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<title>F.8 What role did the state take in the creation of capitalism?

</title>
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<h1>F.8 What role did the state take in the creation of capitalism?</h1>

<p>
If the "anarcho"-capitalist is to claim with any plausibility that "real"
capitalism is non-statist or that it can exist without a state, it must
be shown that capitalism evolved naturally, in opposition to state
intervention. In reality, the opposite is the case. Capitalism was born 
from state intervention. In the words of Kropotkin, <i>"the State . . . 
and capitalism . . . developed side by side, mutually supporting and
re-enforcing each other."</i> [<b>Anarchism</b>, p. 181]
</p><p>
Numerous writers have made this point. For example, in Karl Polanyi's
flawed masterpiece <b>The Great Transformation</b> we read that <i>"the road 
to the free market was opened and kept open by an enormous increase in
continuous, centrally organised and controlled interventionism"</i> by the
state. [p. 140] This intervention took many forms -- for example, state
support during "mercantilism," which allowed the "manufactures" (i.e.
industry) to survive and develop, enclosures of common land, and so forth.
In addition, the slave trade, the invasion and brutal conquest of the
Americas and other "primitive" nations, and the looting of gold, slaves,
and raw materials from abroad also enriched the European economy, giving
the development of capitalism an added boost. Thus Kropotkin:
</p><p><blockquote>
<i>"The history of the genesis of capital has already been told by socialists
many times. They have described how it was born of war and pillage, of
slavery and serfdom, of modern fraud and exploitation. They have shown
how it is nourished by the blood of the worker, and how little by little
it has conquered the whole world . . . Law . . . has followed the same phases
as capital . . . they have advanced hand in hand, sustaining one another 
with the suffering of mankind."</i> [<b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 207]
</blockquote></p><p>
This process is what Karl Marx termed <i><b>"primitive accumulation"</b></i> and was marked by
extensive state violence. Capitalism, as he memorably put it, <i>"comes dripping 
from head to toe, from every pore, with blood and dirt"</i> and the <i>"starting-point 
of the development that gave rise both to the wage-labourer and to the capitalist 
was the enslavement of the worker."</i> [<b>Capital</b>, vol. 1, p. 926 and p. 875] 
Or, if Kropotkin and Marx seem too committed to be fair, we have John Stuart Mill's 
summary that the <i>"social arrangements of modern Europe commenced from a distribution
of property which was the result, not of just partition, or acquisition by industry, 
but of conquest and violence."</i> [<b>Principles of Political Economy</b>, p. 15]
</p><p>
The same can be said of all countries. As such, when supporters of "libertarian" 
capitalism say they are against the "initiation of force," they mean only <b>new</b> 
initiations of force: for the system they support was born from numerous initiations 
of force in the past (moreover, it also requires state intervention to keep it going 
-- <a href="secD1.html">section D.1</a> addresses this point in some detail). 
Indeed, many thinkers have argued that it was precisely this state support and 
coercion (particularly the separation of people from the land) that played the 
<b>key</b> role in allowing capitalism to develop rather than the theory that 
<i>"previous savings"</i> did so. As left-wing German thinker Franz Oppenheimer 
(whom Murray Rothbard selectively quoted) argued, <i>"the concept of a 'primitive 
accumulation,' or an original store of wealth, in land and in movable property, 
brought about by means of purely economic forces"</i> while <i>"seem[ing] quite 
plausible"</i> is in fact <i>"utterly mistaken; it is a 'fairly tale,' or it is a 
class theory used to justify the privileges of the upper classes."</i> [<b>The 
State</b>, pp. 5-6] As Individualist anarchist Kevin Carson summarised as part 
of his excellent overview of this historic process:
</p><p><blockquote><i>
"Capitalism has never been established by means of the free market. It has 
always been established by a revolution from above, imposed by a ruling 
class with its origins in the Old Regime . . . by a pre-capitalist ruling 
class that had been transformed in a capitalist manner. In England, it was 
the landed aristocracy; in France, Napoleon III's bureaucracy; in Germany, 
the Junkers; in Japan, the Meiji. In America, the closest approach to a 
'natural' bourgeois evolution, industrialisation was carried out by a 
mercantilist aristocracy of Federalist shipping magnates and landlords."</i>
[<i>"Primitive Accumulation and the Rise of Capitalism,"</i> <b>Studies in
Mutualist Political Economy</b>]
</blockquote></p><p>
This, the actual history of capitalism, will be discussed in the following 
sections. So it is ironic to hear right-"libertarians" sing the 
praises of a capitalism that never existed and urge its adoption by all 
nations, in spite of the historical evidence suggesting that only state 
intervention made capitalist economies viable -- even in that Mecca of 
"free enterprise," the United States. As Noam Chomsky argues, <i>"who but 
a lunatic could have opposed the development of a textile industry in New 
England in the early nineteenth century, when British textile production was 
so much more efficient that half the New England industrial sector would have 
gone bankrupt without very high protective tariffs, thus terminating industrial
development in the United States? Or the high tariffs that radically
undermined economic efficiency to allow the United States to develop steel
and other manufacturing capacities? Or the gross distortions of the
market that created modern electronics?"</i> [<b>World Orders, Old and New</b>,
p. 168] Such state interference in the economy is often denounced and dismissed by
right-"libertarians" as mercantilism. However, to claim that "mercantilism" is 
not capitalism makes little sense. Without mercantilism, "proper" capitalism 
would never have developed, and any attempt to divorce a social system from 
its roots is ahistoric and makes a mockery of critical thought (particularly
as "proper" capitalism turns to mercantilism regularly).
</p><p>
Similarly, it is somewhat ironic when "anarcho"-capitalists and other right
"libertarians" claim that they support the freedom of individuals to 
choose how to live. After all, the working class was not given <b>that</b>
particular choice when capitalism was developing. Instead, their right 
to choose their own way of life was constantly violated and denied -- 
and justified by the leading capitalist economists of the time. To 
achieve this, state violence had one overall aim, to dispossess the 
labouring people from access to the means of life (particularly the land)
and make them dependent on landlords and capitalists to earn a living. 
The state coercion <i>"which creates the capital-relation can be nothing
other than the process which divorces the worker from the ownership
of the conditions of his own labour; it is a process which operates
two transformations, whereby the social means of subsistence and 
production are turned into capital, and the immediate producers are
turned into wage-labourers. So-called primitive accumulation, therefore, is 
nothing else than the historical process of divorcing the producer from the 
means of production."</i> [Marx, <b>Op. Cit.</b>, pp. 874-5] So to claim 
that <b>now</b> (after capitalism has been created) we get the chance to 
try and live as we like is insulting in the extreme. The available options 
we have are not independent of the society we live in and are decisively 
shaped by the past. To claim we are "free" to live as we like (within the 
laws of capitalism, of course) is basically to argue that we are able (in
theory) to "buy" the freedom that every individual is due from those who 
have stolen it from us in the first place. It ignores the centuries of
state violence required to produce the "free" worker who makes a "voluntary" 
agreement which is compelled by the social conditions that this created.
</p><p>
The history of state coercion and intervention is inseparable from the history 
of capitalism: it is contradictory to celebrate the latter while claiming to 
condemn the former. In practice capitalism has <b>always</b> meant intervention 
in markets to aid business and the rich. That is, what has been called by
supporters of capitalism "laissez-faire" was nothing of the kind and represented 
the political-economic program of a specific fraction of the capitalist class 
rather than a set of principles of "hands off the market." As individualist
anarchist Kevin Carson summaries, <i>"what is nostalgically called 'laissez-faire' 
was in fact a system of continuing state intervention to subsidise accumulation, 
guarantee privilege, and maintain work discipline."</i> [<b>The Iron Fist behind the 
Invisible Hand</b>] Moreover, there is the apparent unwillingness by such "free 
market" advocates (i.e. supporters of "free market" capitalism) to distinguish 
between historically and currently unfree capitalism and the other truly 
free market economy that they claim to desire. It is common to hear 
"anarcho"-capitalists point to the state-based capitalist system as vindication 
of their views (and even more surreal to see them point to <b>pre</b>-capitalist
systems as examples of their ideology). It should be obvious that they cannot 
have it both ways.
</p><p>
In other words, Rothbard and other "anarcho"-capitalists treat capitalism as if 
it were the natural order of things rather than being the product of centuries 
of capitalist capture and use of state power to further their own interests. The 
fact that past uses of state power have allowed capitalist norms and assumptions 
to become the default system by their codification in property law and justified 
by bourgeois economic does not make it natural. The role of the state in the 
construction of a capitalist economy cannot be ignored or downplayed as 
government has always been an instrument in creating and developing such 
a system. As one critic of right-"libertarian" ideas put it, Rothbard 
<i>"completely overlooks the role of the state in building and maintaining 
a capitalist economy in the West. Privileged to live in the twentieth 
century, long after the battles to establish capitalism have been fought and won, 
Rothbard sees the state solely as a burden on the market and a vehicle for 
imposing the still greater burden of socialism. He manifests a kind of historical 
nearsightedness that allows him to collapse many centuries of human experience 
into one long night of tyranny that ended only with the invention of the free 
market and its 'spontaneous' triumph over the past. It is pointless to argue, 
as Rothbard seems ready to do, that capitalism would have succeeded without the 
bourgeois state; the fact is that all capitalist nations have relied on the 
machinery of government to create and preserve the political and legal environments 
required by their economic system."</i> That, of course, has not stopped him 
<i>"critis[ing] others for being unhistorical."</i> [Stephen L. Newman, <b>Liberalism 
at Wit's End</b>, pp. 77-8 and p. 79] 
</p><p>
Thus we have a key contradiction within "anarcho"-capitalism. While they bemoan
state intervention in the market, their underlying assumption is that it had no
real effect on how society has evolved over the centuries. By a remarkable 
coincidence, the net effect of all this state intervention was to produce a 
capitalist economy identical in all features as one which would have been 
produced if society had been left alone to evolve naturally. It does seem 
strange that state violence would happen to produce the same economic system 
as that produced by right-"libertarians" and Austrian economists logically 
deducing concepts from a few basic axioms and assumptions. Even more of a 
coincidence, these conclusions also happen to be almost exactly the same as 
what those who have benefited from previous state coercion want to hear --
namely, the private property is good, trade unions and strikes are bad, that 
the state should not interfere with the power of the bosses and should not even 
think about helping the working class (employed or unemployed). As such, while 
their advice and rhetoric may have changed, the social role of economists has not. 
State action was required to dispossess the direct producers from the means of 
life (particularly the land) and to reduce the real wage of workers so that 
they have to provide regular work in a obedient manner. In this, it and the 
capitalists received much advice from the earliest economists as Marxist 
economic historian Michael Perelman documents in great detail. As he summarises, 
<i>"classical political economy was concerned with promoting primitive accumulation 
in order to foster capitalist development, even though the logic of 
primitive accumulation was in direct conflict with the classical political 
economists' purported adherence to the values of laissez-faire."</i> [<b>The 
Invention of Capitalism</b>, p. 12] The turn to "laissez-faire" was possible
because direct state power could be mostly replaced by economic power to ensure 
the dependency of the working class.
</p><p>
Needless to say, some right-"libertarians" recognise that the state played 
<b>some</b> role in economic life in the rise and development of capitalism. 
So they contrast "bad" business people (who took state aid) and "good" ones
(who did not). Thus Rothbard's comment that Marxists have <i>"made no particular 
distinction between 'bourgeoisie' who made use of the state, and bourgeoisie who 
acted on the free market."</i> [<b>The Ethics of Liberty</b>, p. 72] But such 
an argument is nonsense as it ignores the fact that the "free market" is a 
network (and defined by the state by the property rights it enforces). This
means that state intervention in one part of the economy will have ramifications
in other parts, particularly if the state action in question is the expropriation
and/or protection of productive resources (land and workplaces) or the skewing 
of the labour market in favour of the bosses. In other words, the individualistic 
perspective of "anarcho"-capitalism blinds its proponents to the obvious 
collective nature of working class exploitation and oppression which flows from 
the collective and interconnected nature of production and investment in any 
real economy. State action supported by sectors of the capitalist class has, 
to use economic jargon, positive externalities for the rest. They, in general, 
benefit from it <b><i>as a class</i></b> just as working class people suffers 
from it collectively as it limits their available choices to those desired by 
their economic and political masters (usually the same people). As such, the
right-"libertarian" fails to understand the <b>class</b> basis of state 
intervention.
</p><p>
For example, the owners of the American steel and other companies who grew rich 
and their companies big behind protectionist walls were obviously "bad" bourgeoisie. 
But were the bourgeoisie who supplied the steel companies with coal, machinery, food, 
"defence" and so on not also benefiting from state action? And the suppliers of the 
luxury goods to the wealthy steel company owners, did they not benefit from state 
action? Or the suppliers of commodities to the workers that laboured in the steel 
factories that the tariffs made possible, did they not benefit? And the suppliers 
to these suppliers? And the suppliers to these suppliers? Did not the users of
technology first introduced into industry by companies protected by state orders 
also not benefit? Did not the capitalists who had a large pool of landless working 
class people to select from benefit from the "land monopoly" even though they may 
not have, unlike other capitalists, directly advocated it? It increased the pool of 
wage labour for <b>all</b> capitalists and increased their bargaining position/power 
in the labour market at the expense of the working class. In other words, such a 
policy helped maintain capitalist market power, irrespective of whether individual 
capitalists encouraged politicians to vote to create/maintain it. And, similarly, 
<b>all</b> American capitalists benefited from the changes in common law to recognise 
and protect capitalist private property and rights that the state enforced during the 
19th century (see <a href="secB2.html#secb25">section B.2.5</a>). 
</p><p>
Rothbard, in other words, ignores class theft and the accumulative effect of 
stealing both productive property and the products of the workers who use it. 
He considered the <i>"moral indignation"</i> of socialism arose from the argument 
<i>"that the capitalists have stolen the rightful property of the workers, and 
therefore that existing titles to accumulated capital are unjust."</i> He argued 
that given <i>"this hypothesis, the remainder of the impetus for both Marxism and 
anarchosyndicalism follow quite logically."</i> However, Rothbard's "solution" to 
the problem of past force seems to be (essentially) a justification of existing 
property titles and not a serious attempt to understand or correct past 
initiations of force that have shaped society into a capitalist one and still 
shape it today. This is because he is simply concerned with returning property
which has been obviously stolen and can be returned to those who have been 
directly dispossessed or their descendants (for example, giving land back to
peasants or tenant farmers). If this cannot be done then the <i>"title to that 
property, belongs properly, justly and ethically to its current possessors."</i> 
[<b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 52 and p. 57] At best, he allows nationalised property and
any corporation which has the bulk of its income coming from the state to
be "homesteaded" by their workers (which, according to Rothbard's arguments 
for the end of Stalinism, means they will get shares in the company). The end 
result of his theory is to leave things pretty much as they are. This is because 
he could not understand that the exploitation of the working class was/is collective 
in nature and, as such, is simply impossible to redress it in his individualistic 
term of reference.
</p><p>
To take an obvious example, if the profits of slavery in the Southern states of 
America were used to invest in factories in the Northern states (as they were), 
does giving the land to the freed slaves in 1865 <b>really</b> signify the end 
of the injustice that situation produced? Surely the products of the slaves work were 
stolen property just as much as the land was and, as a result, so is any investment 
made from it? After all, investment elsewhere was based on the profits extracted
from slave labour and <i>"much of the profits earned in the northern states were 
derived from the surplus originating on the southern plantations."</i> [Perelman,
<b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 246] In terms of the wage workers in the North, they have been 
indirectly exploited by the existence of slavery as the investment this allowed 
reduced their bargaining power on the market as it reduced their ability to set 
up business for themselves by increasing the fixed costs of so doing. And what of 
the investment generated by the exploitation of these wage workers? As Mark Leier 
points out, the capitalists and landlords <i>"may have purchased the land and 
machinery, but this money represented nothing more than the expropriated labour 
of others."</i> [<b>Bakunin</b>, p. 111] If the land should be returned to those 
who worked it as Rothbard suggests, why not the industrial empires that were 
created on the backs of the generations of slaves who worked it? And what of 
the profits made from the generations of wage slaves who worked on these 
investments? And what of the investments which these profits allowed? Surely 
if the land should be given to those who worked it then so must any investments 
it generated? And assuming that those currently employed can rightly seize their 
workplaces, what about those previously employed and <b>their</b> descendants? 
Why should they be excluded from the riches their ancestors helped create?
</p><p>
To talk in terms of individuals misses all this and the net result is to ensure 
that the results of centuries of coercion and theft are undisturbed. This is 
because it is the working class <b>as a whole</b> who have been expropriated and whose 
labour has been exploited. The actual individuals involved and their descendants 
would be impossible to identify nor would it be possible to track down how the 
stolen fruits of their labour were invested. In this way, the class theft of 
our planet and liberty as well as the products of generations of working class 
people will continue safely.
</p><p>
Needless to say, some governments interfere in the economy more than others. 
Corporations do not invest in or buy from suppliers based in authoritarian 
regimes by accident. They do not just happen to be here, passively 
benefiting from statism and authoritarianism. Rather they choose <b>between</b> 
states to locate in based precisely on the cheapness of the labour supply. In 
other words, they prefer to locate in dictatorships and authoritarian regimes 
in Central America and Southeast Asia <b>because</b> those regimes interfere 
in the labour market the most -- while, of  course, talking about the very 
"free market" and "economic liberty" those regimes deny to their subjects. 
For Rothbard, this seems to be just a coincidence or a correlation rather 
than systematic for the collusion between state and business is the fault, not 
of capitalism, but simply of particular capitalists. The system, in other words, 
is pure; only individuals are corrupt. But, for anarchists, the origins of the 
modern capitalist system lies not in the individual qualities of capitalists 
as such but in the dynamic and evolution of capitalism itself -- a complex 
interaction of class interest, class struggle, social defence against the 
destructive actions of the market, individual qualities and so forth. In 
other words, Rothbard's claims are flawed -- they fail to understand 
capitalism as a <b>system</b>, its dynamic nature and the authoritarian 
social relationships it produces and the need for state intervention these
produce and require.
</p><p>
So, when the right suggests that "we" be "left alone," what they mean by "we" 
comes into clear focus when we consider how capitalism developed. Artisans and 
peasants were only "left alone" to starve (sometimes not even that, as the 
workhouse was invented to bring vagabonds to the joy of work), and the working
classes of industrial capitalism were only "left alone" outside work and for 
only as long as they respected the rules of their "betters." As Marx memorably
put it, the <i>"newly freed men became sellers of themselves only after they had 
been robbed of all their own means of production, and all the guarantees 
of existence afforded by the old feudal arrangements. And this history, the
history of their expropriation, is written in the annals of mankind in 
letters of blood and fire."</i> [<b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 875] As for the other 
side of the class divide, they desired to be "left alone" to exercise their 
power over others as we will see. That modern "capitalism" is, in effect, a 
kind of "corporate mercantilism," with states providing the conditions that 
allow corporations to flourish (e.g. tax breaks, subsidies, bailouts, anti-labour 
laws, etc.) says more about the statist roots of capitalism than the ideologically 
correct definition of capitalism used by its supporters.
</p><p>
In fact, if we look at the role of the state in creating capitalism we could be 
tempted to rename "anarcho"-capitalism "marxian-capitalism". This is because, 
given the historical evidence, a political theory can be developed by which the 
"dictatorship of the bourgeoisie" is created and that this capitalist state 
"withers away" into "anarchy". That this means replacing the economic and social 
ideas of Marxism and their replacement by their direct opposite should not mean 
that we should reject the idea (after all, that is what "anarcho"-capitalism
has done to Individualist Anarchism!). But we doubt that many "anarcho"-capitalists 
will accept such a name change (even though this would reflect their politics far 
better; after all they do not object to past initiations of force, just current 
ones and many do seem to think that the modern state <b>will</b> wither away due 
to market forces).
</p><p>
This is suggested by the fact that Rothbard did not advocate change from below 
as the means of creating "anarchy." He helped found the so-called Libertarian 
Party in 1971 which, like Marxists, stands for political office. With the fall 
of Stalinism in 1989, Rothbard faced whole economies which could be "homesteaded"
and he argued that <i>"desocialisation"</i> (i.e., de-nationalisation as, like Leninists, 
he confused socialisation with nationalisation) <i>"necessarily involves the action 
of that government surrendering its property to its private subjects . . . In a 
deep sense, getting rid of the socialist state requires that state to perform 
one final, swift, glorious act of self-immolation, after which it vanishes from 
the scene."</i> (compare to Engels' comment that <i>"the taking possession of the 
means of production in the name of society"</i> is the state's <i>"last independent 
act as a state."</i> [<b>Selected Works</b>, p. 424]). He considered the <i>"capital 
goods built by the State"</i> as being <i>"philosophically unowned"</i> yet failed to
note whose labour was exploited and taxed to build them in the first place (needless 
to say, he rejected the ideas of shares to all as this would be <i>"egalitarian handouts 
. . . to undeserving citizens,"</i> presumably the ill, the unemployed, retirees, 
mothers, children, and future generations). [<b>The Logic of Action II</b>, 
p. 213, p. 212 and p. 209]
</p><p>
Industrial plants would be transferred to workers currently employed there, 
but not by their own direct action and direct expropriation. Rather, the 
state would do so. This is understandable as, left to themselves, the workers 
may not act quite as he desired. Thus we see him advocating the transfer
of industry from the state bureaucracy to workers by means of <i>"private, 
negotiable shares"</i> as ownership was <i>"not to be granted to collectives or 
co-operatives or workers or peasants holistically, which would only bring 
back the ills of socialism in a decentralised and chaotic syndicalist 
form."</i> His "homesteading" was not to be done by the workers themselves 
rather it was a case of <i>"granting shares to workers"</i> by the state. He 
also notes that it should be a <i>"priority"</i> for the government <i>"to return 
all stolen, confiscated property to its original owners, or to their 
heirs."</i> This would involve <i>"finding original landowners"</i> -- i.e., the 
landlord class whose wealth was based on exploiting the serfs and peasants. 
[<b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 210 and pp. 211-2] Thus expropriated peasants would have 
their land returned but not, apparently, any peasants working land which had 
been taken from their feudal and aristocratic overlords by the state. Thus those 
who had just been freed from Stalinist rule would have been subjected to 
"libertarian" rule to ensure that the transition was done in the economically 
correct way. As it was, the neo-classical economists who did oversee the 
transition ensured that ownership and control transferred directly to a 
new ruling class rather than waste time issuing "shares" which would 
eventually end up in a few hands due to market forces (the actual way it
was done could be considered a modern form of "primitive accumulation" as
it ensured that capital goods did not end up in the hands of the workers).
</p><p>
But this is beside the point. The fact remains that state action was required 
to create and maintain capitalism. Without state support it is doubtful that 
capitalism would have developed at all. So the only "capitalism" that has 
existed is a product of state support and intervention, and it has been 
characterised by markets that are considerably less than free. Thus, serious 
supporters of truly free markets (like the American Individualist Anarchists) 
have not been satisfied with "capitalism" -- have, in fact, quite rightly and 
explicitly opposed it. Their vision of a free society has always been at odds
with the standard capitalist one, a fact which "anarcho"-capitalists bemoan 
and dismiss as "mistakes" and/or the product of "bad economics." Apparently 
the net effect of all this state coercion has been, essentially, null. It 
has <b>not</b>, as the critics of capitalism have argued, fundamentally shaped 
the development of the economy as capitalism would have developed naturally by 
itself. Thus an economy marked by inequalities of wealth and power, where the 
bulk of the population are landless and resourceless and where interest, rent 
and profits are extracted from the labour of working people would have developed 
anyway regardless of the state coercion which marked the rise of capitalism and 
the need for a subservient and dependent working class by the landlords and 
capitalists which drove these policies simply accelerated the process towards 
"economic liberty." However, it is more than mere coincidence that capitalism 
and state coercion are so intertwined both in history and in current practice.
</p><p>
In summary, like other apologists for capitalism, right-wing "libertarians" 
advocate that system without acknowledging the means that were necessary to 
create it. They tend to equate it with any market system, failing to understand 
that it is a specific kind of market system where labour itself is a commodity. 
It is ironic, of course, that most defenders of capitalism stress the importance 
of markets (which have pre-dated capitalism) while downplaying the importance of 
wage labour (which defines it) along with the violence which created it. Yet
as both anarchists and Marxists have stressed, money and commodities do not 
define capitalism any more than private ownership of the means of production.
So it is important to remember that from a socialist perspective capitalism is 
<b>not</b> identical to the market. As we stressed in <a href="secC2.html">section C.2</a>,
both anarchists and Marxists argue that where people produce for themselves, 
is not capitalist production, i.e. when a worker sells commodities this is not 
capitalist production. Thus the supporters of capitalism fail to understand that 
a great deal of state coercion was required to transform pre-capitalist societies 
of artisans and peasant farmers selling the produce of their labour into a capitalist 
society of wage workers selling themselves to bosses, bankers and landlords. 
</p><p>
Lastly, it should be stressed that this process of primitive accumulation is not 
limited to private capitalism. State capitalism has also had recourse to such 
techniques. Stalin's forced collectivisation of the peasantry and the brutal 
industrialisation involved in five-year plans in the 1930s are the most obvious 
example). What took centuries in Britain was condensed into decades in the 
Soviet Union and other state capitalist regimes, with a corresponding impact 
on its human toil. However, we will not discuss these acts of state coercion here
as we are concerned primarily with the actions required to create the conditions
required for private capitalism.
</p><p>
Needless to say, this section cannot hope to go into all the forms of
state intervention across the globe which were used to create or impose 
capitalism onto an unwilling population. All we can do is provide a
glimpse into the brutal history of capitalism and provide enough 
references for those interested to pursue the issue further. The first
starting point should be Part VIII (<i>"So-Called Primitive Accumulation"</i>) 
of volume 1 of Marx's <b>Capital</b>. This classic account of the origins of
capitalism should be supplemented by more recent accounts, but its basic
analysis is correct. Marxist writers have expanded on Marx's analysis, with
Maurice Dobb's <b>Studies in the Development of Capitalism</b> and David McNally's
<b>Against the Market</b> are worth consulting, as is Michael Perelman's <b>The 
Invention of Capitalism</b>. Kropotkin's <b>Mutual Aid</b> has a short 
summary of state action in destroying communal institutions and common ownership 
of land, as does his <b>The State: It's Historic Role</b>. Rudolf Rocker's
<b>Nationalism and Culture</b> is also essential reading. Individualist Anarchist 
Kevin Carson's <b>Studies in Mutualist Political Economy</b> provides an 
excellent summary (see part 2, <i>"Capitalism and the State: Past, Present 
and Future"</i>) as does his essay <b>The Iron Fist behind the Invisible 
Hand</b>.</p>

<a name="secf81"><h2>F.8.1 What social forces lay behind the rise of capitalism?</h2></a>

<p>
Capitalist society is a relatively recent development. For Marx, while
markets have existed for millennium <i>"the capitalist era dates from the 
sixteenth century."</i> [<b>Capital</b>, vol. 1, p. 876] As Murray Bookchin 
pointed out, for a <i>"long era, perhaps spanning more than five centuries,"</i> 
capitalism <i>"coexisted with feudal and simple commodity relationships"</i>
in Europe. He argues that this period <i>"simply cannot be treated as 
'transitional' without reading back the present into the past."</i> [<b>From 
Urbanisation to Cities</b>, p. 179] In other words, capitalism was not
a inevitable outcome of "history" or social evolution.
</p><p>
Bookchin went on to note that capitalism existed <i>"with growing significance
in the mixed economy of the West from the fourteenth century up to the
seventeenth"</i> but that it <i>"literally exploded into being in Europe, 
particularly England, during the eighteenth and especially nineteenth
centuries."</i> [<b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 181] The question arises, what lay behind 
this <i>"growing significance"</i>? Did capitalism <i>"explode"</i> due to its 
inherently more efficient nature or where there other, non-economic, forces at 
work? As we will show, it was most definitely the second -- capitalism was 
born not from economic forces but from the political actions of the social 
elites which its usury enriched. Unlike artisan (simple commodity) production, 
wage labour generates inequalities and wealth for the few and so will be 
selected, protected and encouraged by those who control the state in their 
own economic and social interests.
</p><p>
The development of capitalism in Europe was favoured by two social elites, 
the rising capitalist class within the degenerating medieval cities and 
the absolutist state. The medieval city was <i>"thoroughly changed by the
gradual increase in the power of commercial capital, due primarily to
foreign trade . . . By this the inner unity of the commune was loosened,
giving place to a growing caste system and leading necessarily to a
progressive inequality of social interests. The privileged minorities
pressed ever more definitely towards a centralisation of the political
forces of the community. . . Mercantilism in the perishing city republics
led logically to a demand for larger economic units [i.e. to nationalise
the market]; and by this the desire for stronger political forms was
greatly strengthened . . . Thus the city gradually became a small
state, paving the way for the coming national state."</i> [Rudolf Rocker,
<b>Nationalism and Culture</b>, p. 94] Kropotkin stressed that in this 
destruction of communal self-organisation the state not only served the 
interests of the rising capitalist class but also its own. Just as the 
landlord and capitalist seeks a workforce and labour market made up of 
atomised and isolated individuals, so does the state seek to eliminate 
all potential rivals to its power and so opposes <i>"all coalitions and 
all private societies, whatever their aim."</i> [<b>The State: It's
Historic role</b>, p. 53]
</p><p>
The rising economic power of the proto-capitalists conflicted with that of
the feudal lords, which meant that the former required help to consolidate
their position. That aid came in the form of the monarchical state which,
in turn, needed support against the feudal lords. With the force of 
absolutism behind it, capital could start the process of increasing its 
power and influence by expanding the "market" through state action. 
This use of state coercion was required because, as Bookchin noted, 
<i>"[i]n every pre-capitalist society, countervailing forces . . . 
existed to restrict the market economy. No less significantly, many 
pre-capitalist societies raised what they thought were insuperable obstacles 
to the penetration of the State into social life."</i> He noted the <i>"power 
of village communities to resist the invasion of trade and despotic political 
forms into society's abiding communal substrate."</i> State violence was
required to break this resistance and, unsurprisingly the <i>"one class to
benefit most from the rising nation-state was the European bourgeoisie . . . 
This structure . . .  provided the basis for the next great system of labour 
mobilisation: the factory."</i> [<b>The Ecology of Freedom</b>, pp. 207-8 
and p. 336] The absolutist state, noted Rocker, <i>"was dependent upon the 
help of these new economic forces, and vice versa</i> and so it <i>"at first 
furthered the plans of commercial capital"</i> as its
coffers were filled by the expansion of commerce. Its armies and fleets
<i>"contributed to the expansion of industrial production because they
demanded a number of things for whose large-scale production the shops 
of small tradesmen were no longer adapted. Thus gradually arose the
so-called manufactures, the forerunners of the later large industries."</i> 
[<b>Op. Cit.</b>, pp. 117-8] As such, it is impossible to underestimate
the role of state power in creating the preconditions for both agricultural
and industrial capitalism.
</p><p> 
Some of the most important state actions from the standpoint of early
industry were the so-called Enclosure Acts, by which the "commons" -- the
free farmland shared communally by the peasants in most rural villages --
was "enclosed" or incorporated into the estates of various landlords as
private property (see <a href="secF8.html#secf83">section F.8.3</a>). This 
ensured a pool of landless workers who had no option but to sell their labour 
to landlords and capitalists. Indeed, the widespread independence caused by the 
possession of the majority of households of land caused the rising class of 
capitalists to complain, as one put it, <i>"that men who should work as 
wage-labourers cling to the soil, and in the naughtiness of their hearts 
prefer independence as squatters to employment by a master."</i> [quoted by 
Allan Engler, <b>The Apostles of Greed</b>, p. 12] Once in service to a 
master, the state was always on hand to repress any signs of <i>"naughtiness"</i>
and <i>"independence"</i> (such as strikes, riots, unions and the like).
For example, Seventeenth century France saw a <i>"number of decrees . . . which forbade 
workers to change their employment or which prohibited assemblies of
workers or strikes on pain of corporal punishment or even death. (Even
the Theological Faculty of the University of Paris saw fit to pronounce
solemnly against the sin of workers' organisation)."</i> [Maurice Dobb, 
<b>Studies in Capitalism Development</b>, p. 160]
</p><p>
In addition, other forms of state aid ensured that capitalist firms got
a head start, so ensuring their dominance over other forms of work (such
as co-operatives). A major way of creating a pool of resources that could 
be used for investment was the use of mercantilist policies which
used protectionist measures to enrich capitalists and landlords at the
expense of consumers and their workers. For example, one of most common 
complaints of early capitalists was that workers could not turn up to 
work regularly. Once they had worked a few days, they disappeared as
they had earned enough money to live on. With higher prices for food, 
caused by protectionist measures, workers had to work longer and harder 
and so became accustomed to factory labour. In addition, mercantilism
allowed native industry to develop by barring foreign competition and
so allowed industrialists to reap excess profits which they could then
use to increase their investments. In the words of Marxist economic 
historian Maurice Dobb:
</p><p><blockquote>
<i>"In short, the Mercantile System was a system of State-regulated exploitation 
through trade which played a highly important rule in the adolescence of 
capitalist industry: it was essentially the economic policy of an age of 
primitive accumulation."</i> [<b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 209]
</blockquote></p><p>
As Rocker summarises, <i>"when absolutism had victoriously overcome all 
opposition to national unification, by its furthering of mercantilism 
and economic monopoly it gave the whole social evolution a direction 
which could only lead to capitalism."</i> [<b>Op. Cit.</b>, pp. 116-7]
</p><p>
Mercantilist policies took many forms, including the state providing capital 
to new industries, exempting them from guild rules and taxes, establishing 
monopolies over local, foreign and colonial markets, and granting titles and 
pensions to successful capitalists. In terms of foreign trade, the state 
assisted home-grown capitalists by imposing tariffs, quotas, and prohibitions 
on imports. They also prohibited the export of tools and technology as well 
as the emigration of skilled workers to stop competition (this applied to 
any colonies a specific state may have had). Other policies were applied 
as required by the needs of specific states. For example, the English state 
imposed a series of Navigation Acts which forced traders to use English ships to 
visit its ports and colonies (this destroyed the commerce of Holland, its chief 
rival). Nor should the impact of war be minimised, with the demand for weapons 
and transportation (including ships) injecting government spending into the 
economy. Unsurprisingly, given this favouring of domestic industry at the expense 
of its rivals and the subject working class population the mercantilist period 
was one of generally rapid growth, particularly in England.
</p><p>
As we discussed in <a href="secC10.html">section C.10</a>, some kind of 
mercantilism has always been required for a country to industrialise.
Over all, as economist Paul Ormerod puts it, the <i>"advice to follow pure 
free-market polices seems . . . to be contrary to the lessons of virtually 
the whole of economic history since the Industrial Revolution . . . every 
country which has moved into . . . strong sustained growth . . . has done so
in outright violation of pure, free-market principles."</i> These interventions
include the use of <i>"tariff barriers"</i> to protect infant industries,
<i>"government subsidies"</i> and <i>"active state intervention in the 
economy."</i> He summarises: <i>"The model of entrepreneurial activity in 
the product market, with judicious state support plus repression in the 
labour market, seems to be a good model of economic development."</i> 
[<b>The Death of Economics</b>, p. 63]
</p><p>
Thus the social forces at work creating capitalism was a combination of
capitalist activity and state action. But without the support of the
state, it is doubtful that capitalist activity would have been enough
to generate the initial accumulation required to start the economic
ball rolling. Hence the necessity of Mercantilism in Europe and its
modified cousin of state aid, tariffs and "homestead acts" in America.
</p>

<a name="secf82"><h2>F.8.2 What was the social context of the statement "laissez-faire?"</h2></a>

<p>
The honeymoon of interests between the early capitalists and autocratic
kings did not last long. <i>"This selfsame monarchy, which for weighty
reasons sought to further the aims of commercial capital and was. . .
itself aided in its development by capital, grew at last into a 
crippling obstacle to any further development of European industry."</i> 
[Rudolf Rocker, <b>Nationalism and Culture</b>, p. 117] 
</p><p>
This is the social context of the expression <i>"laissez-faire"</i> -- a 
system which has outgrown the supports that protected it in its early 
stages. Just as children eventually rebel against the protection and 
rules of their parents, so the capitalists rebelled against the 
over-bearing support of the absolutist state. Mercantilist policies 
favoured some industries and harmed the growth of others. The rules 
and regulations imposed upon those it did favour reduced the flexibility 
of capitalists to changing environments. As Rocker argues, <i>"no matter 
how the absolutist state strove, in its own interest, to meet the demands 
of commerce, it still put on industry countless fetters which became gradually
more and more oppressive . . . [it] became an unbearable burden . . .
which paralysed all economic and social life."</i> [<b>Op. Cit.</b>, 
p. 119] All in all, mercantilism became more of a hindrance than a 
help and so had to be replaced. With the growth of economic and
social power by the capitalist class, this replacement was made easier. As 
Errico Malatesta notes:
</p><p><blockquote>
<i>"The development of production, the vast expansion of commerce, the 
immeasurable power assumed by money . . . have guaranteed this supremacy 
[of economic power over political power] to the capitalist class which, 
no longer content with enjoying the support of the government, 
demanded that government arise from its own ranks. A government 
which owed its origin to the right of conquest . . . though
subject by existing circumstances to the capitalist class, went on
maintaining a proud and contemptuous attitude towards its now wealthy
former slaves, and had pretensions to independence of domination. That 
government was indeed the defender, the property owners' gendarme, but
the kind of gendarmes who think they are somebody, and behave in an
arrogant manner towards the people they have to escort and defend, when
they don't rob or kill them at the next street corner; and the capitalist
class got rid of it . . . and replac[ed] it by a government of its own
choosing, at all times under its control and specifically organised to 
defend that class against any possible demands by the disinherited."</i> 
[<b>Anarchy</b>, pp. 22-3]
</blockquote></p><p>
Malatesta here indicates the true meaning of <i>"leave us alone,"</i> or
<i>"laissez-faire."</i> The <b>absolutist</b> state (not "the state" per se) 
began to interfere with capitalists' profit-making activities and authority, 
so they determined that it had to go -- which the rising capitalist class
did when they utilised such popular movements as the English, French and 
American revolutions. In such circumstances, when the state is not fully
controlled by the capitalist class, then it makes perfect sense to oppose
state intervention no matter how useful it may have been in the past -- a
state run by aristocratic and feudal landlords does not produce class
legislation in quite the right form. That changes when members of the 
capitalist class hold state power and when the landlords start acting more
like rural capitalists and, unsurprisingly, laissez-faire was quickly
modified and then abandoned once capitalists could rely on a <b><i>capitalist</i></b>
state to support and protect its economic power within society.
</p><p>
When capitalism had been rid of unwanted interference by the hostile use of
state power by non-capitalist classes then laissez-faire had its utility
(just as it has its utility today when attacking social welfare). Once 
this had been accomplished then state intervention in society was encouraged 
and applauded by capitalists. <i>"It is ironic that the main protagonists of 
the State, in its political and administrative authority, were the middle-class 
Utilitarians, on the other side of whose Statist banner were inscribed the 
doctrines of economic Laissez Faire."</i> [E.P. Thompson, <b>The Making of 
the English Working Class</b>, p. 90] Capitalists simply wanted <b>capitalist</b> 
states to replace monarchical states, so that heads of government would follow 
state economic policies regarded by capitalists as beneficial to their 
class as a whole. And as development economist Lance Taylor argues:
</p><p><blockquote>
<i>"In the long run, there are no laissez-faire transitions to modern
economic growth. The state has always intervened to create a capitalist
class, and then it has to regulate the capitalist class, and then the
state has to worry about being taken over by the capitalist class,
but the state has always been there."</i> [quoted by Noam Chomsky, <b>Year
501</b>, p. 104]
</blockquote></p><p>
In order to attack mercantilism, the early capitalists had to ignore
the successful impact of its policies in developing industry and
a "store of wealth" for future economic activity. As William Lazonick
points out, <i>"the political purpose of [Adam Smith's] the <b>Wealth of 
Nations</b> was to attack the mercantilist institutions that the British
economy had built up over the previous two hundred years. Yet in proposing
institutional change, Smith lacked a dynamic historical analysis. In
his attack on these institutions, Smith might have asked why the
extent of the world market available to Britain in the late eighteenth
century was <b>so uniquely under British control.</b> If Smith had
asked this 'big question,' he might have been forced to grant credit
for Britain's extent of the world market  to the very mercantilist 
institutions he was attacking."</i> Moreover, he <i>"might have recognised 
the integral relation between economic and political power in the rise of 
Britain to international dominance."</i> Overall, <i>"[w]hat the British 
advocates of laissez-faire neglected to talk about was the role that a 
system of national power had played in creating conditions for Britain to
embark on its dynamic development path . . . They did not bother to
ask how Britain had attained th[e] position [of 'workshop of the
world'], while they conveniently ignored the on going system of
national power -- the British Empire -- that . . . continued to
support Britain's position."</i> [<b>Business Organisation and the Myth 
of the Market Economy</b>, p. 2, p. 3 and p.5]
</p><p>
Similar comments are applicable to American supporters of laissez faire who 
fail to notice that the "traditional" American support for world-wide free 
trade is quite a recent phenomenon. It started only at the end of the Second 
World War (although, of course, <b>within</b> America military Keynesian 
policies were utilised). While American industry was developing, the state 
and capitalist class had no time for laissez-faire (see 
<a href="secF8.html#secf85">section F.8.5</a> for details). After it had grown 
strong, the United States began preaching laissez-faire to the rest of the 
world -- and began to kid itself about its own history, believing its slogans 
about laissez-faire as the secret of its success. Yet like all other successful 
industrialisers, the state could aid capitalists directly and indirectly (via 
tariffs, land policy, repression of the labour movement, infrastructure subsidy 
and so on) and it would "leave them alone" to oppress and exploit workers, exploit 
consumers, build their industrial empires and so forth. 
</p><p>
Takis Fotopoules indicates that the social forces at work in "freeing" the market 
did not represent a "natural" evolution towards freedom:
</p><p><blockquote>
<i>"Contrary to what liberals and Marxists assert, marketisation of the
economy was not just an evolutionary process, following the expansion of
trade under mercantilism . . . modern [i.e. capitalist] markets did not
evolve out of local markets and/or markets for foreign goods . . . the
nation-state, which was just emerging at the end of the Middle Ages,
played a crucial role creating the conditions for the 'nationalisation' 
of the market . . . and . . . by freeing the market from effective social 
control."</i> [<i>"The Nation-state and the Market"</i>, pp. 37-80
<b>Society and Nature</b>, Vol. 2, No. 2, pp. 44-45]
</blockquote></p><p>
The "freeing" of the market means freeing those who "own" most of 
the market (i.e. the wealthy elite) from <i>"effective social control,"</i> but
the rest of society was not as lucky. Kropotkin makes a similar point: <i>"While 
giving the capitalist any degree of free scope to amass his wealth at the expense 
of the helpless labourers, the government has <b>nowhere</b> and <b>never</b> . . . 
afforded the labourers the opportunity 'to do as they pleased'."</i> [<b>Anarchism</b>, 
p. 182]
</p><p>
So, the expression "laissez-faire" dates from the period when capitalists were 
objecting to the restrictions that helped create them in the first place. It has 
little to do with freedom as such and far more to do with the needs of capitalist 
power and profits. It should also be remembered that at this time the state was 
run by the rich and for the rich. Elections, where they took place, involved the 
wealthiest of male property owners. This meant there were two aspects in
the call for laissez-faire. On the one hand, by the elite to eliminate
regulations and interventions they found burdensome and felt unnecessary 
as their social position was secure by their economic power (mercantilism 
evolved into capitalism proper when market power was usually sufficient 
to produce dependency and obedience as the working class had been successfully
dispossessed from the land and the means of production). On the other, 
serious social reformers (like Adam Smith) who recognised that the 
costs of such elite inspired state regulations generally fell on working 
class people. The moral authority of the latter was used to bolster the
desire of the former to maximise their wealth by imposing costs of others
(workers, customers, society and the planet's eco-system) with the state
waiting in the wings to support them as and when required.
</p><p>
Unsurprising, working class people recognised the hypocrisy of this 
arrangement (even if most modern-day right-"libertarians" do not and
provide their services justifying the actions and desires of repressive
and exploitative oligarchs seeking monopolistic positions). They turned
to political and social activism seeking to change a system which saw
economic and political power reinforce each other. Some (like the Chartists 
and Marxists) argued for political reforms to generalise democracy into
genuine one person, one vote. In this way, political liberty would be
used to end the worse excesses of so-called "economic liberty" (i.e.,
capitalist privilege and power). Others (like mutualists) aimed at 
economic reforms which ensure that the capitalist class would be 
abolished by means of genuine economic freedom. Finally, most other 
anarchists argued that revolutionary change was required as the state 
and capitalism were so intertwined that both had to be ended at the 
same time. However, the struggle against state power always came from
the general population. As Murray Bookchin argued, it is an error to 
depict this <i>"revolutionary era and its democratic aspirations as 
'bourgeois,' an imagery that makes capitalism a system more committed to 
freedom, or even ordinary civil liberties, than it was historically."</i> 
[<b>From Urbanisation to Cities</b>, p. 180f] While the capitalist class 
may have benefited from such popular movements as the English, American 
and French revolutions but these revolutions were not led, never mind 
started or fought, by the bourgeoisie.
</p><p>
Not much as changed as capitalists are today seeking maximum freedom from 
the state to ensure maximum authority over their wage slaves and society.
The one essential form of support the "Libertarian" right wants the state 
(or "defence" firms) to provide capitalism is the enforcement of property 
rights -- the right of property owners to "do as they like" on their own 
property, which can have obvious and extensive social impacts. What 
"libertarian" capitalists object to is attempts by others -- workers, 
society as a whole, the state, etc. -- to interfere with the authority 
of bosses. That this is just the defence of privilege and power (and 
<b>not</b> freedom) has been discussed in <a href="secBcon.html">section B</a> 
and elsewhere in <a href="secFcon.html">section F</a>, so we will not repeat 
ourselves here. Samuel Johnson once observed that <i>"we hear the loudest 
<b>yelps</b> for liberty among the drivers of Negroes."</i> [quoted by Noam 
Chomsky, <b>Year 501</b>, p. 141] Our modern "libertarian" capitalist drivers 
of wage-slaves are yelping for exactly the same kind of "liberty."</p>

<a name="secf83"><h2>F.8.3 What other forms did state intervention in creating capitalism take?</h2></a>

<p>
Beyond being a paymaster for new forms of production and social relations
as well as defending the owners' power, the state intervened economically in
other ways as well. As we noted in <a href="secB2.html#secb25">section B.2.5</a>, 
the state played a key role in transforming the law codes of society in a capitalistic 
fashion, ignoring custom and common law when it was convenient to do so. Similarly, 
the use of tariffs and the granting of monopolies to companies played an important 
role in accumulating capital at the expense of working people, as did the
breaking of unions and strikes by force. 
</p><p>
However, one of the most blatant of these acts was the enclosure of 
common land. In Britain, by means of the Enclosure Acts, land that 
had been freely used by poor peasants was claimed by large landlords as 
private property. As socialist historian E.P. Thompson summarised, <i>"the 
social violence of enclosure consisted . . . in the drastic, total imposition 
upon the village of capitalist property-definitions."</i> [<b>The Making of the 
English Working Class</b>, pp. 237-8] Property rights, which favoured 
the rich, replaced the use rights and free agreement that had governed 
peasants use of the commons. Unlike use rights, which rest in the 
individual, property rights require state intervention to create and 
maintain. <i>"Parliament and law imposed capitalist definitions to 
exclusive property in land,"</i> Thompson notes. This process involved 
ignoring the wishes of those who used the commons and repressing those 
who objected. Parliament was, of course, run by and for the rich who 
then simply <i>"observed the rules which they themselves had made."</i> 
[<b>Customs in Common</b>, p. 163] 
</p><p>
Unsurprisingly, many landowners would become rich through the enclosure 
of the commons, heaths and downland while many ordinary people had a 
centuries old right taken away. Land enclosure was a gigantic swindle 
on the part of large landowners. In the words of one English folk poem 
written in 1764 as a protest against enclosure:
</p><p><div align="center"><i>
		They hang the man, and flog the woman,<br>
		That steals the goose from off the common;<br>
		But let the greater villain loose,<br>
		That steals the common from the goose.<br></i>
</p><p></div>
It should be remembered that the process of enclosure was not limited
to just the period of the industrial revolution. As Colin Ward notes,
<i>"in Tudor times, a wave of enclosures by land-owners who sought to
profit from the high price of wool had deprived the commoners of 
their livelihood and obliged them to seek work elsewhere or become
vagrants or squatters on the wastes on the edges of villages."</i>
[<b>Cotters and Squatters</b>, p. 30] This first wave increased the
size of the rural proletariat who sold their labour to landlords. Nor
should we forget that this imposition of capitalist property rights 
did not imply that it was illegal. As Michael Perelman notes,<i>"[f]ormally, 
this dispossession was perfectly legal. After all, the peasants did not 
have property rights in the narrow sense. They only had traditional rights. 
As markets evolved, first land-hungry gentry and later the bourgeoisie used 
the state to create a legal structure to abrogate these traditional rights."</i> 
[<b>The Invention of Capitalism</b>, pp. 13-4]
</p><p>
While technically legal as the landlords made the law, the impact of this 
stealing of the land should not be under estimated. Without land, 
you cannot live and have to sell your liberty to others. This places
those with capital at an advantage, which will tend to increase,
rather than decrease, the inequalities in society (and so place the
landless workers at an increasing disadvantage over time). This
process can be seen from early stages of capitalism. With the 
enclosure of the land an agricultural workforce was created which
had to travel where the work was. This influx of landless ex-peasants 
into the towns ensured that the traditional guild system crumbled 
and was transformed into capitalistic industry with bosses and wage 
slaves rather than master craftsmen and their journeymen. Hence the 
enclosure of land played a key role, for <i>"it is clear that economic 
inequalities are unlikely to create a division of society into an 
employing master class and a subject wage-earning class, unless 
access to the means of production, including land, is by some means 
or another barred to a substantial section of the community."</i> 
[Maurice Dobb, <b>Studies in Capitalist Development</b>, p. 253]
</p><p>
The importance of access to land is summarised by this limerick 
by the followers of Henry George (a 19th century writer who argued
for a <i>"single tax"</i> and the nationalisation of land). The Georgites 
got their basic argument on the importance of land down these few, 
excellent, lines:
</p><p><div align="center"><i>
		A college economist planned<br>
		To live without access to land<br>
		He would have succeeded<br>
		But found that he needed<br>
		Food, shelter and somewhere to stand.<br></i>
</p><p></div>
Thus anarchists concern over the <i>"land monopoly"</i> of which the Enclosure 
Acts were but one part. The land monopoly, to use Tucker's words, <i>"consists 
in the enforcement by government of land titles which do not rest upon personal 
occupancy and cultivation."</i> [<b>The Anarchist Reader</b>, p. 150] So it
should be remembered that common land did <b>not</b> include the large holdings of 
members of the feudal aristocracy and other landlords. This helped to artificially 
limit available land and produce a rural proletariat just as much as enclosures.
</p><p>
It is important to remember that wage labour first developed on the land and it 
was the protection of land titles of landlords and nobility, combined with 
enclosure, that meant people could not just work their own land. The pressing
economic circumstances created by enclosing the land and enforcing property 
rights to large estates ensured that capitalists did not have to point a gun at 
people's heads to get them to work long hours in authoritarian, dehumanising 
conditions. In such circumstances, when the majority are dispossessed and face 
the threat of starvation, poverty, homelessness and so on, "initiation of force" 
is <b>not required.</b> But guns <b>were</b> required to enforce the system of 
private property that created the labour market in the first place, to enclosure 
common land and protect the estates of the nobility and wealthy.
</p><p>
By decreasing the availability of land for rural people, the enclosures destroyed 
working-class independence. Through these Acts, innumerable peasants were excluded 
from access to their former means of livelihood, forcing them to seek work from 
landlords or to migrate to the cities to seek work in the newly emerging factories 
of the budding industrial capitalists who were thus provided with a ready source 
of cheap labour. The capitalists, of course, did not describe the results this way, 
but attempted to obfuscate the issue with their usual rhetoric about civilisation 
and progress. Thus John Bellers, a 17th-century supporter of enclosures, claimed 
that commons were <i>"a hindrance to Industry, and . . . Nurseries of Idleness 
and Insolence."</i> The <i>"forests and great Commons make the Poor that are upon 
them too much like the <b>indians.</b>"</i> [quoted by Thompson, <b>Op. Cit.</b>, 
p. 165] Elsewhere Thompson argues that the commons <i>"were now seen as a dangerous 
centre of indiscipline . . . Ideology was added to self-interest. It became a 
matter of public-spirited policy for gentlemen to remove cottagers from the 
commons, reduce his labourers to dependence."</i> [<b>The Making of the English 
Working Class</b>, pp. 242-3] David McNally confirms this, arguing <i>"it was 
precisely these elements of material and spiritual independence that many of the 
most outspoken advocates of enclosure sought to destroy."</i> Eighteenth-century 
proponents of enclosure <i>"were remarkably forthright in this respect. Common 
rights and access to common lands, they argued, allowed a degree of social and 
economic independence, and thereby produced a lazy, dissolute mass of rural poor 
who eschewed honest labour and church attendance . . . Denying such people common 
lands and common rights would force them to conform to the harsh discipline 
imposed by the market in labour."</i> [<b>Against the Market</b>, p. 19]
</p><p>
The commons gave working-class people a degree of independence which
allowed them to be "insolent" to their betters. This had to be stopped,
as it undermined to the very roots of authority relationships within
society. The commons <b>increased</b> freedom for ordinary people and made
them less willing to follow orders and accept wage labour. The reference
to "Indians" is important, as the independence and freedom of Native
Americans is well documented. The common feature of both cultures was
communal ownership of the means of production and free access to it
(usufruct). This is discussed further in section I.7 
(<a href="secI7.html">Won't Libertarian Socialism destroy individuality?</a>).
As Bookchin stressed, the factory <i>"was not born from a need to integrate 
labour with modern machinery,"</i> rather it was to regulate labour and make 
it regular. For the <i>"irregularity, or 'naturalness,' in the rhythm and 
intensity of traditional systems of work contributed more towards the 
bourgeoisie's craze for social control and its savagely anti-naturalistic 
outlook than did the prices or earnings demanded by its employees. More 
than any single technical factor, this irregularity led to the rationalisation 
of labour under a single ensemble of rule, to a discipline of work and
regulation of time that yielded the modern factory . . . the initial 
goal of the factory was to dominate labour and destroy the worker's
independence from capital."</i> [<b>The Ecology of Freedom</b> p. 406]
</p><p>
Hence the pressing need to break the workers' ties with the land and so
the <i>"loss of this independence included the loss of the worker's contact
with food cultivation . . . To live in a cottage . . . often meant to
cultivate a family garden, possibly to pasture a cow, to prepare one's
own bread, and to have the skills for keeping a home in good repair. To 
utterly erase these skills and means of a livelihood from the worker's
life became an industrial imperative."</i> Thus the worker's <i>"complete 
dependence on the factory and on an industrial labour market was a 
compelling precondition for the triumph of industrial society . . . The 
need to destroy whatever independent means of life the worker could garner 
. . . all involved the issue of reducing the proletariat to a condition of 
total powerlessness in the face of capital. And with that powerlessness 
came a supineness, a loss of character and community, and a decline in 
moral fibre."</i> [Bookchin, <b>Op. Cit.,</b>, pp. 406-7] Unsurprisingly, there was 
a positive association between enclosure and migration out of villages and 
a <i>"definite correlation . . . between the extent of enclosure and reliance 
on poor rates . . . parliamentary enclosure resulted in out-migration and a 
higher level of pauperisation."</i> Moreover, <i>"the standard of living was 
generally much higher in those areas where labourer managed to combine 
industrial work with farming . . . Access to commons meant that labourers 
could graze animals, gather wood, stones and gravel, dig coal, hunt and 
fish. These rights often made the difference between subsistence and
abject poverty."</i> [David McNally, <b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 14 and p. 18]
Game laws also ensured that the peasantry and servants could not legally 
hunt for food as from the time of Richard II (1389) to 1831, no person 
could kill game unless qualified by estate or social standing. 
</p><p>
The enclosure of the commons (in whatever form it took -- see 
<a href="secF8.html#secf85">section F.8.5</a> for the US equivalent) solved both 
problems -- the high cost of labour, and the freedom and dignity of the worker. 
The enclosures perfectly illustrate the principle that capitalism requires a 
state to ensure that the majority of people do not have free access to any 
means of livelihood and so must sell themselves to capitalists in order to
survive. There is no doubt that if the state had "left alone" the European 
peasantry, allowing them to continue their collective farming practices
("collective farming" because, as Kropotkin shows, the peasants not only 
shared the land but much of the farm labour as well), capitalism could not 
have taken hold (see <b>Mutual Aid</b> for more on the European enclosures
[pp. 184-189]). As Kropotkin notes, <i>"[i]nstances of commoners themselves 
dividing their lands were rare, everywhere the State coerced them to enforce 
the division, or simply favoured the private appropriation of their lands"</i> 
by the nobles and wealthy. Thus <i>"to speak of the natural death of the village 
community [or the commons] in virtue of economical law is as grim a joke as to 
speak of the natural death of soldiers slaughtered on a battlefield."</i> 
[<b>Mutual Aid</b>, p. 188 and p. 189]
</p><p>
Once a labour market <b>was</b> created by means of enclosure and the land monopoly, 
the state did <b>not</b> passively let it work. When market conditions favoured the
working class, the state took heed of the calls of landlords and capitalists and 
intervened to restore the "natural" order. The state actively used the law to lower 
wages and ban unions of workers for centuries. In Britain, for example, after the 
Black Death there was a "servant" shortage. Rather than allow the market to work 
its magic, the landlords turned to the state and the result was <b><i>"the Statute 
of Labourers"</i></b> of 1351:
</p><p><blockquote><i>
"Whereas late against the malice of servants, which were idle, and not willing
to serve after the pestilence, without taking excessive wages, it was ordained 
by our lord the king . . .  that such manner of servants . . . should be bound 
to serve, receiving salary and wages, accustomed in places where they ought to 
serve in the twentieth year of the reign of the king that now is, or five or 
six years before; and that the same servants refusing to serve in such manner 
should be punished by imprisonment of their bodies . . . now forasmuch as it 
is given the king to understand in this present parliament, by the petition of 
the commonalty, that the said servants having no regard to the said ordinance, 
. .  to the great damage of the great men, and impoverishing of all the said 
commonalty, whereof the said commonalty prayeth remedy: wherefore in the said 
parliament, by the assent of the said prelates, earls, barons, and other great 
men, and of the same commonalty there assembled, to refrain the malice of the 
said servants, be ordained and established the things underwritten."</i>
</blockquote></p><p>
Thus state action was required because labourers had increased bargaining power 
and commanded higher wages which, in turn, led to inflation throughout the economy. 
In other words, an early version of the NAIRU (see <a href="secC9.html">section C.9</a>). 
In one form or another this statute remained in force right through to the 19th 
century (later versions made it illegal for employees to "conspire" to fix wages,
i.e., to organise to demand wage increases). Such measures were particularly sought 
when the labour market occasionally favoured the working class. For example, 
<i>"[a]fter the Restoration [of the English Monarchy],"</i> noted Dobb, <i>"when 
labour-scarcity had again become a serious complaint and the propertied class had 
been soundly frightened by the insubordination of the Commonwealth years, the 
clamour for legislative interference to keep wages low, to drive the poor into 
employment and to extend the system of workhouses and 'houses of correction' and 
the farming out of paupers once more reached a crescendo."</i> The same occurred
on Continental Europe. [<b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 234]
</p><p>
So, time and again employers called on the state to provide force to suppress 
the working class, artificially lower wages and bolster their economic power and
authority. While such legislation was often difficult to enforce and 
often ineffectual in that real wages did, over time, increase, the threat and use 
of state coercion would ensure that they did not increase as fast as they may 
otherwise have done. Similarly, the use of courts and troops to break unions and 
strikes helped the process of capital accumulation immensely. Then there were
the various laws used to control the free movement of workers. <i>"For centuries,"</i>
notes Colin Ward, <i>"the lives of the poor majority in rural England were dominated 
by the Poor law and its ramifications, like the Settlement Act of 1697 which debarred 
strangers from entering a parish unless they had a Settlement Certificate in which 
their home parish agreed to take them back if they became in need of poor relief. 
Like the Workhouse, it was a hated institution that lasted into the 20th century."</i>
[<b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 31]
</p><p>
As Kropotkin stressed, <i>"it was the State which undertook to settle . . . griefs"</i> 
between workers and bosses <i>"so as to guarantee a 'convenient' livelihood"</i> 
(convenient for the masters, of course). It also acted <i>"severely to prohibit 
all combinations . . . under the menace of severe punishments . . . Both in the 
town and in the village the State reigned over loose aggregations of individuals, 
and was ready to prevent by the most stringent measures the reconstitution of any sort
of separate unions among them."</i> Workers who formed unions <i>"were prosecuted 
wholesale under the Master and Servant Act -- workers being summarily arrested and 
condemned upon a mere complaint of misbehaviour lodged by the master. Strikes were 
suppressed in an autocratic way . . . to say nothing of the military suppression of strike
riots . . . To practice mutual support under such circumstances was anything but an 
easy task . . . After a long fight, which lasted over a hundred years, the right of 
combing together was conquered."</i> [<b>Mutual Aid</b>, p. 210 and p. 211] It took 
until 1813 until the laws regulating wages were repealed while the laws against 
combinations remained until 1825 (although that did not stop the Tolpuddle Martyrs
being convicted of "administering an illegal oath" and deported to Tasmania in 1834). 
Fifty years later, the provisions of the statues of labourers which made it a civil 
action if the boss broke his contract but a criminal action if the worker broke it 
were repealed. Trade unions were given legal recognition in 1871 while, at the same 
time, another law limited what the workers could do in a strike or lockout. The British 
ideals of free trade never included freedom to organise.
</p><p>
(Luckily, by then, economists were at hand to explain to the workers that organising 
to demand higher wages was against their own self-interest. By a strange coincidence, 
all those laws against unions had actually <b>helped</b> the working class by enforcing 
the necessary conditions for perfect competition in labour market! What are the chances
of that? Of course, while considered undesirable from the perspective of mainstream 
economists -- and, by strange co-incidence, the bosses -- unions are generally not 
banned these days but rather heavily regulated. The freedom loving, deregulating 
Thatcherites passed six Employment Acts between 1980 and 1993 restricting industrial 
action by requiring pre-strike ballots, outlawing secondary action, restricting 
picketing and giving employers the right to seek injunctions where there is doubt 
about the legality of action -- in the workers' interest, of course as, for some 
reason, politicians, bosses and economists have always known what best for 
trade unionists rather than the trade unionists themselves. And if they objected,
well, that was what the state was for.)
</p><p>
So to anyone remotely familiar with working class history the notion that there could 
be an economic theory which ignores power relations between bosses and workers is a 
particularly self-serving joke. Economic relations always have a power element, 
even if only to protect the property and power of the wealthy -- the Invisible Hand 
always counts on a very visible Iron Fist when required. As Kropotkin memorably put 
it, the rise of capitalism has always seen the State <i>"tighten the screw for 
the worker"</i> and <i>"impos[ing] industrial serfdom."</i> So what the bourgeoisie 
<i>"swept away as harmful to industry"</i> was anything considered as <i>"useless and 
harmful"</i> but  that class <i>"was at pains not to sweep away was the power 
of the State over industry, over the factory serf."</i> Nor should the role of public 
schooling be overlooked, within which <i>"the spirit of voluntary servitude was 
always cleverly cultivated in the minds of the young, and still is, in order to 
perpetuate the subjection of the individual to the State."</i> [<b>The 
State: Its Historic Role</b>, pp. 52-3 and p. 55] Such education also ensured that 
children become used to the obedience and boredom required for wage slavery.
</p><p>
Like the more recent case of fascist Chile, "free market" capitalism was
imposed on the majority of society by an elite using the authoritarian
state. This was recognised by Adam Smith when he opposed state
intervention in <b>The Wealth of Nations</b>. In Smith's day, the government
was openly and unashamedly an instrument of wealth owners. Less than 
10 per cent of British men (and no women) had the right to vote. When 
Smith opposed state interference, he was opposing the imposition of
wealth owners' interests on everybody else (and, of course, how "liberal",
never mind "libertarian", is a political system in which the many follow 
the rules and laws set-down in the so-called interests of all by the 
few? As history shows, any minority given, or who take, such power <b>will</b> 
abuse it in their own interests). Today, the situation is reversed, with 
neo-liberals and right-"libertarians" opposing state interference in the 
economy (e.g. regulation of Big Business) so as to prevent the public 
from having even a minor impact on the power or interests of the elite. 
The fact that "free market" capitalism always requires introduction by an
authoritarian state should make all honest "Libertarians" ask: How "free"
is the "free market"? </p>

<a name="secf84"><h2>F.8.4 Aren't the enclosures a socialist myth?</h2></a>

<p>
The short answer is no, they are not. While a lot of historical analysis 
has been spent in trying to deny the extent and impact of the enclosures,
the simple fact is (in the words of noted historian E.P. Thompson) 
enclosure <i>"was a plain enough case of class robbery, played according
to the fair rules of property and law laid down by a parliament of
property-owners and lawyers."</i> [<b>The Making of the English Working Class</b>,
pp. 237-8]
</p><p>
The enclosures were one of the ways that the <i>"land monopoly"</i> was created.
The land monopoly referred to feudal and capitalist property rights and ownership 
of land by (among others) the Individualist Anarchists. Instead of an 
<i>"occupancy and use"</i> regime advocated by anarchists, the land monopoly
allowed a few to bar the many from the land -- so creating a class of people with 
nothing to sell but their labour. While this monopoly is less important these 
days in developed nations (few people know how to farm) it was essential as a 
means of consolidating capitalism. Given the choice, most people preferred to 
become independent farmers rather than wage workers (see 
<a href="secF8.html#secf85">next section</a>). As such, the <i>"land monopoly"</i>
involves more than simply enclosing common land but also enforcing the claims 
of landlords to areas of land greater than they can work by their own labour.
</p><p>
Needless to say, the titles of landlords and the state are generally ignored
by supporters of capitalism who tend to concentrate on the enclosure movement
in order to downplay its importance. Little wonder, for it is something of an
embarrassment for them to acknowledge that the creation of capitalism
was somewhat less than "immaculate" -- after all, capitalism is portrayed
as an almost ideal society of freedom. To find out that an idol has
feet of clay and that we are still living with the impact of its 
origins is something pro-capitalists must deny. So <b>are</b> the enclosures
a socialist myth? Most claims that it is flow from the work of the
historian J.D. Chambers' famous essay <i>"Enclosures and the Labour Supply
in the Industrial Revolution."</i> [<b>Economic History Review</b>, 2nd series,
no. 5, August 1953] In this essay, Chambers attempts to refute Karl
Marx's account of the enclosures and the role it played in what Marx
called <i>"primitive accumulation."</i>
</p><p>
We cannot be expected to provide an extensive account of the debate that has 
raged over this issue (Colin Ward notes that <i>"a later series of scholars 
have provided locally detailed evidence that reinforces"</i> the traditional 
socialist analysis of enclosure and its impact. [<b>Cotters and Squatters</b>, p. 143]). 
All we can do is provide a summary of the work of William Lazonick who presented 
an excellent reply to those who claim that the enclosures were an unimportant 
historical event (see his <i>"Karl Marx and Enclosures in England."</i> [<b>Review 
of Radical Political Economy</b>, no. 6, pp. 1-32]). Here, we draw upon his 
subsequent summarisation of his critique provided in his books <b>Competitive 
Advantage on the Shop Floor</b> and <b>Business Organisation and the Myth of 
the Market Economy</b>. 
</p><p>
There are three main claims against the socialist account of the enclosures. 
We will cover each in turn.
</p><p>
Firstly, it is often claimed that the enclosures drove the uprooted cottager 
and small peasant into industry. However, this was never claimed. As Lazonick 
stresses while some economic historians <i>"have attributed to Marx the notion 
that, in one fell swoop, the enclosure movement drove the peasants off the soil 
and into the factories. Marx did not put forth such a simplistic view of the 
rise of a wage-labour force . . . Despite gaps and omission in Marx's historical 
analysis, his basic arguments concerning the creation of a landless proletariat 
are both important and valid. The transformations of social relations of production 
and the emergence of a wage-labour force in the agricultural sector were the 
critical preconditions for the Industrial Revolution."</i> [<b>Competitive 
Advantage on the Shop Floor</b>, pp. 12-3]
</p><p>
It is correct, as the critics of Marx stress, that the agricultural revolution 
associated with the enclosures <b>increased</b> the demand for farm labour as 
claimed by Chambers and others. And this is the whole point -- enclosures 
created a pool of dispossessed labourers who had to sell their time/liberty to 
survive and whether this was to a landlord or an industrialist is irrelevant 
(as Marx himself stressed). As such, the account by Chambers, ironically, 
<i>"confirms the broad outlines of Marx's arguments"</i> as it implicitly
acknowledges that <i>"over the long run the massive reallocation of access 
to land that enclosures entailed resulted in the separation of the mass of 
agricultural producers from the means of production."</i> So the <i>"critical 
transformation was not the level of agricultural employment before and after 
enclosure but the changes in employment relations caused by the reorganisation 
of landholdings and the reallocation of access to land."</i> [<b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 29,
pp. 29-30 and p. 30] Thus the key feature of the enclosures was that it created
 a supply for farm labour, a supply that had no choice but to work for another. 
Once freed from the land, these workers could later move to the towns in search 
for better work:
</p><p><blockquote><i>
"Critical to the Marxian thesis of the origins of the industrial labour
force is the transformation of the social relations of agriculture and the
creation, in the first instance, of an agricultural wage-labour force that
might eventually, perhaps through market incentives, be drawn into the
industrial labour force."</i> [<b>Business Organisation and the Myth of 
the Market Economy</b>, p. 273]
</blockquote></p><p>
In summary, when the critics argue that enclosures increased the demand for farm 
labour they are not refuting Marx but confirming his analysis. This is because 
the enclosures had resulted in a transformation in employment relations in 
agriculture with the peasants and farmers turned into wage workers for landlords
(i.e., rural capitalists). For if wage labour is the defining characteristic of 
capitalism then it matters little if the boss is a farmer or an industrialist. 
This means that the <i>"critics, it turns out, have not differed substantially
with Marx on the facts of agricultural transformation. But by ignoring the 
historical and theoretical significance of the resultant changes in the social 
relations of <b>agricultural</b> production, the critics have missed Marx's 
main point."</i> [<b>Competitive Advantage on the Shop Floor</b>, p. 30]
</p><p>
Secondly, it is argued that the number of small farm owners increased,
or at least did not greatly decline, and so the enclosure movement was
unimportant. Again, this misses the point. Small farm owners can still
employ wage workers (i.e. become capitalist farmers as opposed to
"yeomen" -- an independent peasant proprietor). As Lazonick notes, <i>"[i]t
is true that after 1750 some petty proprietors continued to occupy and work 
their own land. But in a world of capitalist agriculture, the yeomanry no 
longer played an important role in determining the course of capitalist 
agriculture. As a social class that could influence the evolution of British 
economy society, the yeomanry had disappeared."</i> Moreover, Chambers himself 
acknowledged that for the poor without legal rights in land, then enclosure 
injured them. For <i>"the majority of the agricultural population . . . had 
only customary rights. To argue that these people were not treated unfairly 
because they did not possess legally enforceable property rights is irrelevant 
to the fact that they were dispossessed by enclosures. Again, Marx's critics 
have failed to address the issue of the transformation of access to the means 
of production as a precondition for the Industrial Revolution."</i> [<b>Op. Cit.</b>, 
p. 32 and p. 31]
</p><p>
Thirdly, it is often claimed that it was population growth, rather than 
enclosures, that caused the supply of wage workers. So was population
growth more important than enclosures? Given that enclosure impacted on
the individuals and social customs of the time, it is impossible to separate
the growth in population from the social context in which it happened. As
such, the population argument ignores the question of whether the changes 
in society caused by enclosures and the rise of capitalism have an 
impact on the observed trends towards earlier marriage and larger 
families after 1750. Lazonick argues that <i>"[t]here is reason 
to believe that they did."</i> [<b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 33] Overall, 
Lazonick notes that <i>"[i]t can even be argued that the changed 
social relations of agriculture altered the constraints on early 
marriage and incentives to childbearing that contributed to the growth in 
population. The key point is that transformations in social relations in 
production can influence, and have influenced, the quantity of wage labour 
supplied on both agricultural and industrial labour markets. To argue that 
population growth created the industrial labour supply is to ignore these 
momentous social transformations"</i> associated with the rise of capitalism. 
[<b>Business Organisation and the Myth of the Market Economy</b>, p. 273]
</p><p>
In other words, there is good reason to think that the enclosures, far
from being some kind of socialist myth, in fact played a key role in
the development of capitalism. As Lazonick notes, <i>"Chambers misunderstood"</i> 
the <i>"argument concerning the 'institutional creation' of a proletarianised 
(i.e. landless) workforce. Indeed, Chamber's own evidence and logic tend to 
support the Marxian [and anarchist!] argument, when it is properly understood."</i> 
[<b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 273]
</p><p>
Lastly, it must be stressed that this process of dispossession happened over
hundreds of years. It was not a case of simply driving peasants off their land 
and into factories. In fact, the first acts of expropriation took place in 
agriculture and created a rural proletariat which had to sell their labour/liberty 
to landlords and it was the second wave of enclosures, in the eighteenth and 
nineteenth centuries, that was closely connected with the process of 
industrialisation. The enclosure movement, moreover, was imposed in an uneven way, 
affecting different areas at different times, depending on the power of peasant 
resistance and the nature of the crops being grown (and other objective conditions). 
Nor was it a case of an instant transformation -- for a long period this rural 
proletariat was not totally dependent on wages, still having some access to the
land and wastes for fuel and food. So while rural wage workers did exist 
throughout the period from 1350 to the 1600s, capitalism was not fully established 
in Britain yet as such people comprised only a small proportion of the labouring 
classes. The acts of enclosure were just one part of a long process by which a 
proletariat was created.</p>

<a name="secf85"><h2>F.8.5 What about the lack of enclosures in the Americas?</h2></a>

<p>
The enclosure movement was but one part of a wide-reaching process of state
intervention in creating capitalism. Moreover, it is just one way of creating 
the <i>"land monopoly"</i> which ensured the creation of a working class. The 
circumstances facing the ruling class in the Americas were distinctly different 
than in the Old World and so the "land monopoly" took a different form there. 
In the Americas, enclosures were unimportant as customary land rights did not 
really exist (at least once the Native Americans were eliminated by violence). 
Here the problem was that (after the original users of the land were eliminated) 
there were vast tracts of land available for people to use. Other forms of 
state intervention were similar to that applied under mercantilism in Europe 
(such as tariffs, government spending, use of unfree labour and state 
repression of workers and their organisations and so on). All had one aim, to
enrich and power the masters and dispossess the actual producers of the means
of life (land and means of production).
</p><p>
Unsurprisingly, due to the abundance of land, there was a movement towards 
independent farming in the early years of the American colonies and subsequent 
Republic and this pushed up the price of remaining labour on the market by 
reducing the supply. Capitalists found it difficult to find workers willing 
to work for them at wages low enough to provide them with sufficient profits. 
It was due to the difficulty in finding cheap enough labour that capitalists in 
America turned to slavery. All things being equal, wage labour <b>is</b> more
productive than slavery but in early America all things were <b>not</b>
equal. Having access to cheap (indeed, free) land meant that working
people had a choice, and few desired to become wage slaves and so because 
of this, capitalists turned to slavery in the South and the "land monopoly" 
in the North. 
</p><p>
This was because, in the words of Maurice Dobb, it <i>"became clear to
those who wished to reproduce capitalist relations of production in 
the new country that the foundation-stone of their endeavour must be
the restriction of land-ownership to a minority and the exclusion of
the majority from any share in [productive] property."</i> [<b>Studies in
Capitalist Development</b>, pp. 221-2] As one radical historian puts
it, <i>"[w]hen land is 'free' or 'cheap'. as it was in different regions 
of the United States before the 1830s, there was no compulsion for farmers 
to introduce labour-saving technology. As a result, 'independent household 
production' . . . hindered the development of capitalism . . . [by] allowing 
large portions of the population to escape wage labour."</i> [Charlie Post, 
<i>"The 'Agricultural Revolution' in the United States"</i>, pp. 216-228, 
<b>Science and Society</b>, vol. 61, no. 2, p. 221]
</p><p>
It was precisely this option (i.e. of independent production) that had to be 
destroyed in order for capitalist industry to develop. The state had to violate 
the holy laws of "supply and demand" by controlling the access to land in order 
to ensure the normal workings of "supply and demand" in the labour market (i.e. 
that the bargaining position favoured employer over employee). Once this situation 
became the typical one (i.e., when the option of self-employment was effectively 
eliminated) a more (protectionist based) "laissez-faire" approach could be adopted,
with state action used indirectly to favour the capitalists and landlords (and
readily available to protect private property from the actions of the dispossessed).
</p><p>
So how was this transformation of land ownership achieved?
</p><p>
Instead of allowing settlers to appropriate their own farms as was often the case 
before the 1830s, the state stepped in once the army had cleared out (usually 
by genocide) the original users. Its first major role was to enforce legal 
rights of property on unused land. Land stolen from the Native Americans 
was sold at auction to the highest bidders, namely speculators, who then 
sold it on to farmers. This process started right <i>"after the revolution, 
[when] huge sections of land were bought up by rich speculators"</i> and 
their claims supported by the law. [Howard Zinn, <b>A People's History of 
the United States</b>, p. 125] Thus land which should have been free was 
sold to land-hungry farmers and the few enriched themselves at the expense 
of the many. Not only did this increase inequality within society, it also 
encouraged the development of wage labour -- having to pay for land would 
have ensured that many immigrants remained on the East Coast until they had 
enough money. Thus a pool of people with little option but to sell their 
labour was increased due to state protection of unoccupied land. That the 
land usually ended up in the hands of farmers did not (could not) countermand 
the shift in class forces that this policy created.
</p><p>
This was also the essential role of the various "Homesteading Acts" and, 
in general, the <i>"Federal land law in the 19th century provided for the 
sale of most of the public domain at public auction to the higher bidder 
. . . Actual settlers were forced to buy land from speculators, at 
prices considerably above the federal minimal price."</i> (which few people 
could afford anyway). [Charlie Post, <b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 222] This is
confirmed by Howard Zinn who notes that 1862 Homestead Act <i>"gave 
160 acres of western land, unoccupied and publicly owned, to anyone who
would cultivate it for five years . . . Few ordinary people had the 
$200 necessary to do this; speculators moved in and bought up much of
the land. Homestead land added up to 50 million acres. But during the
Civil War, over 100 million acres were given by Congress and the President
to various railroads, free of charge."</i> [<b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 233] Little wonder 
the Individualist Anarchists supported an <i>"occupancy and use"</i> system 
of land ownership as a key way of stopping capitalist and landlord
usury as well as the development of capitalism itself.
</p><p>
This change in the appropriation of land had significant effects on
agriculture and the desirability of taking up farming for immigrants.
As Post notes, <i>"[w]hen the social conditions for obtaining and maintaining
possession of land change, as they did in the Midwest between 1830 and 
1840, pursuing the goal of preserving [family ownership and control] . . .
produced very different results. In order to pay growing mortgages, 
debts and taxes, family farmers were compelled to specialise production
toward cash crops and to market more and more of their output."</i> 
[<b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 221-2]
</p><p>
So, in order to pay for land which was formerly free, farmers got themselves 
into debt and increasingly turned to the market to pay it off. Thus, the 
<i>"Federal land system, by transforming land into a commodity and stimulating 
land speculation, made the Midwestern farmers dependent upon markets for the 
continual possession of their farms."</i> Once on the market, farmers had to 
invest in new machinery and this also got them into debt. In the face of a bad 
harvest or market glut, they could not repay their loans and their farms had 
to be sold to so do so. By 1880, 25% of all farms were rented by tenants, 
and the numbers kept rising. In addition, the <i>"transformation of social 
property relations in northern agriculture set the stage for the 
'agricultural revolution' of the 1840s and 1850s . . . [R]ising debts and 
taxes forced Midwestern family farmers to compete as commodity producers 
in order to maintain their land-holding . . . The transformation . . . was 
the central precondition for the development of industrial capitalism in 
the United States."</i> [Charlie Post, <b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 223 and p. 226]
</p><p>
It should be noted that feudal land owning was enforced in many areas
of the colonies and the early Republic. Landlords had their holdings
protected by the state and their demands for rent had the full backing 
of the state. This lead to numerous anti-rent conflicts. [Howard Zinn,
<b>A People's History of the United States</b>, p. 84 and pp. 206-11] Such 
struggles helped end such arrangements, with landlords being "encouraged"
to allow the farmers to buy the land which was rightfully theirs. The
wealth appropriated from the farmers in the form of rent and the price
of the land could then be invested in industry so transforming feudal
relations on the land into capitalist relations in industry (and, 
eventually, back on the land when the farmers succumbed to the 
pressures of the capitalist market and debt forced them to sell).
</p><p>
This means that Murray Rothbard's comment that <i>"once the land was purchased 
by the settler, the injustice disappeared"</i> is nonsense -- the injustice was 
transmitted to other parts of society and this, the wider legacy of the 
original injustice, lived on and helped transform society towards capitalism. 
In addition, his comment about <i>"the establishment in North America of a 
truly libertarian land system"</i> would be one the Individualist Anarchists 
of the period would have seriously disagreed with! [<b>The Ethics of Liberty</b>, 
p. 73] Rothbard, at times, seems to be vaguely aware of the importance of land
as the basis of freedom in early America. For example, he notes in passing
that <i>"the abundance of fertile virgin land in a vast territory enabled 
individualism to come to full flower in many areas."</i> [<b>Conceived in Liberty</b>,
vol. 2, p. 186] Yet he did not ponder the transformation in social relationships 
which would result when that land was gone. In fact, he was blas about it. <i>"If 
latecomers are worse off,"</i> he opined, <i>"well then that is their proper 
assumption of risk in this free and uncertain world. There is no longer a vast 
frontier in the United States, and there is no point crying over the fact."</i> 
[<b>The Ethics of Liberty</b>, p. 240] Unsurprisingly we also find Murray Rothbard 
commenting that Native Americans <i>"lived under a collectivistic regime that, 
for land allocation, was scarcely more just than the English governmental 
land grab."</i> [<b>Conceived in Liberty</b>, vol. 1, p. 187] That such a regime 
made for <b>increased</b> individual liberty and that it was precisely the 
independence from the landlord and bosses this produced which made enclosure 
and state land grabs such appealing prospects for the ruling class was lost on 
him. 
</p><p>
Unlike capitalist economists, politicians and bosses at the time, Rothbard seemed 
unaware that this <i>"vast frontier"</i> (like the commons) was viewed as a major 
problem for maintaining labour discipline and appropriate state action was taken 
to reduce it by restricting free access to the land in order to ensure that workers 
were dependent on wage labour.  Many early economists recognised this and 
advocated such action. Edward Wakefield was typical when he complained that 
<i>"where land is cheap and all are free, where every one who so pleases can 
easily obtain a piece of land for himself, not only is labour dear, as respects
the labourer's share of the product, but the difficulty is to obtain
combined labour at any price."</i> This resulted in a situation were few 
<i>"can accumulate great masses of wealth"</i> as workers <i>"cease . . .
to be labourers for hire; they . . . become independent landowners, if
not competitors with their former masters in the labour market."</i> 
Unsurprisingly, Wakefield urged state action to reduce this option and 
ensure that labour become cheap as workers had little choice but to seek 
a master. One key way was for the state to seize the land and then sell
it to the population. This would ensure that <i>"no labourer would be 
able to procure land until he had worked for money"</i> and this <i>"would
produce capital for the employment of more labourers."</i> [quoted by 
Marx, <b>Op. Cit., </b>, p. 935, p. 936 and p. 939] Which is precisely what
did occur.
</p><p>
At the same time that it excluded the working class from virgin land, the state 
granted large tracts of land to the privileged classes: to land speculators, 
logging and mining companies, planters, railroads, and so on. In addition to 
seizing the land and distributing it in such a way as to benefit capitalist 
industry, the <i>"government played its part in helping the bankers and hurting 
the farmers; it kept the amount of money -- based in the gold supply -- steady 
while the population rose, so there was less and less money in circulation. The 
farmer had to pay off his debts in dollars that were harder to get. The bankers, 
getting loans back, were getting dollars worth more than when they loaned them 
out -- a kind of interest on top of interest. That was why so much of the talk
of farmers' movements in those days had to do with putting more money in 
circulation."</i> [Zinn, <b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 278] This was the case with the 
Individualist Anarchists at the same time, we must add.
</p><p>
Overall, therefore, state action ensured the transformation of America from a 
society of independent workers to a capitalist one. By creating and enforcing 
the "land monopoly" (of which state ownership of unoccupied land and its 
enforcement of landlord rights were the most important) the state ensured 
that the balance of class forces tipped in favour of the capitalist class. 
By removing the option of farming your own land, the US government created its 
own form of enclosure and the creation of a landless workforce with little 
option but to sell its liberty on the "free market". They was nothing "natural" 
about it. Little wonder the Individualist Anarchist J.K. Ingalls attacked
the "land monopoly" with the following words:
</p><p><blockquote>
<i>"The earth, with its vast resources of mineral wealth, its spontaneous
productions and its fertile soil, the free gift of God and the common
patrimony of mankind, has for long centuries been held in the grasp of
one set of oppressors by right of conquest or right of discovery; and
it is now held by another, through the right of purchase from them.
All of man's natural possessions . . . have been claimed as property;
nor has man himself escaped the insatiate jaws of greed. The invasion
of his rights and possessions has resulted . . . in clothing property
with a power to accumulate an income."</i> [quoted by James Martin, <b>Men 
Against the State</b>, p. 142]
</blockquote>
Marx, correctly, argued that <i>"the capitalist mode of production and accumulation, 
and therefore capitalist private property, have for their fundamental condition the 
annihilation of that private property which rests on the labour of the individual
himself; in other words, the expropriation of the worker."</i> [<b>Capital</b>, Vol. 1, 
p. 940] He noted that to achieve this, the state is used:
</p><p><blockquote>
<i>"How then can the anti-capitalistic cancer of the colonies be healed? 
. . . Let the Government set an artificial price on the virgin soil,
a price independent of the law of supply and demand, a price that compels 
the immigrant to work a long time for wages before he can earn enough 
money to buy land, and turn himself into an independent farmer."</i> 
[<b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 938]
</blockquote></p><p>
Moreover, tariffs were introduced with <i>"the objective of manufacturing
capitalists artificially"</i> for the <i>"system of protection was an 
artificial means of manufacturing manufacturers, or expropriating independent
workers, of capitalising the national means of production and subsistence, 
and of forcibly cutting short the transition . . . to the modern mode of 
production,"</i> to capitalism [<b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 932 and pp. 921-2]
</p><p>
So mercantilism, state aid in capitalist development, was also seen in the
United States of America. As Edward Herman points out, the <i>"level of 
government involvement in business in the United States from the late 
eighteenth century to the present has followed a U-shaped pattern: There 
was extensive government intervention in the pre-Civil War period (major 
subsidies, joint ventures with active government participation and direct 
government production), then a quasi-laissez faire period between the 
Civil War and the end of the nineteenth century [a period marked by 
"the aggressive use of tariff protection" and state supported railway 
construction, a key factor in capitalist expansion in the USA], followed 
by a gradual upswing of government intervention in the twentieth century, 
which accelerated after 1930."</i> [<b>Corporate Control, Corporate Power</b>, 
p. 162]
</p><p>
Such intervention ensured that income was transferred from workers to
capitalists. Under state protection, America industrialised by forcing
the consumer to enrich the capitalists and increase their capital stock.
<i>"According to one study, if the tariff had been removed in the 1830s 
'about half the industrial sector of New England would have been 
bankrupted' . . . the tariff became a near-permanent political 
institution representing government assistance to manufacturing. It 
kept price levels from being driven down by foreign competition and
thereby shifted the distribution of income in favour of owners of 
industrial property to the disadvantage of workers and customers."</i> 
This protection was essential, for the <i>"end of the European wars in 
1814 . . . reopened the United States to a flood of British imports 
that drove many American competitors out of business. Large portions 
of the newly expanded manufacturing base were wiped out, bringing a 
decade of near-stagnation."</i> Unsurprisingly, the <i>"era of protectionism 
began in 1816, with northern agitation for higher tariffs."</i> [Richard 
B. Du Boff, <b>Accumulation and Power</b>, p. 56, p. 14 and p. 55] 
Combined with ready repression of the labour movement and government 
"homesteading" acts (see <a href="secF8.html#secf85">section F.8.5</a>), 
tariffs were the American equivalent of mercantilism (which, after all, was 
above all else a policy of protectionism, i.e. the use of government to 
stimulate the growth of native industry). Only once America was at the top 
of the economic pile did it renounce state intervention (just as Britain 
did, we must note). 
</p><p>
This is <b>not</b> to suggest that government aid was limited to tariffs.
The state played a key role in the development of industry and 
manufacturing. As John Zerzan notes, the <i>"role of the State is 
tellingly reflected by the fact that the 'armoury system' now rivals
the older 'American system of manufactures' term as the more
accurate to describe the new system of production methods"</i> developed
in the early 1800s. [<b>Elements of Refusal</b>, p. 100] By the
middle of the nineteenth century <i>"a distinctive 'American system of 
manufactures' had emerged . . . The lead in technological innovation 
[during the US Industrial Revolution] came in armaments where assured 
government orders justified high fixed-cost investments in special-pursue 
machinery and managerial personnel. Indeed, some of the pioneering effects
occurred in government-owned armouries."</i> Other forms of state aid
were used, for example the textile industry <i>"still required tariffs
to protect [it] from . . . British competition."</i> [William Lazonick, 
<b>Competitive Advantage on the Shop Floor</b>, p. 218 and p. 219] The 
government also <i>"actively furthered this process [of 'commercial 
revolution'] with public works in transportation and communication."</i> 
In addition to this "physical" aid, <i>"state government provided critical 
help, with devices like the chartered corporation"</i> [Richard B. Du Boff, 
<b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 15] As we noted in <a href="secB2.html#secb25">section 
B.2.5</a>, there were changes in the legal system which favoured capitalist 
interests over the rest of society.
</p><p>
Nineteenth-century America also went in heavily for industrial planning -- 
occasionally under that name but more often in the name of national defence. 
The military was the excuse for what is today termed rebuilding infrastructure, 
picking winners, promoting research, and co-ordinating industrial growth (as 
it still is, we should add). As Richard B. Du Boff points out, the "anti-state" 
backlash of the 1840s onwards in America was highly selective, as the general 
opinion was that <i>"[h]enceforth, if governments wished to subsidise 
private business operations, there would be no objection. But if public 
power were to be used to control business actions or if the public sector 
were to undertake economic initiatives on its own, it would run up against 
the determined opposition of private capital."</i> [<b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 26] 
</p><p>
State intervention was not limited to simply reducing the amount of available
land or enforcing a high tariff. <i>"Given the independent spirit of workers in 
the colonies, capital understood that great profits required the use of unfree 
labour."</i> [Michael Perelman, <b>The Invention of Capitalism</b>, p. 246] It 
was also applied in the labour market as well. Most obviously, it enforced the 
property rights of slave owners (until the civil war, produced when the pro-free 
trade policies of the South clashed with the pro-tariff desires of the capitalist 
North). The evil and horrors of slavery are well documented, as is its key role 
in building capitalism in America and elsewhere so we will concentrate on other 
forms of obviously unfree labour. Convict labour in Australia, for example, played 
an important role in the early days of colonisation while in America indentured 
servants played a similar role. 
</p><p>
Indentured service was a system whereby workers had to labour for a specific 
number of years usually in return for passage to America with the law requiring 
the return of runaway servants. In theory, of course, the person was only 
selling their labour. In practice, indentured servants were basically slaves 
and the courts enforced the laws that made it so. The treatment of servants 
was harsh and often as brutal as that inflicted on slaves. Half the servants 
died in the first two years and unsurprisingly, runaways were frequent. The 
courts realised this was a problem and started to demand that everyone have 
identification and travel papers. 
</p><p>
It should also be noted that the practice of indentured servants also shows
how state intervention in one country can impact on others. This is because
people were willing to endure indentured service in the colonies because of
how bad their situation was at home. Thus the effects of primitive accumulation
in Britain impacted on the development of America as most indentured servants 
were recruited from the growing number of unemployed people in urban areas 
there. Dispossessed from their land and unable to find work in the cities, 
many became indentured servants in order to take passage to the Americas. 
In fact, between one half to two thirds of all immigrants to Colonial America 
arrived as indentured servants and, at times, three-quarters of the population 
of some colonies were under contracts of indenture. That this allowed the 
employing class to overcome their problems in hiring "help" should go without
saying, as should its impact on American inequality and the ability of 
capitalists and landlords to enrich themselves on their servants labour and
to invest it profitably.
</p><p>
As well as allowing unfree labour, the American state intervened to ensure that
the freedom of wage workers was limited in similar ways as we indicated in 
<a href="secF8.html#secf83">section F.8.3</a>. <i>"The changes in social relations of 
production in artisan trades that took place in the thirty years after 1790,"</i> 
notes one historian, <i>"and the . . . trade unionism to which . . . it gave rise, 
both replicated in important respects the experience of workers in the artisan 
trades in Britain over a rather longer period . . . The juridical responses they 
provoked likewise reproduced English practice. Beginning in 1806, American courts 
consciously seized upon English common law precedent to combat journeymen's 
associations."</i> Capitalists in this era tried to <i>"secure profit . . . through 
the exercise of disciplinary power over their employees."</i> To achieve this 
<i>"employers made a bid for legal aid"</i> and it is here <i>"that the key to 
law's role in the process of creating an industrial economy in America lies."</i> 
As in the UK, the state invented laws and issues proclamations against workers' 
combinations, calling them conspiracies and prosecuting them as such. Trade unionists 
argued that laws which declared unions as illegal combinations should be repealed
as against the Constitution of the USA while <i>"the specific cause of trademens 
protestations of their right to organise was, unsurprisingly, the willingness of 
local authorities to renew their resort to conspiracy indictments to countermand 
the growing power of the union movement."</i> Using criminal conspiracy to counter 
combinations among employees was commonplace, with the law viewing a <i>"collective 
quitting of employment [as] a criminal interference"</i> and combinations to raise 
the rate of labour <i>"indictable at common law."</i> [Christopher L. Tomlins, 
<b>Law, Labor, and Ideology in the Early American Republic</b>, p. 113, p. 295, 
p. 159 and p. 213] By the end of the nineteenth century, state repression for 
conspiracy was replaced by state repression for acting like a trust while actual
trusts were ignored and so laws, ostensibly passed (with the help of the unions 
themselves) to limit the power of capital, were turned against labour (this 
should be unsurprising as it was a capitalist state which passed them). [Howard 
Zinn, <b>A People's History of the United States</b>, p. 254]
</p><p>
Another key means to limit the freedom of workers was denying departing workers 
their wages for the part of the contract they had completed. This <i>"underscored 
the judiciary's tendency to articulate their approval"</i> of the hierarchical 
master/servant relationship in terms of its <i>"social utility: It was a necessary 
and desirable feature of the social organisation of work . . . that the employer's 
authority be reinforced in this way."</i> Appeals courts held that <i>"an employment 
contract was an entire contract, and therefore that no obligation to pay wages existed 
until the employee had completed the agreed term."</i> Law suits <i>"by employers seeking 
damages for an employee's departure prior to the expiry of an agreed term or for other 
forms of breach of contract constituted one form of legally sanctioned economic discipline 
of some importance in shaping the employment relations of the nineteenth century."</i>
Thus the boss could fire the worker without paying their wages while if the worker 
left the boss he would expect a similar outcome. This was because the courts had 
decided that the <i>"employer was entitled not only to receipt of the services contracted 
for in their entirety prior to payment but also to the obedience of the employee in the 
process of rendering them."</i> [Tomlins, <b>Op. Cit.</b>, pp. 278-9, p. 274, p. 272 
and pp. 279-80] The ability of workers to seek self-employment on the farm or 
workplace or even better conditions and wages were simply abolished by employers 
turning to the state.
</p><p>
So, in summary, the state could remedy the shortage of cheap wage labour by controlling 
access to the land, repressing trade unions as conspiracies or trusts and ensuring that 
workers had to obey their bosses for the full term of their contract (while the bosses
could fire them at will). Combine this with the extensive use of tariffs, state
funding of industry and infrastructure among many other forms of state aid to capitalists 
and we have a situation were capitalism was imposed on a pre-capitalist nation at the 
behest of the wealthy elite by the state, as was the case with all other countries.
</p> 

<a name="secf86"><h2>F.8.6 How did working people view the rise of capitalism?</h2></a>

<p>
The best example of how hated capitalism was can be seen by the rise and 
spread of the labour and socialist movements, in all their many forms, across 
the world. It is no coincidence that the development of capitalism also saw
the rise of socialist theories. Nor was it a coincidence that the rising
workers movement was subjected to extensive state repression, with unions,
strikes and other protests being systematically repressed. Only once 
capital was firmly entrenched in its market position could economic 
power come to replace political force (although, of course, that always
remained ready in the background to defend capitalist property and power).
</p><p>
The rise of unions, socialism and other reform movements and their repression 
was a feature of <b>all</b> capitalist countries. While America is sometime
portrayed as an exception to this, in reality that country was also marked by
numerous popular movements which challenged the rise of capitalism and the
transformation of social relationships within the economy from artisanal
self-management to capitalist wage slavery. As in other countries, the state
was always quick to support the capitalist class against their rebellious 
wage slaves, using first conspiracy and then anti-trust laws against working
class people and their organisations. So, in order to fully understand how 
different capitalism was from previous economic systems, we will consider 
early capitalism in the US, which for many right-"libertarians" is <b>the</b> 
example of the "capitalism-equals-freedom" argument.
</p><p>
Early America was pervaded by artisan production -- individual ownership
of the means of production. Unlike capitalism, this system is <b>not</b>
marked by the separation of the worker from the means of life. Most
people did not have to work for another, and so did not. As Jeremy
Brecher notes, in 1831 the <i>"great majority of Americans were farmers
working their own land, primarily for their own needs. Most of the rest
were self-employed artisans, merchants, traders, and professionals. 
Other classes -- employees and industrialists in the North, slaves and
planters in the South -- were relatively small. The great majority of
Americans were independent and free from anybody's command."</i> [<b>Strike!</b>,
p. xxi] So the availability of land ensured that in America, slavery and 
indentured servants were the only means by which capitalists could get
people to work for them. This was because slaves and servants were not 
able to leave their masters and become self-employed farmers or artisans. As 
noted in the <a href="secF8.html#secf85">last section</a> this material base was, 
ironically, acknowledged by Rothbard but the implications for freedom when it
disappeared was not. While he did not ponder what would happen when that supply 
of land ended and whether the libertarian aspects of early American society would 
survive, contemporary politicians, bosses, and economists did. Unsurprisingly, 
they turned to the state to ensure that capitalism grew on the grave of artisan 
and farmer property.
</p><p>
Toward the middle of the 19th century the economy began to change. Capitalism 
began to be imported into American society as the infrastructure was improved
by state aid and tariff walls were constructed which allowed home-grown 
manufacturing companies to develop. Soon, due to (state-supported) capitalist 
competition, artisan production was replaced by wage labour. Thus "evolved" 
modern capitalism. Many workers understood, resented, and opposed their 
increasing subjugation to their employers, which could not be reconciled 
with the principles of freedom and economic independence that had marked 
American life and had sunk deeply into mass consciousness during the days of the 
early economy. In 1854, for example, a group of skilled piano makers hoped 
that <i>"the day is far distant when they [wage earners] will so far forget 
what is due to manhood as to glory in a system forced upon them by their 
necessity and in opposition to their feelings of independence and self-respect. 
May the piano trade be spared such exhibitions of the degrading power of the day 
[wage] system."</i> [quoted by Brecher and Costello, <b>Common Sense for Hard 
Times</b>, p. 26] 
</p><p>
Clearly the working class did not consider working for a daily wage, in
contrast to working for themselves and selling their own product, to be 
a step forward for liberty or individual dignity. The difference between 
selling the product of one's labour and selling one's labour (i.e. oneself) 
was seen and condemned (<i>"[w]hen the producer . . . sold his product, he 
retained himself. But when he came to sell his labour, he sold himself . . . 
the extension [of wage labour] to the skilled worker was regarded by him 
as a symbol of a deeper change."</i> [Norman Ware, <b>The Industrial Worker, 
1840-1860</b>, p. xiv]). Indeed, one group of workers argued that they were 
<i>"slaves in the strictest sense of the word"</i> as they had <i>"to toil 
from the rising of the sun to the going down of the same for our masters -- 
aye, masters, and for our daily bread."</i> [quoted by Ware, <b>Op. Cit.</b>, 
p. 42] Another group argued that <i>"the factory system contains in itself 
the elements of slavery, we think no sound reasoning can deny, and everyday 
continues to add power to its incorporate sovereignty, while the sovereignty 
of the working people decreases in the same degree."</i> [quoted by Brecher and 
Costello, <b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 29] For working class people, free labour meant 
something radically different than that subscribed to by employers and economists. 
For workers, free labour meant economic independence through the ownership of 
productive equipment or land. For bosses, it meant workers being free of 
any alternative to consenting to authoritarian organisations within their 
workplaces -- if that required state intervention (and it did), then so be 
it.
</p><p>
The courts, of course, did their part in ensuring that the law reflected and
bolstered the power of the boss rather than the worker. <i>"Acting piecemeal,"</i> 
summarises Tomlins, <i>"the law courts and law writers of the early republic 
built their approach to the employment relationship on the back of English 
master/servant law. In the process, they vested in the generality of 
nineteenth-century employers a controlling authority over the employees founded 
upon the pre-industrial master's claim to property in his servant's personal 
services."</i> Courts were <i>"having recourse to master/servant's language of 
power and control"</i> as the <i>"preferred strategy for dealing with the 
employment relation"</i> and so advertised their conclusion that <i>"employment 
relations were properly to be conceived of as generically hierarchical."</i>
[<b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 231 and p. 225] As we noted in <a href="secF8.html#secf85">
last section</a> the courts, judges and jurists acted to outlaw unions as 
conspiracies and force workers to work the full length of their contracts. In
addition, they also reduced employer liability in industrial accidents (which, 
of course, helped lower the costs of investment as well as operating costs).
</p><p>
Artisans and farmers correctly saw this as a process of downward mobility toward 
wage labour and almost as soon as there were wage workers, there were strikes, 
machine breaking, riots, unions and many other forms of resistance. John Zerzan's 
argument that there was a <i>"relentless assault on the worker's historical 
rights to free time, self-education, craftsmanship, and play was at the heart 
of the rise of the factory system"</i> is extremely accurate. [<b>Elements of 
Refusal</b>, p. 105] And it was an assault that workers resisted with all 
their might. In response to being subjected to the wage labour, workers 
rebelled and tried to organise themselves to fight the powers that be and to 
replace the system with a co-operative one. As the printer's union argued, 
its members <i>"regard such an organisation [a union] not only as an agent 
of immediate relief, but also as an essential to the ultimate destruction of 
those unnatural relations at present subsisting between the interests of the 
employing and the employed classes . . . when labour determines to sell itself 
no longer to speculators, but to become its own employer, to own and enjoy 
itself and the fruit thereof, the necessity for scales of prices will have 
passed away and labour will be forever rescued from the control of the 
capitalist."</i> [quoted by Brecher and Costello, <b>Op. Cit.</b>, pp. 27-28]
</p><p>
Little wonder, then, why wage labourers considered capitalism as a modified
form of slavery and why the term <i>"wage slavery"</i> became so popular 
in the labour and anarchist movements. It was just reflecting the feelings of 
those who experienced the wages system at first hand and who created the 
labour and socialist movements in response. As labour historian Norman Ware 
notes, the <i>"term 'wage slave' had a much better standing in the forties 
[of the 19th century] than it has today. It was not then regarded as an empty
shibboleth of the soap-box orator. This would suggest that it has
suffered only the normal degradation of language, has become a <b>cliche</b>,
not that it is a grossly misleading characterisation."</i> [<b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. xvf]
It is no coincidence that, in America, the first manufacturing complex in 
Lowell was designed to symbolise its goals and its hierarchical structure
nor that its design was emulated by many of the penitentiaries, insane asylums, 
orphanages and reformatories of the period. [Bookchin, <b>The Ecology of
Freedom</b>, p. 392]
</p><p>
These responses of workers to the experience of wage labour is important
as they show that capitalism is by no means "natural." The fact is the first
generation of workers tried to avoid wage labour is at all possible --
they hated the restrictions of freedom it imposed upon them. Unlike the
bourgeoisie, who positively eulogised the discipline they imposed on others. 
As one put it with respect to one corporation in Lowell, New England, the 
factories at Lowell were <i>"a new world, in its police it is <b>imperium in 
imperio</b>. It has been said that an absolute despotism, justly administered 
. . . would be a perfect government . . . For at the same time that it is
an absolute despotism, it is a most perfect democracy. Any of its subjects
can depart from it at pleasure . . . Thus all the philosophy of mind which
enter vitally into government by the people . . . is combined with a set
of rule which the operatives have no voice in forming or administering, yet
of a nature not merely perfectly just, but human, benevolent, patriarchal
in a high degree."</i> Those actually subjected to this <i>"benevolent"</i> 
dictatorship had a somewhat different perspective. Workers, in contrast, 
were perfectly aware that wage labour was wage slavery -- that they were
decidedly <b>unfree</b> during working hours and subjected to the will of
another. The workers therefore attacked capitalism precisely because it
was despotism (<i>"monarchical principles on democratic soil"</i>) and 
thought they <i>"who work in the mills ought to own them."</i> Unsurprisingly,
when workers did revolt against the benevolent despots, the workers noted
how the bosses responded by marking <i>"every person with intelligence and 
independence . . . He is a suspected individual and must be either got rid 
of or broken in. Hundreds of honest labourers have been dismissed from 
employment . . . because they have been suspected of knowing their rights 
and daring to assert them."</i> [quoted by Ware, <b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 78, p. 79
and p. 110]
</p><p>
While most working class people now are accustomed to wage labour (while often 
hating their job) the actual process of resistance to the development of 
capitalism indicates well its inherently authoritarian nature and that 
people were not inclined to accept it as "economic freedom." Only once 
other options were closed off and capitalists given an edge in the "free" 
market by state action did people accept and become accustomed to wage labour. 
As E. P. Thompson notes, for British workers at the end of the 18th and beginning of the 19th centuries, 
the <i>"gap in status between a 'servant,' a hired wage-labourer subject to the orders and 
discipline of the master, and an artisan, who might 'come and go' as he pleased, was wide
 enough for men to shed blood rather than allow themselves to be pushed from one side to 
the other. And, in the value system of the community, those who resisted degradation were 
in the right."</i> [<b>The Making of the English Working Class</b>, p. 599] 

</p><p>
Opposition to wage labour and factory fascism was/is widespread and seems
to occur wherever it is encountered. <i>"Research has shown"</i>, summarises
William Lazonick, <i>"that the 'free-born Englishman' of the eighteenth
century -- even those who, by force of circumstance, had to submit to
agricultural wage labour -- tenaciously resisted entry into the capitalist 
workshop."</i> [<b>Competitive Advantage on the Shop Floor</b>, p. 37] 
British workers shared the dislike of wage labour of their American cousins. 
A <i>"Member of the Builders' Union"</i> in the 1830s argued that the trade 
unions <i>"will not only strike for less work, and more wages, but will 
ultimately <b>abolish wages</b>, become their own masters and work for each 
other; labour and capital will no longer be separate but will be indissolubly 
joined together in the hands of workmen and work-women."</i> [quoted by
E. P. Thompson, <b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 912] This
perspective inspired the <b>Grand National Consolidated Trades Union</b> of
1834 which had the <i>"two-fold purpose of syndicalist unions -- the protection
of the workers under the existing system and the formation of the nuclei of
the future society"</i> when the unions <i>"take over the whole industry of
the country."</i> [Geoffrey Ostergaard, <B>The Tradition of Workers' Control</b>, 
p. 133] As Thompson noted, <i>"industrial syndicalism"</i> was a major theme of this
time in the labour movement. <i>"When Marx was still in his teens,"</i> he noted,
British trade unionists had <i>"developed, stage by stage, a theory of
syndicalism"</i> in which the <i>"unions themselves could solve the problem
of political power"</i> along with wage slavery. This vision was lost <i>"in
the terrible defeats of 1834 and 1835."</i> [<b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 912 and p. 913]
In France, the mutualists of Lyons had come to the same conclusions, seeking 
<i>"the formation of a series of co-operative associations"</i> which would 
<i>"return to the workers control of their industry."</i> Proudhon would take 
up this theme, as would the anarchist movement he helped create. [K. Steven 
Vincent, <b>Pierre-Jospeh Proudhon and the Rise of French Republican Socialism</b>, 
pp. 162-3] Similar movements and ideas developed elsewhere, as capitalism was
imposed (subsequent developments were obviously influenced by the socialist 
ideas which had arisen earlier and so were more obviously shaped by anarchist
and Marxist ideas).
</p><p>
This is unsurprising, the workers then, who had not been swallowed up whole by 
the industrial revolution, could make critical comparisons between the factory 
system and what preceded it. <i>"Today, we are so accustomed to this method of
production [capitalism] and its concomitant, the wage system, that it requires
quite an effort of imagination to appreciate the significance of the change in
terms of the lives of ordinary workers . . . the worker became <b>alienated</b>
. . . from the means of production and the products of his labour . . . In 
these circumstances, it is not surprising that the new socialist theories 
proposed an alternative to the capitalist system which would avoid this 
alienation."</i> While wage slavery 
may seem "natural" today, the first generation of wage labourers saw the 
transformation of the social relationships they experienced in work, from a 
situation in which they controlled their own work (and so themselves) to one 
in which <b>others</b> controlled them, and they did not like it. However, 
while many modern workers instinctively hate wage labour and having bosses, 
without the awareness of some other method of working, many put up with it as 
"inevitable." The first generation of wage labourers had the awareness of 
something else (although a flawed and limited something else as it existed 
in a hierarchical and class system) and this gave then a deep insight into 
the nature of capitalism and produced a deeply radical response to it and 
its authoritarian structures. Anarchism (like other forms of socialism) was 
born of the demand for liberty and resistance to authority which capitalism
had provoked in its wage slaves. With our support for workers' self-management
of production, <i>"as in so many others, the anarchists remain guardians of
the libertarian aspirations which moved the first rebels against the slavery
inherent in the capitalist mode of production."</i> [Ostergaard, <b>Op. Cit.</b>, p. 27
and p. 90]
</p><p>
State action was required produce and protect the momentous changes in social 
relations which are central to the capitalist system. However, once capital <b>has</b> 
separated the working class from the means of life, then it no longer had to rely 
as much on state coercion. With the choice now between wage slavery or starving, 
then the appearance of voluntary choice could be maintained as economic power 
was/is usually effective enough to ensure that state violence could be used as 
a last resort. Coercive practices are still possible, of course, but market 
forces are usually sufficient as the market is usually skewed against the working 
class. However, the role of the state remains a key to understanding capitalism 
as a system rather than just specific periods of it. This is because, as we stressed 
in <a href="secD1.html">section D.1</a>, state action is not associated only with 
the past, with the transformation from feudalism to capitalism. It happens today 
and it will continue to happen as long as capitalism continues.
</p><p>
Far from being a "natural" development, then, capitalism was imposed on 
a society by state action, by and on behalf of ruling elites. Those working
class people alive at the time viewed it as <i>"unnatural relations"</i> and 
organised to overcome it. It is from such movements that all the many forms
of socialism sprang, including anarchism. This is the case with the European 
anarchism associated with Proudhon, Bakunin and Kropotkin as well as the 
American individualist anarchism of Warren and Tucker. The links between
anarchism and working class rebellion against the autocracy of capital and
the state is reflected not only in our theory and history, but also in our 
anarchist symbols. The Black Flag, for example, was first raised by rebel
artisans in France and its association with labour insurrection was the 
reason why anarchists took it up as our symbol (see the appendix on <a href="append2.html">"The
Symbols of Anarchy"</a>). So given both the history of capitalism and anarchism,
it becomes obvious any the latter has always opposed the former. It is why
anarchists today still seek to encourage the desire and hope for political 
<b>and</b> economic freedom rather than the changing of masters we have 
under capitalism. Anarchism will continue as long as these feelings and hopes 
still exist and they will remain until such time as we organise and abolish 
capitalism and the state.
</p>

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