Submitted by Zac Muddle
14 November, 2023 -
Author: John Cunningham
LONG READ
Introduction
In the Ariège Department in Pyrenean France, between 1829 – 1831, men dressed up as women revolted against their landowners in what became known, curiously, as the ‘Girl’s War’ or ‘Maidens’ War’ (Guerre Des Demoiselles).
They were trying to protect their long held right to forage for firewood and graze their animals in the forests. A new forestry code passed in 1827 denied them this right and the rebellion spread across the region with many pitched battles taking place. So strong was feeling amongst the local populace that it became difficult to recruit anyone for the mayoralty lest they became ‘tainted’ with the detested new laws. The resistance of the ‘Maidens’ continued sporadically until 1872. Around the same time, over in the Rhineland, a part of Prussia, peasants hired a local Advocate (roughly equivalent to a lawyer in the British legal system), one Heinrich Marx of Trier, to fight a court case on their behalf in an attempt to affirm and uphold their long held right to collect firewood from the forests around Koblenz. The legal proceedings ran on for a staggering 27 years (outlasting Heinrich by seven years), prompting his slightly more famous son, Karl, (left) to write a series of articles in a liberal-radical newspaper (Rheinische Zeitung, RZ) about what became known as the Wood Theft Laws. What connects these two historical events, separated by geography and a few years? The answer is simple and complex at the same time: in both cases rural communities were denied a long established right to help themselves to firewood from the forests and surrounding woods. It sounds unimportant, trivial even, yet it became a burning issue – if somewhat localised – of the time, evoked much controversy and was indicative of wider and deeper trends. It was also important for the political development of the young Karl Marx.
All over Europe ideas and practices about ownership and inherited rights were in flux as economic needs, modes of production and demographic patterns changed. The last vestiges of feudalism were being erased and replaced by the new, dynamic yet more brutal mode of capitalism. The court case pursued by Heinrich Marx began when Karl was only nine yet it ran on into his adulthood and, in total he wrote five articles for the Rheinische Zeitung on this issue, all in 1842. It was not the first of his forays into radical journalism but it was one of the most important for the future author of The Communist Manifesto, written at a time when ‘Marxism’ was unheard of and the word ‘communism’ was being used for the first time in Germany. The young journalist from Trier, on the banks of the Moselle, considered himself a radical liberal, certainly not a communist or any of those other new-fangled labels that were just starting to circulate and soon to become common currency in Europe and elsewhere, particularly in the period leading up to the revolutions of 1848-9 and beyond. Socialist and communist thought (the two terms were interchangeable at this time) began to take root in Germany in 1842 starting with a key publication: Lorenz von Stein’s ‘The Socialism and Communism of Present Day France’. This book had strange origins particularly in light of the role it would later play. It was originally commissioned by the Prussian government and planned as a report on the influence of leftist ideas among German immigrant workers in Paris. Stein was no socialist but inadvertently his book became widely read and helped spread the ideas of socialism in Germany (no doubt to the embarrassment of the Prussian government).
Throughout Europe, for generations, those who worked on the land (loosely labelled as ‘peasants’, although this was not in any sense a homogenous class), had certain rights. In England these rights went as far back as the reign of Edward the Confessor (1042-1066). For our purposes there were two main elements to this entitlement: firstly, the right to access common land to graze pigs and cattle and secondly the right to access the forests to gather firewood for domestic use. In some areas wood-burning to make charcoal was also included in these rights although the charcoal burners and wood gatherers would occasionally clash. The situation varied from place to place: killing a deer generally brought severe retaliations from landowners but catching the odd rabbit for the pot was sometimes allowed, likewise fishing in rivers was permitted in some areas but banned in others. Collecting the ‘fruits of the forest’ (mushrooms, berries, nuts etc.) was also part of this complex and varied but well-established package of rights. There were other activities such as gleaning (scouring fields after the harvest for left-over grain
All over Europe ideas and practices about ownership and inherited rights were in flux as economic needs, modes of production and demographic patterns changed. The last vestiges of feudalism were being erased and replaced by the new, dynamic yet more brutal mode of capitalism. The court case pursued by Heinrich Marx began when Karl was only nine yet it ran on into his adulthood and, in total he wrote five articles for the Rheinische Zeitung on this issue, all in 1842. It was not the first of his forays into radical journalism but it was one of the most important for the future author of The Communist Manifesto, written at a time when ‘Marxism’ was unheard of and the word ‘communism’ was being used for the first time in Germany. The young journalist from Trier, on the banks of the Moselle, considered himself a radical liberal, certainly not a communist or any of those other new-fangled labels that were just starting to circulate and soon to become common currency in Europe and elsewhere, particularly in the period leading up to the revolutions of 1848-9 and beyond. Socialist and communist thought (the two terms were interchangeable at this time) began to take root in Germany in 1842 starting with a key publication: Lorenz von Stein’s ‘The Socialism and Communism of Present Day France’. This book had strange origins particularly in light of the role it would later play. It was originally commissioned by the Prussian government and planned as a report on the influence of leftist ideas among German immigrant workers in Paris. Stein was no socialist but inadvertently his book became widely read and helped spread the ideas of socialism in Germany (no doubt to the embarrassment of the Prussian government).
Throughout Europe, for generations, those who worked on the land (loosely labelled as ‘peasants’, although this was not in any sense a homogenous class), had certain rights. In England these rights went as far back as the reign of Edward the Confessor (1042-1066). For our purposes there were two main elements to this entitlement: firstly, the right to access common land to graze pigs and cattle and secondly the right to access the forests to gather firewood for domestic use. In some areas wood-burning to make charcoal was also included in these rights although the charcoal burners and wood gatherers would occasionally clash. The situation varied from place to place: killing a deer generally brought severe retaliations from landowners but catching the odd rabbit for the pot was sometimes allowed, likewise fishing in rivers was permitted in some areas but banned in others. Collecting the ‘fruits of the forest’ (mushrooms, berries, nuts etc.) was also part of this complex and varied but well-established package of rights. There were other activities such as gleaning (scouring fields after the harvest for left-over grain
‘The Gleaners’ (Les Glaneuses) by Jean Francois Millet, completed in 1857. Gleaning, although somewhat outside of the terms of our discussion, was another ancient right which came under attack from farmers and landowners and was fiercely contested by the French peasantry. The practice continues to this day and modern day gleaners can also be found in those groups who search the ‘waste’ bins of supermarkets to procure foodstuffs which are still edible, as depicted in Agnes Varda’s film The Gleaners and I (2000).
And other crops such as grapes left on the vine) which existed as long-established rights and they too came under attack. The extent to which the peasantry relied on these rights to survive (particularly in times of a bad harvest or a harsh winter) is hard to assess but it can be said with some certainty that the right to gather wood for the home fire was essential for heating and cooking, without which life would be grim indeed. The erosion of the right of access to common land and the forests was fiercely contested. Peasants would often engage in stand-up fights with the landowners and their stewards and bailiffs and it was not unusual for the military or police to be called in to crack open a few peasant skulls. In one notorious instance in the village of Newton on 8 June 1607 in Northamptonshire, England, over 40 villagers were killed in fighting. While this was an exceptional case, deaths were not uncommon. The erosion of commons rights was an issue, but not the main one in the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381 and was a central motivating element in the Jack Cade Revolt of 1450 and Kett’s Rebellion of 1549 (all in England). It was also a concern of the Levellers and Diggers during the period of the English Revolution. In Scotland the Highland Clearances (roughly 1750-1850) took on an exceptionally brutal aspect as whole families were forced off their land to make way for sheep rearing, many being forced to emigrate to North America.
And other crops such as grapes left on the vine) which existed as long-established rights and they too came under attack. The extent to which the peasantry relied on these rights to survive (particularly in times of a bad harvest or a harsh winter) is hard to assess but it can be said with some certainty that the right to gather wood for the home fire was essential for heating and cooking, without which life would be grim indeed. The erosion of the right of access to common land and the forests was fiercely contested. Peasants would often engage in stand-up fights with the landowners and their stewards and bailiffs and it was not unusual for the military or police to be called in to crack open a few peasant skulls. In one notorious instance in the village of Newton on 8 June 1607 in Northamptonshire, England, over 40 villagers were killed in fighting. While this was an exceptional case, deaths were not uncommon. The erosion of commons rights was an issue, but not the main one in the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381 and was a central motivating element in the Jack Cade Revolt of 1450 and Kett’s Rebellion of 1549 (all in England). It was also a concern of the Levellers and Diggers during the period of the English Revolution. In Scotland the Highland Clearances (roughly 1750-1850) took on an exceptionally brutal aspect as whole families were forced off their land to make way for sheep rearing, many being forced to emigrate to North America.
In Switzerland, herdsmen take their cattle to the commons for summer grazing. From ‘A Short History of Enclosure’ by Simon Fairlie in The Land No. 7. Summer 2009.
In England, common land was closed off mainly for sheep grazing in order to supply the growing and extremely lucrative wool trade. By the reign of Henry V (1413-1422) around 63% of the Crown’s total income came from a tax on wool exports. Wool was big business – the commons simply got in the way. It was a long process and there had already been many enclosures before the first enclosure facilitated by an Act of Parliament in 1604 (there were others). In practice, this meant that a landowner had simply to apply for an enclosure to Parliament and it was usually granted. Many more applications were to follow, over 5,200 individual cases. To take just one of a myriad of examples: the last enclosure in the Sheffield area occurred in 1837 when 1,200 acres in the district of Totley were enclosed. The last enclosure in Britain, astonishingly, occurred as late as 1914! On mainland Europe the seizure of the commons did not always lead to such confrontational and bloody showdowns as at Newton but nevertheless the peasantry of the Rhineland, France, Sicily (which enclosed its commons in 1789) and elsewhere fought to protect their ancient rights, whether through the courts or through guerilla warfare, acts of sabotage or open conflict. The resort to the courts, as in the Rhineland, was unusual as legal cases were often too expensive a course to pursue and, of course, the judges were frequently drawn from the landowning class. This was not a time for the faint-hearted, many were prepared to stand up and fight for what they saw as their inalienable rights and death threats were not unusual, though it is not possible to know how many were actually ever carried out. The anonymous sentiments expressed below were probably not that usual, though in this particular case, the Lord of the Manor, wasn’t gunned down in the street.
Anonymous letter received by John Edward Dorington (and his son) Lord of the Manor, Gloucestershire, England, in 1864:
‘You are robbing the working class of the Parish and their offspring for ever in fact you are not gentlemen but robbers and vagabonds, however if it [the common land] is enclosed you shall never receive any benefit thereby as there are several on the lookout for you both and so help my God I am on the alert for you and if I have one chance of you I will shoot you as dead as mortal.’
To put it simply: firewood ceased to be something you picked up on the floor of a nearby forest and took home; it became a commodity to be sold on the market, as explained by Karl Kautsky in the first of his two volume work The Agrarian Question, written in 1899,
Once urbanisation had made wood into a desirable commodity – and in the absence of coal or iron a much more important building material and fuel than now – the feudal lords tried to grab forest lands, either by taking them off the Mark [German village with a strong communal ethos] communities to whom they belonged, or, where they themselves owned them, by restricting peasant access for the collection of wood and straw for grazing. (Kautsky 24)
As in Britain this was no recent development. Over 350 years before Kautsky put pen to paper, the rebellious peasants of the 1525 Peasant War, issued a famous statement of their beliefs. The peasants, ill-equipped and with little or no military training, were slaughtered at the Battle of Frankenhauser (15 May 1525) but they left to posterity their famous Twelve Articles, drawing attention to their ancient rights such as wood gathering and couched in the religious idiom of the time. The famous leader of the peasants, Thomas Muntzer did not write this but he penned a supporting document, The Constitutional Draft. Sections four and five of the Twelve Articles read as follows:
The Fourth Article. – In the fourth place it has been the custom heretofore, that no poor man should be allowed to catch venison or wild fowl or fish in flowing water, which seems to us quite unseemly and unbrotherly as well as selfish and not agreeable to the word of God. In some places the authorities preserve the game to our great annoyance and loss, recklessly permitting the unreasoning animals to destroy to no purpose our crops which God suffers to grow for the use of man, and yet we must remain quiet. This is neither godly or neighbourly. For when God created man he gave him dominion over all the animals, over the birds of the air and over the fish in the water. Accordingly it is our desire if a man holds possession of waters that he should prove from satisfactory documents that his right has been unwittingly acquired by purchase. We do not wish to take it from him by force, but his rights should be exercised in a Christian and brotherly fashion. But whosoever cannot produce such evidence should surrender his claim with good grace.
The Fifth Article. – In the fifth place we are aggrieved in the matter of wood-cutting, for the noble folk have appropriated all the woods to themselves alone. If a poor man requires wood he must pay double for it (or, perhaps, two pieces of money). It is our opinion in regard to wood which has fallen into the hands of a lord whether spiritual or temporal, that unless it was duly purchased it should revert again to the community. It should, moreover, be free to every member of the community to help himself to such fire-wood as he needs in his home. Also, if a man requires wood for carpenter’s purposes he should have it free, but with the knowledge of a person appointed by the community for that purpose. Should, however, no such forest be at the disposal of the community let that which has been duly bought be administered in a brotherly and Christian manner. If the forest, although unfairly appropriated in the first instance, was later duly sold let the matter be adjusted in a friendly spirit and according to the Scriptures.
The historian Christopher Clark in his monumental study of 1848-9, Revolutionary Spring, highlights how the enclosures and wood theft laws closed down the open spaces previously accessible to the rural population. The forest skirmishes and land battles in pre-1848 Europe were ‘… often (though not always) rearguard actions against the more homogenous and spatially delimited forms of ownership that would become characteristic of modern society’. (Clark 88) Clark’s academic language should not be allowed to hide the brutal reality of what this meant: hunger, starvation, immiseration and death for thousands of rural people throughout Europe.
In the Rhineland
In Prussia (which included the Rhineland) the issue became so toxic that between 1830-1836, 77% of all prosecutions were concerned, in one way or another, with forestry, hunting and pasture rights. Generally speaking peasants had, under the old system of rights, been allowed to gather wood which was lying on the ground. In some cases there were maximum dimensions to the wood which you could pick and cutting down branches was not allowed and could result in a severe penalty. Now, under the increasing restrictions being introduced even this wasn’t permitted. Given the large number of prosecutions it looks as if this policy was energetically policed by the landowners, through their bailiffs, hired hands and the police and then pursued through the courts.
Urban growth in the Rhineland during the 1800s was the fastest in the whole of what was to become Germany in 1871: The figures below show urbanisation rates (in %) between 1815 – 1850 in the Rhineland.
Although these figures are not as great as some areas in Europe they nevertheless indicate an increasing escalation in the urban population. These people had to be fed and they needed fuel for their fires. Urban growth was to have a profound effect on rural life, not least in the drift of the rural population to toil in the workshops and factories now beginning to develop in the new towns and cities; increasingly the rural economy was geared to feeding the urban population and centuries old patterns of agricultural practice were swept away. Marx’s words in the Communist Manifesto, ‘All that was solid melts in the air’ were rarely so appropriate. Wood was now collected by the landowners to be sold on the market in the growing towns and cities. If peasants collected firewood they could not use it for themselves unless they paid for it, or they could sell it to the landowner who in turn would sell it to merchants in the towns, at a profit of course.
Given that his father was the Advocate in the long-running legal battle around the Wood Theft Laws it is hardly surprising that the young Karl Marx became interested in the issue. Marx paid close attention to the debates in the Sixth Rhine Province Assembly about the Wood Theft Laws which took place between 23 May to 25 July. The Rhine Province was created in 1822 from the provinces of the Lower Rhine and Jülich-Cleves-Berg; its capital was Koblenz. The Assembly was formed a year later and was hardly democratic. The system of election was based on landownership which gave landowners a comfortable majority when it came to voting. Apparently, he attended all the sessions where the issue was discussed but, for reasons which are not clear, was not supplied with any of the relevant documentation pertaining to the issues raised in the chamber. Fortunately, he was an assiduous note-taker.
He reported, analysed and commented on what he heard in the Rheinische Zeitung (RZ) which had been established in January 1842 with Moses Hess as its editor. In October Marx was appointed to the editorial board. Before looking at what Marx wrote it is worth mentioning that, at this time in his life he was heavily influenced by the German philosopher Hegel who had taught at Berlin University before Marx arrived there. Although Hegel died in November 1831 and Marx arrived in Berlin in October 1836 the Hegelian influence was still very strong. Many of Marx’s early collaborators were Hegelians and he too fell under the spell of this philosopher who did much to shape the intellectual landscape of Germany and other parts of Europe. One result of this philosophical influence is that it renders some of what Marx wrote about the Wood Theft Laws rather abstract. In later years Marx turned away from Hegel (although never totally abandoning him) towards a class analysis based on historical materialism and a concentration on economic analysis as manifested in his monumental study Das Kapital, the first volume being published in German in 1867.
As a contributor and later as an editor on the RZ, Marx addressed a number of issues not least of which was the question of press censorship which was widely practiced at the time and would ultimately signal the death knell for the RZ in 1843. His concern for the Wood Theft Laws could be seen as an element in Marx’s growing awareness of what was often referred to, at the time, as the ‘social question’. There were numerous writings about the social conditions of the newly emergent working class which proliferated in the first half and middle of the 19thC: James Kay, Bettina von Armin, Heinrich Grunholzer, Ange Guépin and Eugene Bonamy were just five of these chroniclers of urban labour, poverty and destitution, to which we must add the classic study, The Condition of the Working Class in England written in 1845 (by which time Marx and his family were living in Belgium) by Marx’s future friend and collaborator Frederick Engels. Hal Draper elaborates,
Concern with the “social question” was not only new, it was the special characteristic of the pioneer socialists and communists whose ranks Marx was still unwilling to join. What was characteristic of these early radicals was that they mostly dissociated the “social question” from the “political question” (gaining freedom in the state) […] It was precisely Marx’s contribution to develop a communism that integrated into one consistent perspective both the battle for political democracy and the struggle on the “social question”. (Draper, Marx’s Theory of Revolution Vol. 1. p. 66)
Marx’s articles in the Rheinische Zeitung
Turning now to what Marx wrote in the RZ about the Wood Theft Laws, it is striking that he expends much energy writing in a mode that, from today’s perspective, could be called satirical (in fact throughout his life Marx displayed an abundant talent for this kind of expression and rarely missed an opportunity to ‘have a go’ at an opponent). He clearly regards the Assembly Deputies as a bunch of idiots and there are many examples of his talent for put-downs and insults, although he mentions no-one by name. Marx’s articles on the Wood Theft Laws are not easy to follow (apart from other considerations he thought the debates were ‘tedious and uninspired’). There are detailed accounts on what constitutes a right, what punishments are appropriate or not and the appointment of Forest Wardens and the role they play; none of which need detain us any further. What follows is an attempt to pick out the main issues and summarise what Marx wrote, not to provide a blow-by-blow account of what transpired in the debating chamber.
His first article (although they are usually referred to as Supplements) appeared in the RZ 298 in 25 Oct. 1842. The other Supplements appeared in No. 300 (27 Oct.), No. 303 (30 Oct.), No. 305 (1 Nov.), No. 307 (3 Nov.). Two main themes soon begin to emerge:
a) the rights of property versus the rights of the people.
b) the relation between the state and the property owner.
One of the key aspects of the wood theft debates is to what extent does an inherited right have over a new law which clearly works to the disadvantage of those who have previously benefitted from the old, well-established practice? Does a new law simply sweep away the old rights? The dynamo of capitalist development was rapidly changing the face of Europe (and the rest of the world would follow), what chance did a relatively small number of peasants in the Rhineland and elsewhere have of maintaining a practice that was perceived by many (particularly landowners) as outmoded and flew in the face of the inexorable march of modernity? What did it matter that a few peasants would have to abandon an age old right and, probably also, at some point, abandon their whole way of life and move to the cities? Why not succumb to the inevitable? Marx did not see it this way, his sympathies were clearly with the wood gatherers.
Marx argued in RZ 300 that ‘Little thought is needed to perceive how one-sidedly enlightened legislation has treated and been compelled to treat the customary rights of the poor…’ (in all quotes from RZ italics are as in the original). The very question of whether wood lying on the floor of the forest was property or not was a matter of debate as was the question, if indeed it was property, to whom did it belong? Marx elaborates,
‘…all customary rights of the poor were based on the fact that certain forms of property were indeterminate in character, for they were definitely not private property, but neither were they definitely not common property being a mixture of public and private right, such as we find in all institutions of the Middle Ages.’
‘Indeterminate’ is a key word here. The wood on the forest floor is not private property (as opposed to the trees themselves). The scattered branches are ‘accidental’ and ‘elemental’ and belong to what Marx called ‘occupation rights’, in other words to ‘those excluded from all other property’ (in this case the peasantry). Marx likened the loose wood to the ‘alms of nature’ and just as the poor could claim alms (money or food distributed to the destitute) which were given out in the street, so they could claim branches and twigs lying on the forest floor. The wood becomes an ‘accidental appendage of property’. The landowners were having none of this – an attitude starkly illustrated by the apparently innocuous practice of picking berries in the forests. Traditionally, this task was left to children and was another long-established customary right. The landowners did away with this practice and the berries too became part of the monopoly of the landowning class. As a Deputy explained in the Assembly and quoted by Marx ‘…in his area these berries have already become articles of commerce and are dispatched to Holland by the barrel.’
What was particularly striking to Marx was the way the Wood Theft Laws represented the power of the landowners over the elements of the state at both regional and local level. The authority of the state has become a servant of the landowners, ‘All the organs of the state become the ears, eyes, arms, legs by means of which the forest owner, observes, appraises, protects, reaches out, and runs.’ (RZ 303) Marx continued on this theme in RZ 305, ‘What then are the harmful results? Harmful is that which is harmful to the interest of the forest owner.’ The Deputies even discussed taking punishment out of the hands of the law and, in effect, giving it to the landowner. The possibility arose of making a convicted wood thief work (unpaid of course) for the landowner meaning that the landowner would actually profit from the activity of the wood thief. In this way crime would ‘pay’ twice over but only for the landowner. Marx, evoking the spirit of Jonathan Swift, commented, ‘We are only surprised that the forest owner is not allowed to heat his stove with wood thieves.’
In his final article on the Wood Theft Laws (RZ, 307 3 Nov. 1842) Marx attempted to sum up the situation. Private interest (i.e. of the landowners/capitalists) was paramount, all else was subordinate, ‘Our account has shown the Assembly degrades the executive power, the administrative authorities, the life of the accused, the idea of the state, crime itself and punishment as well, to material means of private interest.’ Considering that his father was a legal Advocate it must also have impressed itself upon the young Marx how the law was ‘outvoted’ by the Assembly Deputies. The principles of law, supposedly so sacrosanct to the ruling classes, were sacrificed to the interest of forest protection, for the sole benefit of the landowners,
This abject materialism, this sin against the holy spirit of the people and humanity, is an immediate consequence of the doctrine which the Preussische Staats-Zeitung [Prussian State Gazette – an official publication] preached to the legislator, namely that in connection with the law concerning wood he should think only of wood and forest and should solve each material problem in a non-political way, i.e. without any connection with the whole of the reason and morality of the state.’
The relationship of the state and local authority to the landowner was one which Marx had not yet fully worked out; this would come later beginning in 1843 with some critical notes on Hegel and The German Ideology (written in 1845-6 but not published till much later). At the time Marx has no developed analysis of the state and he expects the state authorities to defend the wood gatherers, which of course, is precisely what did not happen. Another crucial aspect of Marx’s thought, which he is only just beginning to understand, is the notion of class. He does not talk about the working class in his articles on wood theft although he does refer to the poor as the ‘elemental class of human society’. He sees in the poor many virtues and here we can also locate an area where Marx moved away from Hegel. The latter was utterly disdainful of the poor who he referred to as Pöbel (usually translated into English as ‘rabble’). All in all, Marx’s writings on the Wood Theft Laws were important stepping stones in his political development, as mentioned by Hal Draper, ‘His article on the Wood Theft Laws anticipated his critique of Hegel: the Diet debases the state officialdom into “material interests of private interests.” His article on the Moselle peasants emphasised the narrowmindedness of the bureaucratic mentality’. Much later, when Marx was dead, Engels, writing to R. Fischer in 1895, made much the same point, ‘I heard Marx say again and again that it was precisely through concerning himself with the wood theft laws and with the situation of the Moselle peasants that he was shunted from pure politics over to economic conditions, and thus came to socialism.’
The Rhineland at this time, although developing quickly was not a place where the industrial bourgeoisie yet held sway and in Germany as a whole, even after 1871, landowners, nobility and the new bourgeoisie all vied for control while keeping an eye over their shoulder at the growing proletariat in the cities. One key aspect of Bismarck’s rule was his attempt, not always successful, to play-off one class or section of a class, against another and later Marx and Engels were to regard his regime as Bonapartist in the same way (though not exactly) as the Bonapartism of the the great Napoleon’s less illustrious, nephew Louis. In time, Germany was to develop as one of the industrial powerhouses of the world, defeating France in the Franco-Prussian war of 1871, flexing its imperial muscles overseas (in Morocco for example), building a navy, a large army and gearing up for the First World War. None of which would have been possible without a powerful, highly productive industrial base. In this complex and unstoppable process the needs and rights of the Rhineland peasants were swept aside.
Sources and notes:
For general background reading there are a number of biographies of Marx which mention, in varying degrees of depth (and quality), his engagement with the Wood Theft Laws and, although it is not a biography, Hal Draper’s Karl Marx’s Theory of Revolution Vol. 1. particularly chap. 2. ‘The Political Apprentice’ is excellent. The reference to the ‘Girls’ War’ or ‘Maidens’ War’ can be found in The Revolutionary Spring by Christopher Clark. The full text of the five ‘Wood Theft’ articles by Marx in the RZ can be found in various sources, I used the Marxist Internet Archive website which was also useful for footnotes giving background information (social makeup etc.) to the Assembly. For general background to issues around the question of land, land rights, enclosures etc. the journal The Land proved invaluable; the information about enclosures in Sheffield came from an article by Peter Harvey in the website our Broomhall.org.uk in 1982. The text of the threatening anonymous letter to John Edward Dorington can be found in a review by Dinah Birch of Penning Poison: A History of Anonymous Letters by Emily Cockayne in London Review of Books, 21 Sept. 2023. Karl Kautsky’s classic study The Agrarian Question was published in English (for the first time) in two volumes by Zwan Publications in 1988. The Twelve Articles can be easily found on various websites. Some ideas about Marx and Hegel were derived from Draper (see previous reference) and ‘The Virtue of Poverty: Karl Marx’s Transformation of Hegel’s Concept of the Poor by Erica Sherover, Canadian Journal of Political Social Theory Vol. 3. No. 1 (Winter 1979) pp 53-66. Figures for urban growth in the Rhineland came from: ‘Population Growth and Urbanisation in Germany in the 19th Century’, Jurgen Reulecke in Urbanism Past and Present. No. 4. (Summer, 1977) pp 21-32. Engels’ letter to R. Fischer (15 April, 1895) is quoted in Draper, see previous reference p. 75.
Note on a source not used: For various reasons I was not able to locate a copy of Daniel Bensaїd’s The Dispossessed: Karl Marx’ Debates on Wood Theft and the Rights of the Poor (University of Minnessota Press, Minneapolis, 2021). However, I understand that Bensaїd’s text uses Marx’s writings on wood theft primarily to discuss various issues arising in the 21st century and this is outside the remit of my basic introduction to the topic. Bensaїd was a highly respected theoretician and activist long associated with the international Trotskyist movement who died in 2010. A beautifully written assessment of his life and work can be found in chapter 11 of Paul Le Blanc’s Revolutionary Collective: Comrades, Critics, and Dynamics in the Struggle for Socialism (Chicago, Haymarket Books, 2022).
Cover illustration: Peasants on a path in the forest (oil on panel, painted in 1626) by Jasper van de Lanen of Antwerp (1585-1634).
In England, common land was closed off mainly for sheep grazing in order to supply the growing and extremely lucrative wool trade. By the reign of Henry V (1413-1422) around 63% of the Crown’s total income came from a tax on wool exports. Wool was big business – the commons simply got in the way. It was a long process and there had already been many enclosures before the first enclosure facilitated by an Act of Parliament in 1604 (there were others). In practice, this meant that a landowner had simply to apply for an enclosure to Parliament and it was usually granted. Many more applications were to follow, over 5,200 individual cases. To take just one of a myriad of examples: the last enclosure in the Sheffield area occurred in 1837 when 1,200 acres in the district of Totley were enclosed. The last enclosure in Britain, astonishingly, occurred as late as 1914! On mainland Europe the seizure of the commons did not always lead to such confrontational and bloody showdowns as at Newton but nevertheless the peasantry of the Rhineland, France, Sicily (which enclosed its commons in 1789) and elsewhere fought to protect their ancient rights, whether through the courts or through guerilla warfare, acts of sabotage or open conflict. The resort to the courts, as in the Rhineland, was unusual as legal cases were often too expensive a course to pursue and, of course, the judges were frequently drawn from the landowning class. This was not a time for the faint-hearted, many were prepared to stand up and fight for what they saw as their inalienable rights and death threats were not unusual, though it is not possible to know how many were actually ever carried out. The anonymous sentiments expressed below were probably not that usual, though in this particular case, the Lord of the Manor, wasn’t gunned down in the street.
Anonymous letter received by John Edward Dorington (and his son) Lord of the Manor, Gloucestershire, England, in 1864:
‘You are robbing the working class of the Parish and their offspring for ever in fact you are not gentlemen but robbers and vagabonds, however if it [the common land] is enclosed you shall never receive any benefit thereby as there are several on the lookout for you both and so help my God I am on the alert for you and if I have one chance of you I will shoot you as dead as mortal.’
To put it simply: firewood ceased to be something you picked up on the floor of a nearby forest and took home; it became a commodity to be sold on the market, as explained by Karl Kautsky in the first of his two volume work The Agrarian Question, written in 1899,
Once urbanisation had made wood into a desirable commodity – and in the absence of coal or iron a much more important building material and fuel than now – the feudal lords tried to grab forest lands, either by taking them off the Mark [German village with a strong communal ethos] communities to whom they belonged, or, where they themselves owned them, by restricting peasant access for the collection of wood and straw for grazing. (Kautsky 24)
As in Britain this was no recent development. Over 350 years before Kautsky put pen to paper, the rebellious peasants of the 1525 Peasant War, issued a famous statement of their beliefs. The peasants, ill-equipped and with little or no military training, were slaughtered at the Battle of Frankenhauser (15 May 1525) but they left to posterity their famous Twelve Articles, drawing attention to their ancient rights such as wood gathering and couched in the religious idiom of the time. The famous leader of the peasants, Thomas Muntzer did not write this but he penned a supporting document, The Constitutional Draft. Sections four and five of the Twelve Articles read as follows:
The Fourth Article. – In the fourth place it has been the custom heretofore, that no poor man should be allowed to catch venison or wild fowl or fish in flowing water, which seems to us quite unseemly and unbrotherly as well as selfish and not agreeable to the word of God. In some places the authorities preserve the game to our great annoyance and loss, recklessly permitting the unreasoning animals to destroy to no purpose our crops which God suffers to grow for the use of man, and yet we must remain quiet. This is neither godly or neighbourly. For when God created man he gave him dominion over all the animals, over the birds of the air and over the fish in the water. Accordingly it is our desire if a man holds possession of waters that he should prove from satisfactory documents that his right has been unwittingly acquired by purchase. We do not wish to take it from him by force, but his rights should be exercised in a Christian and brotherly fashion. But whosoever cannot produce such evidence should surrender his claim with good grace.
The Fifth Article. – In the fifth place we are aggrieved in the matter of wood-cutting, for the noble folk have appropriated all the woods to themselves alone. If a poor man requires wood he must pay double for it (or, perhaps, two pieces of money). It is our opinion in regard to wood which has fallen into the hands of a lord whether spiritual or temporal, that unless it was duly purchased it should revert again to the community. It should, moreover, be free to every member of the community to help himself to such fire-wood as he needs in his home. Also, if a man requires wood for carpenter’s purposes he should have it free, but with the knowledge of a person appointed by the community for that purpose. Should, however, no such forest be at the disposal of the community let that which has been duly bought be administered in a brotherly and Christian manner. If the forest, although unfairly appropriated in the first instance, was later duly sold let the matter be adjusted in a friendly spirit and according to the Scriptures.
The historian Christopher Clark in his monumental study of 1848-9, Revolutionary Spring, highlights how the enclosures and wood theft laws closed down the open spaces previously accessible to the rural population. The forest skirmishes and land battles in pre-1848 Europe were ‘… often (though not always) rearguard actions against the more homogenous and spatially delimited forms of ownership that would become characteristic of modern society’. (Clark 88) Clark’s academic language should not be allowed to hide the brutal reality of what this meant: hunger, starvation, immiseration and death for thousands of rural people throughout Europe.
In the Rhineland
In Prussia (which included the Rhineland) the issue became so toxic that between 1830-1836, 77% of all prosecutions were concerned, in one way or another, with forestry, hunting and pasture rights. Generally speaking peasants had, under the old system of rights, been allowed to gather wood which was lying on the ground. In some cases there were maximum dimensions to the wood which you could pick and cutting down branches was not allowed and could result in a severe penalty. Now, under the increasing restrictions being introduced even this wasn’t permitted. Given the large number of prosecutions it looks as if this policy was energetically policed by the landowners, through their bailiffs, hired hands and the police and then pursued through the courts.
Urban growth in the Rhineland during the 1800s was the fastest in the whole of what was to become Germany in 1871: The figures below show urbanisation rates (in %) between 1815 – 1850 in the Rhineland.
Although these figures are not as great as some areas in Europe they nevertheless indicate an increasing escalation in the urban population. These people had to be fed and they needed fuel for their fires. Urban growth was to have a profound effect on rural life, not least in the drift of the rural population to toil in the workshops and factories now beginning to develop in the new towns and cities; increasingly the rural economy was geared to feeding the urban population and centuries old patterns of agricultural practice were swept away. Marx’s words in the Communist Manifesto, ‘All that was solid melts in the air’ were rarely so appropriate. Wood was now collected by the landowners to be sold on the market in the growing towns and cities. If peasants collected firewood they could not use it for themselves unless they paid for it, or they could sell it to the landowner who in turn would sell it to merchants in the towns, at a profit of course.
Given that his father was the Advocate in the long-running legal battle around the Wood Theft Laws it is hardly surprising that the young Karl Marx became interested in the issue. Marx paid close attention to the debates in the Sixth Rhine Province Assembly about the Wood Theft Laws which took place between 23 May to 25 July. The Rhine Province was created in 1822 from the provinces of the Lower Rhine and Jülich-Cleves-Berg; its capital was Koblenz. The Assembly was formed a year later and was hardly democratic. The system of election was based on landownership which gave landowners a comfortable majority when it came to voting. Apparently, he attended all the sessions where the issue was discussed but, for reasons which are not clear, was not supplied with any of the relevant documentation pertaining to the issues raised in the chamber. Fortunately, he was an assiduous note-taker.
He reported, analysed and commented on what he heard in the Rheinische Zeitung (RZ) which had been established in January 1842 with Moses Hess as its editor. In October Marx was appointed to the editorial board. Before looking at what Marx wrote it is worth mentioning that, at this time in his life he was heavily influenced by the German philosopher Hegel who had taught at Berlin University before Marx arrived there. Although Hegel died in November 1831 and Marx arrived in Berlin in October 1836 the Hegelian influence was still very strong. Many of Marx’s early collaborators were Hegelians and he too fell under the spell of this philosopher who did much to shape the intellectual landscape of Germany and other parts of Europe. One result of this philosophical influence is that it renders some of what Marx wrote about the Wood Theft Laws rather abstract. In later years Marx turned away from Hegel (although never totally abandoning him) towards a class analysis based on historical materialism and a concentration on economic analysis as manifested in his monumental study Das Kapital, the first volume being published in German in 1867.
As a contributor and later as an editor on the RZ, Marx addressed a number of issues not least of which was the question of press censorship which was widely practiced at the time and would ultimately signal the death knell for the RZ in 1843. His concern for the Wood Theft Laws could be seen as an element in Marx’s growing awareness of what was often referred to, at the time, as the ‘social question’. There were numerous writings about the social conditions of the newly emergent working class which proliferated in the first half and middle of the 19thC: James Kay, Bettina von Armin, Heinrich Grunholzer, Ange Guépin and Eugene Bonamy were just five of these chroniclers of urban labour, poverty and destitution, to which we must add the classic study, The Condition of the Working Class in England written in 1845 (by which time Marx and his family were living in Belgium) by Marx’s future friend and collaborator Frederick Engels. Hal Draper elaborates,
Concern with the “social question” was not only new, it was the special characteristic of the pioneer socialists and communists whose ranks Marx was still unwilling to join. What was characteristic of these early radicals was that they mostly dissociated the “social question” from the “political question” (gaining freedom in the state) […] It was precisely Marx’s contribution to develop a communism that integrated into one consistent perspective both the battle for political democracy and the struggle on the “social question”. (Draper, Marx’s Theory of Revolution Vol. 1. p. 66)
Marx’s articles in the Rheinische Zeitung
Turning now to what Marx wrote in the RZ about the Wood Theft Laws, it is striking that he expends much energy writing in a mode that, from today’s perspective, could be called satirical (in fact throughout his life Marx displayed an abundant talent for this kind of expression and rarely missed an opportunity to ‘have a go’ at an opponent). He clearly regards the Assembly Deputies as a bunch of idiots and there are many examples of his talent for put-downs and insults, although he mentions no-one by name. Marx’s articles on the Wood Theft Laws are not easy to follow (apart from other considerations he thought the debates were ‘tedious and uninspired’). There are detailed accounts on what constitutes a right, what punishments are appropriate or not and the appointment of Forest Wardens and the role they play; none of which need detain us any further. What follows is an attempt to pick out the main issues and summarise what Marx wrote, not to provide a blow-by-blow account of what transpired in the debating chamber.
His first article (although they are usually referred to as Supplements) appeared in the RZ 298 in 25 Oct. 1842. The other Supplements appeared in No. 300 (27 Oct.), No. 303 (30 Oct.), No. 305 (1 Nov.), No. 307 (3 Nov.). Two main themes soon begin to emerge:
a) the rights of property versus the rights of the people.
b) the relation between the state and the property owner.
One of the key aspects of the wood theft debates is to what extent does an inherited right have over a new law which clearly works to the disadvantage of those who have previously benefitted from the old, well-established practice? Does a new law simply sweep away the old rights? The dynamo of capitalist development was rapidly changing the face of Europe (and the rest of the world would follow), what chance did a relatively small number of peasants in the Rhineland and elsewhere have of maintaining a practice that was perceived by many (particularly landowners) as outmoded and flew in the face of the inexorable march of modernity? What did it matter that a few peasants would have to abandon an age old right and, probably also, at some point, abandon their whole way of life and move to the cities? Why not succumb to the inevitable? Marx did not see it this way, his sympathies were clearly with the wood gatherers.
Marx argued in RZ 300 that ‘Little thought is needed to perceive how one-sidedly enlightened legislation has treated and been compelled to treat the customary rights of the poor…’ (in all quotes from RZ italics are as in the original). The very question of whether wood lying on the floor of the forest was property or not was a matter of debate as was the question, if indeed it was property, to whom did it belong? Marx elaborates,
‘…all customary rights of the poor were based on the fact that certain forms of property were indeterminate in character, for they were definitely not private property, but neither were they definitely not common property being a mixture of public and private right, such as we find in all institutions of the Middle Ages.’
‘Indeterminate’ is a key word here. The wood on the forest floor is not private property (as opposed to the trees themselves). The scattered branches are ‘accidental’ and ‘elemental’ and belong to what Marx called ‘occupation rights’, in other words to ‘those excluded from all other property’ (in this case the peasantry). Marx likened the loose wood to the ‘alms of nature’ and just as the poor could claim alms (money or food distributed to the destitute) which were given out in the street, so they could claim branches and twigs lying on the forest floor. The wood becomes an ‘accidental appendage of property’. The landowners were having none of this – an attitude starkly illustrated by the apparently innocuous practice of picking berries in the forests. Traditionally, this task was left to children and was another long-established customary right. The landowners did away with this practice and the berries too became part of the monopoly of the landowning class. As a Deputy explained in the Assembly and quoted by Marx ‘…in his area these berries have already become articles of commerce and are dispatched to Holland by the barrel.’
What was particularly striking to Marx was the way the Wood Theft Laws represented the power of the landowners over the elements of the state at both regional and local level. The authority of the state has become a servant of the landowners, ‘All the organs of the state become the ears, eyes, arms, legs by means of which the forest owner, observes, appraises, protects, reaches out, and runs.’ (RZ 303) Marx continued on this theme in RZ 305, ‘What then are the harmful results? Harmful is that which is harmful to the interest of the forest owner.’ The Deputies even discussed taking punishment out of the hands of the law and, in effect, giving it to the landowner. The possibility arose of making a convicted wood thief work (unpaid of course) for the landowner meaning that the landowner would actually profit from the activity of the wood thief. In this way crime would ‘pay’ twice over but only for the landowner. Marx, evoking the spirit of Jonathan Swift, commented, ‘We are only surprised that the forest owner is not allowed to heat his stove with wood thieves.’
In his final article on the Wood Theft Laws (RZ, 307 3 Nov. 1842) Marx attempted to sum up the situation. Private interest (i.e. of the landowners/capitalists) was paramount, all else was subordinate, ‘Our account has shown the Assembly degrades the executive power, the administrative authorities, the life of the accused, the idea of the state, crime itself and punishment as well, to material means of private interest.’ Considering that his father was a legal Advocate it must also have impressed itself upon the young Marx how the law was ‘outvoted’ by the Assembly Deputies. The principles of law, supposedly so sacrosanct to the ruling classes, were sacrificed to the interest of forest protection, for the sole benefit of the landowners,
This abject materialism, this sin against the holy spirit of the people and humanity, is an immediate consequence of the doctrine which the Preussische Staats-Zeitung [Prussian State Gazette – an official publication] preached to the legislator, namely that in connection with the law concerning wood he should think only of wood and forest and should solve each material problem in a non-political way, i.e. without any connection with the whole of the reason and morality of the state.’
The relationship of the state and local authority to the landowner was one which Marx had not yet fully worked out; this would come later beginning in 1843 with some critical notes on Hegel and The German Ideology (written in 1845-6 but not published till much later). At the time Marx has no developed analysis of the state and he expects the state authorities to defend the wood gatherers, which of course, is precisely what did not happen. Another crucial aspect of Marx’s thought, which he is only just beginning to understand, is the notion of class. He does not talk about the working class in his articles on wood theft although he does refer to the poor as the ‘elemental class of human society’. He sees in the poor many virtues and here we can also locate an area where Marx moved away from Hegel. The latter was utterly disdainful of the poor who he referred to as Pöbel (usually translated into English as ‘rabble’). All in all, Marx’s writings on the Wood Theft Laws were important stepping stones in his political development, as mentioned by Hal Draper, ‘His article on the Wood Theft Laws anticipated his critique of Hegel: the Diet debases the state officialdom into “material interests of private interests.” His article on the Moselle peasants emphasised the narrowmindedness of the bureaucratic mentality’. Much later, when Marx was dead, Engels, writing to R. Fischer in 1895, made much the same point, ‘I heard Marx say again and again that it was precisely through concerning himself with the wood theft laws and with the situation of the Moselle peasants that he was shunted from pure politics over to economic conditions, and thus came to socialism.’
The Rhineland at this time, although developing quickly was not a place where the industrial bourgeoisie yet held sway and in Germany as a whole, even after 1871, landowners, nobility and the new bourgeoisie all vied for control while keeping an eye over their shoulder at the growing proletariat in the cities. One key aspect of Bismarck’s rule was his attempt, not always successful, to play-off one class or section of a class, against another and later Marx and Engels were to regard his regime as Bonapartist in the same way (though not exactly) as the Bonapartism of the the great Napoleon’s less illustrious, nephew Louis. In time, Germany was to develop as one of the industrial powerhouses of the world, defeating France in the Franco-Prussian war of 1871, flexing its imperial muscles overseas (in Morocco for example), building a navy, a large army and gearing up for the First World War. None of which would have been possible without a powerful, highly productive industrial base. In this complex and unstoppable process the needs and rights of the Rhineland peasants were swept aside.
Sources and notes:
For general background reading there are a number of biographies of Marx which mention, in varying degrees of depth (and quality), his engagement with the Wood Theft Laws and, although it is not a biography, Hal Draper’s Karl Marx’s Theory of Revolution Vol. 1. particularly chap. 2. ‘The Political Apprentice’ is excellent. The reference to the ‘Girls’ War’ or ‘Maidens’ War’ can be found in The Revolutionary Spring by Christopher Clark. The full text of the five ‘Wood Theft’ articles by Marx in the RZ can be found in various sources, I used the Marxist Internet Archive website which was also useful for footnotes giving background information (social makeup etc.) to the Assembly. For general background to issues around the question of land, land rights, enclosures etc. the journal The Land proved invaluable; the information about enclosures in Sheffield came from an article by Peter Harvey in the website our Broomhall.org.uk in 1982. The text of the threatening anonymous letter to John Edward Dorington can be found in a review by Dinah Birch of Penning Poison: A History of Anonymous Letters by Emily Cockayne in London Review of Books, 21 Sept. 2023. Karl Kautsky’s classic study The Agrarian Question was published in English (for the first time) in two volumes by Zwan Publications in 1988. The Twelve Articles can be easily found on various websites. Some ideas about Marx and Hegel were derived from Draper (see previous reference) and ‘The Virtue of Poverty: Karl Marx’s Transformation of Hegel’s Concept of the Poor by Erica Sherover, Canadian Journal of Political Social Theory Vol. 3. No. 1 (Winter 1979) pp 53-66. Figures for urban growth in the Rhineland came from: ‘Population Growth and Urbanisation in Germany in the 19th Century’, Jurgen Reulecke in Urbanism Past and Present. No. 4. (Summer, 1977) pp 21-32. Engels’ letter to R. Fischer (15 April, 1895) is quoted in Draper, see previous reference p. 75.
Note on a source not used: For various reasons I was not able to locate a copy of Daniel Bensaїd’s The Dispossessed: Karl Marx’ Debates on Wood Theft and the Rights of the Poor (University of Minnessota Press, Minneapolis, 2021). However, I understand that Bensaїd’s text uses Marx’s writings on wood theft primarily to discuss various issues arising in the 21st century and this is outside the remit of my basic introduction to the topic. Bensaїd was a highly respected theoretician and activist long associated with the international Trotskyist movement who died in 2010. A beautifully written assessment of his life and work can be found in chapter 11 of Paul Le Blanc’s Revolutionary Collective: Comrades, Critics, and Dynamics in the Struggle for Socialism (Chicago, Haymarket Books, 2022).
Cover illustration: Peasants on a path in the forest (oil on panel, painted in 1626) by Jasper van de Lanen of Antwerp (1585-1634).
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