I’m going to be the nerd who talks about how difficult it is for modern, post-Industrial Revolution humans to truly understand how medieval peasants lived. Really, this applies to how ancient and medieval people of all walks of life lived, but for now, let’s stick to the topic of this meme. Is it entirely relevant to this post? Eh, probably not, but I’m bored at work and in the mood to ramble.

That meme about how peasants had so many more days off than modern workers? Those “days off” were simply the days when their labor wasn’t solely for the benefit of their lord. The days they “worked” were the ones spent fulfilling their feudal obligations—working their lord’s fields to stock the larders and granaries of the nobility and clergy. The rest of the year was when peasants worked to sustain their own communities.

Make no mistake: a peasant’s life was one of constant toil. For a medieval peasant, there was no sharp distinction between work and home life like we have today. There were no modern conveniences either—everything required labor. When fields didn’t need to be tended, and livestock didn’t require care, that was the time for milling grain, baking bread, brewing ale, weaving cloth, etc. God, crafting and maintaining your clothes took so much work, not to mention repairing and upkeeping your cottage.

Granted, these duties were often divided among family and community members. Unless you were a hermit living alone in the woods, no one was expected to do it all themselves. One of the “nicer” aspects of medieval peasant life was the close bonds within families and communities. People provided for one another. Children and the elderly, while still expected to work, had lighter duties. Bartering and trading goods or services with neighbors was also common.

That said, I don’t want to romanticize their lives too much. Here are some of the harsher realities:

1. If you were a man, you could be levied into your lord’s army at any time. This meant marching far from home, and risking death in battle. You really, really do not want to find yourself on the losing side of a medieval battle, something completely out of your control as a levied peasant. You also had to provide your own equipment. If you were relatively well-off, this might mean a spear, a shield, and padded armor. If not, you’d bring whatever you had—likely a farm tool. Refusing or deserting would leave you an outlaw, and if you were caught you would be flogged and possibly hanged.

2. If you weren’t called to war (because you were a woman, a child too young to fight, or too old or infirm), you lived in constant fear of armies rampaging through your village. They could destroy your home, steal your valuables, and rape and murder you, regardless of age or gender. With your lord’s army far away (or defeated), you’d be left to defend yourself, and running was your best option.

3. Medical care was rudimentary. Alcohol was the primary painkiller, and while there were herbal remedies, their effectiveness was often questionable. Nearly every illness or injury carried the risk of an agonizing death. Infections were almost always fatal. Childbirth was a leading cause of death for women, and as people aged, they faced constant pain with little relief.

Medieval peasants lived lives that, by our standards, were horrific: often short, brutal, and full of hardship. They were at the mercy of powers far beyond their control—victims of the whims of history. Yet ignorance truly was bliss. They knew no other way of life. If they were blessed with good times, free of war, famine, or plague, many peasants could lead fulfilling lives, and some, may have even considered themselves happy.

That was partly as a result of the Black Death reducing the workforce so much that it put the remaining population in a great bargaining position.

Given Trumps pick of RFK for HSS, I’d say give it a few years and you’ll be in a great position too.

We don’t even get gruel, just Krusty brand imitation gruel. 9 out of 10 orphans can’t tell the difference.

Marx’s analysis of Capitalism and predictions of where it heads are proven more correct with the passage of time. The reason the Proletarian is exploited to a greater degree than the serf is due to the nature of commodity production. As the M-C-M’ circuit, whereby M is an initial sum of money, C the commodity produced with M, and M’ the greater sum of money after selling said commodity is the basis of Capitalist production, said process is incentivized to be maximized. In Feudalism, rent is extracted and the rest kept for subsistence, in Capitalism wages are set by cost of continued existence and replacement, moving up or down mostly by societal norms.

Question 8 : In what way does the proletarian differ from the serf?

Answer : The serf enjoys the possession and use of an instrument of production, a piece of land, in exchange for which he hands over a part of his product or performs labour. The proletarian works with the instruments of production of another for the account of this other, in exchange for a part of the product. The serf gives up, the proletarian receives. The serf has an assured existence, the proletarian has not. The serf is outside competition, the proletarian is in it. The serf frees himself either by running away to the town and there becoming a handicraftsman or by giving his landlord money instead of labour and products, thereby becoming a free tenant; or by driving his feudal lord away and himself becoming a proprietor, in short, by entering in one way or another into the owning class and into competition. The proletarian frees himself by abolishing competition, private property and all class differences.

-The Principles of Communism

The serfs did not have it better, of course. However, the nature of their production was limited to the low technological development of the time. With mass factories Capitalism was transitioned to, and now with complex development of production in the hands of massive, monopolist syndicates and cartels, we can move beyond Capitalism to Socialized prodiction, central planning and public ownership, far easier than ever before.

I highly recommend those interested to check out my Introductory Reading List on Marxism.

You are a serf. removed, you live in Alsace. You are a peasant. You need to give your fuckin’ lord the grain. Your fucking children, you’ve had 15 children. You’ve never taken a bath. You’ve literally never. washed. your. penis. You’ve never used toilet paper. Motherfucker, you have worms. You are dying. You’ve had 40 children, 3 of them are alive. 2 of them are child soldiers in the Duke’s army.

removed, the greatest thing you can hope for is to die at the ripe old age of 36. You fucking can’t read. You don’t know what TV is. If you were transported into today, you would be the worst gamer of all time. You don’t know shit. You literally probably don’t even know what the direction ‘left’ is. I’m sure some Medieval guy is gonna get mad at me for this, removed I’ve been to the Renaissance Fair. I’ve eaten a large turkey wing, which the Juggalos call ‘removed beaters’, which I think is problematic but a funny thing to call them.

Motherfucker, you gotta recognize where you are, and then you gotta get past that. You gotta be unemotional. You can’t sink into this hole. You live in the oubliette. Your job is to crawl up the ladder, motherfucker. You live in the HOLE. You’re in the HOLE. You are a RAT. And the rat, when he’s in the hole gets fucked. People only throw trash in the hole.

You need to eat a body. And you need to carry the plague. And you need to carry a plague around this whole world, that will change this whole fuckin world. And all your enemies will vomit black bile and will choke on blood and will grow boils and die. But only if you get together with your other RATS. And you come up with some kind of super plague, to fuckin end your enemies and… END THIS NIGHTMARE

We better at least get off for a national dictator day out of this whole debacle.

It’s polyworking now, get with the times!

I understand the point being made, but don’t knock gruel.

Yeah but we gots fraydum!

Fuck ya got me. Critical strike.

This is a misinterpretation of a study on peasant life. It called certain religious days “holidays”. What it meant was those days were days they didn’t have to work for their lord. Peasants were obligated to work a certain number of days per year on the lord’s land. The other days they still had to work their own land. Agriculture was back breaking work and if you weren’t working in the fields you were constantly working on things like making cloth, repairing things, preparing food, etc.

EPA and revitalize auto industry is obviously a conflict of interest.

You don’t know how bad peasants actually had it.

More dysentery also… like a LOT more dysentery. So much so that people often believed their soul exists in their lower abdomen because when you feel pain there you die shortly after.

Wow that’s a lot of dysentery.

Sorry your point lacks proper context based on reality.

I don’t think that peasant economy was exploitative in the same way capitalism is. Peasants were largely farmers who grew food and provided the landowner with a percentage of their crop. They were integral to human survival and as far as I know the percentage taken by landowners was not comparable to the wealth extracted from workers today.