this post was submitted on 12 Dec 2025
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How many owned their own land through history?
I know very little about how things were handled pre-medival, but its my understanding that serfdom (where you were attached to a piece of land and obligated to work it) was the norm for the vast majority of common people.
Not that different from today... you have to work for the piece of land you own/rent.
I agree that most today are on a subsistence lifestyle.
But gonna have to disagree with "we're at modern serfdom" in the sense that medieval serfdom existed. There are LOTS of economic barriers to picking your life up and moving somewhere else, to changing what you do for a living, etc; but there aren't legal barriers. That is, if you decide to move or change jobs, you could land yourself in lean times, but no one is going to chop body parts off you or lock you in a dungeon for doing it (as could happen to serfs in the long ago.
Additionally, if you're one of the lucky ones who does manage to buy a place, it becomes a financial asset. If you have kids, it can be passed to them, at which point they an sell it to go move themselves somewhere else. Contrast this with the typical depiction (which I assume is at least moderately factually correct) where your kids are now tied to the land you lived on.
Unless you mean to speak of serfdom to the government who can control your ability to travel (generally I mean internationally, but some nations do restrict intranational travel), who take a portion of your wealth on a regular basis in the form of taxes (thinking property taxes, but I guess could be applied to income and other taxes), and who can lock you up in a "dungeon" (prison - and for relatively arbitrary/subjective reasons).
I'm talking about rent and mortgages getting extraordinarily high, and that mostly financing other people's opulent lifestyles, instead of financing general wellbeing.
Lots of places getting too expensive. And if you want cheap, you are going on a waiting list for many years. So you can effectively move nowhere for years, but still have to pay a hefty sum for rent and mortgage. How is that not a form of serfdom?
Like I said, I'd agree that most live a subsistence lifestyle. Its hard to break out of a cycle of poverty, and life isn't easy for most.
But our lives hardly come with the same restrictions that serfs did. I think we think of our times as worse because they come after a period that (we're told) was great and prosperous for all, while for serfs, they (probably) had no such cultural mythology. I could hear an argument that there lives were better due to community and simplicity of life or something like that (I don't know if I'd agree, but I'd probably think there was something to it).
But I also think we're both looking at a wall and you're saying its fuchsia while I think its magenta. When its all said and done, the wall is some shade of purple; it seems like we agree that things are bad, that they could be a lot better, and that they should be better.
Yeah, I agree with you on that. It certainly could be better.
That's accurate to what serfdom was but it was an evolution of pre-medival slavery. Instead of being the personal property of a king working the fields on the kings owned land, it was about being the personal property of the crown, the state, the system (owned by the king.)
A slave could earn their freedom, be set free, or even kill their master and be free. A lot of slaves in antiquity had a tendency to overthrow kingdoms.
A serf though, was never meant to be free. Except, maybe, by another, foreign nation state. And now you know the basis of most European medieval war history.
Don't suppose you know any places that are good to go read up on this?
Places? At risk of sounding glib, your local library. It's such a wide and broad topic you can read up on pretty much any country or regions history and get a picture of how it developed.
Now for the specific topic of economic and labor systems? Honestly I think I would venture to say start with critiques of F.A. Hayek since what I was referring to was the development of the centrally planned nation state.
Hayek's influential work is definitely geared towards a Cold War era audience which is why I suggest critiques. Disentangling central planning from political ideology can be a valuable tool.
I suppose by places I meant like websites and/or resources (my word choice had room for improvement upon reflection).
And specifically looking for things regarding "what was serfdom really like".
So in that regard just be aware that serfdom is a really broad category that embodies the labor system that existed under fuedal societies. For example, one of the longest lasting systems of serfdom existed in the Russian Empire until the 1860s. The serfs of England revolted in the Elizabethan era and a system of tenant rent was implemented. So there are centuries long gaps in what serfdom was like depending on where you're looking. Material conditions for the 14th century peasant and the 19th century vary widely, but do have common structure and function.
Tolstoy and Dostoevsky wrote extensive literature of Russian serfdom, and worth a read. Although, well, its Tolstoy ans Dostoevsky. I have barely read either, for context.
Do you own the servers for the company you work at?
I am assuming the house you lived on as a serf was yours, and you could do whatever you wanted to it. I don't think the lord was trotting about town going "Um, regulations say no pets"
Well, you would be wrong. The house belonged to the Lord, as did the land, the surrounding lands and so on. The very well could have said "no pets", if they had cared. They had veto power on marriage, changing labors, and everything.
The Lord owned the serf in the same way that a homeowner owns the sidewalk. They had to provide basic protections or someone higher would eventually maybe get upset. They could do basically whatever they wanted to them, but the serf could only be sold as part of the estate.
No, he was more like "your daughter looks nice, she's mine now until i get bored of her. And by the way, you'll have to take care of the bastard."
Serfdom was two steps away from slavery. You didn't own the house, you couldn't sell it or even leave. Your payment for work was a piece of land you could use for subsistence farming. It differs from place to place obviously but it was much worse then "regulations say no pets".