Marx's Pendulum
Once again history’s pendulum approaches the apex of its arc as we find ourselves mired within extremes of wealth and poverty as great as any that Orwell, Marx, or Tacitus described in their day. The poor and the young are unable to buy even the smallest apartments afforded by modern cities, students take out mortgages to finance their educations, and a basic salary is certainly insufficient to make ends meet within most modern Western cities. Financiers are claiming record bonuses and salaries, CEOs of failing companies are paid millions to leave quietly, and today’s city elite now expect a yacht, holiday homes, and a luxury car, if not a private plane to complete their lifestyle packages. Meanwhile the poor inhabit dangerous neighborhoods where they depend upon credit cards, second jobs, junk food and a decaying public transit system for their survival. Stunning advances in medical science may well predict that the rich will enjoy longer and more productive lives, but rising levels of medical costs, environmental toxins, processed foods, pollution, and social stress suggest that the poor will be unlikely to survive to a retirement age which is steadily approaching seventy.
In this day and age the term ‘slavery’ remains deeply unfashionable, as society’s elite dispensed with the notion of direct ownership of other human beings some centuries ago. However, when all factors are weighed and summed, most of today’s mandarins and employers have as much control over the destiny of those who are beholden to them as at almost any time in our history. For those who would disagree, please consider that any employee who disappoints, rebels, dissents or disobeys is unlikely to recover gainful employment that would allow them to enjoy a high quality of life or to raise children in prosperity. If the desires of an employer, patron, or overlord should extend to sexual indulgences, unpaid hours, or other errands which would be beyond the normal call of duty, then their subject is often left only with the options of compliance or the freedom to be unemployed. While there may always be the recourse of legal action, most of Europe’s subordinate classes are unable to afford a good lawyer or to wait years for compensation to arrive.
If we cast our minds back a couple of thousand years to the height of Rome, the slaves of an era widely considered to have been one of brutish oppression would have been found working as cooks, barbers, hairdressers, nurses, tutors, secretaries, butlers, cleaners, seamstresses, and teachers [1]. Sound familiar? Highly educated slaves could even be found working in professions such as accounting, medicine, or education, and many became powerful cultural influences in Roman society, often developing intimate personal relationships with their masters. It was not uncommon for slaves to be provided with accommodation, food and pocket money, freeing them of any burden of debt as we would understand it. Roman slaves typically worked what we today would consider to have been ‘part time’ hours, and when they were not working they were often allowed to roam the city (as long as they did not attempt to escape bearing their marks of slavery), and could enjoy Rome’s many feasts and public holidays. Many who pleased their masters were awarded their freedom and ascended into the ranks of the lower middle classes, much as today.
Compare the lot of the Roman slave to that of the modern city worker who frequently has to endure fire traps, crippling levels of debt, poverty, spiraling health care costs, three hour daily commutes, and obscene working hours, and you might begin to appreciate the parallel. Of course, unlike the Roman slave, the modern city worker is widely regarded as being free, but as with most concepts it is all a matter of where the gray line of definition is drawn. Even the feudal serf of Medieval Europe was given a house, a small plot of land to farm, and limited access to resources in return for seasonal hours of service to his feudal lord and taxes often paid in the form of produce. A small portion of the serf’s week was allocated to plowing his master’s fields, harvesting his crops, digging ditches, repairing fences, or working in the kitchens of the manor house. The rest of the serfs’ working week was allocated to tending their own fields, crops and animals to provide for their families [2]. On a more positive communal note, a feudal serf would expect to be well fed for his service, enjoying cooked meals and seasonal feasts, and could even gather some fuel and occasional game from his lord’s lands. This might seem like utopia to many of today’s stressed and underpaid city workers.
In our own modern system of feudal patronage, even those educated at university are expected to work up to eighty hours a week until well into their thirties, at which point they may have earned their freedom and the right to an office and enough money to support a family. Many though do not ascend the social ladder after their many years of service to their modern overlords. In fact, most city workers enjoy far less freedom and free time than either feudal serfs or Roman slaves.
I have often wondered what ratio of riches to poverty was sufficient to trigger the social revolutions of 1917, 1789, 1775, or 1639, when those who ate cake suddenly found their lofty heads in a lowly basket. These upheavals, like other natural storms, rose suddenly, quickly became bloody, and spared few from the ruling classes. Just how poor and hopeless do the masses have to become, and exactly how much ostentatious wealth has to be paraded in their faces in the form of designer clothes, fast cars and mansions before they rise again, as they have before. An impending recession, collapsing mortgage markets, rising food prices, and declining standards of health care might suggest that their patience will not survive through to the affluence of the next economic cycle. The undergrowth is tinder dry, and all that is needed is the plain spark of economic truth and a little turbulence within the economy for them to rise again...
[1] http://www.moyak.com/researcher/resume/papers/roman_slavery.html
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serfdom
In this day and age the term ‘slavery’ remains deeply unfashionable, as society’s elite dispensed with the notion of direct ownership of other human beings some centuries ago. However, when all factors are weighed and summed, most of today’s mandarins and employers have as much control over the destiny of those who are beholden to them as at almost any time in our history. For those who would disagree, please consider that any employee who disappoints, rebels, dissents or disobeys is unlikely to recover gainful employment that would allow them to enjoy a high quality of life or to raise children in prosperity. If the desires of an employer, patron, or overlord should extend to sexual indulgences, unpaid hours, or other errands which would be beyond the normal call of duty, then their subject is often left only with the options of compliance or the freedom to be unemployed. While there may always be the recourse of legal action, most of Europe’s subordinate classes are unable to afford a good lawyer or to wait years for compensation to arrive.
If we cast our minds back a couple of thousand years to the height of Rome, the slaves of an era widely considered to have been one of brutish oppression would have been found working as cooks, barbers, hairdressers, nurses, tutors, secretaries, butlers, cleaners, seamstresses, and teachers [1]. Sound familiar? Highly educated slaves could even be found working in professions such as accounting, medicine, or education, and many became powerful cultural influences in Roman society, often developing intimate personal relationships with their masters. It was not uncommon for slaves to be provided with accommodation, food and pocket money, freeing them of any burden of debt as we would understand it. Roman slaves typically worked what we today would consider to have been ‘part time’ hours, and when they were not working they were often allowed to roam the city (as long as they did not attempt to escape bearing their marks of slavery), and could enjoy Rome’s many feasts and public holidays. Many who pleased their masters were awarded their freedom and ascended into the ranks of the lower middle classes, much as today.
Compare the lot of the Roman slave to that of the modern city worker who frequently has to endure fire traps, crippling levels of debt, poverty, spiraling health care costs, three hour daily commutes, and obscene working hours, and you might begin to appreciate the parallel. Of course, unlike the Roman slave, the modern city worker is widely regarded as being free, but as with most concepts it is all a matter of where the gray line of definition is drawn. Even the feudal serf of Medieval Europe was given a house, a small plot of land to farm, and limited access to resources in return for seasonal hours of service to his feudal lord and taxes often paid in the form of produce. A small portion of the serf’s week was allocated to plowing his master’s fields, harvesting his crops, digging ditches, repairing fences, or working in the kitchens of the manor house. The rest of the serfs’ working week was allocated to tending their own fields, crops and animals to provide for their families [2]. On a more positive communal note, a feudal serf would expect to be well fed for his service, enjoying cooked meals and seasonal feasts, and could even gather some fuel and occasional game from his lord’s lands. This might seem like utopia to many of today’s stressed and underpaid city workers.
In our own modern system of feudal patronage, even those educated at university are expected to work up to eighty hours a week until well into their thirties, at which point they may have earned their freedom and the right to an office and enough money to support a family. Many though do not ascend the social ladder after their many years of service to their modern overlords. In fact, most city workers enjoy far less freedom and free time than either feudal serfs or Roman slaves.
I have often wondered what ratio of riches to poverty was sufficient to trigger the social revolutions of 1917, 1789, 1775, or 1639, when those who ate cake suddenly found their lofty heads in a lowly basket. These upheavals, like other natural storms, rose suddenly, quickly became bloody, and spared few from the ruling classes. Just how poor and hopeless do the masses have to become, and exactly how much ostentatious wealth has to be paraded in their faces in the form of designer clothes, fast cars and mansions before they rise again, as they have before. An impending recession, collapsing mortgage markets, rising food prices, and declining standards of health care might suggest that their patience will not survive through to the affluence of the next economic cycle. The undergrowth is tinder dry, and all that is needed is the plain spark of economic truth and a little turbulence within the economy for them to rise again...
[1] http://www.moyak.com/researcher/resume/papers/roman_slavery.html
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serfdom
posted by The Angry Man at 2:37 PM
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