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Meanwhile, taking the UK as an example, productivity has grown exponentially. Goes to show how exploited the working class is. If production was more evenly distributed, and part of the growth in productivity was allowed to be returned as free time, imagine how much better quality of life would be.
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/labor-productivity-per-hour
Also don’t forget:
Medieval peasants worked on average (depending on the area and era you are looking at) 30-60% less hours per year than present-day wage-workers
Medieval peasants who worked on someone else’s land could elect not to go to work on any particular day and just not get paid for it (that’s how weekends were created)
Medieval bosses (i.e. land-owners) were responsible for feeding their workers for the day with breakfast and lunch.
Usually lunch during field work was followed by a customary 2-3 hours nap.
While its true that thru time peasant worked for their landlord quite a bit less than people work today, they also had to maintain themselves u know grow their own food, repair their homes, make or repair tools, make food, make clothes, make furniture all that kinda stuff; most historians would say peasants in europe generally worked more than we do today. They did have a lot of holidays tho.
We did it, Joe!
Things were so much better when the average life expectancy was in the 30s and every third child died in infancy and nobody knew how to read or write and there was no separation of church and state and society was constantly plagued by an endless cycle of famine and disease
So that makes it okay to ignore the real problems of low home ownership rates and high rent?
none of that shit about famine or plague or life expectancy has shit to do with your income or your relationship to your labor
The point I was making was that to pretend people are worse off now than they were during the Middle Ages is ridiculous
The point of the meme is that a modern-day wage labourer is exploited way more than a medieval wage labourer. There’s nothing there about famines, plagues and wars (which by the way only went away from Europe to an extend for the past 80 years, and there’s no guarantee that they’ll be staying away).
Among peer countries, the U.S. has the lowest life expectancy at birth for both women and men
A life expectancy at birth of 78.4 years for the whole population compared to 31.3 years JUST for English males who were lucky enough to be born to land-owning families
According to your data, the United States has an infant mortality rate of 5.4 per 1,000 births, or 0.54%. For comparison, an estimated 30% of babies in the Middle Ages died before their first birthday and only about half reached adulthood
These claims are very misleading. The actual share of US adults who are illiterate is closer to 12%. In mediaeval times on the other hand, the VAST, vast majority of people, including the nobility, didn’t know how to read or write. Charlemagne, despite being a strong proponent of an educated citizenry, famously was himself illiterate. Writing back then was mostly reserved for the clergy
It’s certainly being eroded, but the present situation isn’t anywhere near as bad as it was in the Middle Ages. I don’t see anyone being burnt at the stake for heresy
With one-fifth of states seeing active measles outbreaks, the U.S. is nearing 900 cases
Oh wow a whole three people died from measles
Food insecurity isn’t famine. There is no mass starvation epidemic in the United States and there never has been, except among the indigenous population. This is a country where over 40% of the people are obese for Christ’s sake
Super duper nice, good star. Show us where anyone said capitalism wasn’t a stage of final development, anyone saying it should’ve never happened?
You’re comparing a system that lets people suffer unnecessarily with a time of lower technological development. It’s literally apples and oranges, not to mention you’ve failed to address what they meant, something someone else spelled out.
Yeah, probably not a great idea to uncritically parrot RETVRN memes here
Are there people who actually want to return to feudalism? (Who aren’t conveniently placed as one who would be the exploiter). This isn’t the first time I’ve gotten the impression there’s some kind of anxiety about people wanting to go back, but I’m not aware of people who specifically want to go back to feudalism. I know there’s some romanticizing of European medieval life out there, but that seems to be more like pro-royalty propaganda, than anything to do with comparing the degree of exploitation of the working class.
Personally, I get confused about the pushback sometimes because like, I live in the US and there are aspects of past societies that were clearly better. The US has a pretty piss poor sense of community, for example, undoubtedly in some part due to rabid anti-communism and trying to de-fang organization of the masses, along with its history of racialized slavery, genocide of the natives, etc. Not that everyone the world over has moved on from community, so for some places, it wouldn’t be a thing of the past anyway. But in general, I find the whole “don’t romanticize the past” thing can go too far, to the point that it starts sounding too similar to “primitive savage early humans” colonial stuff and makes it sound too much like human history was: “something something humans miserable for thousands of years, then boom, capitalism, now humans are doing way better.”
I imagine that’s probably not your intent, but I get wary in the other direction, is the point.
