andie nachgeborenen wrote:>>>The jury system was developed at a time when things were a lot less democratic than they are now. . .<<<
I wrote: >> grassroots democracy -- as opposed to central-state democracy -- is very old. Back in English pre-capitalist times in English agriculture, for example, communities would regularly redistribute land among themselves in order to maintain equality. (This was despite the top-down system of feudalism, etc.) Of course, it wasn't perfect (being combined with patriarchy, etc.), but neither is the parliamentary democracy of today.<<
andie nachgeborenen now writes:> You can't seriously be suggesting that the England of the 12th century was as or more democratic as the contemporary US.
no, I distinguished between decentralized (local) democracy at the grassroots and centralized (state, parliamentary) democracy. My point was simply that local democracy can exist even in a feudal system. But even at the local level, there is probably more democracy now than in the 12th century. However, communities are often so atomized these days that local democracy may be effectively irrelevant (except in crisis times, e.g., when someone wants to put a toxic waste dump in the neighborhood). The 12th century communities were more like extended families or "tribal" organizations (alliances of extended families), though of course they weren't formalized with laws and the like.
AN writes: >I'd like to know more about this supposed redistribution of land, considering that real estate -- so called because in them days that was the "real" basis of wealth -- was perhaps the single thing most closely monitored by the nobility. Possible serfs and the yeomanry informally redistributed the land that they held from the Lords.<
The nature of land-ownership was very different than nowadays, being merged with politics. The Duke was not only your boss or landlord (some of the time) but also your political/judicial leader. The lord would "control" an area (under the delegated authority of the King), while usually restricting the mobility of producers out of the area. The lords did not just control the land; they also were able to draft or volunteer its inhabitants to fight in wars, both in England and on the Continent. (By the way, just as the producers were most often tied to the land, so was the lord. The duchy could not be sold. Surrendering the land would mean loss of one's title.)
As long as the producers paid their taxes/rents (or did the mandatory forced labor on the demesne or in the lord's army), the producers had a lot of autonomy (though they were subject to small-town style control by their peers). Just as the lord controlled land under the delegated authority of the king, the producers controlled land under the delegated authority of the lord. The producers controlled their tools and little plots of land for gardening, along with collectively using the commons. In the "open fields," land was divided into long strips which were "owned" by individuals – in the sense of usufruct ownership. But they were distributed and redistributed by the community.
>From the WIKIPEDIA (open field system):
The open field system was the prevalent agricultural system in Europe
from the Middle Ages to as recently as the 20th century in places.
>From the 12th century onwards it was gradually replaced by Crop
Rotation [after property rights were changed, to become individual
property rights as under capitalism].
Open fields appeared to have developed in the medieval period, and were particularly well suited to the very heavy ploughs that were used to cut through the heavy clay soil in North West Europe. Because the ploughs were so heavy, it made more sense to have as long a way as possible to pull them before trying to turn them around. The ox teams which pulled the ploughs were also very expensive, and thus tended to be shared among the families of a village.
Each village would be surrounded by several large open fields, usually not physically divided from each other, with each field containing a different crop as part of a three field crop rotation. The fields would be split into a number of furlongs (~200 m), each of which would be subdivided into strips covering an area of half an acre (2,000 m²) or less. Each villager was allocated a set number of strips in each field (traditionally about thirty) which they would subsistence farm. The strips were generally allocated in a public meeting at the start of the year. The individual holdings were widely scattered, so that no single farmer would end up with all the good or bad land. Plowing techniques used one or other form of ridge and furrow cultivation to prepare the land for drainage and planting.
In addition to the three fields, there would be common land where the villagers would graze their livestock, woodland for the pigs, and a communal village green for social events. The ploughed fields could also be used for grazing outside the growing season.
As populations increased, the available land diminished as more strips were required. From the late Middle Ages onwards, a gradual movement towards consolidation took place as small plots were amalgamated into fewer but larger holdings, with a corresponding increase in the power of the landowners.
Open fields in England
Contrary to popular belief, not all areas of England had open-field farming in the medieval period. Parts of south-east England, notably parts of Essex and Kent retained a pre-Roman system of farming in small square enclosed fields. In much of west and north-west England, fields were similarly either never open, or early enclosed. The primary area of open field management was in the lowland areas of England in a broad swath from Yorkshire and Lincolnshire diagonally across England to the south, taking in parts of Norfolk and Suffolk, Cambridgeshire, large areas of the Midlands, and most of south central England. This area was some of the most populous and profitable; it was also the main grain growing region (as opposed to pastoral farming).
>From as early as the 12th century, some open fields in Britain were
being enclosed into individually owned fields. In Great Britain, the
process sped up during the 15th and 16th centuries as sheep farming
grew more profitable. In the 16th and early 17th centuries, the
practice of enclosure was denounced by the Church and the government,
particularly depopulating enclosure, and legislation was drawn up
against it. However, the tide of elite opinion began to turn towards
support for enclosure, and rate of enclosure increased in the
seventeenth century. This led to a series of government acts
addressing individual regions, which were given a common framework in
the Enclosure Consolidation Act of 1801.
Throughout the 19th century, the developments in Britain were exported across the world, and the various contributions made upon the working population by warfare and increased mechanization finally finished the open field system off. However, to this day there is still more communally managed open agricultural land in Continental Europe than in England.
There is one village in England where the open field system continues to be used: the village of Laxton in Nottinghamshire. It is thought that its anomalous survival is due to two early 19th century landowners' inability to agree on how the land was to be enclosed, thus resulting in the perpetuation of the status quo. -- Jim Devine / "the world still seems stuck in greed-lock, ruled by fossilized fools fueled by fossil fuels." -- Swami Beyondananda