Taxes: a Marxist view

Rodney Hilton

Unjust Taxation and Popular Resistance

Historical materialism as a concept for understanding society, past, present and future, is under constant examination, by its adherents as much as by its opponents. [*] Some of these discussions are stimulating, intellectually exciting and perhaps even useful for the definition of political strategies. Much space has been occupied by those who are primarily concerned with one side of the Marxist project—theory rather practice. Whether or not this distances them from contemporary political issues is not my concern; but I intend here to examine the importance of the concepts of historical materialism to the practice of the working historian.

Marxist historians have, on the whole, applied themselves to the interpretation of particular periods or specific problems, as in the case of the older generation formed in Britain in the 1940s and 1950s. They have not often engaged explicitly in the definition of the theoretical principles which they have applied to their work. That has been left to what one might designate as secondary writers, philosophers or socio-logists rather than historians. They use the work of historians at second hand, themselves having little or no experience of the problems of historical research, using primary sources.

Mode of Production

If one is to consider the most important aspects of the application of theories of historical materialism to the practice of historical research and writing, it seems to me that the most useful starting-point would be to examine the main thrust of the anti-Marxists rather than the internal contortions of some of the Marxist theorists. There are many differing strands of the criticism of Marxist theories of history but at the moment I only want to consider two. First, the concept of the mode of production is much criticized, as is inevitable given its central importance for historical materialism. Second and perhaps more frequently, that essential feature of the mode of production concept, social class and class conflict, is frequently under attack.

The mode of production concept can be badly applied, both by practising historians and especially by theorists who are not such. Among the most obvious of the faulty uses of the concept is an assumption of a one-way determination by the economic base of all other aspects of a particular mode, on an even narrower form of technological determinism. Engels, towards the end of his life, took care to distance himself from this use of Marxism. Other distortions at the opposite end of the scale include an over-emphasis on class conflict at the expense of economic factors. In fact, these misuses of the mode of production concept tend not to be made by working historians, but rather by the sort of theorists I have referred to who do not engage in the application of theory to practice. [1] When the working historian finds that theory, as he/she applies it, does not explain the facts, it is the theory which has to be critically scrutinized.

Marxists, as well as their critics, can pick out and reject distortions of the mode of production concept. But critics of Marxism also attack what they regard as the ‘holism’ implied by historical materialism and by the mode of production concept in particular. Their target is not so much forms of rigid determinism as the idea that there is an interdependence of the different aspects of a social formation—economic base, class relations of production, legal, political and ideological superstructures. The working Marxist historian is careful not to assume one-way determination within the complexities of a social formation based on a mode of production, but does assume interconnections. And in insisting on these interconnections he/she, as a materialist, will give long-term priority to the material foundations of social class relations.

To come down to brass tacks, as a medievalist, I think that it is essential to recognize ‘feudalism’ as a mode of production, even though it may be prudent to accept its European specificity. This specificity is implied in the borrowing of the term ‘feudal’, derived from a particular European medieval institution, the ‘fief’, as broadly definitive of the mode. I do not think that a full understanding of medieval society is possible without this concept, not to speak of the by no means exhausted investigation of the transition from feudalism to capitalism. My main aim in this paper is to consider a particular aspect of medieval society which I think has been badly distorted by some non-Marxist historians. But I will first briefly outline my own understanding of the feudal mode of production in its socio-economic aspects, without entering into detail concerning so-called super-structural aspects.

Feudal Society

The idea that medieval technology was at a low level and almost static has fairly frequently been challenged over the years. The use of water and wind power for corn-grinding and fulling mills is quite rightly emphasized—sometimes, perhaps, over-emphasized. [2] Nevertheless, the use of power-driven machinery was not sufficiently developed to alter the fact that that the basic units of production in both town and country were almost all so small that the labour force which worked them was based on the family, whether nuclear or three-generational. [3] In many cases, though by no means all, the family labour force would be strengthened by the addition of one or two—seldom more—hired workers. In the case of the holdings of middling or richer peasants, there might be young members of other, perhaps related, families, with the seasonal addition of smallholders whose holdings were insuficient for self-subsistence, and, at harvest time, itinerant men and women from towns. [4] In the towns the analogous unit of production was the artisan workshop, also with a family labour force. The traditional picture is of the addition of an apprentice, often from outside the town, and of a journeyman who had finished his apprenticeship but not yet acquired sufficient resources to own his own workshop. In fact, the situation was probably more fluid, the line between poor masters and journeymen often being blurred and the prospects for journeymen becoming masters very slim. [5]

Peasants, smallholders, artisans and journeymen constituted the core of the working population in the feudal mode of production, though we must not ignore the large, though badly documented, numbers of unskilled workers and marginal people, especially in the bigger towns. The dominant class which lived off the rents in labour, kind and money of the peasant producers was as differentiated socially as was the peasantry, ranging from the big baronial and ecclesiastical land-owners to the lesser gentry. All, however, mainly through the jurisdictional power which they exercised over their tenants and dwellers on their estates, were transferring, in various forms, the surplus product of peasant labour beyond the peasants’ subsistence and reproduction needs, by means of non-economic coercion. Whatever elements of bargaining there might be as to rent levels, reflecting changes in the landlord/peasant balance of power, peasant rent was not, basically, ‘economic’ and was the major element in landlord income. The pretence that the traditional manorial demesnes (or home farms) or the new Cistercian granges foreshadowed capitalist enterprises cannot be sustained. Seigneurial power was as much the force behind hired labour on the demesnes or the labour of the lay brethren on the granges as it was behind labour services as part of rent. [6]

The feudal mode of production was not a natural economy. In the countryside as well as in the towns petty commodity production was established very early, in some places perhaps as early as pre-history. Naturally, it did not dominate production, or production relations, in the countryside as it did in the towns. Nevertheless, peasants had to acquire money, either to buy manufactured commodities or to pay rent or tax. Even though they were able to provide their own subsistence, they still had to go to the market to sell their surplus produce and get a small money income—or to sell to itinerant corn or stock-mongers who then went to the market. As suggested, some peasant money income might be spent on necessary manufactured commodities, or on essentials such as salt which could not be acquired except through the market. But the bulk of their money income went either to the landlord in rent or to the feudal state through taxation. This ruling class and state money income was spent to a large extent on luxury commodities (wines, spices, silks. . .) or on war (arms, armour, castles, mercenaries). Most of these commodities were the major components of international or long-distance trade and were handled by merchants, the dominating elements in the ruling elites of the bigger towns. The relationship between these merchant capitalists and the feudal landowners was by no means that of class antagonists, although there might be jurisdictional disputes, as between feudal lords themselves. The feudal state and the feudal lords, moreover, depended on merchant capitalists, not only for the goods of long-distance trade but also for money loans. In one way or another, merchant capitalists, of whatever creed, were usurers.

Urban Popular Grievances

How do the artisans and those lower down the social scale in the towns fit into this description of the feudal mode of production? Was a surplus analogous to rent appropriated from the middling and lower urban classes? Rent certainly had to be paid to urban land-owners but did not constitute a significant element in the incomes of the ruling urban elites. Insofar as artisans had grievances it could, for example, be because of the exploitation by merchant putters-out, who provided the raw material (mainly for cloth production) and sold the finished product. Conflicts in medieval Flemish and Italian towns, especially in the fourteenth century, reflect this situation. But, as many historians point out, the principal grievance of the artisans and those below them was taxation—a grievance expressed in bitter complaints to state authorities and very often in revolt.

Many non-Marxist historians admit the class element in peasant movements against landlords as well as the rationality of their complaints against rents and such servile dues as marriage fines, death duties and arbitrary tallage. In this perception they are probably influenced by Marc Bloch, who said that peasant revolts were as inevitable in seigneurial society as strikes in large-scale capitalist enterprise. [7] But when we consider rebellion among the lower classes of the medieval town, a very different attitude appears. Class divisions are either denied or regarded as minimal. Discontent and revolt are dismissed as irrational. S. Reynolds, in her survey of medieval English towns, believes that ‘people did not feel all the class antagonisms that we may think their rational interests required’, they had ‘faith in consensus and reconciliation’. P. Wolff, in his important study of social movements in the towns of Languedoc, denies class conflict on the grounds that there were ‘rich and poor within each social group’. J. Lestocquoy, many years ago, suggested that the anti-patrician movements in the Flemish towns were due to ambitious agitators. Rossiaud more recently says that urban revolts were irrational violence provoked by rumour and usually manipulated from above. Chevalier tells us that popular violence was due to the emotions of the poor. . .no class conflict, no reforming ideas, just anger that the rich were not doing their social duty. [8]

Nevertheless, these and other historians insist on taxation as the main reason for complaint and revolt. Here, as we will see, we seem to be going ‘back to the future’. The townspeople did not oppose taxation as such. They acepted the monarchical state and in time of war—most of the fourteenth century—they knew that troops and equipment had to be paid for. This was especially the case in France, where marauding invaders and bandit-like mercenaries were part of the everyday landscape. But they were well aware that the way in which taxes were levied by the mercantile oligarchies was both unfair and corrupt. They had a rational, even sophisticated perception of the different forms of taxation. P. Wolff, in the work mentioned above, shows that the artisans in towns in the south of France were explicitly hostile to poll taxes and to indirect taxes on consumables. They demanded that taxes be levied which were proportional to wealth, whereas the urban elites preferred the poll tax and the indirect tax. The artisans’ view would seem to us to be not only reasonable but more perceptive than those of many people today. It is likely that they regarded the oligarchies’ manipulation of the tax system much as the peasants regarded demands for ever more rents and services—as another form of non-economic and coercive appropriation of their earnings in return for nothing.

Before moving on to examples of revolt against tax, it would be useful to examine some objective evidence of urban taxation—objective in the sense that it does not simply emerge as the content of complaints against the tax. Such figures are not easy to obtain, given the erratic survival of urban records. A unique calculation has been made by A. Rigaudière from the financial records of the medium-sized town of St. Flour in the Auvergne, a town at the centre of the Tuchin revolts of the late fourteenth century. [9] The records used go from 1378 to 1465.

Most of the urban income was derived from tax and most of it was spent on defence. Half of the total income came from an indirect tax on consumables. Only 30 per cent came from a direct tax on property, which could have been proportional to wealth, except that town houses, gardens and mills, most belonging to the rich, got a 50 per cent abatement, which artisans’ workshops did not get. Furthermore, the capital value of pious endowments, pensions for clergy and relatives and alms was deducted from the assessments. This naturally benefited the rich, so that some of them paid no tax at all—not to speak of total tax exemption for the clergy, the nobility and officials, because of their status.

Corruption and Revolt

Most of the anti-tax rebellions resulted more from obvious examples of corruption than from the awareness—which existed—of the unfairness of the system, since the latter was a permanent feature of life. These rebellions go back well beyond the crisis years of the late fourteenth century. In London, in the mid-1190s, a rebellion provoked by the tax-avoidance of the rich was led by William Fitzosbert, possibly a member of a well-to-do family. He and nine other rebels were hanged. Unfortunately, we have only a chronicler’s report which gives no details of the tax-fiddling. Complaints in London recur. For example, elements among its middling citizens complained that the rich were buying tax exemptions from the Crown and shifting the burden on to the poor. A decade earlier, in 1265, Lincoln citizens had been protesting because the rich paid no tax and appropriated market tolls for themselves. In 1306, as a result of a judicial enquiry at York, we have some details of a very elaborate tax fiddle. A caucus within the ruling council, including the mayor, set up a religious fraternity for bogus charitable purposes. They swore oaths to support each other, even against members of their own families, in law suits. They also arranged that they would control tax assessments in order to make sure that they paid nothing or only minimal quantities. On the other hand, they agreed that artisans should pay a weekly tax on their earnings. The enquiry resulted in their temporary suspension from citizenship, but within a few years they were reinstated and some of them once again obtained leading offices, such as the mayoralty. [10]

There are many other instances in medieval English towns of the exploitation of the tax system by the merchant oligarchies. Serious rebellions against taxation were even more frequent in France, where the tax burden was much heavier. I give a few examples. At Arras, in the north-east, in the 1280s, complaints against the diversion of the heavy burden on to the people for the benefit of the ruling elite led to the imprisonment of one of the complainants. Renewed protests led to the formation of a body which was supposed to control the town’s finances, but the tax evasions of the rich continued over the years until 1355 when a riot followed a heavy tax imposition, resulting in the defenestration of some of the prominent oligarchs. In the town of Provins, famous for its fairs and textile production, heavy taxation in 1281 caused an artisan rising in which the mayor was killed. In 1324, the majority of the population voted for the abolition of the merchant-dominated commune in favour of direct royal control, because of fiscal oppression by the mayor and the échevins. All over France, similar protests and rebellions took place, culminating in the 1380s in revolts in Paris and twenty-six other French towns—and repeated again later. [11]

These tax rebellions in France were taking place at the same time as the English rising of 1381. The English rebels had many grievances and many claims, most arising from specific issues of landlord/peasant relationships. But it was the third of a series of poll taxes which triggered off the rebellion and brought urban populations into supporting the rebels as far north as York, Beverley and Scar-borough. [12]

Urban discontent was not confined to the issue of taxation. In the fourteenth century, especially in London, discontented journeymen were forming ‘covins’ among themselves to support demands for higher wages and continued to do so, sometimes in the guise of religious fraternities, well into the fifteenth century, in Coventry as well as in London. Similar movements are found in Paris and other French towns, often over hours of work. But whatever the significance of these early manifestations of discontent among wage-workers, the tax issue predominated and the journeymen followed the lead of the master artisans, in spite of the conflicts with them over wages and hours of work. It is clear, too, that tax rebellions were supported by the unskilled and marginal elements of the population—the urban poor who were seriously affected by the indirect taxes on food and drink which the rich, for obvious reasons, preferred. It is possible that the involvement of the marginals gives some colour to certain depictions of urban revolt as irrational hostility by the poor to the rich. This superficial dismissal of protest against genuine grievances does not stand up if one engages in a detailed class analysis of the medieval town.

The master artisans, including the well-to-do ones, were generally excluded from the political processes of urban government and were well aware of the tax manipulation by those who controlled the ruling councils. Their exclusion meant that in many cases their rational and justified opposition could only be expressed in protests which inevitably led to violence. [13] The same remarks can be made about rebellious journeymen and the discontented and marginalized poor. Their class position made them even more vulnerable than the master artisans, especially in face of the high cost of living resulting from the predominance of indirect, and consequently regressive, taxation. Their grievances and their forms of rebellion were as much to be expected in feudal society as were the revolts of peasants. However much they frightened the chroniclers and others who denigrated them, the historians who closely examine the facts can give them credit for rationality.

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[*] This paper was read to the Back to the Future conference, organized in 1988 by Lawrence and Wishart to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of A.L. Morton’s People’s History of England. It will appear in R. Hilton, Class Conflict and the Crisis of Feudalism, revised edn., Verso 1990.

[1] I have discussed this in my introduction to The Brenner Debate. Agrarian Class Structure and Economic Development in Pre-Industrial Europe, eds. T.H. Aston and C.H.P. Philpin, 1985.

[2] See R.A. Holt, The Mills of Medieval England, 1988. A.R. Bridbury in Medieval English Clothmaking, 1982, throws doubt on conventional emphases on the importance of the fulling mill. The contributors to The Countryside of Medieval England, eds. G. Astill and A. Grant, 1988, tend to stress the static character of medieval technology.

[3] In many medieval peasant and artisan households the two generation family, in the normal cycle of family history, could from time to time be a three generation family—that is, with grandparents living alongside their children and grandchildren.

[4] See S.A. Penn, ‘Female Wage Labour in Late 14th-Century England’, Agricultural History Review, 1987.

[5] A point made many years ago by E. Coormaert in Les Corporations en France avant 1789, 1941. See also G. Unwin, Industrial Organisation, 1904.

[6] The illusion that Cistercian granges woked by conversi somehow anticipated capitalist enterprise has been well exposed by Isabel Alfonso in a forthcoming article.

[7] Caractères originales de l’histoire rurale française, 1981, p. 175.

[8] S. Reynolds, An Introduction to the History of Medieval English Towns, 1977. Conflict is well documented in this work. See p. 185 for her refusal to accept the existence of conflicting classes in medieval towns. See also P. Wolff, ‘Les luttes sociales dans le Midi français’ Annales esc, 1947; J. Lestocquoy, Les Villes de Flandre et de l’Italie sous le gouvernement des patriciens, 1952, pp. 79–85; J. Rossiaud in Histore de la France urbaine, ed. G. Duby, ii, La Ville médiévale, 1980, pp. 519–24; B. Chevalier, Les Bonnes Villes de la France, 1982, pp. 299–302.

[9] St–Flour, Ville d’Auvergne au bas moyen age, 1982.

[10] C.N.L. Brooke and G. Keir, London 800–1216, the Shaping of a City, 1975; G.A. Williams, Medieval London from Commune to Capital, 1963; J.W.F. Hill, Medieval Lincoln, 1948; G.O. Sayles, ‘Dissolution of a Gild at York’, English Historical Review, 1940.

[11] L. Mirot, Les insurrections urbaines au début du règne de Charles vi, 1380–3: leurs causes, leurs consequences, 1906.

[12] The English Rising of 1381, eds. R.H. Hilton and T.H. Aston, 1984.

[13] Medieval records, especially judicial, make it clear that violence was also very much part of the life-style of the medieval ruling class. See, for instance, J. Bellamy, Crime and Disorder in England in the Later Middle Ages, 1973.

New Left Review I/180, March-April 1990

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