Das Kapital

BLOODY LEGISLATION AGAINST THE EXPROPRIATED

Economic Manuscripts: Capital Vol. I - Chapter Twenty-Eight
Karl Marx. Capital Volume One
Chapter Twenty-Eight: Bloody Legislation Against the Expropriated, from the End of the 15th Century. Forcing Down of Wages by Acts of Parliament
The proletariat created by the breaking up of the bands
of feudal retainers and by the forcible expropriation of the
people from the soil, this “free” proletariat could not
possibly be absorbed by the nascent manufactures as fast as
it was thrown upon the world. On the other hand, these men,
suddenly dragged from their wonted mode of life, could not
as suddenly adapt themselves to the discipline of their new
condition. They were turned en masse into beggars,
robbers, vagabonds, partly from inclination, in most cases
from stress of circumstances. Hence at the end of the 15th
and during the whole of the 16th century, throughout Western
Europe a bloody legislation against vagabondage. The fathers
of the present working class were chastised for their
enforced transformation into vagabonds and paupers.
Legislation treated them as “voluntary” criminals, and
assumed that it depended on their own good will to go on
working under the old conditions that no longer existed.
In England this legislation began under Henry VII.
Henry VIII. 1530: Beggars old and unable to work
receive a beggar’s licence. On the other hand, whipping and
imprisonment for sturdy vagabonds. They are to be tied to
the cart-tail and whipped until the blood streams from their
bodies, then to swear an oath to go back to their birthplace
or to where they have lived the last three years and to “put
themselves to labour.” What grim irony! In 27 Henry VIII.
the former statute is repeated, but strengthened with new
clauses. For the second arrest for vagabondage the whipping
is to be repeated and half the ear sliced off; but for the
third relapse the offender is to be executed as a hardened
criminal and enemy of the common weal.
Edward VI.: A statute of the first year of his
reign, 1547, ordains that if anyone refuses to work, he
shall be condemned as a slave to the
person who has denounced him as an
idler. The master shall feed his slave on bread and water,
weak broth and such refuse meat as he thinks fit. He has the
right to force him to do any work, no matter how disgusting,
with whip and chains. If the slave is absent a fortnight, he
is condemned to slavery for life and is to be branded on
forehead or back with the letter S; if he runs away thrice,
he is to be executed as a felon. The master can sell him,
bequeath him, let him out on hire as a slave, just as any
other personal chattel or cattle. If the slaves attempt
anything against the masters, they are also to be executed.
Justices of the peace, on information, are to hunt the
rascals down. If it happens that a vagabond has been idling
about for three days, he is to be taken to his birthplace,
branded with a red-hot iron with the letter V on the breast
and be set to work, in chains, in the
streets or at some other labour.
If the vagabond gives a
false birthplace, he is then to become the slave for life of
this place, of its inhabitants, or its corporation, and to
be branded with an S. All persons have the right to take
away the children of the vagabonds and to keep them as
apprentices, the young men until the 24th year, the girls
until the 20th. If they run away, they are to become up to
this age the slaves of their masters, who can put them in
irons, whip them, &c., if they like. Every master may
put an iron ring round the neck, arms or legs of his slave,
by which to know him more easily and to be more certain of
him. The
last part of this statute provides, that certain poor people
may be employed by a place or by persons, who are willing to
give them food and drink and to find them work. This kind of
parish slaves was kept up in England until far into the 19th
century under the name of “roundsmen.”
Elizabeth, 1572: Unlicensed beggars above 14 years
of age are to be severely flogged and branded on the left
ear unless some one will take them into service for two
years; in case of a repetition of the offence, if they are
over 18, they are to be executed, unless some one will take
them into service for two years; but for the third offence
they are to be executed without mercy as felons. Similar
statutes: 18 Elizabeth, c. 13, and another of 1597.

James 1: Any one wandering
about and begging is declared a rogue and a vagabond.
Justices of the peace in petty sessions are authorised to
have them publicly whipped and for the first offence to
imprison them for 6 months, for the second for 2 years.
Whilst in prison they are to be whipped as much and as often
as the justices of the peace think fit... Incorrigible and
dangerous rogues are to be branded with an R on the left
shoulder and set to hard labour, and if they are caught
begging again, to be executed without mercy. These statutes,
legally binding until the beginning of the 18th century,
were only repealed by 12 Anne, c. 23.
Similar laws in France, where by the middle of the 17th
century a kingdom of vagabonds (truands) was established in
Paris. Even at the beginning of Louis XVI.’s reign
(Ordinance of July 13th, 1777) every man in good health from
16 to 60 years of age, if without means of subsistence and
not practising a trade, is to be sent to the galleys. Of the
same nature are the statute of Charles V. for the
Netherlands (October, 1537), the first edict of the States
and Towns of Holland (March 10, 1614), the “Plakaat” of the
United Provinces (June 26, 1649), &c.
Thus were the agricultural people, first forcibly
expropriated from the soil, driven from their homes, turned
into vagabonds, and then whipped, branded, tortured by laws
grotesquely terrible, into the discipline necessary for the
wage system.
It is not enough that the conditions of labour are
concentrated in a mass, in the shape of capital, at the one
pole of society, while at the
other are grouped masses of men,
who have nothing to sell but their labour-power. Neither is
it enough that they are compelled to sell it voluntarily.
The advance of capitalist production develops a
working class, which by education, tradition, habit, looks
upon the conditions of that mode of production as
self-evident laws of Nature. The organisation of the
capitalist process of production, once fully developed,
breaks down all resistance. The constant generation of a
relative surplus-population keeps the law of supply and
demand of labour, and therefore keeps wages, in a rut that
corresponds with the wants of capital. The dull compulsion
of economic relations completes the subjection of the
labourer to the capitalist. Direct force, outside economic
conditions, is of course still used, but only exceptionally.
In the ordinary run of things, the labourer can be left to
the “natural laws of production,” i.e., to his
dependence on capital, a dependence springing from, and
guaranteed in perpetuity by, the conditions of production
themselves. It is otherwise during the historic genesis
of capitalist production. The bourgeoisie, at its rise,
wants and uses the power of the state to “regulate” wages,
i.e., to force them within the limits suitable for
surplus-value making, to lengthen the working-day and to
keep the labourer himself in the normal degree of
dependence. This is an essential element of the so-called
primitive accumulation.
The class of wage labourers, which arose in the latter
half of the 14th century, formed then and in the following
century only a very small part of the population, well
protected in its position by the independent peasant
proprietary in the country and the guild-organisation in the
town. In country and town master and workmen stood close
together socially. The subordination of labour to capital
was only formal — i.e., the mode of
production itself had as yet no specific capitalistic
character. Variable capital preponderated greatly over
constant. The demand for wage labour grew, therefore,
rapidly with every accumulation of capital, whilst the
supply of wage labour followed but slowly. A large part of
the national product, changed later into a fund of
capitalist accumulation, then still entered into the
consumption-fund of the labourer.
Legislation on wage labour (from the first, aimed at the
exploitation of the labourer and, as it advanced, always
equally hostile to him),
is started in England by the
Statute of Labourers, of Edward III., 1349. The ordinance
of 1350 in France, issued in the name of King John,
corresponds with it. English and French legislation run
parallel and are identical in
purport. So far as the labour-statutes aim at compulsory
extension of the working-day, I do not return to them, as
this point was treated earlier (Chap. X., Section 5).
The Statute of Labourers was passed at the urgent
instance of the House of Commons. A Tory says naively:
“Formerly the poor demanded such high wages as to
threaten industry and wealth. Next, their wages are so
low as to threaten industry and wealth equally and
perhaps more, but in another way.”
A tariff of wages was fixed by
law for town and country, for piece-work and day-work. The
agricultural labourers were to hire themselves out by the
year, the town ones “in open market.” It was forbidden,
under pain of imprisonment, to pay higher wages than those
fixed by the statute, but the taking of higher wages was
more severely punished than the giving them. [So also in
Sections 18 and 19 of the Statute of Apprentices of
Elizabeth, ten days’ imprisonment is decreed for him that
pays the higher wages, but twenty-one days for him that
receives them.] A statute of 1360 increased the penalties
and authorised the masters to extort labour at the legal
rate of wages by corporal punishment. All combinations,
contracts, oaths, &c., by which masons and carpenters
reciprocally bound themselves, were declared null and void.
Coalition of the labourers is treated as a heinous crime
from the 14th century to 1825, the year of the repeal of the
laws against Trades’ Unions. The spirit of the Statute of
Labourers of 1349 and of its offshoots comes out clearly in
the fact, that indeed a maximum of wages is dictated by the
State, but on no account a minimum.
In the 16th century, the condition of the labourers had,
as we know, become much worse. The money wage rose, but not
in proportion to the depreciation of money and the
corresponding rise in the prices of commodities. Wages,
therefore, in reality fell. Nevertheless, the laws for
keeping them down remained in force, together with the
ear-clipping and branding of those “whom no one was willing
to take into service.” By the Statute of Apprentices 5
Elizabeth, c. 3, the justices of the peace were empowered to
fix certain wages and to modify them according to the time
of the year and the price of commodities. James I. extended
these regulations of labour also to weavers, spinners, and
all possible categories of workers. George II. extended the laws
against coalitions of labourers to
manufactures. In the manufacturing period par
excellence, the capitalist mode of production had
become sufficiently strong to render legal regulation of
wages as impracticable as it was unnecessary; but the ruling
classes were unwilling in case of necessity to be without
the weapons of the old arsenal. Still, 8 George II. forbade
a higher day’s wage than 2s. 7½d. for journeymen tailors
in and around London, except in cases of general mourning;
still, 13 George III., c. 68, gave the regulation of the
wages of silk-weavers to the justices of the peace; still,
in 1706, it required two judgments of the higher courts to
decide, whether the mandates of justices of the peace as to
wages held good also for non-agricultural labourers; still,
in 1799, an act of Parliament ordered that the wages of the
Scotch miners should continue to be regulated by a statute
of Elizabeth and two Scotch acts of 1661 and 1671. How
completely in the meantime circumstances had changed, is
proved by an occurrence unheard-of before in the English
Lower House. In that place, where for more than 400 years
laws had been made for the maximum, beyond which wages
absolutely must not rise, Whitbread in 1796 proposed a legal
minimum wage for agricultural labourers. Pitt opposed this,
but confessed that the “condition of the poor was cruel.”
Finally, in 1813, the laws for the regulation of wages were
repealed. They were an absurd anomaly, since the capitalist
regulated his factory by his private legislation, and could
by the poor-rates make up the wage of the agricultural
labourer to the indispensable minimum. The provisions of the
labour statutes as to contracts between master and workman,
as to giving notice and the like, which only allow of a
civil action against the contract-breaking master, but on
the contrary permit a criminal action against the
contract-breaking workman, are to this hour (1873) in full
force. The barbarous laws against Trades’ Unions fell in
1825 before the threatening bearing of the proletariat.
Despite this, they fell only in part. Certain beautiful
fragments of the old statute vanished only in 1859. Finally,
the act of Parliament of June 29, 1871, made a pretence of
removing the last traces of this class of
legislation by legal recognition of
Trades’ Unions. But an act of Parliament of the same date
(an act to amend the criminal law relating to violence,
threats, and molestation), re-established, in point of fact,
the former state of things in a new shape. By this
Parliamentary escamotage the means which the labourers could
use in a strike or lock-out were withdrawn from the laws
common to all citizens, and placed under exceptional penal
legislation, the interpretation of which fell to the masters
themselves in their capacity as justices of the peace. Two
years earlier, the same House of Commons and the same Mr.
Gladstone in the well-known straightforward fashion brought
in a bill for the abolition of all exceptional penal
legislation against the working class. But this was never
allowed to go beyond the second reading, and the matter was
thus protracted until at last the “great Liberal party,” by
an alliance with the Tories, found courage to turn against
the very proletariat that had carried it into power. Not
content with this treachery, the “great Liberal party”
allowed the English judges, ever complaisant in the service
of the ruling classes, to dig up again the earlier laws
against “conspiracy,” and to apply them to coalitions of
labourers. We see that only against its will and under the
pressure of the masses did the English Parliament give up
the laws against Strikes and Trades’ Unions, after it had
itself, for 500 years, held, with shameless egoism, the
position of a permanent Trades’ Union of the capitalists
against the labourers.
During the very first storms of the revolution, the
French bourgeoisie dared to take away from the workers the
right of association but just acquired. By a decree of June
14, 1791, they declared all coalition of the workers as “an
attempt against liberty and the declaration of the rights of
man,” punishable by a fine of 500 livres, together with
deprivation of the rights of an active citizen for one year.
This law
which, by means of State compulsion, confined the struggle
between capital and labour within limits comfortable for
capital, has outlived revolutions and changes of dynasties.
Even the Reign of Terror left it untouched. It was but quite
recently struck out of the Penal Code. Nothing is more
characteristic than the pretext for this bourgeois coup
d’état. “Granting,” says Chapelier, the reporter
of the Select Committee on this law, “that wages ought to be
a little higher than they are, ... that
they ought to be high enough for
him that receives them, to be free from that state of
absolute dependence due to the want of the necessaries of
life, and which is almost that of slavery,” yet the workers
must not be allowed to come to any understanding about their
own interests, nor to act in common and thereby lessen their
“absolute dependence, which is almost that of slavery;”
because, forsooth, in doing this they injure “the freedom of
their cidevant masters, the present entrepreneurs,” and
because a coalition against the despotism of the quondam
masters of the corporations is — guess what! —
is a restoration of the corporations abolished by the French
constitution.
Footnotes
1. The author of the
“Essay on Trade, etc.,” 1770, says, “In the reign of Edward
VI. indeed the English seem to have set, in good earnest,
about encouraging manufactures and employing the poor. This
we learn from a remarkable statute which runs thus: ‘That
all vagrants shall be branded, &c.’” l. c., p. 5.
2. Thomas More says in
his “Utopia": “Therfore that on covetous and unsatiable
cormaraunte and very plage of his native contrey maye
compasse aboute and inclose many thousand akers of grounde
together within one pale or hedge, the husbandman be thrust
owte of their owne, or els either by coneyne and fraude, or
by violent oppression they be put besydes it, or by wrongs
and iniuries thei be so weried that they be compelled to
sell all: by one meanes, therfore, or by other, either by
hooke or crooke they muste needes departe awaye, poore,
selye, wretched soules, men, women, husbands, wiues,
fatherlesse children, widowes, wofull mothers with their
yonge babes, and their whole household smal in substance,
and muche in numbre, as husbandrye requireth many handes.
Awaye thei trudge, I say, owte of their knowen accustomed
houses, fyndynge no place to reste in. All their housholde
stuffe, which is very little woorthe, thoughe it might well
abide the sale: yet beeynge sodainely thruste owte, they be
constrayned to sell it for a thing of nought. And when they
haue wandered abrode tyll that be spent, what cant they then
els doe but steale, and then iustly pardy be hanged, or els
go about beggyng. And yet then also they be caste in prison
as vagaboundes, because they go aboute and worke not: whom
no man wyl set a worke though thei neuer so willyngly profre
themselues therto.” Of these poor fugitives of whom Thomas
More says that they were forced to thieve, “7,200 great and
petty thieves were put to death,” in the reign of Henry
VIII. (Holinshed, “Description of England,” Vol. 1, p.
186.) In Elizabeth’s time, “rogues were trussed up apace,
and that there was not one year commonly wherein three or
four hundred were not devoured and eaten up by the
gallowes.” (Strype’s “Annals of the Reformation and
Establishment of Religion and other Various Occurrences in
the Church of England during Queen Elizabeth’s Happy Reign.”
Second ed., 1725, Vol. 2.) According to this same Strype, in
Somersetshire, in one year, 40 persons were executed, 35
robbers burnt in the hand, 37 whipped, and 183 discharged as
“incorrigible vagabonds.” Nevertheless, he is of opinion
that this large number of prisoners does not comprise even a
fifth of the actual criminals, thanks to the negligence of
the justices and the foolish compassion of the people; and
the other counties of England were not better off in this
respect than Somersetshire, while some were even worse.
3. “Whenever the
legislature attempts to regulate the differences between
masters and their workmen, its counsellors are always the
masters,” says A. Smith. “L’esprit des lois, c’est la
propriété,” says Linguet.
4. “Sophisms of Free
Trade.” By a Barrister. Lond., 1850, p. 206. He adds
maliciously: “We were ready enough to interfere for the
employer, can nothing now be done for the employed?”
5. From a clause of
Statute 2 James I., c. 6, we see that certain clothmakers
took upon themselves to dictate, in their capacity of
justices of the peace, the official tariff of wages in their
own shops. In Germany, especially after the Thirty Years’
War, statutes for keeping down wages were general. “The want
of servants and labourers was very troublesome to the landed
proprietors in the depopulated districts. All villagers were
forbidden to let rooms to single men and women; all the
latter were to be reported to the authorities and cast into
prison if they were unwilling to become servants, even if
they were employed at any other work, such as sowing seeds
for the peasants at a daily wage, or even buying and selling
corn. (Imperial privileges and sanctions for Silesia, I.,
25.) For a whole century in the decrees of the small German
potentates a bitter cry goes up again and again about the
wicked and impertinent rabble that will not reconcile itself
to its hard lot, will not be content with the legal wage;
the individual landed proprietors are forbidden to pay more
than the State had fixed by a tariff. And yet the conditions
of service were at times better after war than 100 years
later; the farm servants of Silesia had, in 1652, meat twice
a week, whilst even in our century, districts are known
where they have it only three times a year. Further, wages
after the war were higher than in the following century.”
(G. Freytag.)
6. Article I. of this
law runs: “L’anéantissement de toute
espèce de corporations du même état et
profession étant l’une des bases fondamentales
de la constitution française, il est défendu
de les rétablir de fait sous quelque prétexte
et sous quelque forme que ce soit.” Article IV. declares,
that if “des citoyens attachés aux mêmes
professions, arts et métiers prenaient des
délibérations, faisaient entre eux des
conventions tendantes à refuser de concert ou
à n’accorder qu’à un prix
déterminé le secours de leur industrie ou de
leurs travaux, les dites délibérations et
conventions... seront déclarées
inconstitutionnelles, attentatoires à la
liberté et à la declaration des droits de
l’homme, &c.;” felony, therefore, as in the old
labour-statutes. [As the abolition of any form of association between citizens of the same estate and profession is one of the foundations of the French constitution, it is forbidden to re-establish them under any pretext or in any form, whatever they might be. ... citizens belonging to the same profession, craft or trade have joint discussions and make joint decisions with the intention of refusing together to perform their trade or insisting together on providing the services of their trade or their labours only at a particular price, then the said deliberations and agreements ... shall be declared unconstitutional, derogatory to liberty and the declaration of the rights of man, etc.] (“Révolutions de Paris,” Paris,
1791, t. III, p. 523.)
7. Buchez et Roux:
“Histoire Parlementaire,” t. x., p. 195.
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