Driving out the Undeserving Poor

Abstract

Peasant life based on a simple mode of production dominated the precapitalist history of a large part of humankind for millennia. Stone-age economics revolving around hunting and gathering, although continuously practiced in many zones of our planet, were steadily surpassed by more sedentary forms of work and living. Lack of control over natural resources did not allow for much more than precarious survival, but the condition of poverty that prevailed was a shared experience. Arrangements for production and livelihood took place in small-scale communities, and the majority of the world’s population lived in households that remained embedded in these primary anchor points of ancient civilizations. With a surplus siphoned off at the behest of supra-local lords engaged in early state formation, the peasantry produced for its own frugal subsistence. A communitarian ethos saw to it that they helped each other out in times of hardship; this redistribution was facilitated by the still cashless character of the localized economy. With an increase in output—the result of technological advancements that led to better control over the forces of nature—differentiation in the ownership of means of production set in and gave rise to a more varied life style, also at the local level. This was the beginning of a social divide, which according to Alexis de Tocqueville arose in a new stage of settled—that is, domesticated—agriculture following slash-and-burn cultivation. In his first Memoir on Pauperism (1834), he argued that: