Capitalism’s birth required peasants to lose autonomous access to common lands.

Evidence

The enclosure movement usually refers to the historical moment in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in England when common land was appropriated by the English government and aristocracy, taken from those who lived on the land who were then forced to rent the land they lived on back from the new aristocratic ”owners.” In the process, family members had to leave and work in factories in cities, destroying rural community in the name of capitalist “progress” through the theft of resources. To some degree, the narrative of communist triumph suggests that this lost agrarian community will be restored in the future. Narratives such as these defer to some lost wholeness from the past that will then emerge once again in the future, a structure Jacques Derrida memorably termed “hauntological.” — Grant Bollmer, Katherine Guinness, The Influencer Factory, 101 (#expands, via linked claim)

But our economic system would be stillborn without the emergence of the first pillar of capitalism, wage labor—the novel social condition of the majority of the population. This class of dispossessed wage laborers was formed by the centuries-long process of enclosure of the common land. It’s no surprise that a transition from one socioeconomic system to another takes generations, is richly layered, and is marked by tumultuous social upheavals. But I want to emphasize one aspect of this transition that immediately imposed itself: the inseparable connection between the increase in wealth of a few on one hand, and the dizzying growth of poverty among the majority on the other. The wealth of nations (also the title of the famous book by Adam Smith published in 1776) generated through capital accumulation was only made possible through exploitation and impoverishment of the masses. — Clara E. Mattei, Escape from Capitalism, 70 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Furthermore, as it was acquired in part by the bourgeoisie, now free of the feudal burdens that once weighed upon it, landed property became absolute property: all the tolerated ‘rights’ that the peasantry had acquired or preserved (the abandonment of old obligations or the consolidation of irregular practices: the right of free pasture, wood-collecting, etc.) were now rejected by the new owners who regarded them quite simply as theft (thus leading, among the people, to a series of chain reactions of an increasingly illegal, or, if one prefers the term, criminal kind: breaches of close, the theft or killing of cattle, fires, assaults, murders (cf. Festy and Agulhon). The illegality of rights, which often meant the survival of the most deprived, tended, with the new status of property, to become an illegality of property. It then had to be punished. — Michel Foucault, Discipline & Punish- The Birth of the…, 141 (#expands, via linked claim)

Categorization

• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim
• XREF: connects to: The enclosure movement destroyed rural community through theft of common land — Grant Bollmer, Katherine Guinness, The Influencer Factory: A Marxist…, 101; Bourgeois landed property recast peasant customary rights as theft requiring punishment — Michel Foucault, Discipline & Punish- The Birth of the…, 141; Industrial capital required the destruction of rural household production — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 344 (+5 more)

Related

• Capitalism’s triumph required first expropriating peasants from common lands (similarity 0.91)
• The enclosure movement destroyed rural community through theft of common land (similarity 0.83)
• The English Enclosure Acts forced peasants off commons land into factory labor. (similarity 0.83)
• The English enclosure movement dismantled rural communities by seizing common land. (similarity 0.82)
• Enclosing common lands converted capital into a commanding power that subordinated the old aristocracy. (similarity 0.80)
• Capitalist wealth accumulation was built on the dispossession and impoverishment of the masses. (similarity 0.79)
• Commodification of common land vaulted capital past landowner supremacy globally (similarity 0.78)
• Rentier classes accumulate savings through usurious exploitation of underfed peasants (similarity 0.78)

Broader Connections

• The enclosure movement destroyed rural community through theft of common land #expands (0.95) — Grant Bollmer, Katherine Guinness, The Influencer Factory, 101
• Capitalist wealth accumulation was built on the dispossession and impoverishment of the masses. #corroborates (0.85) — Clara E. Mattei, Escape from Capitalism, 70
• Bourgeois landed property recast peasant customary rights as theft requiring punishment #expands (0.80) — Michel Foucault, Discipline & Punish- The Birth of the…, 141
• Industrial capital required the destruction of rural household production #expands (0.75) — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 344
• Taxing peasants in money forced them into debt and market dependence #expands (0.75) — Clara E. Mattei, Escape from Capitalism, 311