We Was Robbed

The modern British working class came into existence as the result of a piece of common thievery, and violence. From the 15th century on Landlords had been stealing land from the peasants, but that theft took on a qualitatively different aspect with the general Enclosure Act of 1801. In fact what was enclosed was not just Common Land, but the land actually owned individually by the peasants, the open strip farms. What took place through the Enclosure Acts was just a legalised version of the theft of peasants’ land that had been going on piecemeal for nearly three hundred years. It was the biggest act of robbery ever perpetrated, and without it capitalism would not have been possible.

Over the last couple of years, I have been engaged in debates with US Libertarians whose economics and politics are derived from the likes of Von Mises and Hayek. A central theme is, “You socialists simply want to steal other people’s property.” Of course, in a sense, that is true. We want to expropriate the property in the form of means of production, which workers need in order to work and to create a better society, and which a tiny minority of the population have monopolised for themselves, in order that they can live lavishly off the backs of the work of others. As far as I am aware, few socialists have much interest in the other forms of wealth, of the rich, such as works of art. As far as I am concerned, they can keep them. But, this act of expropriation of the means of production, currently in the hands of the capitalist class is, of course,, not an act of theft such as that committed by a bank robber or burglar. It is the act of the householder who seeing the goods that were previously stolen from him/her shortcuts the legal process, by taking them back. It is the expropriation of the expropriators. We normally, think of that in terms of the labour-power capitalists steal from workers on a daily basis, and indeed that now over two hundred years of capitalism proper amounts to an immense sum, but that daily theft of workers’ labour would not have been possible without the huge almost single act of robbery committed against the peasants.

I think the story of that theft should be told.

The ideologists of Capital paint a picture of a world in which Labour and Capital contract on equal terms, where there is no difference between the individual worker and the individual capitalist engaged in this transaction, both are equal owners of commodities that they bring to market. In this supposed world all individuals are the same. They paint a picture in which workers gladly gave up their own means of production and “rushed” to the towns so that they could be exploited by capitalists. The historical record proves otherwise. A few historical facts will demonstrate.

It is useful to note the actual progress of the relationship between labour and capital in Britain, and to note the consequences of this for the Liberty of the individual worker.

Capital first begins to make its appearance in Britain during the 14th century though on a small scale, primarily in relation to agricultural labour. During this time the majority of the population were peasants. In other words, they were people who owned their own plot of land, which they farmed with their family and were self-sufficient. Typically, the peasant household would also produce its own clothes by spinning and weaving. The extent to which it needed to trade any of what it produced for other goods was very minimal. The existence of common land meant that even the landless labourer had some means of subsistence other than relying on working for someone else. This had already placed a minimum level under which the labourers were not prepared to sell their labour-power. The Great Plague decimated the population causing an even greater shortage of labour. Marx in Capital quotes a Tory writer detailing the times who writes in his “Sophisms of Free Trade” 1850 “The difficulty of getting men to work on reasonable terms (i.e. at a price that enabled their employer to extract surplus value AB) grew to such a height as to be quite intolerable” (p253).

What was the response to this intolerable shortage that resulted in workers being prepared only to work 4 days a week, during which time they could earn enough to live? The response was the “Statute of Labourers” brought in by Edward III in 1349 on behalf of the employers. Not only did it fix wages at a “reasonable” level i.e. reduced them, but it also introduced limits to the working day. Not maximum limits, but MINIMUM limits that the worker had to work. This latter minimum number of hours that workers had to endure was repeated in the Statute of 1496 brought in by Henry VII. Indeed as the previous Tory writes “Acts of Parliament regulating wages, but against the labourer and in favour of the master, lasted for the long period of 464 years.” Why were they abandoned, consideration for the welfare of the worker, maybe? Not a bit of it. “Population grew. These laws were then found, and really became, unnecessary and burdensome.” (ibid p206).

It is interesting to note though the minimum duration set in 1496 compared with the more enlightened time of the 19th century, the period of Libertarian free market capitalism most admired by our capitalist apologists. In 1496 the statute set the working day to be from 5 in the morning until 7 in the evening during summer and until dark in the winter. However, out of this 14 hour day the worker was entitled to breaks, 1 hour for breakfast, 1 ½ hours for dinner, and ½ hour for “noon-meate”. These break times amounted to twice the break times that had to be introduced by law with the Factory Acts of the 19th century to try to improve the condition of workers by setting minimum standards. I will come back to the comparison of the actual length of the working day later. In fact the MINIMUM working day could not be enforced, and the actual condition of the workers was much better than would appear from the Statute. The father of Political Economy William Petty relates that, “Labouring-men (he means field labourers) work 10 hours per diem, and make 20 meals per week, viz., 3 a day for working days and 2 on Sundays.” (W. Petty. “Political Anatomy of Ireland, Verbum Sapienti,” 1672 p10) As Marx points out, Petty was describing the situation here as late as the last third of the 17th century.

Even during the greater part of the 18th century, when the majority of the population were still peasants, those few who had to sell their labour-power still were in a privileged position compared to those that came after them once capitalism proper began. Apart from the agricultural labourers, capital was unable to capture a full week’s work from the worker in return for his wage. The fact that they could live for a whole week on the wage of four days, did not appear to the labourers a sufficient reason that they should work the other two days for the capitalist.

What was the reaction of the capitalists and their apologists to this situation? The anonymous author of “An Essay on Trade and Commerce, containing Observations on Taxes etc.” 1770, comments, ”That mankind in general are naturally inclined to ease and indolence, we fatally experience to be true, from the conduct of our manufacturing populace, who do not labour, upon an average, above four days in a week, unless provisions happen to be very dear.”

He goes on demonstrating the link between this ability of the worker to work only that time he finds necessary to his Liberty.

“But our populace have adopted a notion, that as Englishmen they enjoy a birthright privilege of being more free and independent than in any country in Europe. (Such notions he can never support amongst the workers in practice) …The labouring people should never think themselves independent of their superiors… It is extremely dangerous to encourage mobs in a commercial state like ours, where perhaps seven parts out of 8 of the whole, are people of little or no property. The cure will not be perfect, till our manufacturing poor are contented to labour six days for the same sum which they now earn in four days.”

His solution was to increase the price of workers necessaries so that they had to work longer in order to live. The actual solution for the capitalists was to expropriate the peasants through the Enclosure Acts depriving them of their means of existence and thereby creating a large surplus population, which now had to sell its labour power in order to live.

From the 15th century the landed aristocracy had been thieving land from the peasants piecemeal. There was nothing subtle about it, they just used their power, prestige and brute force to steal the land. Various governmental decrees and laws were passed against the practice, but it was never likely that a state dominated by the landed aristocracy was going to ever take serious action against members of its own class. From the middle of the 15th century when the price of wool increased the process speeded up even more, as people were thrown off their land in order to make way for sheep. But even this was small beer compared to the wholesale theft of peasant lands that was to take place later.

Both in England and most of Europe even up to the end of the 18th century the vast majority of the population were employed on the land. Most were peasants. Life was based around the village, which acted in many ways like a commune. Peasant land was divided into strips of arable land (hence the term strip farming). In order that each peasant could access his particular strip, pieces of land separated each strip. In addition to the strips, large areas of common land were the collective property of the village, and could be used by all the villagers, including those with no individual land of their own, on which to keep their horses, cattle, sheep etc., and from which they also collected wood, which formed the main source of fuel. It was a pretty inefficient means of farming. When the revolution in farming methods got underway, this method of farming was no longer sustainable. The rotation of crops, the use of agricultural equipment, the introduction of improved methods of drainage, and the need to keep cattle and other animals off this land meant that what was needed was large enclosed fields.

Now this could have been accomplished in the way socialists put forward to peasants in similar situations today, through them giving up their own individual ownership and pooling their resources into a collective farm. But another change was taking place just as in industry the individual craftsman was being replaced by small scale capitalists who put work out to workers, so capitalist farmers were entering agriculture, and employing wage labour there. As early as 1724, Daniel Defoe had noted that, on estates near London, families of local gentry were being displaced by families enriched in business; and Cobbett, thee writer who admired Squire Coke of Holkham, felt very differently about the people from London whome he termed “the Squires of Change Alley”. Parliament passed a series of so called Enclosure Acts. A few such Acts had been obtained under Queen Anne and George I, and over two hundred during George II’s reign, but even at the accession of George III in 1760, the open field system still existed in half the counties of England mostly in the Eastern counties bounded by the east Riding in Yorkshire, Norfolk, and Wiltshire. During George II’s reign some 3,200 Enclosure Acts were obtained including in 1801 a General Enclosure Act, which simplified the procedure.

On the face of it these Acts seemed fair. Land in a village was supposed to be the subject of Enclosure only if the owners of four-fifths of the area of property to be enclosed were in favour. But there was an in built problem here for the small peasant. The landed aristocracy were the biggest owners of landed property and, depending upon how the boundaries of the land to be enclosed were drawn, their individual land ownership could of itself ensure that the figure of four-fifths was achieved. In addition the increase in he number of capitalist farmers previously mentioned, meant that these new elements whose capitalistic methods of farming were only possible on large enclosed fields were bound to vote for Enclosure, and they themselves had larger areas of land ownership than the average peasant because it had been bought from the former squirearchy whose economic fortunes had been in decline. As many of the landlords were themselves suffering financially it was in their interest to have the land enclosed, in order to rent it out to capitalist farmers who would pay more rent. Secondly, in order to have a vote, it was necessary to prove that you were, in fact, a land owner. Most of the small peasant farms had passed down through generations of the peasant’s family, and no written documentation existed to prove such ownership. This was not just a problem at this stage, but at a later stage when, after Enclosure and the replacement of the old strip of land, a new enclosed field was to be allotted. If you could not prove ownership, you got no new allocation. Moreover, in many cases even where peasants did produce title deeds to their land, they were simply torn up, so that no proof existed, and the landlord then appropriated the land.

Even if these hurdles were overcome, the small peasant farmer was at a massive disadvantage. The compact piece of land he received after Enclosure had to compensate him not just for his arable strip, but also for his former use of the common land, which was now appropriated by the landlord. Not only did he lose the use of this land (which he like the other villagers had previously owned collectively) on which to graze his cattle, etc., but he also lost his source of fuel. Once an Enclosure Act had been passed, the Government sent in Commissioners to undertake the process. Of course, who were these Commissioners, ordinary peasants? Not on your life. There were normally three of them, and they were peers, gentlemen, clergymen, or farmers. And of course their fees and travelling expenses (which, with repeated trips back to London, were considerable given the cost of transport at the time) had to be paid, and this cost fell far more heavily in proportion on the pockets of the peasant than it did on the large landowner. Nor did the cost end there. The hedges or fences were also inordinately expensive for the peasant, as was the cost of the award, which had to be paid by each person who benefited.
Even Arthur Young, who had for years advocated enclosure, was forced to acknowledge the “knavery of commissioners and attorneys” acting under the Enclosure Acts, and stated that “by nineteen out of twenty Enclosure Acts the poor are injured, and most grossly.” Oliver Goldsmith in his poem, The Deserted Village, lamented,

A bold peasantry, their country’s pride,
When once destroyed can never be supplied.

Those that managed to hang on soon found that their other means of livelihood was soon removed. Factory-produced goods soon replaced hand spinning and other crafts. In addition, new Game Laws were introduced that were extremely harsh. Where once the common land was a free source of food, in the form of game, these new laws meant that the penalty, for example, of being found, on open land, with nets for rabbiting, was seven years transportation. But, the greatest crime was the actual theft of the peasants’ land, which the Enclosure Acts themselves constituted.

Some small freeholders, who had been the most independent type of yeoman because being owners of their land they need obey no squire, kept their farms as long as prices were high, but at the end of the French Wars at the beginning of the 19th century many of these too had to sell up and move to the towns as agricultural prices fell.

A similar process occurred in France, Belgium, and western Germany during the 17th and 18th centuries.

Marx gives the following account of the process in Scotland. In Scotland, the people were organised in clans. All property belonged collectively to the clan. This particular example relates to the Duchess of Sutherland, but is typical. In the 18th century the hunted out Gaels were forbidden from emigrating in order to drive them by force into Glasgow and other manufacturing towns. As a result of earlier clearances, i.e. forcible removal of families from their Highland properties, the population of the Duchesses land had been reduced to 15,000, and most of the land turned over to sheep. From 1814 to 1820, these remaining inhabitants, about 3,000 families were systematically hunted and rooted out. All their villages were destroyed and burnt, all their fields turned to pasture. British soldiers enforced the eviction and fighting broke out with the inhabitants. One old woman was burned alive in her house, which she refused to leave. All in all, the Duchess expropriated clan land, that had belonged since time immemorial to the members of the clan, to the extent of 794,000 acres. True, she did assign a measly 6,000 acres of sea shore to those expelled, but only after she had fixed a rent of 2s. 6d. per acre on it. Even then, when the industrious highlanders managed to begin making money from this seashore, through fishing, they found even this taken from them, and the land was let to London fishmongers.

The following comment is made by James Connolly in respect of Ireland.

“The Catholic gentlemen and nobles who had the leadership of the people of Ireland at the time were, one and all, men who possessed considerable property in the country, property to which they had, notwithstanding their Catholicity, no more right to title than the merest Cromwellian or Williamite adventurer. The lands they held were lands, which in former times belonged to the Irish people – in other words, they were tribe-lands. As such, the peasantry – then reduced to the position of mere tenants at will – were the rightful owners of the soil, while the Jacobite chivalry of King James were either the descendants of men who had taken sides with the oppressor against their own countrymen and were allowed to retain their property as the fruits of treason; or finally, of men who had consented to seek from the English Government for a grant giving them a personal title to the lands of their clansmen.” (James Connolly “Labour in Irish History” p7) In other words In Ireland as in Scotland the basic organisation of society had been the clan, and land was owned collectively by the clan. This clan ownership continued until around 300 years ago in many cases, but its dissolution was not an act of collective agreement by the members of the clan. As in Scotland individuals that associated themselves with the British Crown and Government stole this land, and laid individual private claim to it, backed up by the might and power of the British state.

In “The 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte” Marx sets out how under the first Bonaparte the peasants were transformed “from semi-villeins into freeholders.” However, during the 19th century the peasants were pauperised, thrown off their land and turned into wageworkers.

“But in the course of the nineteenth century the feudal lords were replaced by urban usurers; the feudal obligation that went with the land was replaced by the mortgage; aristocratic landed property was replaced by bourgeois capital. The small holding of the peasant is now only the pretext that allows the capitalist to draw profits, interest and rent from the soil, whilst leaving the tiller of the soil himself to see how he can extract his wages.”

“Sixteen million peasants (including women and children dwell in hovels.”

“Besides the mortgage which capital imposes on it, the small holding is burdened with taxes.”

The peasant then that had initially benefited from the distribution of the land as a result of the Great Revolution found that having been encouraged to borrow heavily at low interest rates, was crippled as these rates increased. At the same time he was forced to sell his products rather than feed himself, in order to raise the money to pay the heavy increased tax burden placed upon him. Worse still, increased agricultural production resulted in lower prices. Even where the peasant was not turned into a landless labourer as most had been in Britain, he found himself no more than a worker on his own farm working to meet the payments of interest, rent and taxes to the capitalists and their government.

To illustrate just how the emergence of capitalism required it to force free men to become wageworkers in its service let me give just a few examples. Consequent upon the beginning of the expropriation of land from the peasants, and those, for example, of the permanent tenants of monastic land disbanded under the Reformation a number of laws were introduced to ensure those set free were forced into work as well as the Labour Statutes before mentioned which set maximum wages and minimum hours of work.

Marx details them in Capital. A Statute of 1530 permitted beggars to be whipped until they bled, on the second occasion to have half their ear cut off too, and for a third offence death. These were people who had been made beggars by having their land taken from them. The idea was to force them to work. A Statute of 1547 ordained that anyone refusing to work be made a slave of the person who denounced them. If they run away they are branded a slave for life literally by having an S branded on their forehead or back. Every master has the right to put an iron ring around the neck of the slave. The latter part of this Statute remained in place until well into the 19th century, the slaves kept within it were known as “roundsmen”.

Such was capitalism’s contribution to Liberty. Such were the methods it required to force people to work for it in order to produce the profits which in turn were turned into capital the better to enslave the future generations of workers even if the chains that bind them have the glister of gold, and have been slackened somewhat.

Given the problems outlined previously of capitalists being able to secure enough workers to work at wages that guaranteed them a profit this theft of the peasants land and property was just what they needed. As long as the peasants had their own means of production, and could furnish their own livelihood, there was no reason to work for someone else. Indeed, from more recent studies of peasant life we know that life, for the average peasant, was not that bad. They worked far fewer hours than factory workers, their diet was far and away superior, they were in fact better educated in most cases than we previously believed, and all of this was reflected in the fact that there average life expectancy was much better, approximately double, that of the average industrial worker of the 19th century. This was even true of the landless labourers.

The degree to which the workers were better off even in the 15th century compared to the 19th century is given by J. Wade in his “History of the Middle and Working Classes he remarks “From the statement above (i.e. in relation to the Statute) it appears that in 1496 the diet was considered equivalent to one third of the income of an artificer and one half the income of a labourer, which indicates a greater degree of independence among the working classes than prevails at present; for the board both of labourers and artificers, would now be reckoned at a much higher proportion of their wages.” (Pp 24,25, and 577)

So despite the vast increase in productive capacity brought about in the intervening 450 years the condition of the workers was worse in 1850 than it had been in 1496. This does not even take into consideration the disadvantaged position that these workers were in, during the whole of that period, compared to the peasants who owned their own means of production and were able to choose their own hours of work, whose minimum was only that which they required to meet their needs. Even as late as the middle of the 18th century, the average working day for an average adult artisan such as a blacksmith was no more than 10 hours, almost half that for workers during the 19th century.

But even with the huge flood of workers now sent to the towns after having their land stolen from them the new capitalist firms still could not get enough labour. As the peasants were expropriated and a growing number of landless labourers and paupers were created, Britain created its own version of the slave trade that was being carried on within the borders of the US at the time. People forced into the Poor Houses were gathered together and put on canal boats having been sold by the Poor Houses to the textile manufacturers in Manchester who could not recruit enough workers. This speech by a Member of Parliament gives a flavour of the time.

“This system had grown up unto a regular trade. This House will hardly believe it, but I tell them, that this traffic in human flesh was as well kept up, they were in effect as regularly sold to the (Manchester) manufacturers as slaves are sold to the cotton grower in the United States…. In 1860, the cotton trade was at its zenith…. The manufacturers again found that they were short of hands…. They applied to the ‘flesh agents’ as they are called. Those agents sent to the Southern downs of England, to the pastures of Dorsetshire, to the glades of Devonshire, to the people tending kine in Wiltshire, but they sought in vain. The surplus population was ‘absorbed’.” (Ferrand’s speech in the House of Commons 27th April 1863.)

This last reference to “absorbed” relates to comments made by the cotton manufacturers in 1834. Ferrand in his speech gives details of the way in which the intolerable conditions of the workers was affecting their life expectancy. He commented,

“The cotton trade has existed for ninety years…It has existed for three generations of the English race, and I believe I may safely say that during that period it has destroyed nine generations of factory operatives.” (ibid.)

Faced with this shortage of labour the manufacturers had applied to the Poor Law Commissioners that they should send the “surplus population” to them with the explanation that they would “absorb and use it up” to use their own words. Hence Ferrand’s reference.

It should be remembered that this was in the mid 19th century, the height of the age of Free Trade and Libertarianism, the golden era that the capitalist apologists of free markets hark back to. MP’s like Ferrand were certainly no socialists. But, the devastation that capitalism was wreaking on the population, in a period of just 90 years, was so great that even enlightened capitalists and their representatives were appalled at what happens when you let free market forces and laissez-faire run riot as the free marketeers would have us do.

This fact is shown by the actions of capitalists like Josiah Wedgwood, and his analysis alongside those of his fellow manufacturers is illustrative. The condition of the Staffordshire potters was appalling. The life expectancy had been slashed, and disease was rampant amongst them. Had it not been for the intermarrying of the potters in North Staffordshire with members of the surrounding rural population the population of North Staffordshire would have died out. Faced with these circumstances, as much out of self-interest as anything else, (though Wedgwood having himself been originally a working man had some social conscience) they resolved to act. In 1863 26 firms owning extensive potbanks in Staffordshire, including Wedgwood, petitioned the government for legislative action to limit working time. Not now to set a minimum working day, but to set a maximum working day. And why did they need such legislation rather than voluntary agreement.

“Much as we deplore the evils before mentioned, (i.e. the length of the working day and poor conditions) it would not be possible to prevent them by any scheme of agreement between the manufacturers…Taking all these points into consideration, we have come to the conviction that some legislative enactment is wanted.” (Children’s Employment Commission Report 1. 1863 p 322)

The reason no voluntary agreement could be reached was precisely because free market competition would force each to cheat in order to gain an advantage. An example of this was given amongst manufacturers in Blackburn shortly afterwards. Faced with a high price of cotton the manufacturers introduced by mutual consent a shorter working week. But the wealthier manufacturers cheated on the agreement in order to make more profits at the expense of the smaller capitalists. The response was that the small capitalists urged their workers to demonstrate and agitate for the 9 hours system and promised money to them to assist in this effort.

It was with this backdrop that the Factory Acts and the Ten Hours Bill were eventually introduced, though in many cases employers simply ignored them. Exactly, how much of an improvement did these Acts offer the working class.

The Tory referred to earlier who wanted to force the workers to work longer by increasing the cost of their subsistence also had another solution. He proposed that those that become dependent on the public should be shut up in an “ideal workhouse”. This workhouse was to be a “House of Terror” where “the poor shall work 14 hours in a day, allowing proper time for meals, in such a manner that there shall remain 12 hours of neat labour.”

This was written in 1770, and yet, this “House of Terror”, reserved only for the poor who had become dependent, would just a few short years thereafter have seemed a paradise compared to the conditions of the ordinary factory worker, whose normal working day, even for children, was 18 hours, and where the capitalist regularly shortened the time allotted for meal breaks, insisted that workers ate while they worked at their machines, and demanded that workers set up the machines in their own time before the start of the work day, and cleaned them off after the end of the work day i.e. in what was supposed to be their own time. And read any of the Factory Inspectors or Health Commissioners Reports of the time, and you will see where children (who were employed as early as 7 years old) regularly worked in heavy industries like iron works for 30 hours in one go, with just a few hours rest before they began another “working day.”

But it was not just in England that this situation prevailed. Even as late as the middle of the 18th century the average working day for an average adult artisan such as a blacksmith was no more than 10 hours. Yet we see for children in the US legislation to limit their hours.

“No child under 12 years of age shall be employed in any manufacturing establishment more than 10 hours in one day.” General Statutes of Massachusetts, 63 ch 12. (The various statutes were passed between 1836 and 1858.)

A similar restriction to a 10 hour day 60 hour week for children under 10 was also introduced in New Jersey in 1851, and in Rhode Island children between 12 and 15 were restricted to an 11 hour day in 1857.

Not content with having stolen their land and means of production in order to turn them into workers forced to work in the most appalling conditions, the capitalists ensured that the law enabled them to squeeze the maximum out of the workers once they had been forced to sell their labour-power. Take, for example, the difference between the law on breach of contract in its application to employers and to employees. If an employer broke a contract of employment, it was a civil matter, and the worker had to sue the employer, which was hardly likely to happen given the cost. If, however, a worker broke the contract of employment it was a criminal matter and the worker was liable to imprisonment having been prosecuted by the state on the employer’s behalf. So, in 1866, a Sheffield worker was prosecuted in the High Court, in London, for breach of contract from his employment in a Sheffield steelworks. He was sentenced to 2 months in gaol. At the end of his sentence his former employer demanded he fulfil his contract. The worker rightly claimed he had served 2 months in gaol and had, therefore already been punished and had no further responsibility to the employer. He was hauled before the court again and sentenced to another gaol term.

The following is taken from the government Blue Books on the Mines, quoted by Marx in Capital. It is the “Report from the Select Committee on Mines, together with etc. Evidence, 23rd July 1866.”

To give an idea of the times the first part of the evidence concerned the employment of children in the mines. Despite some improvements due to the Factory Acts, still in 1866 children as young as 10 were employed in the mines for an average 14 to 15 hour day. However, the following testimony is interesting. Miners were paid fortnightly in arrears, and were paid by the cubic capacity of the tubs of coal mined. The employers always falsified the capacity of the tubs so that the miners were always robbed of their wages. Consequently, the miners were demanding weekly payment, and payment by weight rather than cubic capacity. This point being put by the Committee asked.

“If the tubs were fraudulently increased, a man could discontinue by giving 14 days notice?”

The witness replied.

But if he goes to another place, there is the same thing going on there.

The Committee asked

“But he can leave that place where the wrong has been committed?”

The witness replies again.

“It is general; wherever he goes, he has to submit to it.”

Having been thrown off their land, the peasants and their sons and grandsons were trapped, forced to work in order to live. But even when they tried to escape and find some way of returning to their former lives the capitalists used the power of their state to stop them. As a result of the repeated regular and serious crises of overproduction which capitalism, particularly in Britain as the most advanced capitalist country of the time faced during the 19th century, which were so bad that workers regularly starved to death, particularly in the mill towns of Lancashire and Yorkshire, workers began through their Trade Unions and other organisations to form Emigration Societies. Each worker would put in a small sum of money and periodically a draw would be held and the lucky few gained a passage to the US.

The following shows how free the exchange of labour for wages was in this situation at a time when Libertarian ideas ran free, a time much admired by Hayek and the other advocates of Libertarianism. Faced with the possibility that their labour supply was going to be reduced, the employers put forward Edmund Potter, former President of the Manchester Chamber of Commerce to advance their views.

Here they are,

“He (the man out of work) may be told the supply of cotton-workers is too large…. and …. must….in fact be reduced by a third, perhaps and then there will be a healthy demand for the remaining two-thirds….Public opinion…urges emigration The master cannot willingly see his labour supply being removed…. Encourage or allow the working power to emigrate, and what of the capitalist? (What indeed AB)…Take away the cream of the workers and the fixed capital will depreciate in a great degree, and the floating will not be subject itself to a struggle with the short supply of inferior.”

Potter’s letter was referred to as the “Manifesto of the Manufacturers” in the House of Commons. Even the Times which had printed Potter’s letter on 24th March 1863 was prompted to respond.

Potter had called the workers “human machinery” and asked was it worth keeping up this human machinery i.e. should the unemployed workers be kept in some state of destitution by poor relief rather than allowed to emigrate in order that they would be available as a cheap reserve of labour-power when the employers required them again.

The Times responded rather out of character given its class allegiance,

“We must confess that we do not think it ‘worthwhile’, or even possible, to keep the human machinery in order – that is to shut it up and keep it oiled till it is wanted. Human machinery will rust under inaction, oil and rub at it as you may. Moreover, the human machinery will, as we have just seen, get the steam up of its own accord, and burst and run amok in our great towns…..He says that it is very natural the workers should want to emigrate; but he thinks that in spite of their desire, the nation ought to keep this half million of workers with their 700,000 dependents, shut up in the cotton districts; and as a necessary consequence, he must of course, think that the nation ought to keep down their discontent by force, and sustain them by alms – and upon the chance that the cotton masters may some day want them…The time is come when the great public opinion of these islands must operate to save this ‘working power’ from those who would deal with it as they would deal with iron, and coal, and cotton.”

The Times was referring to the fact that, faced with starvation and repeated mass unemployment, as capitalism went through its periodic cycles of overproduction, the workers had begun to fight back, marching in tens and hundreds of thousands on the great cities which for most of the period had to be put under military protection. But, the Times plea was in vain, at the time the only Public Opinion that mattered was that of the capitalists themselves, because it was only property owners that had the vote.

In his Channel 4 programme “The Empire Pays Back” , Robert Beckford assessed the compensation that would be owed to the descendants of the British slaves sent to the Caribbean. The figure came to around £7trillion. The robbery of the land and means of production of the peasantry, were it to be likewise compensated to British workers, as the descendants of those peasants would make this figure look insignificant.

We was robbed. We want it back.