The Deed and the Wage · Episode 3 of 10 · 20 min
How Enclosure Created the Modern Worker
Between roughly 1500 and 1830 England fenced the open fields and extinguished the commons, leaving most people with no productive stake in the soil and only their labor to sell. The episode argues that the wage worker was made first by the deed, drawing on More, Marx and Polanyi, then plants a seed of doubt that a later episode will grow.
Who's who
- Thomas MoreLord Chancellor whose Utopia indicted Tudor enclosure as sheep eating men
- Arthur Young+1 more episodeAgricultural writer who championed enclosure then counted its cost to the poor
- Karl Marx+5 more episodesMade English enclosure the founding scene of capitalism in Capital
- Karl PolanyiEconomic historian who framed labor as a fictitious commodity
- Jane HumphriesOxford historian who priced the worth of commons rights
- Robert AllenEconomic historian and leading revisionist on enclosure
- J. D. Chambers+1 more episodeAuthor of the 1953 critique blaming population growth, not enclosure
Where it happens
- England+5 more episodesWhere over 5,200 enclosure acts covered about a fifth of the country
- Speenhamland, BerkshireWhere magistrates adopted a bread-indexed poor-relief scale in 1795
Timeline
- 1516More publishes Utopia, attacking sheep enclosures
- 1604-1914Over 5,200 enclosure acts cover roughly 6.8 million acres
- May 6, 1795Berkshire magistrates adopt the Speenhamland relief scale
- 1830-1831Captain Swing rising brings 19 executions and roughly 500 transportations
- 1867Marx publishes Capital, naming so-called primitive accumulation
Still debated
Whether enclosure made the proletariat or population growth and rising labor demand explain more is the series' core dispute. The worth of commons rights, Speenhamland's effects, productivity gains and Swing's causes are also argued.
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