The Medieval Serf
Been There - Done That
Introduction
Serfdom was the predominant organizing structure of agricultural labor from the
tenth through the sixteenth century in most of Western Europe. It had existed along
side of other forms of labor organization for many centuries prior and persisted for a
somewhat longer period elsewhere, e.g., to the east and in Russia. The
majority of people, who were tied to and worked the land, did so with defined rights of
usage but not ownership of that resource. Towns, trade, diverse categories of labor
and a social hierarchy had replaced familial groups, tribal wanderings and small
settlements. However, with only draft animals to provide power, achieving the
necessary
agricultural output still took a great deal of human physical work from a large fraction of
the population, a situation that remained unchanged until the introduction of
mechanization.
The current relevance of this phase of societal organization lies beyond
its agrarian aspects With the onset of the industrial age came dramatic changes in
economic and political contexts, leading to a profound restructuring of social life. A
much smaller fraction of the population was thereafter necessary for agrarian pursuits.
Agriculture became and is now but another industry whose strongest bonds of dependence are to
the
financial, chemical and mechanical industries. The age of the serf has passed. Or has
it? If we take away the agricultural aspects, the term "serf" remains as a valid, albeit
colloquial reference to a state of minimal personal ownership corresponding to
enhanced extrapersonal control. The current relevance derives not from the historical roots in agricultural service. Labor still
exists as a necessary component of our economy. However, it is demand, the consumption of goods and services contingent upon that labor, that
is now the principal the focus of control. To control demand requires the management
of choice.
With capital as a primary resource, current developed economies achieve
their success via relatively high levels of production. To insure the desired degree of
stability this production requires a correspondingly high level of consumption, hence
demand. The economic convenience of supply/demand theory aside, it is intuitively
obvious that without demand the level of production must fall and the economy follows.
What more than a few scholars (most notably Galbraith) have elaborated upon can be
summarized as: An economically developed society must, if it is to sustain itself,
provide
for the necessary rate of growth, that is, it must promote consumption via demand
management. Consumption is not simply the average person's pleasure, it is his role.
Whether it be personal goods, military equipment or social programs, steady creation
and disbursement of inventory without an accumulating surplus is the ideal. Resource
limitations are putely market functions. This guiding force upon demand/consumption is comparable to
that which managed the labor of the serf. As debt is the new equity, so say the wags,
choice (demand) is the new labor.
We may be dismayed by questions such as: Are we now again serfs in an
industrial age? Are we, after centuries of transition from serf to freeman in step with the
rise of capitalistic democracy, moving back to that former state, to implicit serfdom with
an overabundance of control, oversight and limitation? Yet, such questions must be
asked.
The issues are significant not so much because in any given occupation labor is
constrained, that is, managed outside of our control. To the degree that this may be
correct one is to a corresponding extent free to expand to alternative, possibly more
rewarding pursuits. A flexible medium of exchange - money - is in play, so that labor (in
the broad sense) has been monetized. Being freely exchangeable, deriving monetary
income from labor allows a degree of flexibility profoundly beyond what a medieval serf
might have enjoyed. However, this intermediation via freely exchangeable currencies
displaces but does not fundamentally alter the nature of constraints upon and control
over the self-allocation of the results of one's labor.
Historical Context
Serfdom had been a common practice since at least the time of the Greeks. It
was less common under the Romans who preferred to impose outright slavery onto
conquered lands, as indeed they adopted in great measure in their own households.
Arguably in even the simplest society, incentives are necessary to insure that
agricultural production is substantially greater than the needs of those specifically so
engaged. As the European population grew and coalesced during the middle ages, it
fell upon the labor of the agrarian peasant to yield a level of production beyond that of
subsistence and self sufficiency. The support of a diverse social hierarchy required
transferable agricultural surplus.
In western Europe, roughly from the time of the fall of the Roman Empire until the
late middle ages, labor fell into one of three general groups or classes. There was, of
course, the slave who was forced to work for his master and at his master's total
discretion. The slave had no property and no rights, not even to his own life. At the
opposite end of the spectrum was the freeman. In the manorial period these were
generally townsfolk and/or craftsmen with modest degrees of mobility. In the middle
were
the land bound peasant, the villein or serf, generally engaged in agriculture.
There were several possible paths to achieving the necessary levels of sustained
agricultural output in manorial Western Europe. Land was a stable
resource.
Agriculture and husbandry had replaced the hunter-gatherer lifestyle. If the bulk of the
population were self motivated, outside threats not so severe and the land reasonably
productive, little coercive oversight was required. Living simply and being self-sufficient,
thus utterly free of outside human oversight, was a possibility for those on the land. The complex developing population centers required more, however. Simple forms of trade,
such as barter, accommodated bidirectional flow of products and services for some, but
were insufficient to support the upper echelons of the social hierarchy. Practical
considerations of safety (of person as well as crops), local social stability, conflict
resolution and anticipatory financial backing, specialized trades and religious comfort,
all
of these basics of a vigorous, expanding society promoted a vertical complexity in the
society with agricultural production at its base.
Labor was all that the agricultural worker had to offer. Further, it was a critical medium of
exchange in an era of agrarian dominance. While during western Europe's first
millennium the agrarian "freeman" was not uncommon, after the 11-th century Norman
conquest of Britain the appellation "free" could no longer applied to the vast bulk of the
agrarian workers. The conversion was facilitated by the physical force that could be
organized to enforce a more restricted and controlled status, a regression in personal
freedom that amply reflected the tenor of the times. Yet, why not simply reimpose
slavery? The power and means were certainly there in abundance. The simplistic,
perhaps even the correct answer is that while force was(is) one way to compel
cooperation, it is itself costly and labor intensive. A middle ground of controlled self-
interest was more effective. This was serfdom. There were issues of morality, to be sure, but such rarely resist the onslaughts of economic realities.
As Europe entered the middle ages potentially productive land holdings, acquired
by conquest and usually held by hereditary title, were concentrated in the hands of a
small number of families. On rare occasion individuals not of this class could acquire
land of their own. For the most part, however, a complex of kinship and kingship
allowed
land to be owned at the top and parceled out in respect of favor and/or service to those
of lower rank. Deriving stable production from this resource was another matter. For
this the serf provided the necessary labor.
This status of serf was a step up from slavery in
the sense that it allowed peasants to derive unmediated benefit from their agricultural
efforts. Further, the serf had a specific and codified body of rights. The political system
of the middle ages recognized personal contract between serf and landowner. These
enforceable mutual obligations worked to the benefit of both parties, which was critical
for the stability of the arrangement. For example, the landowner provided: protection,
a
body of law, stability of use, certain supplies and tools, perhaps even draft animals.
Retaining a portion for his own use, the serf returned to the landowner a defined share
of his production. In addition he (and family members to be sure) provided personal
services, again generally well defined, to the landowner. These might include military
duties, working the owner's retained lands or in his household.
West European serfdom was a
reasonable, rational, and effectively structured arrangement between landowner and
agrarian workers. Given the large size of the available workforce, iit required less immediate managerial oversight while yielding a dedicated level of
effort from the serf. There was, after all, little in the way of weaponry that would give a small
group of landowners a preponderance of force over the much larger
class of field workers. More than a few rebellions, such as in Southern France, bore this out. Yet force had then, as it does now, acknowledged practical limits.
Discontent was better prevented than overwhelmed.
Under the system of European
serfdom labor management was distributed downward, onto the source of that labor.
The serf, having a certain level of independence and self direction, while acting in his
own best interest also served the interests of the landowner. Furthermore, a rational
basis for the practice was glibly accommodated by social/moral argument from above.
Management via self-interest worked.
The agrarian peasant class took on a more complex character over time. The
serf, yet a step up from the slave, was bound to a landowner in terms of his person as
well as labor. He had little in the way of personal property and no ownership rights to
the
land he worked. The villein, another component of that same agrarian peasant class,
could be characterized as one having fallen down a step from the status of freeman.
The
villein had perhaps more flexibility than the serf, in that he could move about, arrange
his
affairs and may even have come to own his own stock and supplies. These were rights
not afforded the serf. As the manorial era matured one can find descriptions of villeins
who came to be quite prosperous, in actual possession (as we might now know it) of
significant acreage. Some ascended to the status of employing lower ranked workers.
However, whether formally a villein or a serf, the vast majority of agrarian peasants
were
bound to a landowner by virtue of the labor service that they were obliged to render.
The categorical distinction between villein and serf is not relevant here. As it relates to
effective economic freedom and allocation of personal labor the term serf, with its
ready
anecdotal inference and tone, will suffice.
Serfdom, in Practice
The serfs provided the labor necessary to work vast tracts of land. The
immediate and crucial benefit to the serfs was that portion of production that they could
retain for self and family. Losing that right would, lacking any other skill or resource,
result in a state of potential dire privation. Thus, the serf was at risk should the
arrangement break down. Yet theirs was an important if highly controlled role. For the
landowner there was the obvious benefit of agrarian production upon which his long
term security depended. Thus dependent, so too was the landowner correspondingly at
risk.
Despite standards of civil conduct that made life safer and more orderly for all,
abuses of the arrangement certainly did occur. In addition antisocial, criminal activity
was ever present. To any such negative forces the agrarian laborer, being the most
numerous in but virtually at the bottom of the social hierarchy, was the most vulnerable.
Poor were the prospects of an agricultural worker without manorial protection. Both
land
owner and serf therefore had good and sufficient reason to cooperate.
As a serf, the agricultural worker "owned" a parcel of land only in the sense that it
was considered to be for him to use and to pass on to his heirs, who then were required
to assume the obligations along with the rights. In addition to the immediate benefits of
production, the serf was thus afforded, within the limits of local law and custom, a most
motivating sense of familial security. However, this meant neither that he could use the
land solely as he wished nor that he could transfer it to anyone other than a direct
descendent. Property rights of that degree were yet to come. In fact, virtually no land
was "owned" by the vast majority of people, that is, by those who produced from it.
Land ownership was concentrated amongst a very small segment of the population. It
is
not even clear that the manorial landowner had absolute ownership, since, as noted
above, such devolved from a higher level of rights reserved to the ruling hierarchy,
whose rights of ownership were absolute only to the degree that they had the military
power to enforce them.
The land which the serf worked and from which he derived his livelihood, was
land provided simply at the "will of the Lord." This was the Lord of the Manor, not the
good Lord in heaven, although His will was often evoked to justify many of the customs,
rules and mores. It was an entitlement without title, with locale specific variations. In
practice, the controlling landowner came to exert control over other aspects of labor
class life - marriage, manner of dress, feast days, crop allocation, relocation - in
addition
to the compelled work and/or military duties noted above. Eventually, with maturation
of
the rulership hierarchy and economic expansion, various forms of tenancy evolved.
These ranged from the totally servile, to sharing production with the landowner, to rent
paying free holders. As the economic world became increasingly diverse, as the unique
position of agricultural labor changed within an increasingly complex social structure, serfdom itself became unwieldy.
Decline of Serfdom
As the middle ages progressed, serfdom declined in the West in parallel with the
development of non-agricultural aspects of the economy. Specialized tasks take
specialized skills. Thus, there arose new opportunities for those with talents, either
native or absorbed, to move away from the land, to set themselves apart physically as
well as socially. A proliferation of exchangeable units of value apart from labor and
physical goods - the expansion of currency based economies - promoted this transition.
In addition, the dramatic loss of life during the plagues, hence a transient increase in the
scarcity of labor, weakened manorial control. Serfdom largely disappeared from
England by the end of the middle ages and from France after the revolution.
Russia, and to some degree all of Eastern Europe, followed a somewhat different
path. In respect of their service to the Tsar, large landowners had been allowed to exert
absolute control over the lands to which they were given title. Local laws and customs
were for them to define and enforce. The field workers, the peasant serfs, were thus
bound more to the person of the landowner than to the land itself. The serf was,
in a harsh and often cruel sense, owned. He could be transferred with the land, off the
land or to another landowner. In this respect, it was a retrograde change of status, with
the serf in Eastern Europe and Russia moving closer to the status of slave. It wasn't
until the mid 19-th century that serfdom was finally and formally abolished in those areas. It
is worth noting that the Russian landowners had heavy economic arguments against
this abolition, much as did the southern sector of the United States against the abolition
of slavery. Had the former been more concentrated in locale and more organized they
may have been able to mount strong opposition to the Tsar’s pronouncement.
Slavery was not the normal English practice at home and it certainly did not
increase there as serfdom ended. It was common, on the other had, in the British
colonies until formally disallowed in the early 19-th century. The former slave holders
were compensated by the British government for the resulting loss of service.
The Northern US had little in the way of serfdom in the Western European sense. Tenant
farming, perhaps comparable to the late stage of a waning serfdom, was as close as
we came. Yes, there were bond servants and the like. However, such were never a
major component of the labor (or should we say "non-ownership") class and the interval
for its potential application in the industrialized Northern states was brief. For the
agriculturally dominated southern states, on the other hand, virtual serfdom and outright
slavery was a critical economic necessity, as they boldly but unsuccessfully claimed.
Tsar Alexander II had abolished Russian serfdom (virtual slavery for one third of
the population) in 1861 over significant but ineffective protest of the small landowners.
Slavery in the US was not abolished formally until several years later, in 1863, by similar
central directive. In contrast to the Russian experience, however, the unproven power of
Federal control over the individual states of the American Union provided a window of
opportunity for active revolt against this policy change. The consequent rebellion was
brief, violent, destructive for both sides and barely suppressed.
Was Lincoln’s proclamation a noble but calculated deed? Was it a necessary
result of the changing social framework? Was it an attempt to imitate Russia’s
successful moderation of the power of a wealthy agrarian “aristocracy?” However one
answers these questions, history followed a totally different course in the two countries.
The Russian Tsar did not just "free" the serf/slaves, which would have created a
defacto impoverished class for many generations. (Sound familiar?) The policy was for
the serfs to receive the land which they had worked; however, they had to contract to
pay for it. The means for payment against this transfer were also provided for by
decree. The landowner was compensated directly by the state and the former serf then
paid the state a yearly redemption payment (nominally over 49 years) until the obligation
was paid off. It was a policy of indirect transfer of ownership that was necessary (the
serfs had no money) but poorly constructed, presented obvious opportunities for abuse,
and lead to much discontent. The intent was clear, perhaps even enlightened, but its
poor execution formed the basis for the eventual communist revolution.
Who can say, therefore, if the different but equally poorly managed “advance”
against slavery in this country yet saved us from a worse fate than the Civil War. But
again, that depends upon whether you are a Northerner or Southerner, and upon which
would eventually prevail in any replay of that conflict. Having lost the Civil War,
compensation for lost lands and /or services was moot.
Serfdom’s Connotation
Serfdom as it was known in the middle ages - labor bound to a master's land -
has largely disappeared from the industrialized world. Labor intensive working of land to
produce food is no longer a primary concern of a "developed" economy. With
industrialization came means other than physical or hardship compulsion for
encouraging labor service from the untenured - a complex economy utilizing readily
exchangeable units of currency and an established price for virtually every available
commodity or service. Offering up our labor, service and/or skill in exchange for
currency units provides the means to satisfy our physical needs. Ideally, this would be
an action unburdened by necessity. In practice, however, such a level of total economic
freedom may never be attainable. Serving the master of necessity obviates the
absolute freedom so often the aim of the reckless or immature.
While being a serf connotes a lack of personal freedom and outside control over
one’s own affairs, it is not a qualitative absolute but a status that needs to be considered
in quantitative terms. However, quantitative characterization of freedom is something
which the social sciences and politics are not equipped to deal. A true “social calculus”
has yet to be developed. One pertinent measures might be the degree to which one
acts at the behest of others,. Another, not necessarily independent of the first, is the
degree one is free to plan and makes life choices, be they large or trivially small. Trying
to establish such a scale, and an individual’s place upon it, has had scant success using
moral, ethical or political assignments. Perhaps a purely economic measure, neither
ideal nor all inclusive, will serve as a first approximation - the scale from slave through
serf to freeman is one spanned in proportion to the degree of available economic choice.
In the current world, this devolves to the manner in which we assign and utilize monetary
income.
Money is neither the final nor true measure of success. It is but one of many
factors. However, by virtue of money being THE infinitely interchangeable medium of
exchange it provides a potentially useful metric of free economic behavior. But not by
being measured in absolute amount. This would be considering a different question.
Rather it would seem possible to examine the extent of modern “serfdom” from an
economic rather than political or moral perspective by evaluating the degree to which a
given person’s income is freely allocated by that person.
