The War Against the Commons, Dispossession and Resistance in the Making of Capitalism
Ian Angus, Monthly Review Press 2023
This is a beautifully written examination of the rise of capitalism with implications for organizing today. It focuses on the transformation of Feudalism into Capitalism in England and Scotland. It also sharply refutes the reactionary thesis of “the tragedy of the commons” and clarifies Marx’s view on the “so called primitive accumulation”
The author argues that for hundreds of years peasants had successfully managed common land to the benefit of all. They democratically decided on its use and did not over-exploit it as the reactionary thesis contends. Often peasants repartitioned the private strips of land around the common area to give all families enough land to survive. Under Feudalism, the landlords exploited the mass of the peasantry either as serfs or free farmers. Peasants paid rent and/or performed service on the lord’s demesne. In return for that exploitation, the peasants were allowed the collective use of common areas. This collective use of the commons was absolutely essential to the livelihood of the peasants.
The Rise of Capitalism required the war on the commons
“Peasants continually resisted these attacks that denied their livelihood.”
With the rise of the market economy in the 1400s landlords were under more pressure to raise revenue.
“Landed families which stuck to the old ways, left rents as they were and continued to grant long leases soon found themselves trapped between static incomes and rising prices.” (45)
There were several related processes the landlords used: raising rents, enclosing the commons and adding it to their demesne, consolidating farms into larger units and replacing farming with sheep raising. The latter required less labor and created higher profits. The economic differentiation of the peasantry over time aided the landlords’ efforts.
Peasants continually resisted these attacks that denied their livelihood. Peasant revolts broke out through this whole process. These revolts peaked at particular times. They often involved re-taking common lands by tearing down fences and hedge rows. During the English revolution in the 1640s, these peasant revolts intersected with the civil war. According to the author the peasant revolts did not fuel either side of the war exclusively (74). Though the parliamentary side appeared more favorable to the peasant revolt, the consolidation of power by that side furthered the consolidation on land in the hands of the landlords. The most radical elements during this period were the Diggers who tried to extend communal ownership of land both physically and through political organizing.
At the beginning of the war against the commons, the royal government tried to restrain enclosures. They feared depopulation that would deny the needed soldiers for war. They also feared social unrest. The royal governments passed laws to slow down the enclosure process. Landlords who often controlled the local justices of the peace prevented effective enforcement of these laws. Over time royal resistance to land consolidation and enclosure waned as the new capitalist relations more and more dominated the economy.
The author examines the role of the “commonwealth men” who theoretically opposed capitalist development but also opposed peasant resistance to rising capitalism. (42) They were similar to the Feudal Socialists who Marx denounced in the Communist Manifesto.
Despite the peasant revolts the dominant trend was toward enclosure and consolidation. These processes expelled rural residents from the land. Many became vagabonds who tried to survive by begging and stealing. Over time, the peasants kicked off the land became the basis of the working class that capitalism needed in industry. Rural people with small cottages entered the capitalist system directly by working for capitalists as weavers etc. under the putting out system. (Merchants would sell raw materials to cottagers who would work it up into products. Merchants would buy the finished product back at a fixed rate, rather than pay a wage. Marx called this the formal subsumption of labor to capital as opposed to the real subsumption of wage labor.)
Wage labor was the last resort
“To enforce wage labor the state now dominated by capitalism used draconian methods, including actual slavery”
When peasants were expelled, wage labor was the last resort for survival. People saw wage labor as another form of slavery.
“A new class of wage-laborers was born in England when great masses of men were suddenly and forcibly torn from their means of subsistence, and hurled onto the labor-market as free, unprotected and rightless proletarians.” (58) (Capital)
Under Feudalism, they had largely controlled their own labor. It was governed by weather, seasons and natural conditions. Under capitalism, labor was controlled by the clock and hours were longer.
To enforce wage labor the state now dominated by capitalism used draconian methods, including actual slavery. “Poaching” was outlawed for the poor who needed food, but hunting was allowed for the rich who did not need it. For a period, England had a death penalty for hundreds of offenses and also made regular use of deportation to the colonies. The destruction of the old rural economy unleashed more people than the rising capitalist economy could absorb. Even if there was not enough wage work available, vagabonds were punished for not working for a master. The creation of capitalism was based on the horrific oppression of ordinary people.
The consolidation of capitalism in England took hundreds of years, from the 1400s to the 1700s. Continued enclosure persisted well into the 1800s in England. In Scotland, after the English conquest the process went much faster. The results were equally horrific but much more condensed in time.
Apologists for capitalism contend that it made agriculture much more efficient. The author thoroughly refutes this, showing that many of the improvements arose during the period of peasant management of the commons. He shows that caloric intake declined as capitalism rose.
“Most industrial workers and agricultural laborers were malnourished: they were less healthy and died younger than their ancestors a century earlier.”(162)
“the expansion of the capitalist world system caused a dramatic and prolonged process of impoverishment on a scale unprecedented in recorded history.”(172)
Marx Saw Capitalism As Destructive
“When workers no longer have access to the means of production, they end up having to work for those who stole it from them.”
Importantly, Angus explains Marx’s views of this process. Too many would-be Marxists stress the progressive nature of the rise of capitalism. Marx on the other hand saw it as a destructive process even though it ultimately developed the productive forces that would allow the working class to take power and establish communism.
He discussed it as “original expropriation” rather than primitive accumulation. Marx felt that primitive accumulation was too neutral a term which is why he used the phrase “so-called primitive accumulation”. Too many people miss Marx’s sarcasm when discussing this issue. Marx talked of some stealing wealth from others rather than amassing it through hard work or intelligence as the capitalist myth would have it. When workers no longer have access to the means of production, they end up having to work for those who stole it from them.
A large part of this original theft came from colonization. The author explains the process of wealth seizure in the colonies as a basis for the accumulation of capital in England. The effects on the native population of the Western Hemisphere and the slavery of Africans are well known. As Marx said:
“the veiled slavery of the wage-labourers in Europe needed the unqualified slavery of the New World as its pedestal.”(107)
“The discovery of gold and silver in America, the extirpation, enslavement and entombment in mines of the indigenous population of that continent , the beginnings of the conquest and looting of India , and the conversion of Africa into a preserve for the commercial hunting of blackskins, are all things which characterize the dawn of the era of capitalist production.”(99) from Capital.
According to the author, the war against the commons continues to this day. He believes that Marx also saw expropriation as a continual basis of capitalism, not just a process at the dawn of capitalism. Though capitalism now dominates the world economy, the dispossession of the world’s peasantry continues. Capital still accumulates through expropriation.
Controversies on the Left
“.. the main emphasis of anti-capitalists today needs to be resistance against the exploitation of workers and opposition to oppression which divides workers”
This enters into current political controversies on the Left. David Harvey for example focuses on current “accumulation by dispossession”. Harvey seems to downplay the importance of the basic process of mature capitalism, accumulation by exploitation (not paying workers the full value of what they produce). The author does not explicitly endorse Harvey’s position but does support the importance of the continuation of expropriation.
This is an important emphasis which solidifies our understanding.
“Since the late 1900s, capital’s continuing war against the commons has dispossessed millions of peasant families in Africa, Latin America and Asia.” (195)
The battles of peasants against being forced off the land are struggles that the Left should support. Peasants can be allies with workers in the war against capitalism. Marx agreed with this approach. The author notes the positive attitude Marx had toward the peasant communes in Russia. He thought that they could become the basis of a transformation to communism, but importantly only if connected to the international working-class revolution. Marx rejected a utopian view of the peasant commune.
Nor does Marx’s attitude mean that Marxists support the preservation of peasant property even after the working-class revolution. The goal is still collective control of the whole economy including land by the population as a whole.
In spite of Marxist continual defense of the remaining commons, the current context is important. In the period that Angus focuses on the 1400s through the 1800s in England, capitalism was still forming. Most of the world was pre-capitalist. The seizure of the commons was absolutely essential to the rise of capitalism.
Today, the situation has been transformed. The world economy is capitalist. Even remaining peasant agriculture is largely commercial and integrated into the capitalist market. Subsistence agriculture, which was the essence of agriculture during the rise of capitalism is now more marginal. The expropriation of peasant land today is a transfer of wealth among participants in the capitalist system. It is no longer the destruction of a pre-capitalist mode of production to make way for capitalism. Over the last 140 years since Marx’s death, much of the common land has been taken by capitalists. Expropriation of the poor by the rich is no longer the necessary basis of capitalism as it was during capitalism’s rise. Today, expropriation is an important supplement to exploitation but only a supplement.
Contra Harvey, the main emphasis of anti-capitalists today needs to be resistance against the exploitation of workers and opposition to oppression which divides workers. The form of a worker-peasant alliance will differ from country to country, but defense of peasants should be integrated into working class revolution rather than being seen as a separate struggle.
The author argues that Marx and Engels were more flexible and less dogmatic than later Marxists are. He discusses how Engels was reluctant to give advice to Russian activists because of ignorance of Russian politics. Angus also says that Marx and Engels supported assassination in Russia even while opposing it in Britain.
This attitude is an important corrective to dogmatism. Marxists need to understand the political and economic situation before pronouncing on it. We must learn before we can teach! However, the world has transformed in the last 140 years. The spread of the capitalist system across the world, means that Marx’s strategies for the capitalist countries in the 1880s are more applicable across the world today than they were in his time. Though, we need to understand the specifics of each situation, the broad contours of the focus on working class struggle are applicable everywhere. The Communist Manifesto’s “workers of the world unite; you have nothing to lose but your chains” are truer today than when Marx and Engels wrote them.
This shift is shown by the changing strategy of Russian Marxists. As capitalism developed in Russia in the early 1900s, they moved away from Marx’s positive attitude to the Narodniks which oriented to the peasantry. Instead, they focused on organizing the industrial working class.
Finally, Angus raises the very important issue of overcoming the division between the town and country. Marx and Engels were very clear on the importance of spreading the population rather than having it concentrated in cities. They saw this as similar to the abolition of class division.
“The abolition of the antithesis between town and country is no more and no less utopian than the abolition of antithesis between capitalists and wage workers.” (189) The Housing Question, Engels
This book is a brilliant examination of the rise of capitalism. It is a vindication of the possibility of democratic control of the earth. It smashes some of the bases of capitalist ideology. It connects anti-capitalism to defense of the environment, showing how capitalism has always been opposed to ecological sanity. It shows the direct connection of capitalism to fossil fuels, especially coal. (63) It contributes to current debates on the Left.
For all these reasons, it is a must read for those who care about the future of humanity and the planet!
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