agricultural revolution Capitalism began with enclosure of open fields and the elimination of commons. After the Black Death, rich peasants had consolidated and enclosed their plots, but the perpetuation of common rights assured subsistence for all. In contrast, sixteenth and seventeenth-century enclosures extinguished common rights by distributing commons to landholders. Land became a commodity rather than a bundle of use-rights. Where feudal landlords only had the right to a revenue from their lands, capitalist landlords, unconstrained by communal demands or the cries of the evicted, surveyed and mapped their land to determine its bounds, sold their property, adopted specialized agriculture, charged market rents, and reduced long-term tenants to short-term leaseholders or evicted cottagers. The extinction of common right and the spread of private property discomforted traditional gentlemen. The process used to bring about that transformation was enclosure.
The word is significant. The unenclosed lands of the common and the open field were to become enclosed property; the scattered plots were to be joined together; the undivided fields, portioned out into compact estates that would be entirely independent of one another, and surrounded by continuous hedges, the sign and pledge of their autonomy. Were Marx examining society historically, he tells us, he would begin with ground rent and landed property since these are tied up with the first form of production, agriculture. But his concern is with constructing a model of the inner connection between relations of production, of distribution and of circulation (Marx III, ch.48) and, for this reason, the sequence of categories in this model must correspond to the causal relationship between their referents in modern, bourgeois society, rather than the sequence in which they were historically decisive. Because capitalist society is dominated by capital, enclosure of open fields was caused agricultural revolution. In the Capital Marx have suggested that one of the causes for agricultural revolution was the consequence of the series of enclosure movements between 1760 and 1830 that swept away all the small farmers (holders) and turned them into wage laborers, paupers, and vagabonds. The attempts to enclose open fields had a material-economic origin.
The Essay on Tragedy of the Commons 2
The tragedy of the commons is a dilemma arising from situation in which multiple individuals, acting independently and rationally consulting their own self-interest, will ultimately deplete a shared limited resource even when it is clear that it is not in anyone’s long-term interest for this to happen. Hardin’s Commons Theory is cited to support the notion of sustainable development, meshing ...
Rising prices of wheat throughout the period until 1815 stimulated high production levels. The constant needs for grain and wool in an expansionary European world-economy sustained the need for increased production. To meet increased levels of production and profit, agricultural efficiency had to be maintained or increased. Small pieces of land worked by small tenant farmers, squatters, and cottagers lay in the way. The route available to overcome this difficulty was to enclose these lands as well as open fields. Massive land (capital, according to Marx) acquisition became a key component of agricultural revolution.
Marx defines social class as relations to means of production. Enclosure of the open fields caused class structure changed. Instead of society being divided into the landowners and non-landowners, it became divided into those the capitalist and the worker. The capitalist owned land, and with the land the capitalist had raw materials. Enclosure involved the systematic rearrangement of common or open fields into private cultivable or arable land units. In England, from 1760 onward, landlords exploited the legal institution of enclosing land (through property definition) by converting uncultivated or cultivated open or common fields into private cultivated land or pasture (Hobsbawm).
The Essay on Marx
Kings and Dukes ran Europe in the early nineteenth century. The working class was stripped of all but the most basic rights. They were not allowed to have a say in politics whatsoever. Karl Marx recognized these injustices and wanted change. His answer to the problem was a 142-page manifesto outlining a political system that abolished social classes and made every citizen equal. His writings set ...
The widespread move to enclose land by landowners and large farmers meant severe economic hardship for small tenant farmers.
On the other hand it allowed big landlords to increase their profits and acquire more land. Through enclosures, small farmers either had to pay exorbitant rents to stay on their farms or risked losing them. With the slowly depleting availability of common fields, the small farmer lost his rights after the harvests to turn his cattle into the fields for the hay or corn stubbles. He had no other area to quarter his animals when it came time to cultivate his small plot of land. It would therefore be unfeasible and wrong to let the economic categories follow one another in the same sequence as that in which they were historically decisive. Their sequence is determined, rather, by their relation to one another in modern bourgeois society, which is precisely the opposite of that which seems to be their natural order or which corresponds to historical development. (Marx III, ch.48) In addition to these acts of enclosure, the concentration and consolidation of farms exacerbated the displacement of the small farmer (Hobsbawm).
Consolidation resulted in higher agricultural efficiency, producing greater crop yields and higher profits. This was the main reason that caused agricultural revolution in England. Marx wrote the private property of the great landowners, these having taken the place of the feudal lords (Marx III, ch.48).
But Marx disproved his own words when he asked that Parliament should pass a general Bill to approve a division of the commons. Thereby, he not only acknowledged that exceptional legislation would be required to transform them into private property; but he asked Parliament to grant compensation to the evicted poor. The General Act of Enclosures was in no way designed to approve a division of the commons, but to frame general rules for proceeding to that division.
Also, compensation granted for the loss of customary possession does not imply the acknowledgment of an actual right. Marxs conception of the English agricultural revolution seems to have been somewhat removed from the real state of things. Enclosure of the open fields produced wealth for few and unhappiness for many. The few who are fortunate enough to have wealth have the opportunity for their wealth to grow. This caused agricultural revolution.
The Essay on Small capital in Philippines
This chapter consists of brief summary of articles, findings of the study that are related to the present study. It contains foreign and local literature, foreign and local studies. Local Literature According to Mishell M. Malabaguio of entrepreneur magazine Philippines, Small capital, easy set-up and a good chance of success are just some of the reason why Food Cart Business is thriving in the ...
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