concept of free love as they intend it is disgusts me because many of them wouldn't take responsibility for their promiscuos behaviour when it comes to abortions or getting and transmitting STDs.
Unlike the generation younger than me or those 5 or 7 years older than me, I can vote for both "far right" leaders as Bolsonaro and for leftist nationalist coalitions like the one was for the non-mainstream Italia Sovrana Popolare coalitions with people like Marco Rizzo.
I used to be very much pro-Israel too and visited during my Wehraboo period. My personal stance now on the state is "You do something objectively good you be praised. If you do something bad you should be criticized objectively". I personally think the shared Judeo-Christian values has been mostly a well argued smoke and mirrors that has a point to a degree but sometimes it feels like a charade to my eyes.
I am also pro-gun ownership if there's not an historical record of mental illnesses or criminal record, even light as a DUI. False accusations of rape should be charged with the same amount the falsely accused got it.
Aldarion
Neoreactionary Monarchist
Except, they did. Reason why colonate and later feudalism were far more successful systems than slavery was precisely that peasants were motivated to produce as much as possible, as landlord took a percentage of produce: which meant that a peasant producing more produce would benefit the both: landlord gets more, and peasant gets to keep more.
Of course, system could be and was abused, but to categorically state that they did not get benefits from overtime is wrong.
jewish joke - jew was send to war,and say to waifu - do not worry,i would kill few guys and come back home.
Waifu: but what if they kill you?
Jew: Me? for what? i did nothing wrong!
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TheRejectionist
TheRejectionist
To the subject of serfdom and slavery, both are fucking shit. The first is just slightly less awful than the second.
In all cases many serfs lead revolutions that overthrew and outright killed for national collective liberation, even though there were one too many revolutions that won the war but lost the peace, the best example are of course the Russian revolutions or some of the Revolutions of 1989.
Or the one in Nicaragua.
In all cases many serfs lead revolutions that overthrew and outright killed for national collective liberation, even though there were one too many revolutions that won the war but lost the peace, the best example are of course the Russian revolutions or some of the Revolutions of 1989.
Or the one in Nicaragua.
Aldarion
Neoreactionary Monarchist
FIrst, serfs never led any revolutions. Even Ilija Gregorić and Matija Gubec didn't aim to overthrow the system. Despite bullshit spread by Marxist historians, serfs in that rebellion never aimed to overthrow the system - they were just fed up with conflicts between nobility, and the rebellion itself was organized by soldiers who had wanted to take over taxes. And Ilija Gregorić, who actually organized the whole thing, was not a serf - he was a soldier, and wanted to use the rebellion to become a landlord. French revolution was organized by the nobility and the bourgeoisie. As for Marxist revolutions, they were always organized and led by the intellectuals, supported by the rich people who wanted to destroy countries in question (e.g. Lenin was sent to Russia by the Imperial German government).
Second, what the heck do Revolutions of 1989. have to do with serfdom?
EDIT: Something potentially relevant:
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Batrix2070
RON/PLC was a wonderful country.
Not really, it depends more on the country and the style in which they implemented it. In the PLC, for example, there were never peasant uprisings, despite serfdom which in theory bound you to a given lord legally as a matter of privilege and by the end of the PLC, peasants were fleeing from neighboring countries to the PLC despite the fact that they were going from being free/people under the protection of the monarch to becoming serfs of this vs. that nobleman.... and no wait. That's exactly why they were doing it!
This is due to a couple of facts, firstly the Polish nobility and their prosperity and ability to perform their duties depended on the productivity of the peasants, being a steorotypical bad nobleman is an easy way for these peasants to flee. (And that's not hard to do, every lord wants new hands to work with.)
Secondly, the nobleman felt and was responsible for the condition of his subjects. If a peasant's house collapsed, the lord was expected to rebuild it at his expense. If a cow or pig died? The lord had to give him a new one.
And thirdly, all this care of the monarch to give them freedom was a piece of ass, if the peasant had a lord he could get help quickly and easily and so? He could starve to death.
Like @Aldarion said - serf never made succesfull revolutions,only joined them.All slaves/serfs uprisings were crushed.
With one posible exception - in 14th century Bulgary peasants made succesfull uprising.I think,i could be wrong.
You must ask @Agent23 about that.
P.S about 1789 - England paid for that,and masons helped,not mention Philippe Egalite.
All becouse France supported American Revolution in 1776,which would fail without french help.
Which happened becouse France lost Canada in 1763.