#serfdom — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #serfdom, aggregated by home.social.
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I'm reading a book about how the witch hunt policies helped give rise to capitalism and one thing strikes me, as do lots of books about the past:
While life in past times is talked about I get little sense of what it would have been like for people living then. You get phrases like Serfdom and Vagabondage and Closing of the Commons, but I don't really get a sense of what those things would mean for ordinary people.
I guess there are authors out there who have written about daily life and whatnot, but lots of books leave me puzzled to how policies of the church and state would influence everyday life for people.
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Don't worry, we're not far off from "It's God's Will(tm) that they're the ruling class and we're the peasants"
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Don't worry, we're not far off from "It's God's Will(tm) that they're the ruling class and we're the peasants"
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@LovesTha
People value cars because they see them as a tool for #freedomOfMovement and with #freedom altogether. #serfdom under #feudalism deprived you of many freedoms and freedom of movement was one of them.
Cars are seen a symbol for freedom -
"We were bad, but now we're good" vs. "Let me twirl my mustache a little"
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You are right, sir, when you tell me that Les Misérables is written for all nations. I do not know whether it will be read by all, but I wrote it for all. It is addressed to England as well as to Spain, to Italy as well as to France, to Germany as well as to Ireland, to Republics which have slaves as well as to Empires which have serfs. Social problems overstep frontiers. The sores of the human race, those great sores which cover the globe, do not halt at the red or blue lines traced upon the map.
In every place where man is ignorant and despairing, in every place where woman is sold for bread, wherever the child suffers for lack of the book which should instruct him and of the hearth which should warm him, the book of Les Misérables knocks at the door and says: “Open to me, I come for you.”
[Vous avez raison, monsieur, quand vous me dites que le livre les Misérables est écrit pour tous les peuples. Je ne sais s’il sera lu par tous, mais je l’ai écrit pour tous. Il s’adresse à l’Angleterre autant qu’à l’Espagne, à l’Italie autant qu’à la France, à l’Allemagne autant qu’à l’Irlande, aux républiques qui ont des esclaves aussi bien qu’aux empires qui ont des serfs. Les problèmes sociaux dépassent les frontières. Les plaies du genre humain, ces larges plaies qui couvrent le globe, ne s’arrêtent point aux lignes bleues ou rouges tracées sur la mappemonde.
Partout où l’homme ignore et désespère, partout où la femme se vend pour du pain, partout où l’enfant souffre faute d’un livre qui l’enseigne et d’un foyer qui le réchauffe, le livre les Misérables frappe à la porte et dit: Ouvrez-moi, je viens pour vous.]Victor Hugo (1802-1885) French writer
Letter (1862-10-18) to M. DaelliMore about this quote: wist.info/hugo-victor/13238/
#quote #quotes #quotation #qotd #victorhugo #lesmiserables #borders #downtrodden #economicinjustice #global #humancondition #poor #poverty #serfdom #slavery #socialills #socialinjustice #socialproblem
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🇷🇺 **How Extractive Was Russian Serfdom? Income Inequality in Moscow Province in the Early Nineteenth Century**
"_Our findings reveal that serfdom resulted in high inequality and extraction levels as well as low social mobility despite of low levels of enforcement by the state. We compare our results with those for 1904 and find that, in spite of emancipation, inequality remained high during the nineteenth century._"
Korchmina, E. and Malinowski, M. (2026) ‘How Extractive Was Russian Serfdom? Income Inequality in Moscow Province in the Early Nineteenth Century’, The Journal of Economic History, pp. 1–42. doi: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0022050725101071.
#OpenAccess #OA #Article #History #Histodons #Economics #Serfdom #Russia #Moscow #Inequality #C19th #Academia
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it's actually not okay the extremes it takes for some folks to leave Twitter. O_o
and still, some people (who don't personally agree with the many issues) just *still* linger on there casually, seemingly immovable.
Like, anti-consumer, monolithic, data-harvesty platforms that you submit misused personal info to. That should be bad enough, but instead, the effective standard we have as a global community is wayyy too low.
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There has to be a way to stop the #wealthy, #powerful or otherwise enabled #monsters from turning the #World back to #medieval times. They're #manipulating and #bullying people into #serfdom
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/aug/06/jd-vance-ohio-lake-water-levels
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Why is #ElonMusk the current president, and why is it the #Democrats fault? Also, the friggin' corporations are just privatized #serfdom. Money canon go brrrrrrr, right in your face, drowning you - and we all lose. We're next, #Europe! It's a return to autocracy...
Adam something explains...
How Elon Musk Became President
https://youtube.com/watch?v=AgQgrfGPQP0
#politics #us #usa #america #nepobaby #ologarchy -
#LeonSkum is an #AfriKKKaner #Racist #nazi #Fascist #Narcissist #illegal #Alien & he wants to destroy the #US as a nation & turn us a into a #Serfdom
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For most people in the US, housing costs—mortgage or rent—represent about a third of their income.
Which means most people in the US who work and pay for housing spend January through April each year laboring on behalf of their landlord or mortgage lender.
#feudalism #serfdom #slavery #LandOfTheFree #capitalism #PrivateProperty
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This was built back in the day when the lord of the manor could convince the village idiots he was wonderful by taking an extra shilling off them and giving them a penny back. It was a roaring success, they even built this column to his honour. Now, of course, the village idiots can communicate via the internet and worship the lords of the manor muchly morey and be even more stupid and put them in charge of the whole bloody country.
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#FightTechnofeudalism by #BigTech
(5/5)
...the rising new Phoenix, #AMD*, to this list. Even though these last 3 are hardware and cannot really charge a rent, as the software companies can by their subscriptions, etc.
If you are asking yourself what you can do to avoid entreching yourself in #serfdom, this is a key part of it:
https://mastodon.social/@HistoPol/110989338549425682
ETA #AMD:
https://mastodon.social/@HistoPol/111946174776816007
https://mastodon.social/@HistoPol/111946084990349571
//
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"#Capitalism is dead. Now we have something much worse’ Yanis #Varoufakis on #extremism, #Starmer, and the tyranny of #BigTech" (Observer interview)
In his new book, 'Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism', the maverick #Greek economist says we are witnessing an epochal shift. At his island home of Aegina, he argues it’s no longer the global finance system that shapes us, but the ‘fiefdoms’ of tech firms"
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"We’re now in servitude, Varoufakis argues, to the fiefdoms of our new global masters, Lord #Zuckerberg of Facelandia and Sir #Musk of the rotten borough of X."
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“Imagine the following scene straight out of the science fiction storybook,” he writes. “You are beamed into a town full of people going about their business, trading in gadgets, clothes, shoes, books, songs, games and movies. At first everything looks normal. Until you begin to notice something odd. It turns out all the shops, indeed every building, belongs to a chap called Jeff. What’s more, everyone walks down different streets, and sees different stores because everything is intermediated by his algorithm… an algorithm that dances to Jeff’s tune.”It might look like a market, but Varoufakis says it’s anything but. Jeff (Bezos, the owner of Amazon) doesn’t produce capital, he argues. He charges rent. Which isn’t capitalism, it’s feudalism. And us? We’re the serfs. “Cloud serfs”, so lacking in class consciousness that we don’t even realise that the tweeting and posting that we’re doing is actually building value in these companies."
#Capitalism #CapitalismKills #Feudalism #YanisVaroufakis #Socialism #Bezos #JeffBezos #Zuckerberg #MarkZuckerberg #Musk #ElonMusk #Politics #Economics #Economy #Serfs #Serfdom #Workers
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@danneau
The #Oligarchy, the #Wealthy, the #Elite, the #Aristocracy, the #UpperClass, #BigOil, #BigTech, #BigBusiness rules are: "Leave nothing on the table for the #Worker / #CommonPerson. Play the game to enrich said #Oligarchy and make all government rules in favour of said elite listed above. Would the #Oligarchy object to #Slavery and/or #Serfdom? NO - they would not! Slavery and Serfdom is alive and well in the 21st Century. The #Game is absolutely, totally rigged against the #worker. -
@KarlBode The kid on the far right is thinking F*ck this sh*t! #serfdom #slaverycurriculum
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📷 I would call the photos
#Bakhmut - The ShieldThe shield that has been defending #Krematorsk, #Slovyansk (& hundreds of thousands of people in central #Ukraine) for almost 10 months from the arrival of the Russian occupiers with their "ruSSian world" of #destruction, #poverty, #corruption and #serfdom.
#RussianWarOfAgression #WarCrimes #Wagner #Prigozhin #Bakhmout #Peace #RussianWorld
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Capitalism is about property.
Democracy is about people.
The two are always in conflict.
The right pushes to protect property rights, and the left is more concerned with labor and human rights.
But wait, you say, capitalism is an economic system, democracy is a political system, right?
Yeah. But any functioning society needs rules to make the economic system and the political system compatible. They have to prevent money from influencing politics, by ensuring that voters, not corporations or the wealthy always have the final say over matters that impact the public interest.
From #RATM "Wake Up"
"He turned the power to the have nots, and then came the shot..."
So what is de la Rocha talking about there? Well specifically Martin Luther King. But more generally, "power" refers to political power. "Have nots" is a description of economic disenfranchisement. The "shot" refers generically to the wealthy paying for (or otherwise encouraging through propaganda) an assassination of someone who was trying to restore economic justice--which implies political power.
This is the basic tension in our system. The US Constitution is heavily biased toward minority rule in a number of ways which I've discussed extensively. It's been used since our founding to disenfranchise the "have nots."
If you talk to any libertarian, they will tell you that unfettered democracy is unethical because it allows majorities to vote to raise taxes on the wealthy to provide public benefits, thereby violating "property rights."
But there's a problem with this formulation. And that is the idea that the wealthy are the main creators of value. This is provably, demonstrably wrong. No person, using their own labor can ever become wealthy. The only way for anyone to exceed a subsistence level is to organize the labor of others, and profit from it.
A wealthy person stranded on a deserted island will struggle to find enough food to survive.
Whereas a wealthy person in a society with a high population can afford to hire others and make a profit. This capacity is enabled by the presence of public infrastructure. Water, electricity, roads, ports. Also, prisons, schools, healthcare, scientific research. Much of this infrastructure is a public/private partnership. But still requires the government to organize and set rules that are consistent and apply to everyone.
In other words, "property" or wealth gained through use of labor and public infrastructure can't be said to belong exclusively to business owners or investors. They owe a debt to society which they pay in the form of taxes. The more wealth they amass, the larger the fraction of public infrastructure that was involved. And so the higher the fair percentage tax rate.
If the "have nots" are to have their interests protected, that means that the "haves" (the wealthy) cannot get special treatment, or succeed in cutting their taxes. This is where political democracy is vital to economic justice.
Allowing wealth to put its thumb on the scale of governance means that there will never be either democracy or economic justice. This is why there used to be much stricter rules on campaign finance, and lobbying. And there have always been rules against politicians taking bribes. But because those same politicians are often also responsible for enforcement of these rules, bribery has always been rampant.
Until recently, that's been limited to the executive and legislative branches of government because those are elected offices.
But recent scandals at the Supreme Court demonstrate that the rot has now spread to appointed offices as well. At least three of the six Republican Supreme Court justices have taken extensive bribes from wealthy patrons. And what's worse, they don't see anything wrong with it.
The Constitution has created an incredibly high bar for removing Supreme Court justices from office, a 2/3 majority in the Senate. This is just one more example of how the Constitution failed to create sufficient accountability for the wealthy and powerful.
These justices are ruling on cases that have far-reaching implications for economic justice, concerning everything from #labor rights to protection of the Earth's #climate
I can't think of anything more despicable. These are people with lifetime appointments and the ability to completely rewrite US law against the public interest and in favor of private wealth. *As if the wealthy didn't already have enough power.*
"Conflict of interest" is a pretty innocuous sounding phrase. It doesn't convey the absolute horror of putting the wealthy in complete control of society. The proper word is feudalism. But even that sounds kind of quaint. What did feudal lords do? They held people in #serfdom Which is a synonym for #slavery.
When the Supreme Court constantly rules against the public interest, against labor, against human rights, and against the environment, it's not an exaggeration to say that bribery of public officials leads directly to a form of slavery.
We're watching it happen in real time.
#democracy #capitalism #feudalism #scotus #clarencethomas #JohnRoberts #brettkavanaugh #martinlutherking