Eric Hobsbawm - Age Of Revolution 1789 -1848

THE AGE OF REVOLUTIONvast bulk of the rural population from the largest feudal lord down tothe most poverty-stricken shepherd united in abominating it. Only apolitico-legal revolution directed against both lords and traditionalpeasants could create the conditions in which the rational minoritymight become the rational majority. The history of agrarian relationsover most of Western Europe and its colonies in our period is thehistory of this revolution though its full consequences were not feltuntil the second half of the century.As we have seen, its first object was to turn land into a commodity.Entails and other prohibitions of sale or dispersal which rested on nobleestates had to be broken and the landowner therefore subjected to thesalutary penalty of bankruptcy for economic incompetence, whichwould allow economically more competent purchasers to take over.Above all in Catholic and Moslem countries (Protestant ones had longsince done so), the great bloc of ecclesiastical land had to be taken outof the Gothic realm of non-economic superstition and opened to themarket and rational exploitation. Secularization and sale awaitedthem. The equally vast blocks of collectively owned—and thereforebadly utilized—lands of village and town communities, common fields,common pastures, woodlands, etc., had to be made accessible to individualenterprise. Division into individual lots and 'enclosure' awaitedthem. That the new purchasers would be the enterprising, strong andsober could hardly be doubted; and thus the second of the objects of theagrarian revolution would be achieved.But only on condition that the peasantry, from whose ranks many ofthem would doubtless arise, was itself turned into a class freely capableof disposing of its resources; a step which would also automaticallyachieve the third object, the creation of a large 'free' labour forcecomposed from those who failed to become bourgeois. The liberation ofthe peasant from non-economic bonds and duties (villeinage, serfdom,payments to lords, forced labour, slavery, etc.) was therefore alsoessential. This would have an additional and crucial advantage. Forthe free wage-labourer, open to the incentive of higher rewards, or thefree farmer, could be shown, it was thought, to be a more efficientworker than the forced labourer, whether serf, peon or slave. Only onefurther condition had to be fulfilled. The very large number of thosewho now vegetated on the land to which all human history tied them,but who, if it were productively exploited, would be a mere surpluspopulation,* had to be torn away from their roots and allowed to move* Thus it was estimated in the early 1830s that the pool of surplus employable labour wasI in 6 of the total population in urban and industrial England, 1 in 20 in France and Germany,I in 25 in Austria and Italy, 1 in 30 in Spain and 1 in 100 in Russia.''52