Early capitalist states criminalized the newly dispossessed poor as vagabonds

Evidence

Intellectuals and scholars who observed the nascent capitalist system highlighted the emergence of “pauperism,” a phenomenon inexorably linked to land privatization. The state intervened with aggressive legislation to discipline those deprived of their means of subsistence. Poverty became stigmatized, shameful, a personal fault. Henry VIII, king of England and lord of Ireland from 1509 to 1547, granted a begging license to elderly and disabled beggars but had no mercy for able-bodied vagabonds, who were sentenced to whipping and imprisonment. The Vagabonds Act of 1547 went even further, stipulating that anyone who denounced an individual as refusing to work could claim them as a slave. — Clara E. Mattei, Escape from Capitalism, 72

Categorization

• XREF: Poverty as personal fault prefigures the moralized discipline of austerity regimes — the reader’s core topic. — connects to: Slave codes criminalized even self-provisioning, assembly, and education of enslaved people — Nikole Hannah-Jones et al., The 1619 Project: A New American Origin…, 256; Capitalism recast tolerated popular customs as criminal property theft — Michel Foucault, Discipline & Punish- The Birth of the…, 143; Controlling the mobility of poor people drove state repression historically. — Luke de Noronha, The conviviality of the overpoliced,…, 33 (+1 more)
• CANDY: The 1547 law letting anyone claim a denounced ‘idler’ as a slave is a jaw-dropping dinner-party fact.

Broader Connections

• Capitalism recast tolerated popular customs as criminal property theft #expands (0.78) — Michel Foucault, Discipline & Punish- The Birth of the…, 143
• Slave codes criminalized even self-provisioning, assembly, and education of enslaved people #complicates (0.75) — Nikole Hannah-Jones et al., The 1619 Project, 256