mae
noctis_, the right of the first night--the free working-man must, on
demand, surrender to his master not only that, but the right of every
night. The serf could acquire no property; everything that he gained,
his master could take from him; the free working-man has no property, can
gain none by reason of the pressure of competition, and what even the
Norman baron did not do, the modern manufacturer does. Through the truck
system, he assumes every day the administration in detail of the things
which the worker requires for his immediate necessities. The relation of
the lord of the soil to the serf was regulated by the prevailing customs
and by-laws which were obeyed, because they corresponded to them. The
free working-man's relation to his master is regulated by laws which are
_not_ obeyed, because they correspond neither with the interests of the
employer nor with the prevailing customs. The lord of the soil could not
separate the serf from the land, nor sell him apart from it, and since
almost all the land was fief and there was no capital, practically could
not sell him at all. The modern bourgeois forces the working-man to sell
himself. The serf was the slave of the piece of land on which he was
born, the working-man is the slave of his own necessaries of life and of
the money with which he has to buy them--both are _slaves of a thing_.
The serf had a guarantee for the means of subsistence in the feudal order
of society in which every member had his own place. The free working-man
has no guarantee whatsoever, because he has a place in society only when
the bourgeoisie can make use of him; in all other cases he is ignored,
treated as non-existent. The serf sacrificed himself for his master in
war, the factory operative in peace. The lord of the serf was a
barbarian who regarded his villain as a head of cattle; the employer of
operatives is civilised and regards his "hand" as a machine. In short,
the position of the two is not far from equal, and if either is at a
disadvantage, it is the free working-man. Slaves they both are, with the
single difference that the slavery of the one is undissembled, open,
honest; that of the other cunning, sly, disguised, deceitfully concealed
from himself and every one else, a hypocritical servitude worse than the
old. The philanthropic Tories were right when they gave the operatives
the name white slaves. But the hypocritical disguised slavery recognises
the right to fr