I just started Robert Steinfeld’s book The Invention of Free Labor. It’s good so far. Here’s what I take from it at this point. I’ll be putting my notes here as I read, updating this post.
Depending on the definition of terms, voluntarily contracting for the sale of labor does not have to mean that labor is free. Steinfeld defines “free labor” as voluntarily contracted and with no state sanction for failure to perform the labor. Free labor means no criminal penalities for leaving the job – the state doesn’t intervene in this directly. Capitalism does not have to involve free labor in Steinfeld’s sense. Capitalism is (historically, was) compatible with indentured servants – voluntarily entered into contracted labor – as well as slavery. It’s common to associate indenture with slavery nowadays (I know I do). Indentured service was not always associated with unfreedom or slavery, though it was in Steinfeld’s terms unfree. It was only after the US Civil War that indentured servitude became strongly linked with slavery in a strong sense culurally. As I’ve argued before, capitalist enterprises can use slaves while still being slaves. Whether or not capitalism as a mode of production could exist with the only or primary form of labor as enslaved labor I’m not sure about and don’t have an opinion right now. I am convinced that capitalism can exist without labor being free or with the predominant form of labor not being free in Steinfeld’s sense of free labor, and that early capitalism was characterized primarily by unfree labor.
I’d have to check to be sure but I believe Marx’s discussion of labor in v1 of Capital as free labor, I think Marx is referring primarily to the voluntary nature of the contract to sell labor power, I don’t think he spends much time on the sort of distinction that Steinfeld makes – the role of the state in enforcing fulfilment of labor contracts or not enforcing labor contracts.
I don’t think Steinfeld has made this point yet but I’ve read this *about* Steinfeld, perhaps by him talking about his work – the transition to the predominance of free labor in Steinfeld’s sense involved a retraction of state power. Where the state used to act to enforce labor contracts, it stopped doing so. The dominance of free labor involved a step back of state power, even though the state remained crucial in upholding capitalism – regulating the labor movement, the combination acts and so forth and the state was integral to creating capitalism, as in Marx’s discussion of primitive accumulation. With regard to primitive accumulation, enclosure and so forth created a pool of people who needed to live by the sale of their labor but as Steinfeld argues (without reference to enclosure so far) there’s no inherent reason why the sale of labor has to be free in his sense of free labor.
I believe I’ve said it before, but I’ll say it again. I believe that one constant, important feature of ‘freedom’ in ‘free’ labor (for Marx) is ‘no longer a serf.’Without having read Steinfeld, his definition sounds like it focuses to narrowly on labor and not enough on republicanism.
hi Chuckie,
I don’t know to what degree, if any, Steinfeld is talking to or thinking about Marx. I think his definition is useful, at least to the degree that I’d not thought at all before about the difference between there being criminal penalties for failing to carry out work duties and there not being such penalties. Serfdom would be one example of there being that sort of penalty, but not the only one. Can you say more on the significance of (non)serfdom? I’m not totally sure I get your point.
take care,
Nate
In feudalism, you could effectively partition society into two sets, the free and the unfree. these two categories intersect with other fundamental division, common and noble.
The free noble prototypically embodies the feudal aristocrat. However, substantial numbers of unfree nobles also existed. The social and legal category was most explicitly elaborated in the German-speaking territories. the free commoner, of course, is prototypically envisioned, as the English yeoman. The unfree commoner we all know as the serf. All told, the unfree vastly outnumbered the free.
Historically, the struggle to move from unfree status to freedom, and ultimately to abolish the very category of unfreedom figured centrally in the movements of the urban bourgeoisie for republican government and free(er) trade and in the movement of the peasantry off the lord’s land and into the waged work force or into independent land-ownership. In both wage labor and independent farming, the legal abilities to travel and to enter into and conduct market exchanges without the intermediary assent of the feudal master provides the crucial legal criterion for freedom. The French revolution, as its greatest accomplishment,generalized the status of freedom to all feudal dependent. East of France, it took another half century and more to achieve this transition.
Indenture is a contractual relation. It presupposes two free parties, free in this social and legal sense. The terms of service under the contract are modelled on feudal servitude. But this service does not inhere to the person of the servitor. The indentured servant is quite clearly a free laborer. Any penalties that servant suffers for failure to execute services are penalties for breach of contract and share the same legal qualities of all such breaches. They do not impeach the freedom of the laborer in the historical, social and legal sense of freedom in bourgeois societies. Or something along those line.
hi Chuckie,
Thanks for that. Makes sense but just one quibble: Steinfeld argues (I assume he’s got evidence, I’ve not read furhter in the book yet) that in England and the N American colonies prior to the 1770s it was *not* the case that the penalties for violations of indenture were the same as those of any other breach of contract (if this means civil penalties). Breach of indenture contract often resulted in criminal proceedings and the imprisonment of the servants in question until they agreed to carry out then actually carried out the terms of service they had originally contracted into. You’re basically saying “the fact of voluntary contract is a sufficient definition of free labor.” I don’t have a horse in that race either way terminologically, but I do think that the distinction Steinfeld points out is an important one. And though he doesn’t address it in those terms as far as I know, I think that indentured could be understood as impeding, as you put it, “the freedom of the laborer in the historical, social and legal sense of freedom in bourgeois societies,” for the duration of the indenture.
take care,
Nate
ps- I’ve got a vague notion that there’s an instructive parallel to be made here with marriage law but I can’t make it right now. I know I’ve read something on this, I’ll have to look and to think some more.
No, you wouldn’t execute them, would you? I believe, sometimes the term of their indenture was extended, for runaways for example. If a contractor fails to complete work contracted for, he can be compelled to finish it, can’t he? In which case, the bourgeoisie would be unfree too.
Sorry, I forgot the main point. The contract itself is not the argument. It is the personal status that allows a person to enter a contract, the precondition of a contract. Family law would be an analogy. ‘Unfree’ labor is like a minor child. Unable to enter agreements for themself. Unlike a minor, ‘unfree’ labor never grows out of this status, it never reaches its majority. Like a parent, that master on whom they depend will always have the say. Although it may sound odd, the conditions of punishment also indicate the free chracter of the labor. If the laborer were ‘unfree’ a court alone could not decide. The master would be partially responsible and would have voice in the proceedings. To shift from serfdom, servitude asstation, to slavery, servitude as property, punish the slave, you infringe on the owner’s property rights.