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From: g-rh@cca.UUCP (Richard Harter)
Newsgroups: net.politics.theory
Subject: Re: Rent-a-Cop
Message-ID: <5438@cca.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 29-Dec-85 23:02:30 EST
Article-I.D.: cca.5438
Posted: Sun Dec 29 23:02:30 1985
Date-Received: Mon, 30-Dec-85 18:44:24 EST
References: <883@mmintl.UUCP> <28200419@inmet.UUCP> <>
Reply-To: g-rh@cca.UUCP (Richard Harter)
Organization: Computer Corp. of America, Cambridge
Lines: 38
Summary: 

In article <> franka@mmintl.UUCP (Frank Adams) writes:
>In article <28200419@inmet.UUCP> janw@inmet.UUCP writes:
>>
>>No, this is not true of feudalism at all. Through the Middle Ages,
>>the amount a serf or a vassal owed his liege was supposed  to  be
>>*fixed* once and for all, from times immemorial. In practice, hu-
>>man memory being short, it changed quite a lot, but it changed by
>>*precedent*,  not through arbitrary imposition. ...
>
>This was the theory.  The practice was that the amount a serf owed his
>liege was so large that the relationship (maximum harvest) - (your tax) <
>(the minimum you need to live on) held.  The serf would (illegally) withhold
>part of the harvest, to give his family enough to live on.  In general,
>there was no effective way to withhold more than this amount, because the
>serf could not sell the excess.
>
>If some method were found to increase the harvest above this point, a new
>tradition would be created.  Since there was no incentive to increase the
>harvest, this happened rarely.
>

This was more or less the case in earlier feudal times when liege lords
collected their due in kind. In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries there
was a major shift.  Towns had become more common and the cash market for
agricultural products had revived.  There were mass freeings of serfs.
The obligations in kind were replaced by cash obligations which were
definite and fixed.  "Heavy as these obligations might be, he was no
longer subject to the aribtrary will of his lord."  The replacement of
obligations in kind by fixed cash rents had important consequences;
over time prices rose steadily (particularly after the black death in
the fourteenth century) to the profit of the peasants and the loss of
the lords.

Reference: A History of the Middle Ages, Sidney Painter, 1958, Knopf,
pp 240-242.

Richard Harter, SMDS Inc.
decvax!cca!g-rh