----- Original Message ---- From: Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> . In the Golden Age mode, says Williams, a feudal order is idealized as more "natural"; sure enough, one of the globalization conference panelists described the Middle Ages as a time of "real community." But, for "the uncountable thousands who grew crops and reared beasts only to be looted and burned and led away with tied wrists, this economy, even at peace, was an order of exploitation of a most thoroughgoing kind: a property in men as well as land; a reduction of most men to working animals, tied by forced tribute, forced labour, or 'bought and sold like beasts....'"
I agree with the general sentiment, but this is the Middle Ages as viewed by modern (that is, post-Enlightenment) Europeans, not the real Middle Ages, which were much more sophisticated than they are normally believed to have been.
(Which owes a lot to the desire to see modern Europe as a sort of new high point of civilization after 1500 years of darkness.)