Das Kapital Ch. 29: How Farmers Became

Summary

Marx has shown how peasants were driven off the land, whipped into discipline and made to sell their labour. One question remains: where did the capitalists come from? Driving out the peasants creates only great landowners. The farmer is easier to trace, because he grew slowly over several centuries. In England he starts as the bailiff, himself a serf, much like the Roman villicus. In the second half of the fourteenth century the landlord replaces him with a farmer supplied with seed, cattle and tools, who lives much like a peasant except that he employs more wage labour. Next comes the metayer, or half-farmer, who supplies half the stock and splits the crop with the landlord. That form soon dies out in England. The farmer proper takes its place: he makes his own capital breed by hiring labourers, and he pays the landlord rent in money or in kind.

For most of the fifteenth century he stayed modest, because independent peasants were still enriching themselves. Then the agricultural revolution of the late fifteenth and sixteenth centuries made him rich just as fast as it ruined the mass of rural people. The seized common land let him enlarge his herds almost for free and gave his fields more manure. His lease often ran for ninety-nine years. Meanwhile the precious metals lost value, so money bought less, wages were pushed down, and part of them became farm profit. The price of corn, wool and meat kept climbing, while the rent he paid stayed fixed in the old money. He grew rich at the expense of his labourers and of his landlords. By the end of the sixteenth century England had a class of capitalist farmers, rich for their time.

The footnotes widen the view. A dialogue of 1581 makes the same point through a knight and a doctor: dealers and tenants on old rents sell dear, while nobles and gentlemen living on fixed rents lose. In France, Marx adds, the steward who collected dues for the feudal lords soon became a man of business who swindled his way into capital. From this he draws a general rule: in every sphere of life the lion's share falls to the middleman, from the financier and the lawyer to the priest standing between God and the faithful. French farms were smaller and kinder to the people, yet each farmer held rights of jurisdiction over those who lived on his soil, and France once had 160,000 judges where 4,000 tribunals now suffice.

In this chapter:Terms Characters Key Quotes Modern Story

Why This Matters

Reading the Terms Behind Success

Have you ever watched someone get quietly richer while nothing about their work seemed to change? Marx finds the same thing in the English farmer, who held a lease of up to ninety-nine years at a rent fixed in old money while the price of corn, wool and meat climbed and the falling value of money cut into his labourers' wages.

This week, pick one person or firm whose success you admire and find out what terms they started on, such as a lease, a contract or a price fixed before the market moved.

This chapter

Inside the Mind: The capitalist farmer

After the labourer is explained, 'whence came the capitalists originally' still has to be asked. The farmer's position is similar to the old Roman villicus, then slowly becomes an owner: the psyche is a role that thickens through contracts until command of other people's labour feels like a harvest he was always owed.

Continue this thoughtThe Colony Where the Servant Walks Off

Coming Up in Chapter 30

Chapter 30 follows a bundle of flax in Westphalia. A peasant family once grew, spun and wove it for its own use. After the family is driven off the land, the flax stays exactly the same, yet it now belongs to a master manufacturer who sets others to spin and weave it. Marx asks what has changed, and the answer is not in the fibre.

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Chapter 29

How Farmers Became Capitalists

GENESIS OF THE CAPITALIST FARMER Economic Manuscripts: Capital Vol. I - Chapter Twenty-Nine Karl Marx. Capital Volume One Chapter 29: Genesis of the Capitalist Farmer Now that we have considered the forcible creation of a class of outlawed proletarians, the bloody discipline that turned them into wage labourers, the disgraceful action of the State which employed the police to accelerate the accumulation of capital by increasing the degree of exploitation of labour, the question remains: whence came the capitalists originally? For the expropriation of the agricultural population creates, directly, none but the greatest landed proprietors. As far, however, as concerns…

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How Farmers Became Capitalists

Summary

Why This Matters