Society and Morals. Part VI. Feudalism in Europe. (1918)

From the January 1918 issue of the Socialist Standard

Link to Part V.

After having treated in a general way of the social process which consisted of the breaking down of communistic and patriarchal organisation, and resulting in the subjection and exploitation of the one-time free and equal tribesmen, it behoves us now to investigate more closely that concrete example of this process which was passed through by all European peoples with a resultant organisation which persisted up to a more or less recent period, for it was out of the elements of this “feudalism” that modern or “capitalist” society evolved.

These “feudal States” were for the most part formed among the peoples who over-ran, and finally assisted in the break-up of, the great empire of Rome ; but even in countries where the grip of Rome had not been felt the form of society evolved by the “relatives” of these peoples was inevitably the same.

The drying up of the great plains of Central Asia impelled the barbarian nomads, to whom, hitherto, they had afforded sustenance, to migrate towards the more moist and favourable lands of the West, and they swept in recurring waves over the face of Europe for many centuries. Their military institutions were given a decided impetus, first, by the conflicts necessitated by their own invasions of already inhabited regions, and secondly, by the inroads upon them of fresh barbarians, after they had settled in Europe.

Gradually military States were formed all over Europe. Once independent tribes were consolidated by conquest into larger and larger aggregations, the first rude outlines of the modern nations were formed, whilst simultane­ously the Christian faith became “accepted” by the subdued peoples throughout Europe largely through wholesale conversions made practically compulsory by zealous plunderers like Charlemagne.

Thus, for example, the several small kingdoms in Saxon England were, after hard fighting, at last united in a somewhat precarious unity under Egbert. To quote Green in his “Short History of the English People,” the union “had removed the king, as his dominions extended, further and further from his people, and clothed him with a mysterious dignity,” he was “the ‘Lord’s anointed,’ treason against him being “punished with death.” His leading warriors or thegns “advanced with the advance of the king . . . whilst the common ground of the mark (the Teutonic village) now became folk-land in the hands of the king and was carved out into estates for his dependents. With the advance of the thegn fell the freedom of the peasant. The principle of personal allegiance embodied in the new nobility widened into a theory of general dependence. By Alfred’s day it was assumed that no man could exist without a lord. . . . Gradually the ‘lordless man’ became a sort of outlaw in the realm.” The Norman conquest only intensified this development.

All over Europe a similar process was going on. The one-time free villages were modified so that the inhabitants stood in various degrees of subjection to a lord who himself was subject to a king. Most of the people of the village, or manor as it came to be called in England, were serfs who were compelled to render service to the lord of the manor by cultivating for him the land he was allotted by the king, and also by yielding to him a portion of the products they raised upon their own allotments. In addition, every excuse was made by the baron for the extraction from the serfs of further tolls upon their produce ; normally the serf was prohibited from leaving the village of his birth, but he could obtain permission to live away by paying an annual fine or tax ; again, before his daughter was allowed to marry he had to obtain the lord’s sanction and pay to him a fine.

Among the serfs themselves existed many traces of the old communal spirit and institutions. Their land, for instance, was still divided very much according to the old principies, the portions being approximately equal both in area and quality. Furthermore, the serfs still retained their right to the common pasture lands, and to the forests for fuel. The times of and methods adopted in the labours of the field were largely regulated by the ancient customs, and even the village council or folk-moot maintained a certain amount of influence. “There were no strangers in the manor. It was an offence punishable with fine to harbour one,” says Thorold Rogers, thus showing the persistence of the old exclusive spirit.

But the whole history of feudalism shows the growing hatred of the nobility for the commu­nal rights of the peasants, and records successive attempts on their part to abolish them, and to seize upon the common lands. The Jacqueries in France (14th century), the Peasants’ War in Germany (16th century) were risings of the peasants against these encroachments of the baronage.

The Feudal Church.

As feudalism passed through its early formative period, the political utility of Christianity manifested itself with increasing clearness. “Throughout all Christendom,” says Jenks in his “History of Politics,” “bishops and priests were the most intimate counsellors and most enthusiastic supporters of the Crown, and the rich gifts of the kings were amply repaid by the halo of sanctity which the grateful Church thus threw around the person and office of the king.” (P. 84.) Every social relation of feudalism became sanctified by religion. The serf in his hut, the lord in his castle, were ordained for such stations by God—a view of class distinctions which is by no means extinct to-day. Thus the proper conduct for a serf, taught the priests, was that of humility before his superiors and contentment with his lot. He was enjoined to dutifully render to those placed over him, the services and respect they were entitled to. And, although the nobility were requested to respect the feudal rights of the peasantry, considerable latitude was allowed in their case. It was, however, the profound and religious duty of the nobility to uphold the Church of God and to preserve the integrity and prestige of their own class.

The Catholic Church became itself a great feudal power—the Pope corresponded to a monarch, his bishops and abbots to earls and barons. The Church itself owned one third of the land of Christendom and possessed serfs whom it exploited just as did its secular counterpart ; and its local dignitaries claimed a portion or “tithe” of the agricultural produce of the manors. As its wealth grew its greed demanded more and ever more, its devices to this end being numerous and ingenious. The clergy traded on the credulity and gross superstition of the “true-believers” by the sale of spurious “sacred relics”—the bones of saints, chips off the “original cross,” even the sale of “bottles of the virgin’s milk from the holy land” can be read of. The sale of “indulgences,” which were practically permits to commit crime, was practiced widely, and the clergy solemnly promised eternal bliss in paradise to those who left their wealth to the Church, later threatening hell-fire to those who did not, and making such legacies practically compulsory.

With the growing riches of the Church the clergy, especially the higher officials, had in it a vital interest to defend. Organised internationally, and with its millions of superstitious and mentally servile adherents, the Church wielded an enormous social power. Its leaders, recognising that its strength lay in the ignorant beliefs of the masses, set the entire power of the organisation against any swerving from its accepted articles of faith. Whilst it damned all actions contrary to the social virtues of feudalism, it declared heresy the greatest sin of all. Whosoever was suspected of the slightest trace of unorthodoxy in religious opinion was the legitimate prey of this “vulture of the ages.” Every cunning means, every agent, the spy, the informer, were used for its bloody ends. Imprisonment, fiendish torture, and the slow fire at the stake, were its means of enforcing Christian belief and “charity.” Jews and Moors, because of their wholesale heresies and, of course incidentally (!) their not inconsiderable “wealth (which was always confiscated) were among the most acceptable victims.

Every avenue of culture of the age was open to the clergy, and, in the early mediaeval period, to them alone. Therefore, however crude their intellectual achievements judged by modern standards, there existed a real chasm between the mental condition of the more important ecclesiastics and that of the great masses whose minds they dominated. But this very domination, and consequently their prosperity, rested, as we have seen, upon the maintenance of the ignorant superstitions of the multitude, and the upholding of crude and barbarously irrational dogmas. Intellectual hypocrisy was, as a consequence,a widespread feature among the clergy, and along with this sapping of their theoretical basis naturally went a disregard in practice, of the ethical “virtues” they professed and so “(hypocritically preached. In theory lovers of poverty and self-denial, the higher ecclesiastics revelled in luxury and pompous display. Nominally celibates, renouncers of the lusts of the flesh, many of them were rotten with voluptuous debauchery. Towards the end of the Middle Ages “it was openly asserted that there were one hundred thousand women in England made dissolute by the clergy. It was well known that brothels were kept in London for their use.” (Professor Draper, “Intellectual Development of Europe,” vol. 2, p. 234.) The history of the popes is a long record of trickery, robbery, and murder.

The Barons, their Estates and Morality.

We have seen that the feudal barons, while from the king’s point of view merely local agents distributed throughout his kingdom and responsible to him for their position and power, were in the beginning enabled to occupy these positions with the minimum of friction owing to the fact that they were regarded by the people over whom they held sway as the successors of the patriarchal chieftains they had supplanted and whose attributes they skilfully succeeded in taking over. But patriarchalism, with its reverence for blood connections and ancestral lineage, had succeeded in making every occupation every station—even the chiefship—a hereditary one. This idea was appropriated by the early kings and lords, who thus easily made their posts hereditary, and usually in the male line, as patriarchal custom and military exigences also, demanded. It was, of course, this fact which made kingship and lordship social institutions instead of merely the temporary result of conquest.

Furthermore, though the lord from the first acquired rights over the inhabitants of his district, i.e., power over men, yet the right he was most concerned about—the tribute—was so obviously extracted from the soil (agriculture being almost the only method of production) that, after a few generations, the lords came, quite naturally, to look upon the land of their district as the security for their exactions and as the real subject of their rights. The land persisted unchanged for generations, the inhabitants were a fluctuating and unreliable quantity.

Thus it came about that under feudalism “lordship of the land” was the recognised basis of social power. When an estate was transferred from one lord to another, everything living and erected thereon went with it. ; and when a lord lost his estate he lost his title and his privileges. The land did not belong to the lord, he merely had definite rights over it during his lifetime. He could not sell his estate, for upon his death these rights passed to his heir. Lordship of the land was the inalienable attribute of his family line, the foundation of its prestige and power.

To these several circumstances was due two of the best known features of feudal society—knightly “chivalry” and the “law of primogeniture”—and also to a certain extent a third—the condemnation of usury.

The first, when divested of the romantic trappings with which it has been endowed, is seen to have been an attitude adopted by the nobility with the fundamental object of ensuring the chastity of the women of the aristocracy, so that they should give birth only to legitimate heirs. These, by inheriting the feudal estates and privileges, carried on and preserved the continuity of the baronage, of the ruling class, of the feudal system. With this end in view the marriage union was made strictly monogamous and practically indissolable. It became with the males of the nobility a point of honour not to violate but to protect the chastity of the women who were the means of perpetuating the power of their class.

As for the women, it was their supreme function and virtuous duty to bear a legitimate son and heir to their lord. Moreover, that the estates should not be periodically dissipated and split up by being divided among a numerous progeny, thus weakening the family power, it was provided that only one, the eldest male child, should inherit. Pride of family, and in the blood “purity” of its line of descent, were thus typical features in the mentality of the feudal baronage, together with the physical courage, might, and prowess necessary to a military class forming the ideal of character among the nobility of the period.

But the lord, ever courteous and respectful toward the “ladies” of his own class, had no such feelings, as a rule, toward the women of the workers, whom he frequently made the miserable and powerless victims of his sensual lust. In many instances he was allowed the right to lie for the “first night” with any girl bride of the peasantry upon his estate.

Besides “land rights” the feudal nobles recognised only two other legitimate sources of social power—”divine” ordinance and the sword. But with the development of industry there arose another source of social power, which the lords did not and could not possess in any quantity so long as feudal relations persisted in their purity. This new power was money. Money is, of course, primarily a convenience for the rapid and fluid exchange of commodities. Those who possess it in quantity have access to every form of wealth, and it is therefore eagerly sought. But its possessors lend it only at interest and with sufficient security.

History records abundantly that usury and the mortgage are virulent agents in the destruction of personal relations and in the ruin of debtor land-owners large and small—of everything, in fact, which feudalism on its economic side stood for. Therefore the barons hated and envied the monied merchants and craftsmen of the rising towns and declared money-lending an abomination—though, of course, they were keen enough over obtaining money by seizure or otherwise whenever opportunity offered. The Church, as the faithful reflection of secular feudalism, took up the same position, and branded usury as an invention of the devils, nevertheless, with characteristic hypocrisy practising usury itself, either in secret or disguised, as it, with the lapse of time, accumulated in its own coffers money in abundance.

The City and The Guild.

The towns of mediaeval Europe were, for the most part, a development from such villages as offered special facilities for trade and outside intercouse, such as a site at the junction of highways or navigable rivers, or, perhaps, adjacent to a good harbour. To such a favourable spot there tended to gravitate the artisans who were not, or who had ceased to be, attached to a particular village as its official craftsmen, and who now produced goods for sale in the market about which the new town was rising. The market was, from the first, a neutral place where buyers and sellers could freely meet and which later came under the special protection of the king or the Church.

But as feudalism developed, the lords began to eye with rapacious greed the growing wealth of the townsmen under their lordship, and, fearful of the lords’ continual encroachments, the inhabitants made their towns fortified centres of resistance against the baronial power. The fortified towns now became a refuge for fugitive serfs, for they offered them protection from their erstwhile lords ; and usually after residence in the town for a certain period they were regarded as freemen. Thus the town population grew. Then the desire of the barons or of the king for ready money enabled them to purchase various trade-rights and privileges, and eventually to shake off all feudal dues and obtain a charter of independence from the lord or the king direct.

The “free city” was governed by a municipal council, the descendant of the “folk-moot” of the village. It consisted of the descendants of the original holders of the village lands, who, as the immigrant population had increased, had become a sort of exclusive aristocracy, and either became merchants themselves or manipulated the trade facilities of the town in their own interests. To them, therefore, fell most of the material benefits derived from the city’s acquired privileges. Obviously this monopoly of political power by the merchant or semi-merchant oligarchy ran counter to the interests of the actual producers—the artisans and craftsmen. To protect their own interests the artificers had to organise.

Already the followers of each craft possessed as a rule associations for social and religious intercourse, which probably dated from the patriarchal period. But we find these, with the growing antagonism toward the city aristocracy, gradually becoming adapted for, and taking part in, political activities on the one hand, and, on the other, taking on the character of economic organisations for the regulation of industry. After struggles more or less prolonged, these craft “guilds,” as they were called, became strong enough to seize control of the city councils, while on the economic side each craft in time obtained control over the supply and purchase of raw material and the sale of its products, both of which had been largely interfered with and manipulated by the city oligarchs.

To accomplish this economic victory the craftsman had to sink his purely individual interests for the interests of his craft as a whole and its guild organisation, but this offered no difficulties to men in whom patriarchal and communal ideas were even yet far from extinct. The artisan produced, as it were, for his guild. The association frequently purchased the raw materials in the bulk, distributing them equally amongst its members ; and it undertook the sale of the collective products. In individual sales by the craftsmen it regulated the prices at which goods were to be sold, prohibited competition among its members, forestalling in the market, and other means of obtaining exceptional prices. The guild also held itself responsible for the quality of the goods produced by its members, any case of inferiority being considered as reflecting disgrace upon the entire craft. Therefore the shop of the artificer had always to be open to inspection by the guild officials. In production each craft had its own strictly limited domain such as boot making or wood-carving, outside of which its members were not permitted to go, for to do so would be trespassing within the sphere of another craft. When a craftsman had so thrived as to require assistant workers in his extending business, the guild determined the number he might employ. Being the son of a full guildsman was the best title to the right of entry into the guild (a patriarchal characteristic), but usually a long term of apprenticeship had to precede such an entry, for each guildsman had to be “master of his craft.” The guild held itself responsible for the debts of any of its members, and, finally, it possessed its own courts of justice and, what was of considerable political significance, had its own armed militia.

These organisations of the mediaeval workers, to protect their common interests were, in their vigorous prime (and we cannot go here into their decadency, during which they developed aristocratic tendencies, excluding the poorer artisans, who could no longer become master craftsmen and were therefore employed permanently by the guild masters as wage-workers), impressed their principles strongly upon the moral views of their membership. Any infringement of the guild regulations was considered highly criminal and traitorous, rendering the offender liable to expulsion and therefore preventing him from working at his craft, making him, in fact, an industrial outlaw.

* * *

Summing up the morality of feudal society we again see that the class interests of the ruling lords—lay and clerical—and also of the semi-independent craftsmen of the townships, determined their conception of “right and wrong,” just and unjust, exactly as we saw to be the case with the Greek and Roman slaveholders. But, under a system of chattel-slavery, sheer physical force was almost the sole means of holding the slaves in subjection. It was not necessary for a community of interests between master and slave to be hypocritically assumed and inculcated. What the slaves thought was of little or no consequence to their owners : morality was considered no concern of slaves ; it was held to be an attribute of and an obligation upon “free-men” alone.

On the contrary with serfdom, the greater cohesion manifested by the workers made it very necessary to use mental as well as physical means to secure their complete subjection. A pseudo moral code was required for the workers in order to guide their activities along lines consistent with the welfare of their exploiters. But a serf who was compelled to part with both labour and produce to a non-productive lord could never be taught to believe that he was not exploited, that he was a free man, as it has been possible to teach the wage-worker of today. This awkward problem was ingeniously solved by the Catholic clergy, the intellectual and moral guardians of feudalism. They zealously inculcated into the peasantry the idea that the categories king, lord, and serf were of divine ordinance and unalterable, and further, that the present life, with its poverty and riches, is only a preparation for the coming “kingdom of God,” where those who had been meek and humble while toiling and suffering “here below,” would dwell in happiness “amongst the blest.” Such beliefs could, of course, only have been of real social significance and force in an age of “simplicity” such as the medieval period undoubtedly was. Culturally it was, in fact, nothing but a developed barbarism modified by the achievements of Greek and Roman civilisation.

The above outline reveals, then, a function of morality which we have not hitherto touched upon—that of deluding a subject class, of serving as a bulwark of exploitation and oppression. The full development of this, however, yet remains to be considered.

R.W. Housley

(To be Continued.)

The Wind on the Heath (1960)

From the November 1960 issue of the Socialist Standard

Gypsies are in the news again. Dramatically, because a couple of them have been involved in murder cases and, more prosaically, because of a recent spotlighting of their continual clash with some county by-laws and state regulations. These laws control the rights of vagrants, the permissible period for roadside and common camping, child education, and so on. Some county authorities, in trying to enforce the law, have come under fire from the Gypsies' romantic sympathisers (who are often well enough endowed with worldly goods not to live in a caravan, nor sell clothes pegs for a living).

What is the background to this controversy? Where did these strange folk come from; what is their history? The safest theory is that they stem from the Doms, ancient outcast tribes in India who were musicians, dancers and metal workers. Some Persian monarch, it is recorded, transplanted such a group to the Tigris Valley and North Syria. In 855 A.D. the Byzantines moved them to the Balkans. All the while, they continued their old crafts of metal working, making music and dancing. Records from Greece and Rumania show them, in the 1340's, as serfs and personal slaves of the land-owning Boyars—which they continued to be, in Rumania, right up to 1850. The Turkish invasion of the Balkans caused a widespread emigration and some Gipsy bands, in the 1440's, were caught up in this, moving to Central and Northern Europe.

They seemed to have been under the protection of the Holy Roman Emperor and the Church. Some evidence indicates that a Papal order required them to do penance for embracing the Moslem faith whilst they were living under Turkish rule. It is all rather uncertain. Some authorities have them in Europe far earlier, descendants of the wandering metal workers and tinkers, standing apart from the tribes. Here, in fact, is the origin of the “Wayland Smith” legends.

The Gipsy custom of stealing and telling fortunes caused some townsfolk to doubt the sincerity of their penance and the story, like their welcome, were rather thin. All manner of harsh laws were enacted against them. In 1500 the Imperial State annulled the safe conduct which the Princes had issued to Gypsies. Italian states banished them. Some German states ordered all male Gypsies to be shot. Henry VIII forbade separate Gypsy courts and Elizabeth I for a time banished them under pain of death. The Commonwealth executed some simply because they were Gypsies; on the continent they lived in constant fear during the witchcraft manias. Strangely, the Inquisition gave them protection from these. Spain became very popular with the Romanies and many of them moved in, eventually to embrace Spanish names and manners.

The Gypsies were allowed to have their own courts, and to live under their own customs, because they were regarded as a separate race or nation. This was finished in the upheaval caused by the break-up of feudalism in Europe. Peasants were being thrown off the land, merchants were fighting the old feudal lords, aspiring ruling classes tussled with the Roman Church for its land and wealth. Dreadful wars laid Germany waste. Religious intolerance and bigotry with weird maniacal theories tore open the ideas of the Middle Ages. Serfs, landless peasants and unwanted soldiers took to the roads, trying to escape their states’ harsh laws and treatment by joining Gypsy bands. Thus, the Gypsies became connected, in people's minds, with criminals and outlaws and the word Gypsy became a synonym for ruffian and ne'er-do-well. England, France and Spain deported many Gypsies to the Americas; when Australia was discovered, many were shipped there. Such is the tenacity of the Gypsies that they stuck to their old ways in these distant lands—and many still continue to do so.

The Gypsies have shown no desire to uncover their origin. They have, in fact, been content to. be known in Europe as Egyptians; their headmen were referred to as “Counts of Little Egypt.” They were traced to India through originally, the work of an Hungarian named Valyi, who in 1763 noticed a similarity between the language of some Malabar Hindu friends and that of the Hungarian Gypsies. This started a more scientific study of the Romany language, which is now placed as stemming from Aryan, although so far nobody has been able to find the particular area from which such a dialect could have evolved directly.

Although some Gypsy customs have been modified by the areas in which they live, others have remained more or less constant. One of these is the matrilineal nature of their clans, which lays it down that men can only join a clan by marrying into it (although this custom is reversed in the case of the headmen). Property seems to be inherited by the men, although women can and do inherit it. The moral customs of a clan are decreed by the Tribal Mother. The Headman is—or was—elected to his position. The title of Gypsy King and Queen is in fact a misnomer conferred upon them by outsiders which the Gypsies, being sharp, have used to some advantage. The clans, when they reach any considerable size, tend to break up into new groups; it is doubtful if they still exist in the older form in developed countries such as Great Britain.

In spite of everything the Gypsies have clung to their existence to this day. Sometimes—especially in the Balkans and the Middle East—they have existed by doing work that was frowned upon by others; work like latrine cleaning and public hangings. In Spain they provided the bulk of the tobacco factory workers—which must upset a lot of romantic concepts about them. In Spain, also, they have achieved fame by their dancing skills. The industrialisation of Northern Europe has give them the somewhat higher standards of furnished caravans—higher only when compared to their brothers’ tattered tents. Their speciality —and in Hungary some built up fortunes by it—was horse dealing.

But one by one, the doors have been closing against the Gypsies. The horse is fast disappearing as a beast of burden. Mass produced metal and plastic ware is helping to kill the craft of tinkering. A trained mechanic, not a lore-stuffed Gypsy, is needed to repair a combine harvester. Hertfordshire, for example, as a county which accommodates lots of workers in well laid out, expensive dormitory suburbs and estates, is not very keen on having the roads and commons littered with old tins and burst mattresses left there, to boot, by non rate-paying Gypsies. This county, with its agriculture mainly consisting of market gardens, dairy farms and corn crops, worked by modern mechanisation, has little need for floating, seasonable labour. In contrast, Kent is famous for its hop fields and fruit farms. Even today, these need extra casual labour in season, especially for hop stringing and twining, in which Gypsies play no small part. Kent is trying to establish permanent camp sites for the Romanies—and is regarded, therefore, as a humane county by the starry-eyed Gypsy addicts. Even so, things are changing in the hop fields. New hop picking machines leave only one-third of the crop to be picked by hand. Hop-pickers have seen their numbers reduced over the last 20-odd years from 100,000 to 22,000.

It seems, then, that the days of the wandering Gypsies have not long to run. No tears for that: because they live a life on the move in caravans: it does not follow that theirs is an idyllic existence. They have to find some sort of work in order to live; in spite of their reputation as thieves, it is certain that the proceeds of stealing would not last them for long. And anybody who has picked fruit on piece rates will know that it is no more romantic or idyllic than work on a factory bench. Groups which try to exist by just plain begging rapidly degenerate into whining outcasts, devoid of human dignity. Many people wonder why anyone, even a tiny minority, should try to stand outside the world of hire purchase, mortgages, television and social hygiene.

For centuries, Gypsies have tried to hold themselves aloof. But as it has done with so many others, capitalism is about to catch up with them.

Jack Law

History Through Tinted Spectacles (1952)

From the October 1952 issue of the Socialist Standard

It is evident to anyone who is a student of history, however humble, and who is at the same time interested in trends in modem society, that much effort is being expended in bringing the minds of the public to bear on the so-called glories of the Mediaeval Age.

One can think of a number of reasons for this; first, there is the short-term policy—that of “cashing in" in a box-office sense, on the public’s natural curiosity for things of the past, as is evidenced by the spate of so-called “historical’’ films now being shown throughout the country.

The second and more serious reason for this revival in Mediaevalism and obscurantism is to provide an opiate for a society which is beginning to be restive, and in some cases, resistive to the present conditions of graft and gloom that its “leaders” are continually creating for it. These “leaders” are becoming increasingly aware that society is desperately ill and is heading for another major breakdown. Blame is continually laid at the "other fellow’s” door; it is either the poison of Russian "Communism,” which persists in corrupting the Capitalist Democracies or the poison of Capitalist germ bombs which continue to pour down on the heads of "Communist” countries.

The "free world,” i.e., the countries outside Russian Imperialism but subjected to other brands of the same disorder, are on the one hand building up economic barriers to protect themselves from one another (Britain, Australia, U.S.A. are all devoted to the cause of export whilst frowning on imports), while on the other hand they claim they are forced by the threat of Soviet Imperialism to form military alliances for their mutual protection.

It is plain to see that the world is rapidly dividing into two camps, the one representing the well-known company of actors who have for many years treated the general public with drama after drama—usually tragedy from the audience’s point of view—the other a somewhat newer company, branded as upstarts by the more respected company of stock-brokers, bishops and bankers but nevertheless feared for its lustiness and cleverness born of a study of the weaknesses in the make-up of its adversary. No amount of assurances from either side that both companies can continue to do business without coming to blows should convince us when we realise that it is in the nature of both to expand at the other’s expense. In the meantime the audience is being suitably conditioned by both sides whether it be the hypnotic influence of the Russian political ballet or the sanctified self-righteousness of the Western Capitalist knight errants both striving valiantly in the lists at U.N.O.

Which brings us back to Mediaevalism. It is one of the weapons in the armoury of Capitalist, the idea being to feed the workers on past glories in order to forget present-day problems. It is believed by some that a return to Mediaeval faith and philosophy, to the Mediaeval spirit of adventure and chivalry, will give this wobbling society of ours some "spiritual stability” whatever that may mean.

The lusty infant, Soviet Capitalism, utilises history too. It is more than ever tending to portray Russian history as a means of propaganda to its own and other audiences. It has made its peace with the Church on conditions mutually beneficial to Church and State.

In Britain, where an official State religion helps the Capitalist class in its legislation, abetted by numerous other Christian sects, many faithful Protestants banded in the Protestant League are much perturbed at the swing back to Catholicism on the one hand and to the rash of spiritualist churches on the other. While the latter disease is perhaps the misguided groping of befuddled and dispirited workers for a way out of their daily cares, the former appears to be a deliberate plan to bring the minds of people back to the Mediaeval philosophy of poverty.

The attempt to give the bloody wars in Malaya and Korea a semblance of a new kind of “Knight Errantry” is clearly seen from the public utterances of the leaders of Church and State to whom these wars appear as a holy crusade against “Communist” atheism by the one, as an economic necessity by the other, and as salvation to both from the horrors that may come when the exploited classes of all countries break their fetters.

It is when we really study the Mediaeval scene in its true light that we begin to see how utterly funny the present attempts at re-creation are, funny if they were not so terribly serious, if is time that the exploited masses realised the truth about the so-called glories of the Middle Ages; that it was a time of pestilence, famine and rigid class distinction when no man could get outside the pattern of lighters, prayers and peasants with the latter class supporting the whole Feudal structure on its broad back. The prayers and fighters often allied themselves with one another, as for example during the Fourth Crusade in Palestine. Villehardouin, one of six ambassadors to the Doge of Venice, asked for aid in transporting the Crusaders. He tells of an agreement made in March of the year 1201 —“ Sire, we have come to you on behalf of the noble barons of France who have taken the cross.... they pray for you for God's sake .... to furnish them transports and ships of war." The Doge then tells the ambassadors what aid he is prepared to give and continues, “ . . . and we will do more, we will add fifty galleys for the love of God on condition that of every conquest by sea or land, we shall have one half and you the other ....” While therefore the Venetians were willing to help the Crusade along “for the love of God ” they did not let that great love blind them to a fat share in the booty. The Church was of course extremely interested in the Crusade; the “private" of those days, like some of his counterparts to-day, was only interested in his orders and in the belief that dying in the war for Mother Church was a sure passport to heaven.

So great was the oppression of the serfs by the Chapter of Notre Dame de Paris in the reign of Louis, that Queen Blanche did what many modern philanthropists would do—remonstrated “in all humility" whereto the monks replied that “ they might starve their serfs as they pleased.”

The glorious works of art and architecture, the magnificent cathedrals and palaces, were built not only by the veneration of Christian craftsmen, but out of the sweat of the ignorant and oppressed masses and the blood of the conscript peasant who died fighting holy wars for Christian lords against other Christian lords and even if he did manage to survive the battles alive, lived to supply the wealth with which the members of the late lord's family bribed the Church in order that the period of confinement in purgatory would be lessened.

The progressive thinkers often thought at the peril of their lives if their views were a danger to the existing order. Galileo, who professed the theory of Copernicus that the earth moved round the sun, was forced to recant his scientific belief although earlier, Copernicus had dedicated the same treatise to the Pope. (The Mediaeval Church attracted to herself thinkers and men of learning in order that she might remain the dominating factor, though when she failed at any time she came down with a heavy hand on the blasphemer).

The seamen and explorers of the “Age of Discoveries” were inspired much more by the spur of loot than they were by the spirit of adventure.

It is indeed a fitting comment on the crisis in modern Capitalist society that it must once more revert to a past which it itself burst asunder as being incompatible with the new forms of exploitation and profit-making; that it once again invokes the Medieval spirit on the one hand and piles up super modern weapons on the other.

The writing is on the wall. Capitalism is like the villain in a crime magazine, waiting with bated breath for the stroke of midnight it has nowhere to turn. The world has been grabbed long ago (or almost all of it though various re-distributions go on from time to time, conducted by force or the threat of force as we see in Europe and Asia at the present time). We might remember in this connection the words of Cecil Rhodes, an arch Imperialist to whom the annexation of territories was part of his life blood, “ the world is nearly all parcelled out and what is left of it is bring divided up, conquered and colonised. To think of the stars overhead at night, these vast worlds which we can never reach. I would annex the planets if I could . . ."

The Christian fighting barons had a faith; the rising Capitalist class had a faith; Cecil Rhodes cleariy had one and we know for a certainty that the Church never lacked a faith. The workers should realise that these faiths, common to them all had to have for practical purposes, a vast army of unthinking automatons to keep them going—first peasants, now wage-workers.

The issue facing the perplexed workers is what to believe in and what to do. They can of course swallow the distortions of the glorious past and live in the Cinema dream world; they can stupify themselves with the various brands of opium turned out by the purveyors of the many religious sects from the State Established to those of humbler but perhaps more exciting causes. They can stop thinking altogether and “concentrate” on placing 14 correct symbols in their proper places on a football coupon, thereby hoping to win a fortune. One thing is plain they cannot go back. They are creatures of the present and must .take the consequences of the present.

Alternatively they can learn to understand Socialism. This will not come as a gift from heaven, neither is it mysteriously inspired nor does it come from “ leaders.” It can only grow from knowledge—a knowledge of the nature of Capitalism and the laws which govern Capitalist society. The only emancipators of the world's toilers will be the toilers themselves. They will then build edifices that will be monuments to those that follow—monuments to men who overcame the last barrier, who understood what freedom meant and having understood, became free.

W.T.B.

Art, Labour and Socialism. By Wm. Morris. (1907)

From the August 1907 issue of the Socialist Standard

Reprinted from "To-day."

I am “one of the people called Socialists'; therefore I am certain that evolution in the economic conditions of life will go on, whatever shadowy barriers may be drawn across its path by men whose apparent self-interest binds them, consciously or unconsciously, to the present, and who are therefore hopeless for the future.

I hold that the condition of competition between man and man is bestial only, and that of association human: I think that the change from the undeveloped competition of the Middle Ages, trammelled as it was by the personal relations of feudality, and the attempts at association of the guild-craftsmen into the full-blown laissez-faire competition of the nineteenth century, is bringing to birth out of its own anarchy, and by the very means by which it seeks to perpetuate that anarchy, a spirit of association founded on that antagonism which has produced all former changes in the condition of men, and which will one day abolish all classes and take definite and practical form, and substitute Socialism for competition in all that relates to the production and exchange of the means of life. I further believe that as that change will be beneficent in many ways, so especially will it give an opportunity for the new birth of art, which is now being crushed to death by the money-bags of competitive commerce.

My reason for this hope for art is founded on what I feel quite sure is a truth, and an important one, namely that all art, even the highest, is influenced by the conditions of labour of the mass of mankind, and that any pretensions which may be made for even the highest intellectual art to be independent of these general conditions are futile and vain; that is to say, that any art which professes to be founded on the special education or refinement of a limited body or class must of necessity be unreal and short-lived.

“Art is man’s expression of his joy in labour.” If those are not Professor Ruskin’s words they embody at least his teaching on this subject. Nor has any truth more important ever been stated; for if pleasure in labour be generally possible, what a strange folly it must be for men to consent to labour without pleasure; and what a hideous injustice it must be for society to compel most men to labour without pleasure! For since all men not dishonest must labour, it becomes a question either of forcing them to lead unhappy lives or allowing them to live happily.

Now the chief accusation I have to bring against the modern state of society is that it is founded on the art-lacking or unhappy labour of the greater part of men, and all that external degradation of the face of the country of which I have spoken is hateful to me not only because it is a cause of unhappiness to some few of us who still love art, but also and chiefly because it is a token of the unhappy life forced on the great mass of the population by the system of competitive commerce.

The pleasure which ought to go with the making of every piece of handicraft has for its basis the keen interest which every healthy man takes in healthy life, and is compounded, it seems to me, chiefly of three elements—variety, hope of creation, and the self-respect which comes of a sense of usefulness, to which must be added that mysterious bodily pleasure which goes with the deft exercise of the bodily powers. I do not think I need spend many words in trying to prove that these things, if they really and fully accompanied labour, would do much to make it pleasant. As to the pleasure of variety, any of you who have ever made anything—I don’t care what—will well remember the pleasure that went with the turning out of the first specimen. What would have become of that pleasure if you had been compelled to go on making it exactly the same for ever?

As to the hope of creation, the hope of producing some worthy or even excellent work, which, without you, the craftsmen, would not have existed at all, a thing which needs you and can have no substitute for you in the making of it, can we any of us fail to understand the pleasure of this?

No less easy, surely, is it to see how much the self-respect born of the consciousness of usefulness must sweeten labour. To feel that you have to do a thing not to satisfy the whim of a fool or a set of fools, but because it is really good in itself, that is useful, would surely be a good help to getting through the day’s work.

As to the unreasoning, sensuous pleasure in handiwork, I believe in good sooth that it has more power of getting rough and strenuous work out of men, even as things go, than most people imagine. At any rate it lies at the bottom of the production of all art, which cannot exist without it even in its feeblest and rudest form.

Now this compound pleasure in handiwork I claim as the birth right of all workmen. I say that if they lack any part of it they will be so far degraded, but that if they lack it altogether they are, as far as their work goes, I will not say slaves, the word would not be strong enough, but machines more or less conscious of their own unhappiness.

* * * * *

The craftsman of the Middle Ages no doubt often suffered grievous material oppression, yet in spite of the rigid line of separation drawn by the hierarchical system under which he lived between him and his feudal superior, the difference between them was arbitrary rather than real; there was no such gulf in language, manners, and ideas as divides a cultivated middle-class person of to-day, a “gentleman,” from even a respectable lower-class man; the mental qualities necessary to an artist—intelligence, fancy, imagination—had not then to go through the mill of the competitive market, nor had the rich (or successful competitors) made good their claim to be the sole possessors of mental refinement.

As to the conditions of handiwork in those days, the crafts were drawn together into guilds which indeed divided the occupations of men rigidly enough, and guarded the door to those occupations jealously; but as outside among the guilds there was little competition in the markets, wares being made in the first instance for domestic consumption, and only the overplus of what was wanted at home close to the place of production ever coming into the market or requiring any one to come and go between the producer and consumer, so inside the guilds there was but little division of labour; a man or youth once accepted as an apprentice to a craft learned it from end to end, and became as a matter of course the master of it; and in the earlier days of the guilds, when the masters were scarcely even small capitalists, there was no grade in the craft save this temporary one. Later on, when the masters became capitalists of a sort, and the apprentices were, like the masters, privileged, the class of journeyman craftsman came into existence; but it does not seem that the difference between them and the aristocracy of the guild was anything more than an arbitrary one. In short, during all this period the unit of labour was an intelligent man.

Under this system of handiwork no great pressure of speed was put on a man’s work, but he was allowed to carry it through leisurely and thoughtfully; it used the whole of a man for the production of a piece of goods, and not small portions of many men; it developed the workman’s whole intelligence according to his capacity, instead of concentrating his energy on one-sided dealing with a trifling piece of work; in short, it did not submit the hand and soul of the workman to the necessities of the competitive market, but allowed them freedom for due human development.

It was this system, which had not learned the lesson that man was made for commerce, but supposed in its simplicity that commerce was made for man, which produced the art of the Middle Ages, wherein the harmonious co-operation of free intelligence was carried to the furthest point which has yet been attained, and which alone of all art can claim to be called Free.

The effect of this freedom, and the widespread or rather universal sense of beauty to which it gave birth, became obvious enough in the outburst of the expression of splendid and copious genius which marks the Italian Renaissance. Nor can it be doubted that this glorious art was the fruit of the five centuries of free popular art which preceded it, and not of the rise of commercialism which was contemporaneous with it; for the glory of the Renaissance faded out with strange rapidity as commercial competition developed, so that about the end of the seventeenth century, both in the Intellectual and the Decorative arts the commonplace or body still existed, but the romance or soul of them was gone. Step by step they had faded and sickened before the advance of commercialism, now speedily gathering force throughout civilisation. The domestic or architectural arts were becoming (or become) mere toys for the competitive market through which all material wares used by civilised men now had to pass.

Commercialism had by this time well-nigh destroyed the craft-system of labour, in which, as aforesaid, the unit of labour is a fully-instructed craftsman, and had supplanted it by what I will ask leave to call the workshop system, wherein, when complete, division of labour in handiwork is carried to the highest point possible, and the unit of manufacture is no longer a man, but a group of men, each member of which is dependent on his fellows, and is utterly useless by himself. This system of the workshop division of labour was perfected during the eighteenth century by the efforts of the manufacturing classes, stimulated by the demands of the ever-widening markets; it is still the system in some of the smaller and more domestic kinds of manufacture, holding much the same place amongst us as the remains of the craft-system did in the days when that of the workshop was still young. Under this system, as I have said, all the romance of the arts died out, but the commonplace of them flourished still; for the idea that the essential aim of manufacture is the making of goods still struggled with a newer idea which has since obtained complete victory, namely, that it is carried on for the sake of making a profit for the manufacturer on the one hand, and on the other for the employment of the working class.

This idea of commerce being an end in itself and not a means merely, being but half developed in the eighteenth century, the special period of the workshop system, some interest could still be taken in those days in the making of wares. The capitalist manufacturer of the period had some pride in turning out goods which would do him credit, as the phrase went; he was not willing wholly to sacrifice his pleasure in this kind to the imperious demands of commerce; even his workman, though no longer an artist, that is a free workman, was bound to have skill in his craft, limited though it was to the small fragment of it which he had to toil at day by day for his whole life.

But commerce went on growing, stimulated still more by the opening up of new markets, and pushed on the invention of men, till their ingenuity produced the machines which we have now got to look upon as necessities of manufacture, and which have brought about a system the very opposite to the ancient craft-system; that system was fixed and conservative of methods; there was no real difference in the method of making a piece of goods between the time of Pliny and the time of Sir Thomas More; the method of manufacture, on the contrary, in the present time, alters not merely from decade to decade, but from year to year; this fact has naturally helped the victory of this machine system, the system of the Factory, where the machine-like workmen of the workshop period are supplanted by actual machines, of which the operatives as they are now called are but a portion, and a portion gradually diminishing both in importance and numbers.

This system is still short of its full development, therefore to a certain extent the workshop system is being carried on side by side with it, but it is being speedily and steadily crushed out by it; and when the process is complete, the skilled workman will no longer exist, and his place will be filled by machines directed by a few highly trained and very intelligent experts, and tended by a multitude of people, men, women, and children, of whom neither skill nor intelligence is required.

This system, I repeat, is as near as may be the opposite of that which produced the popular art which led up to that splendid outburst of art in the days of the Italian Renaissance which even cultivated men will sometimes deign to notice now-a-days; it has therefore produced the opposite of what the old craft-system produced, the death of art and not its birth; in other words the degradation of the external surroundings of life—or simply and plainly unhappiness. Through all society spreads that curse of unhappiness: from the poor wretches, the news of whom we middle-class people are just now receiving with such naive wonder and horror: from those poor people whom nature forces to strive against hope, and to expend all the divine energy of man in competing for something less than a dog’s lodging and a dog’s food, from them up to the cultivated and refined person, well lodged, well fed, well clothed, expensively educated, but lacking all interest in life except, it may be, the cultivation of unhappiness as a fine art.

(To be continued)

Pathfinders: There will be riots (2024)

The Pathfinders Column from the September 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

The sun is out, the sky is blue, I’m rioting today, how about you? Politicians in the UK have good reason to look with trepidation on the period of their summer recess. It’s not only when the small boat crossings reach their peak. It’s also when riots are most likely to happen. There’s an underlying pressure of discontent that exists year-round and year-on-year, generally simmering through the cold winter months, but ready to explode periodically when reaching a critical mass, if weather permits, and if touched off by some suitable trigger event. This year the pretext was the dreadful stabbing to death of young children in Southport, which certain vicious individuals wasted no time in exploiting with invented claims that the alleged perpetrator was a Muslim illegal immigrant, when he was actually born in Cardiff and had a Christian father.

Comparisons were inevitably drawn in the UK media with the last lot of major riots in England in 2011. There too the trigger event – the fatal shooting of a North London alleged gangster – was obscured by confusion and misinformation, with the police and eyewitnesses providing contradictory accounts. In the ensuing orgy of arson and looting, the original trigger was largely forgotten, having served its purpose.

Echoes of similar misinformation events reverberate back through history. In a particularly notorious instance in 1255, ‘Little Saint’ Hugh of Lincoln, a 9-year-old boy, was alleged to have been ritually murdered in a ‘blood libel’ sacrifice by Jews. The chronicler and Benedictine monk Matthew Paris offered a fantastically ghoulish account in which the boy was tortured, whipped, run through with pikes, crucified and disembowelled before being thrown down a well. The atrocity seems to have been fabricated to incite popular hatred against Jews, and served its purpose admirably. In no time at all, a Jew was found and tortured into confessing, after which he was executed, followed by 18 more Jews who bravely refused to recognise the validity of the kangaroo ‘show trials’. The ritual murder accusation was not the first to be made against Jews, but it was the first to be officially endorsed by the ruling monarch, Henry III. What was not widely advertised at the time was that the king had previously sold his right to tax Jews to his brother Richard, Earl of Cornwall, thereafter decreeing that the property of any Jew committing a crime would be forfeit to the Crown. This gave the perpetually hard-up king a transparent motive for endorsing such stitch-ups. A further 71 Jews were subsequently condemned to death, but by then the fraud had become so farcically obvious that even the Church, and Richard of Cornwall, felt honour bound to intervene, and the victims were released. But the bogus story continued to have legs. It later popped up in works by Chaucer and Marlowe, and was still doing the rounds in 20th century America. In 1955 the Church of England shamefacedly mounted a plaque at Hugh’s former shrine in Lincoln Cathedral, relating how ‘trumped up stories of ritual murders of Christian boys by Jewish communities were common throughout Europe during the Middle Ages and even much later. These fictions cost many innocent Jews their lives… Such stories do not redound to the credit of Christendom, and so we pray: Lord, forgive what we have been…’ (tinyurl.com/4zuc47ae).

Probably the most die-hard English Defence League sympathiser would dismiss the obvious historical parallel. Just because blaming ‘foreigners’ is a tactic as old as history, doesn’t mean today’s far-right are wrong. But they should still pause and ask themselves the cui bono question—who gains from this claim? With hindsight it’s clear that the king and the landowners had a clear financial incentive to discredit and persecute people they owed money to, which led to executions, pogroms, expulsions, and the forced wearing of yellow badges, decreed by the Vatican 700 years before the Nazis. The Church too is thought to have had an incentive in creating little ‘saints’ whose shrines would be lucrative draws for pilgrims. Who gains today? Ambitious populists looking to ride to power on a wave of anti-immigrant votes. Capitalist élites who delight in watching workers fight each other. Desperate individuals eager to blame their failings on those weaker than themselves.

Back in the Middle Ages, most people were illiterate, with no education and no ability to fact-check. People today have no such excuse. If they still choose to believe fake tales, it’s not because they can’t help it, it’s because they don’t care about the truth. They have sunk into sociopathy, and are no help to socialists.

According to the Torah, the Jewish people used to ritually burden a goat with their sins and send it off to get lost in the wilderness. Jesus performed the same function for Christians by getting himself crucified. But the biggest scapegoaters of all are states and their ruling élites, particularly when it comes to violent crimes like the one in Southport. ‘The many causes of and potential solutions to knife crime are well documented in extensive research…. Social issues including poverty and deprivation, serious mental health issues and online radicalisation are all part of the prevalence of knife crime. The lack of a proper home, violence in the home, lack of resources and money, parental neglect, adverse childhood experiences, supply of drugs … are also sometimes part of the picture’ (tinyurl.com/5ey3aam2). What capitalist state could do anything about any of these, even if it wanted to? To abolish poverty, the wellspring of so many social ills, you would have to abolish private wealth ownership, which is the foundation of capitalism. That’s exactly what socialists propose. Capitalist officials will simply lock up the perpetrators as deviants, and look the other way.

Nobody can predict when or where the next riots will happen. But as long as capitalism lasts we can be sure that there will be riots, and usually it will be innocents who get the blame.

Paddy Shannon

Letter: Machinery and Socialism (1932)

Letter to the Editors from the December 1932 issue of the Socialist Standard

A correspondent asks us what is our attitude towards those who condemn machine production and want to go back to handicraft methods.

“Some time ago, within the past year, I read an issue of the Saturday Evening Post, one of the most widely circulated weekly magazines in America, and a correspondent, Marcossan it was, gave an account of the character, aims and objects of the Nazi, or National Socialists in Germany in that issue of the Post.

Among the points he listed and described as features of that movement, was one that struck me as having a lot in common with the Socialist philosophy, and it was this : —

The Nazi’s organisation deplore the predominant role that the machine occupies, in this day and age, in the lives of the masses living within those countries that are for the most part industrialised.

They go in for rites and ceremonial functions that are reminiscent of Mediaevalism, as a reaction to the machine age, and they would revive the colourful picturesqueness of the people lived back in the period of the Holy Roman Empire.

However fallacious all this may seem to us, is there not something wholesome and worthy in a resentment against the necessity for being dominated by the machine, both in economic and social phases of life ? Many authorities agree in this; that the machine age has all but done away with a desire in the present generation for the acquisition of culture, i.e., literature, music and art, and the tendency on the part of the younger generation, so far as the development of their mental capabilities go, are all too one-sided, in the direction of motor mechanics and the repair of engines, etc. The types of people who can carve wonderful designs in wood-work, plaster or clay are only to be found in remote districts like the Bavarian Alps, the Black Forest, Sicily, and other places where the spirit of the Middle Ages still lingers on.”

Reply.

It may be as well to start off by explaining that the name used by the Hitler Party in Germany—”National Socialists”—does not justify the assumption that they have something in common with Socialists. Hitler, in the attempt to build up a large working class following, has found it useful to talk in the phrases of his opponents, the Social Democrats. But neither in his mouth nor in their mouths do these phrases betoken knowledge or acceptance of socialist principles.

Nor do we share Hitler’s alleged longing for medievalism and hatred of machine production. That such a hatred should exist is natural enough among workers who knew or have heard from their parents of the easier conditions under which handicraft production was carried on before the craftman’s products were swept off the market by the cheaper products of the capitalist factory. But it is not correct to describe the workers’ subjection to the capitalist as being simply a condition of “being dominated by the machine,” and it is also fallacious to assume that the course of industrial development can be reversed. If it were possible to reproduce the greatly overpraised conditions of the Middle Ages the same developments which undermined feudalism and led to its replacement by capitalism and machine production would be at work, leading on to the same results.

The chief objection, however, to our correspondent’s argument is the belief that the disabilities under which the workers now suffer are due to their subjection to machines. It is true that machine production, like every other form of production, imposes certain restrictions on the producers. It is true, for example, that it is necessary for all the crew of a boat or a train to be ready for work at a stated time, although this may involve considerable discomfort for those who would prefer to stay in bed for another hour. But what of the discomfort of having to get up early to milk the cows ? What of the inconvenience of having to make hay while the sun was shining, instead of at some other time more pleasing to the mediaeval peasant ? Some machine work is monotonous under capitalist conditions (perhaps some monotony is unavoidable under any conditions), but what of the deadly monotony and brutal exhaustion of primitive agriculture, and of housework ?

Machinery possesses two associated possibilities. It will, when socially owned, act as a saver of much unpleasant and exhausting labour, and it will make it possible so to increase the production of articles needed by the population as a whole that the necessary hours of labour will be greatly reduced. When this happens the majority will have opportunities of recreation and self-development now denied to them. It is not the machine which prevents the workers from living full lives, but the private ownership of the machines, along with the remainder of the means of production and distribution.

Editorial Committee.

50 Years Ago: Socialism, Work and Beauty (1960)

The 50 Years Ago column from the October 1960 issue of the Socialist Standard

In the "golden age of labour“ the craftsman owned his tools and used them for the production of beautiful and useful objects, which were his when made. It was to his credit to put the best that was in him into the things he produced, and all things combined, not only to give him opportunity, but to encourage him to exercise thoroughness in the construction, and to give his work that expression of his individuality which is the very essence of art. He was his own master, free to embody his own ideas in his own product in his own time, not dogged at every step by some impatient holder of a stop-watch, and forced to inscribe on a time-sheet the moments of each stage of production.

How different is the position of the modern toiler (craftsman he cannot be called). Labour today is divorced from art. The labourer has neither right nor interest in the object upon which he labours. It matters not to him whether the article produced be ugly or beautiful, useless or useful. He is an automaton hired to do a certain task; the slave of a machine.  . . . 

To raise the workers from the level of the machine and to place them in the position of men is the object of Socialism. . . . It is our desire, not to return to the method of production of the Middle Ages, but to obtain the happiness and comfort, and the security of life enjoyed by the craftsmen of that day, by making ourselves masters, collectively, of our tools, material and time, shapers of our own destiny.

From the Socialist Standard, October. 1910.

War: Methods of Offence and Defence (continued) (1941)

From the March 1941 issue of the Socialist Standard

Link to Part 4.

(Continued from February issue.) 

An excellent picture of the times is contained in contemporary reports of the siege of Jerusalem in 1099 by eye-witnesses and participants in the event. A number of these reports are contained in the above-mentioned work of Duncalf and Kreg, from which the following extracts are taken.

Firebrands were hurled into the city. They consisted of burning wood and straw.

“The wood was dipped in pitch, wax, and sulphur, then straw and tow were fastened on by an iron band, and when lighted these firebrands were shot from the machines, all bound together by an iron band, I say, so that, wherever they fell the whole mass held together and continued to burn.“ (Raymond of Agiles. Canon of Puy. “History of the Franks who captured Jerusalem”—written about 1112.)

This writer follows on with a description of the incidents after the capture of the town.

“But now that our men had possession of the walls and towers, wonderful sights were to be seen. Some of our men (and this was more merciful) cut off the heads of their enemies ; others shot them with arrows, so that they fell from the towers; others tortured them longer by casting them into the flames. Piles of heads, hands and feet were to be seen in the streets of the city. It was necessary to pick one’s way over the bodies of men and horses. But these were small matters compared to what happened at the temple of Solomon, a place where religious services are ordinarily chanted. What happened there ? If I tell you the truth, it will exceed your powers of belief. So let it suffice to say this much at least, that in the temple and portico of Solomon, men rode in blood up to their knees and bridle reins. Indeed it was a just and splendid judgment of God, that this place should be filled with the blood of unbelievers, when it had suffered so long from their blasphemies. The city was filled with corpses and blood.”

Another writer states : —

“Neither woman or children were spared;”

and adds:—

“Our squires and poorer footmen discovered a trick of the Saracens, for they learned that they could find byzants [gold coins] in the stomachs and intestines of the dead Saracens, who had swallowed them. Thus, after several days they burned a great heap of dead bodies, that they might more easily get the precious metal from the ashes.” (Fulk of Chartres, “The Deeds of the Franks who attacked Jerusalem.”)

Another contemporary author says : —

“Afterwards, the army scattered throughout the city and took possession of the gold and silver, the horses and mules, and the houses full of loot for all.” (“Deeds of the Franks and Crusaders,” by an anonymous author.)

Curious how little war has changed, in its fundamental aspect, across the ages.

Towards the end of the Middle Ages, after the introduction of gunpowder to Europe in 1320, cannon replaced the former feeble siege weapons in the attacks on strongholds. Primitive though they were, they yet hurled missiles heavy enough and forcefully enough to batter breaches in the walls of the most powerful fortifications. From that time dates the decline of the impregnability of the mediaeval castle. The capture of Constantinople by the Turks in 1453 was due to the use of artillery. The Turks changed over to artillery long before Europe. They used arquebuses and field-pieces—the latter joined together by chains to prevent horsemen charging between them.

As the big barons swallowed little ones the internal wars began to come to an end. Military protection being no longer needed by the town and country people, the baron was transformed into a courtier. When gunpowder had revolutionised mediaeval warfare, the power of the baron declined still further. The equipment and maintenance of a company of artillery was so expensive that it became the monopoly of the wealthier princes, and the power of the latter consequently grew as the barons declined.

Gunpowder finally brought back into war the mass of the people as a fighting power when the infantrymen, with gun and cannon, ousted the armoured cavalrymen as the supreme striking force and cut the ground from under the privileged aristocracy of Feudalism.

Thus, gunpowder helped to destroy the mediaeval lord, raise the bourgeoisie (the monied class, as such) and established for a time the power of kings. We have now reached the end of one form of social organisation and the beginning of another— the end of the mediaeval world and the beginning of the modern or capitalist period.

Before continuing the discussion of the development of the implements of war we would like to direct attention to some points that are worth bearing in mind.

Imperialism and the building up of empires commenced with the introduction of slavery as a general feature of communities. All the great antique civilisations were based upon chattel slavery, which freed fighting men for the pursuit of loot—in fact, built up masses of wealth worth looting. In the period of tribal communism, which preceded the introduction of slavery, there were no empires. Even the largest aggregations of settled tribal peoples, such as the confederation of Iroquois tribes occupying what is now the State of New York, exhibited no empire-building traits.

Another interesting fact is that empires grew cut of small city states like Babylon, Athens and Rome, or were established by war chiefs like Mahomet, Genghis Khan and Tamerlaine. In each case, behind the apparently accidental growth of a mushroom empire there was productive development of a high order. This is shown in the invention and workmanship of the offensive and defensive armour. The mail-clad Arabians and the gunpowder-using warriors of Genghis Khan are evidence of this.

When the economic development within a group reached the point of enabling them to produce a supreme weapon or method of warfare it started them on the road to conquest. If other conditions are favourable, such as the position of Rome on crossing trade routes, then the bid for empire is likely to be successful.

Some of the empires of the past were of huge extent, even judging by present-day standards. The Tartar Empire of Genghis Khan, in the 13th century, was one of the largest ever built up, comprising a vast area of Russia, China and Central Asia—half of the known world of the time. After the oft-repeated legends of the barbarous Mongol hordes it is refreshing to read the following recent description of the effect of the Tartar conquest: —

“The blood feuds of the grand princes of ancient Russia—lords of Iwer and Vladimir and Sasdol were buried under a greater calamity. All these figures of an elder world appear to us only as shadows. Empires crumbled under the Mongol avalanche, and monarchs fled to their deaths in wild fear. What would have happened if Genghis Khan had not lived, we do not know.

What did happen was that the Mongol, like the Roman peace, enabled culture to spring up anew. Nations had been shuffled to and fro—or rather the remnants of them—Mohammedan science and skill carried bodily into the Far East, Chinese inventiveness and administrative ability had penetrated into the West. In the devastated gardens of Islam, scholars and architects enjoyed, if not a golden age, a silver age under the Mongol ll-khana; and the thirteenth century was notable in China for its literature, especially plays, and its magnificence—the century of the Yuan”.—(Pages 200 and 207. “Genghis Khan, Emperor of All Men,” by Harold Lamb.)

Apparently neither Chinese nor Mongols knew how to cast cannon, but they were well-acquainted with the detonating effect of gunpowder and used it in fire-projectors to burn or frighten the enemy. 

A Chinese annalist at the Siege of Kaifong, in 1232, records the following: —

“As the Mongols had dug themselves pits under the earth where they were sheltered from missiles, we decided to bind with iron the machines called chin-tien-lei (a kind of fire-projector) and lowered them into the places where the Mongol sappers were ; they exploded and blew into pieces men and shields” (quoted by Lamb, page 224).

Now to get back to the development of gunpowder-using weapons.

We will first examine the evolution of small-arms, leaving until later the evolution of cannon, which were first used in ships.

The principal steps in the development of firearms concerned the method of igniting the charge. The progression was: Primer and match, matchlock, wheel-lock, flint-lock, percussion cap.

Early in the 15th century a hand cannon came into use. It was probably the first form of hand firearms and consisted of a small cannon fixed to a wooden stock, and it was fired by applying a match to some fine powder that had been poured on the touch-hole. These hand-guns required two men to handle, one levelling the gun while the other applied the priming and the match. The loading, levelling and fixing, however, took such a long time that in their early use they rarely fired more than one shot during a battle. In spite of this their effect upon enemy troops was considerable. They were used successfully by the Swiss in 1476 at the battle of Morat, at which were employed 6,000 of these hand-guns or culverins. Their most successful use at the time, however, was by cavalry, to which they were soon adapted. In practice, one group of cavalry fired a volley and then made way for another group to do the same, while they reloaded, thus keeping up a constant fire.

Early in the 16th century the Spaniards invented the arquebus, or match-lock. Its great feature was a lighted match held in a serpentin or hammer in such a position that when the trigger was pulled the serpentin dropped into the flashpan and the match ignited the priming powder. This speeded up the firing.

The match-lock was troublesome in wet weather and when a method of covering the match was devised it was necessary to blow it into flame before firing or it might not ignite the charge.

The next step was the invention of the wheel-lock in Germany in the 16th century. In this a flint was placed in the serpentin, which dropped to the flash pan when the trigger was pulled. The edge of a wheel, rotating at the side of the stocks after the style of a ratchet, came in contact with the flint and produced sparks that ignited the priming.

The wheel-lock was intricate and very expensive to use, consequently it did not come into general use, being employed mainly by the wealthy for sporting purposes.

Early in the 16th century the flint-lock was invented by the Spaniards. This gun was in use for over a century. In it the cover plate of the flashpan was knocked back by a blow from the flint that was screwed into the cock or hammer, and the resulting sparks ignited the priming powder.

In 1807 the Rev. M. Forsythe patented the percussion principle of igniting gunpowder in muskets by means of detonating powder, and percussion caps came into use between 1820 and 1830.

This brief description will give some idea of the steps in the development of small firearms. After their introduction the best workmanship and much ingenuity was employed in producing very fine specimens, both for quality and for ornamentation. Some of the guns were very richly embellished. It was not until the introduction of the rifled barrel that the accuracy of these guns could be depended upon in spite of intricate sighting arrangements.

We will have to leave for the next article a consideration of the effect these different inventions had on the conduct of warfare.

Gilmac.

War: Methods of Offence and Defence (continued) (1941)

From the February 1941 issue of the Socialist Standard

Link to Part 3.

(Continued from December issue.)

From the 5th to the 15th century cavalry was supreme in warfare, and by 1300 the defensive in the form of the heavy armour of the knight and the moated and thickly-walled feudal castle had gained complete mastery over offensive weapons.

It may not be out of place here to point out that the advances in offensive and defensive armour in the past, just as to-day, depended upon the producer, and whatever the brilliancy of the leader or the expertness of the soldiery, in the last analysis the group that had access to the products of the best and most advanced craftsmen were the most successful in warfare. In different parts of Europe and the Near East there were famous workshops producing high grade weapons and armour, excellent examples of which are to be seen in the museums. The great skill that must have been employed in their production is an evidence of the technical capacity of the so-called “Dark Ages.” The product of these workshops, however, could only be purchased by the wealthy lords and nobles of the time, for the rigging out of a knight and his horse in the complete armour required was costly.

From the declining days of the Roman Empire onwards it became a race in armaments, in which the group possessing the heavier cavalry almost inevitably won. The mediaeval knight carried an enormous weight of metal, but it carried him to victory in his day.

There is not space available to explain in detail the changes and shifts of armoured infantry and lightly armoured horsemen that occurred in the development from the horse-bowmen and javelin throwers to the completely armoured knight, whose equipment was impervious to arrows or spears. It may be mentioned that it was the work of its armour makers that helped the Byzantine Empire (the Eastern Roman Empire centred in Constantinople) to hold out against the Barbarian and Saracenic invaders for centuries.

By the 9th century in Europe practically all fighting was done by horsemen. The feudal order grew out of the barbarian tribal organisation in which war was carried on under temporary war chiefs. Declining Rome bought the services of these chiefs in some instances by the grants of territory, in other instances territory was conquered and collectivist villages made subject to the conquerors. The fortification of bridgeheads, strongholds, and eventually the castle was the means that ultimately tied the wandering armed bands down to definite portions of land, and produced the hierarchy of service obligations that has gone by the name of feudalism.

In the hierarchy of feudalism the church was the largest owner of lands, and hence church dignitaries encased in armour were in the forefront of feudal wars, hacking, slaughtering and riding the defeated down with the best.

The knightly cavalry that ultimately developed had no real leaders; each noble was practically a law unto himself. This brought considerable confusion into the battles of the time, as the knight fought or declined to fight when and how he thought he would. Even when agreement had been reached as to the time a battle was to begin isolated groups often commenced the fight long before the main body had arrived on the spot.

In warfare there was little attempt at provisioning an army, dependence being placed upon plundering the country they entered. The principle of attack was the blind impetuous charge. Knights would charge anything; sometimes they landed into a wall or a swamp—hence Cervante’s satire of Don Quixote charging a windmill.

As infantry declined battles became rare, and were replaced by sieges of long duration. The heavily armed horsemen could not operate where there were natural obstructions. In fact, in one instance two armies were drawn up on opposite sides of a river and neither could cross in face of the other. One of the leaders thereupon courteously offered the opposing army an uninterrupted crossing in order that they might have a proper battle ! It was this very weight of armour that first brought the horsemen down when an offensive weapon was found that was able to pierce the best armour that could be produced.

Although war appears to have been the outstanding occupation of the Middle Ages, it must be remembered that no war could be carried on without production, and no wealth could be looted unless there were people regularly engaged in producing it. What the mediaeval lord fought for at bottom was power over increased quantities of the labour dues exacted from the feudal labourer. The feudal barons, developed from village head men and military chiefs installed by conquerors, once constituted, began to war on each other to increase territory. Thus petty barons were gradually wiped out and powerful dukes and lords developed in their places. The wars of the feudal barons were conducted as much against each other as against foreign powers, with the object of increasing power and possessions, much as the capitalists of our days enter into cut-throat competition with each other for a similar object, although they are also a privileged class with an identical interest as against the rest of the population.

By the end of the 9th century the equipment of men-at-arms consisted of a long lance made of ashwood, a steel sword and a long shield made of wood covered with leather. He wore a tunic covered with iron rings. In the course of time the iron rings on this tunic were improved and increased, until, by the end of the 11th century, it was replaced by a coat of mail, entirely composed or iron links, which extended from chin to knee, and which was called a hauberk. The head was protected by a helmet of steel, and the nose by a piece of steel.

This equipment was so heavy and complicated that long practice was necessary before the wearer could make use of it in warfare. Also a servant, who went by the name of squire or equerry, was required to carry the shield and lace the helmet and hauberk.

By the end of the 11th century these knights formed a hereditary privileged class, into which none could enter unless born into it. None could be armed as a knight unless he was the son of a knight. The craftsman and tiller of the soil, who paid in service for military protection, felt the iron heel of his protector grinding him down more and more heavily as the centuries passed, until he found in gunpowder the final means to overthrow this overpowering mass of iron at a time when its usefulness was also passing away.

Owing to the development of the crossbow, the bolt from which could penetrate the coat of mail, the latter gave place to plate armour in the 14th century, which saw the highest development of personal defensive armour. The rider was encased from head to foot in solid steel, the only openings being at the joint of the limbs and in the visor that protected the face. As this armour was so complete only a small oblong shield was carried, which gave the knight more freedom to handle his lance. The horse was also afflicted with quantities of plate armour.

Thus accoutred the knight cruised like a modern battleship. The unfortunate tenants of these lords, a proportion of whom were forced to follow the knight into battle, had practically no protection and were armed with the most primitive weapons—often only pitchforks and the like. They acted as the scouts and attendants and suffered the worst miseries of the prevailing type of warfare. Sometimes when these tenants were moving ahead, trying to make contact with the enemy, the knightly chivalry would become impatient and charge through and over them to get at the foe. Likewise, when the knights, in defeat, decided to abandon the battle, they would turn about and ride their lowly followers down in their indifferent haste to get away.

The heavy armour presented many difficulties. It was impossible for the knightly cavalry to operate effectively in rough or hilly country. There was also the problem of breeding powerful enough horses to carry the enormous weight. For example, England could not provide sufficient of these horses and had to import them from Normandy.

The first weapons to pierce the best plate armour produced were wielded by foemen drawn from sections of society outside and below the privileged knightly circles—the pike-men of Switzerland and the longbow-men of England.

In the 14th century pike-men of Switzerland met and defeated at Morgarten a large body of knights under Leopold of Austria who were attempting to invade Switzerland. This began the ascendancy of infantry over cavalry once again, and the formation used was reminiscent of the Greek and Roman phalanx. In a few years the Swiss pike-men became supreme on the Continent as a fighting force.

The pike-men formed into a phalanx of enormous depth and depended for success upon the tremendous force of their impact upon the enemy. They used ashen pikes, eighteen feet long, with a head of steel that extended another foot, which was held with both hands wide apart at the level of the shoulder. Before the line of pike-men there extended the points of the first, second, third and fourth line of pikes, thus making a bristling hedge of points, almost impossible to penetrate. The Swiss pike-men were strong and hardy mountaineers, kept formation, and rushed swiftly upon their opponents, delivering an impact which the knightly cavalry were unable to resist. When the knights, in their turn, attempted to charge the steel hedge, the point penetrated their armour or knocked them off their horses. Once the knight was unhorsed he was in a hopeless position, owing to his unwieldy equipment. The Swiss also possessed a fearsome weapon in the halberd, which had a blade like a hatchet, that could cleave through any armour. When the halberd men got among the dismounted knights they hewed them to pieces.

Thus the Swiss, by shock tactics and a new weapon, brought the horsemen down.

The other offensive weapon was the missile fired from the longbow of the English archer. The weakness of the crossbow was due to the length of time it took to wind up the arbalest. The English archers, however, with a six-foot bow could fire several arrows at charging horsemen and bring numbers of them down before they could get within striking distance. These bows were so powerful that the arrows would pierce armour at a considerable distance.

At Crecy and Poitiers, in the middle of the 14th century, the English archers scored their first successes, when they were mainly responsible for the victory of the English army over the French.

Thus mediaeval chivalry started upon its decline. The hitherto impregnable fortress was now also to meet a weapon that rendered it obsolete as a form of defence, and again the means—gunpowder—was to be used by infantrymen.

In the tenth century the castle was not of great strength. It consisted of a wooden tower built on an elevation and surrounded by a ditch and a stockade. A sloping plank led up to the door, which was several feet above the ground. In the course of time this stronghold was considerably improved and stone replaced wood in the buildings. By the fourteenth century the castle had become a fortress of considerable strength and almost impossible to capture by the best siege instrument before the use of gunpowder. Sometimes they were built on precipices, like Dunluce Castle in the North of Ireland. In the centre was the huge tower, the abode of the lord; this was surrounded by an enclosure to house cattle, granaries, stables and the lodgings of the servants and men-at-arms. Then came the castellated wall of enormous thickness—twenty to thirty feet. Outside this, again, was an encircling moat, only crossed by a drawbridge, which, when raised, prevented access to the gates. Beyond this, again, there were further obstructions.

When an enemy approached these powerful defences he was met by missiles of various descriptions fired or hurled through the openings at the top of the walls. At one time a platform ran around the top of the walls, from which boiling water and burning faggots descended upon the heads of attackers who attempted to ram or undermine the walls, but that platform was superseded by strong towers built out from the walls at the corners. Through loopholes in these towers the defenders were able to fire upon anyone who succeeded in reaching the foot of the walls.

The siege weapons employed in the Middle Ages are thus described by Duncalf and Kreg, in “Parallel Source Problems of European History” :

“The ram was a large beam or log, which was suspended by ropes or chains from solid perpendicular beams. When drawn back it was allowed to swing against the walls. It was necessary to cover the men who worked the ram with some kind of protection, as the defenders dropped stones from the top of the walls. By the use of the ram the wall was shaken down or a hole was made through it.

There were various kinds of engines for hurling stones or shooting javelins. Ropes or cords were so twisted that when suddenly released they hurled a stone or other missile. Other machines were like large crossbows, and-shot javelins and stones. The petrarea was a machine which hurled stones as missiles. The tormentum was an engine operated by the use of twisted cords, by torsion.” (P. 111.)

“Mantlets were used to shelter the men who were attacking. They were usually made of wickerwork or basketwork of twigs and rods so as to be light enough to carry easily. They were generally covered with hides as a protection from the firebrands hurled down from the walls. Such shields could be held over the men who were working close to the wall, or could be used by men when making an assault. These mantlets seem to have been of great service to the crusaders at Jerusalem.” (P. 125.)

The siege machines were also mounted in wooden towers covered with hides, that were built to a height level with the walls. These towers were pushed up to the walls so that the attackers could pass on to the walls and enter the castle or city.

The privileged classes of antiquity were cultured, but the chief characteristics of the flower of mediaeval chivalry appear to have been armour, arrogance, ignorance and the pursuit of plunder. When the rough, uncultured knights of Europe set out on the first crusade at the end of the eleventh century the taking of the holy sepulchre out of the hands of the infidel was only a pretext behind which their real plundering aims were hidden. The ambitions and mercenary jealousies of the leaders made it doubtful whether the crusaders would ever reach Jerusalem. As they saw the wealth and splendour of the East they were so delighted and astonished that they wanted to settle on the rich territory they had invaded and forget the religious enthusiasm that they professed. It was only the pressure from the ranks that forced the leaders on.

Gilmac.

(To be continued)