http://blogs.reuters.com/great-debate/2013/08/29/why-a-medieval-peasant-got-more-vacation-time-than-you/
--- Perhaps it might be useful to start with a re-examination of how feudal society operated. Brenner is correct to highlight the essentially stagnant character of feudalism, where competition's lash did not accelerate economic innovation. In "Invention of Capitalism," Michael Perelman identifies just one of among the many features that militated against the full exploitation of labor and raw materials: "Although their standard of living may not have been particularly lavish, the people of precapitalistic northern Europe, like most traditional people, enjoyed a great deal of free time. The common people maintained innumerable religious holidays that punctuated the tempo of work. Joan Thirsk estimated that in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, about one-third of the working days, including Sundays, were spent in leisure. Karl Kautsky offered a much more extravagant estimate that 204 annual holidays were celebrated in medieval Lower Bavaria."2 full: http://www.columbia.edu/~lnp3/mydocs/origins/testing_the_brenner_thesis.htm _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
