Londoner wrote:[money predates the feudal system]
Certainly, but it wasn't used to pay labourers,
Of course it was! The potters who made the Chinese emperor's toy soldiers, the masons who built the pyramids, the blacksmiths who forged the knights' swords and the coopers who made the barrels for their ale. Also midwives, prostitutes and priests for first, passage and last rites.
so the fact they were not as well-off as the land-owner was not because of the existence of money.
Only serfs didn't get paid, and that's because they were chattels indentured to the land.
Nor was it money in the modern sense.
How does the modern sense of money differ from the medieval sense?
I mean there is effectively more land now because the factors that limited land use in feudal times have been solved through technology, notably the use of fertilisers. We can also transport and store agricultural products better, so we can make use of land that is distant from markets, and so on.
I doubt there is 'effectively more land' with today's population and desertification. Even so, technology just means you can take food from people farther away, so the hunger gets moved around, and you eat less fresh food. It's nothing at all to do with land ownership in the feudal system of a small but heavily populated continent. They produced enough food for everybody. But they also had to carry their own parasite classes.
... Not all land ownership was in the hands of the warlords, it depended where you were. But an independent peasant (as distinct from a commune) was only one bad harvest away from loosing their independence.
Why??
After that, because they had to borrow seed
From whom?
they were reduced to some form of share-cropping.
By whom? By what means?
But it is unlikely that money was involved; in a subsistance economy, where you eat what you grow, money has a limited use.
Ah, but the power is precisely in that limited use. The independent crofter fell into debt, because, if he couldn't grow enough extra food to sell, he couldn't pay his poll tax or buy seed, and the lord took his land in collateral. He became a sharecropper in exactly the same way poor whites in the post-Reconstruction south did.
Feudalism is a system of relationships based on land, not money. A knight holds land from the king; in return he owes the king military service.
Isn't that what I said? The king, once well established, could redistribute land, but how he got that control over land in the first place was because enough duchies and counties were united under one ruler. The warlords pledged him their fealty. And their troops.
One sword is very tiny recompense for a thousand hectares: you had to bring an army, which you had to horse, equip, provision and house. And pay.
It is a personal, not a money, bargain.
It's personal only in that the soldiers, crafters, labourers and peasants don't get a vote: they're pledged to service by their lord. But what do you suppose happens when soldiers and crafters
don't get paid? The army evaporates and you lose the king's favour and he lets your rival build a fortified castle while you're left vulnerable to attack, and pretty soon, your land belongs to your poxy cousin and you have to hire out as a mercenary.
Similarly, the peasants, the burghers in the towns, the priests and everyone else are part of a complicated system of rights and duties. That interplay of rights and duties has today been replaced by money relationships, but not then.
Certainly, many of the debts and fees were paid in kind, especially by the peasants who didn't get much access to coin, and local systems of barter were common. But at the level of trade and commerce, church and state, the money relationship were not so very different from today. Always causing trouble.
eh.net/book_reviews/money-in-the-mediev ... -973-1489/
... As you say, money is useful for foreign wars if you need mercenaries and have to buy locally, but it does not drive the system.
From absent entirely to 'driving' the system is a big step. I haven't claimed either.
But the point we are discussing here is that you could have the same inequalities then without money having the place it does today. I think it is about the society, not money.
Not quite the
same inequalities. And that wasn't my main problem with money, anyway. At that time, monetary wealth was certainly a factor in who controlled government, just as it is now. One problem that intensifies, the more roles money takes over: it's a lot easier to steal than land or gold or indigo; you can control armies entirely with money and its political clout, from the comfort of your corner office. The biggest problem though, is an ever-more-bloated superstructure that exists for no other purpose than to move money around.
L: There is nothing, certainly not the existence of money, to stop us regulating wages, profits, pollution or anything else.
A: Except the profit motive and the fact that those who have garnered most of the nation's wealth also own the nation's law-makers - or at least have them by the short and curly debts.
Absolutely, but that isn't caused by money. Wealth creates power, power creates wealth. Whether that wealth is in gold, or bits of paper, or land, or soldiers doesn't really matter.
It
does matter what form wealth and power take, and who wields them and by what means. Wealth doesn't
create power; it
confers power. It takes power away from the freeman and gives it to the lord; it takes power away from the citizen and gives it to the lobbyist. Power doesn't
create wealth; it
accumulates wealth. It takes wealth out of the nation and hands it over to private enterprise. It takes the labour and time, health and happiness of the citizen and puts in the service of the corporation. And the way it does this is through employment and debt. They don't need the soldiers anymore strutting up and down Main street to strike a little fear into a shepherd with ideas above his station; they've conned people into working extra hours and handing over the fruits of their labour voluntarily. That's a whole lot easier to do with an invisible, magical, infinitely malleable medium of exchange.
If bankers add nothing to the economy, then why would you need a computer to replace them?
You don't. The computer is for planning and administration, so that appropriate goods and services are where they're needed.
I am sceptical that computers are up to the job, but anyway that supposes we agree the optimum way of getting goods or services to the end user. We don't. For example, some would do so according to need, others would say we need to reward those who are most productive, and so on.
I didn't say people would stop arguing. But they might have more substantial issues to vote for than which party could afford the flashier advertisements.
so instead of giving them a truck load of drill-bits we give them money,
Nonono! I said he's not motivated to embezzle a truckload of drill-bits. He is - very much! - motivated to misdirect a truckload of money.
I don't think having a dress code for work can be described as fraud.
Well, I just did. In juxtaposition with being told how much free choice you have.
If I have some money, I can choose what to wear in my own time.
If they let you save both money and time... sure.
If I have lots of money, I don't have to work at all.
How does one get lots of money and lots of free time? Not by working in a sawmill.
... But I wouldn't blame capital for this; capital is just a thing, it has no motives.
A tank is just a thing without motives, too. Even so, I'd want to take it away from the guy who used it to flatten my village and kill my family.
Those who can induce you to believe absurdities can induce you to commit atrocities. - Voltaire