The New American Serfdom, Part Three

This essay follows Walmart and the New American Serfdom, and The New American Serfdom, Part Two

Serfdom as depicted in the documents of its time

American and world history often plays out with the inevitability of a medieval morality play, at least in public (state) school classrooms. At any given moment, history’s most noxious operators may dominate the scene; but wait long enough, and someone will swing in brandishing our society’s most beloved virtues, and rescue us from tyranny. Dr. King was obviously heroic, while Bull Connor was obviously villainous—nothing more to discuss.

Individual teachers frequently resist this moralism, certainly. But in doing so, they’re fighting the tide. As the late James Loewen demonstrates, scholars write textbooks under corporate supervision, with an eye toward state education boards, which have approval authority over textbook selection. Especially in “red” states, including populous states like Texas and Florida, textbooks admitting to moral ambiguity, or acknowledging that America isn’t relentlessly virtuous, are doomed in advance.

This tendency to reconstruct history as a movement from ignorance to enlightenment, from injustice to parity, is sometimes called “Whig history.” The term comes from British historian Herbert Butterfield, who said that Britain’s now-defunct Whig Party believed all history is a narrative of improvement. To Whigs, in Butterfield’s writing, we’re becoming less monarchical and more democratic, less religious and more secular, less authoritarian and more free.

Whig history infects America’s primary school classrooms. Using more than a dozen widely read classroom textbooks, Loewen demonstrates that students learn American history as an arc from violence to peace, from slavery to liberty, from colonialism to modernity. This arc overlooks that modernization doesn’t inevitably lead to liberty. English-speaking Americans made the choice to start keeping slaves, for instance, and institutional slavery became more cruel the closer emancipation came.

When I speak of “serfdom” infecting American economics, it’s important that serfdom isn’t something European monarchies abandoned. Serfdom—an economic system where the manorial lord owns the land, and the land owns the people—only became possible late in feudalism. Human ownership only became possible after manorial lords didn’t have to constantly defend their lands against Huns, Avars, and Turks, and could afford to pave roads and standardize measurements.

Early in feudalism, when lords primarily defended against foreign invaders and natural disasters, serfdom would’ve cost too much money, and diverted manpower from more pressing issues. Peasants’ lives under early feudalism weren’t bucolic by any means; most lived on porridge three meals a day and died of childbirth or the plague. But at least their lords didn’t own them. If they paid their rent regularly, they lived mostly in peace.

One face of modern serfdom: the American meatpacking plant

Only after Turks no longer threatened Christendom, and international trade routes ensured everyone had access to plentiful food, could manorial lords spare money and time enough to throttle their subjects. The improvements which accompanied peace made it possible for feudal autocrats to curtail freedom in their domains. This was around the time European nations began “discovering” distant lands, keeping chattel slaves, and (officially)burning witches.

This violates official state narratives, of course. I, an ex-Republican, grew up on myths that prosperity creates liberty. Maybe it does, for certain individuals; but in the aggregate, prosperity trends upward, creating a wealth and power bottleneck. This matters today, when we’ve created a new economic class, the centibillionaire. Just like in late feudalism, we’ve created a minority too rich to care about the people whose lives they control.

When Walmart constricts its workers’ wages, it doesn’t only hurt Walmart workers. Because big-box discounters displace locally owned businesses, and the professionals like lawyers and PR personnel they support, Walmart cutting wages reduces the amount of money circulating in communities. Some large cities can absorb this pressure because they have economic diversity and a broad tax base. But small towns and suburbs have no choice but to accept enforced poverty.

The same applies to other industries. A century ago, America’s meatpacking industry was centralized in Chicago; now it’s diffused nationwide. This has created history’s cheapest, most abundant meat, a boon for America collectively. But it hurts workers individually: if Cargill undercuts wages (and they do, frequently), workers can’t take their skills across the street to Tyson or JBS Swift. The only major employer in town holds its workers hostage.

Perhaps this is why conservative nationalists fight so aggressively to constrict schools: so ordinary Americans can’t see that history is not just, progress is not inevitable, and prosperity is often harmful. Serfdom only ended when the entire feudal economy collapsed, when technology ended the agrarian society. Unless we resist this arc, it will happen again, ending in either widespread poverty or social collapse. Or maybe both.