Serfs Quotes
This was one of the statements that he was jailed for during WWI.
In Russia at the time, serfs were little better off than slaves. Not only did they have to obey their landlords in all things, but any who advocated disobedience on their part were beaten and sent to Siberia. Exile to the Siberian Gulags was not an invention of the Communists of the 20th century although they used that punishment in unprecedented numbers. It was used by the Czars and the Empress.
One of his major ideas is that the masses of the industrial monopoly have a great deal of power and can make or break institutions. However, those who see the people as not very empowered distinguish between two types of power. The wealthy capitalist, the politician, the dictator, can exercise power individually and have a profound effect on the society. The average person however has little or no power to alter society individually; he can only exercise his power together with many others. Most of us think of “powerful people” as those who can exercise their power unilaterally. Mises observes that the masses, acting in concert, can overpower the unilateral powers, and therefore regards the people as the dominant power.
Aleksei Maximovitch Peshkov
He was the Russian Reformer who ended serfdom and gave land to the peasants and then was assassinated. Ironically, both Alexander II and Lincoln were assassinated—because of their reform efforts—Lincoln for going too far; the Czar for not going far enough. See the Nickname that was given to the Czar: {622809}.
Cities operated on an entirely different plane than the rural countryside which was divided up and given to nobles and the peasants on the land were serfs—virtual slaves to the noble. Cities allowed more equality, opportunity, freedom, modernity, and education. However, serfs would vote with their feet and move into cities leaving the princes devoid of their surf labor. The Emperor tried to stave off this trend by preventing the cities from admitting the surfs who were otherwise generally welcome as they, like immigrants classically provided an excellent source of compliant, low cost labor. Ironically, there are third world countries who even in modern times are trying to restrict the immigration of peasants to the cities.
The Diggers were a religious-economic movement that even today would be considered very radical. They advocated the right of the poor to go onto public lands and farm them—thus the name “Diggers.” Beyond their opposition to the private ownership of land to the exclusion of the poor, Winstanley and the Diggers promulgated another very modern doctrine: That the poor should take the responsibility and have the right to determinine how the society should provide for the poor. A version of this became one of the Mottos of the Poverty Program of 1964. See {616966}.
Debs was jailed for sedition for this speech.
This is one of the earliest and most eloquent argument for an end to racial discrimination. Burchard argued for giving Blacks the right to vote. While Wisconsin was vehemently opposed to slavery, the convention decided to not include or preclude Negroes from voting and instead left the issue up to later legislatures.
The slaves to which he is referring were the serfs of Slovakia who for hundreds of years had literally been the property of the Hungarian nobility. The problem however has been observed about any long-term slavery.
