[Economic History] From Peasants to Wage Laborers: How the Enclosure Movement Created the Proletariat

The capitalist system centered on capitalists and wage laborers, which we take for granted today, is actually a relatively recent development in human history.

For centuries, most people lived in rural communities, depending on the land and their local communities for their livelihoods. Beginning in the late Middle Ages, however, England underwent a massive reorganization of landholding that fundamentally transformed this traditional rural society.

This was the Enclosure Movement.

In his 1516 work Utopia, Thomas More satirically criticized the displacement of peasants from their land as sheep farming expanded across England. This criticism is commonly associated with the famous expression:

“Sheep devour men.”

Enclosure was not simply a matter of putting fences around pastures.

By reorganizing land that had previously been used collectively by local communities into exclusive private property and transforming agriculture into a more market-oriented system, enclosure increased agricultural productivity on the one hand while creating wage laborers separated from the land on the other.

From Karl Marx’s perspective, this process constituted an important part of the “primitive accumulation” that accompanied the emergence of capitalism.

1. The Essence of the Enclosure Movement: Privatization of Common Land and the Capitalization of the Countryside

In medieval England, rural communities consisted not only of land directly controlled by lords and holdings cultivated by peasants, but also of common land used collectively by villagers.

Peasants grazed livestock, gathered firewood, and supplemented their livelihoods through various customary rights of use.

For smallholders and the rural poor who possessed little land of their own, common land in particular served as a kind of social safety net.

Beginning in the late Middle Ages, however, this traditional system of land use gradually began to change.

During the 15th and 16th centuries, as England’s woolen textile industry and wool market expanded, some landowners converted arable land into pasture. Enclosure increasingly involved consolidating scattered plots of land into larger holdings, fencing them off, and placing them under exclusive private use.

In this process, traditional systems of communal cultivation and customary rights to use common land gradually weakened.

Common Land and Communal Farming → Land Consolidation and Privatization → Expansion of Market-Oriented Agriculture

The rural economy also gradually shifted from subsistence-oriented production toward production for the market.

2. The First and Second Enclosure Movements

The Enclosure Movement is generally explained as having developed in two major phases.

The First Enclosure Movement, which took place mainly during the 15th and 16th centuries, was characterized by the expansion of private enclosure led largely by landowners. As England’s wool industry expanded, some landowners consolidated scattered plots of land and converted arable fields into pasture in order to increase wool production and sheep farming.

The Second Enclosure Movement, which accelerated during the 18th and 19th centuries, was more systematic and increasingly supported by Acts of Parliament. Unlike the earlier enclosures, which had often been carried out through local and private arrangements, Parliamentary Enclosure provided a legal and institutional framework for reorganizing and consolidating agricultural land.

Particularly important was the Parliamentary Enclosure of the 18th and 19th centuries.

Whereas landowners had previously enclosed and consolidated land largely through local and private arrangements, during this period Parliament provided an institutional and legal framework for reorganizing land through legislation.

As a result, agricultural plots that had previously been scattered across different locations were consolidated, making it easier to introduce new agricultural technologies and farming methods.

However, the benefits were not shared equally.

For peasants who owned little land or depended heavily on customary rights to common land, the costs associated with the redistribution and enclosure of land could themselves become a significant burden.

As a result, some small farmers were forced to sell their land or became agricultural laborers, while increasing numbers of people left traditional rural communities altogether.

3. Enclosure and the Agricultural Revolution

One of the most important economic effects of enclosure was that it promoted the commercialization of agriculture and improvements in agricultural productivity.

Consolidating farmland that had previously been scattered across different locations made it much easier to introduce new agricultural techniques.

As agricultural innovations such as crop rotation, selective breeding, improved livestock management, and better drainage systems became more widespread, the productivity of British agriculture increased over the long term.

Higher agricultural productivity also meant that a smaller share of the population was needed to produce the same amount of food.

In other words, a structural transformation gradually emerged:

Higher Agricultural Productivity → Growth of Surplus Rural Labor → Urban Population Growth → Expansion of the Industrial Labor Force

This became one of the important conditions that later helped make the British Industrial Revolution possible.

4. Separation from the Means of Production and the Birth of the Proletariat

In Capital, Karl Marx explained this historical transformation as part of the process of primitive accumulation, which helped establish the conditions necessary for capitalism.

For capitalist production to expand, two major conditions were necessary.

First, there had to be capital that could be invested by those who owned the means of production.

Second, there had to be workers who depended on selling their labor power in the market in order to survive.

Enclosure and the commercialization of agriculture played an important role in creating the second condition.

In the past, peasants, even when poor, often had access to some land and to communal resources that helped sustain their livelihoods.

Once they lost access to these means of subsistence, however, their situation fundamentally changed.

Without selling their labor power, it became increasingly difficult for them to support themselves.

Marx described such people as “free laborers” in a double sense.

They were free in the sense that they were no longer bound by feudal relations and could sell their labor power on the market. At the same time, they were also “free” from—or deprived of—the land and other means of production that would have allowed them to produce independently.

Over time, these landless and propertyless workers came to form a growing class of wage laborers—in other words, the proletariat in the modern sense.

How Was Enclosure Connected to the Industrial Revolution?

It would be overly simplistic to argue that enclosure directly caused the Industrial Revolution.

However, enclosure and the Agricultural Revolution played an important role in creating some of the economic and social conditions that made industrialization possible.

5. From Wool to Cotton Textiles

During the 15th and 16th centuries, when the first phase of enclosure was taking place, the woolen textile industry was one of England’s major export industries.

As the trade in wool and woolen textiles expanded, commercial activity grew, while landowners, merchants, and manufacturers accumulated increasing amounts of capital.

However, it would be too simplistic to assume that capital accumulated through the wool industry in the 15th and 16th centuries was directly transferred into cotton textile factories during the 18th-century Industrial Revolution.

Capital formation during the Industrial Revolution resulted from a combination of factors, including not only domestic commerce but also Atlantic trade, colonial trade, the development of financial markets, and the accumulation of merchant capital.

What is important is that, over a long period, the British economy was developing into an increasingly integrated economic system in which market-oriented agriculture, commerce, finance, and manufacturing were closely interconnected.

6. The Emergence of Spinning and Weaving Machines

During the 18th century, demand for cotton textiles increased rapidly, leading to a series of mechanical inventions designed to overcome bottlenecks in the production process.

Major inventions included:

- John Kay’s Flying Shuttle

- James Hargreaves’s Spinning Jenny

- Richard Arkwright’s Water Frame

- Samuel Crompton’s Spinning Mule

- Edmund Cartwright’s Power Loom

These innovations greatly increased the speed and efficiency of spinning and weaving, laying an important technological foundation for the mechanization of the British textile industry.

As mechanization progressed, the amount of yarn and cloth that a single worker could produce increased dramatically.

In particular, large machines powered first by water and later by steam were difficult to install and operate in ordinary households.

As a result, the factory system began to develop, concentrating machinery and workers in a single location.

7. The Connection Between Enclosure and the Factory System

This is where enclosure and the Industrial Revolution became closely connected.

As Parliamentary Enclosure and the Agricultural Revolution progressed during the 18th and 19th centuries, British rural society underwent rapid transformation.

Improvements in agricultural productivity made it possible to produce more food with fewer agricultural workers, while some small farmers and agricultural laborers left the countryside in search of other forms of employment.

At the same time, newly emerging industrial cities such as Manchester needed workers to operate spinning and weaving machinery.

Over the long term, therefore, the following structural transformation emerged:

Enclosure and the Agricultural Revolution

↓

Higher Agricultural Productivity and the Restructuring of Rural Society

↓

Rural Migration and Urbanization

↓

Development of Spinning and Weaving Technologies

↓

Expansion of the Factory System

↓

Growth of the Wage-Laboring Class

↓

Development of Industrial Capitalism

Enclosure was not the sole cause of the Industrial Revolution, but it played an important role in creating several of the conditions necessary for industrialization, including an expanding food supply, the movement of labor, market-oriented agriculture, and a transformed system of landholding.

How Did Classical Economists View Enclosure?

We should also be cautious about simply describing the classical economists of the period as “spokesmen for the landed class.”

Adam Smith, David Ricardo, and Thomas Malthus all recognized the importance of private property and market-based economic activity, but they differed considerably in their views of landowners, rent, and the Corn Laws.

8. Adam Smith: Support for Private Property and Agricultural Improvement, but Caution Toward Landlord Privilege

In The Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith regarded secure rights to land and agricultural improvement as important conditions for increasing productivity.

He believed that farmers and landowners needed to be confident that they could enjoy the benefits of their investments in order to have an incentive to improve the land.

Smith was therefore broadly favorable toward the weakening of feudal restrictions on land and the expansion of market-oriented economic activity.

However, this does not mean that Smith unconditionally defended the interests of large landowners.

On the contrary, he pointed out that landowners could receive rent without necessarily contributing corresponding labor or effort, and he was wary of monopolies and privileges enjoyed by particular social groups that could distort the functioning of markets.

Smith’s central concern, therefore, is better understood not as “enclosure for the benefit of landlords,” but as support for economic freedom and agricultural improvement that could increase productivity.

9. David Ricardo: The Interests of Industrial Capitalists and Landowners Were Not the Same

David Ricardo’s position was even clearer.

According to his Theory of Differential Rent, as population growth and increasing demand for grain forced cultivation to expand onto less fertile land, the rent received by owners of more productive land would rise.

The problem was that continuously rising rents could put pressure on the profits earned by industrial capitalists.

For this reason, Ricardo opposed the Corn Laws, which restricted imports of foreign grain in order to protect the interests of British landowners.

He believed that importing cheaper grain could reduce workers’ cost of living, ease upward pressure on wages, and thereby help maintain the profits of industrial capital.

It would therefore be misleading to describe Ricardo as a spokesman for the landed class.

Rather, his economic thought was closely aligned in many respects with the interests of Britain’s growing industrial capitalist class.

10. Thomas Malthus: Emphasizing Landlord Consumption and Agriculture

Thomas Malthus took a considerably different position from Ricardo.

Malthus believed that the consumption of landowners played a certain role in maintaining overall demand in the economy.

He argued that sufficient effective demand was necessary for all goods produced to be sold, and that spending by landowners and other so-called “unproductive consumers” could contribute to the circulation of income and sustain economic activity.

In the debate over the Corn Laws, Malthus also took a position more favorable than Ricardo’s toward landowners and the protection of domestic agriculture.

Among the three economists, therefore, Malthus came closest to actively defending the economic interests of landowners and domestic agriculture.

11. The Differences Among the Three Economists

The three classical economists differed considerably in their views of landowners, agriculture, and industrial capitalism.

Adam Smith emphasized private property, markets, and agricultural improvement. Although he believed that secure property rights and economic freedom could encourage investment and increase productivity, he was also critical of privileges and monopolistic advantages enjoyed by landowners and other powerful groups.

David Ricardo placed greater emphasis on the profits of industrial capital and free trade. He was critical of rising land rents and strongly opposed the Corn Laws, which protected domestic landowners by restricting imports of foreign grain. In this respect, Ricardo’s economic thought was more closely aligned with the interests of Britain’s emerging industrial capitalist class.

Thomas Malthus, by contrast, emphasized the importance of agriculture and effective demand. He believed that consumption by landowners could contribute to maintaining overall demand in the economy and took a relatively favorable position toward domestic agriculture and the Corn Laws.

It is therefore difficult to characterize classical economics as simply an economic doctrine of landowners that justified enclosure.

Rather, the debates among these economists are better understood as reflecting the conflicting economic interests of landowners, industrial capitalists, and workers in a rapidly changing British society.

The Benefits and Costs of the Enclosure Movement

Enclosure and the Agricultural Revolution played an important role in increasing the productivity of the British economy.

As land was consolidated and commercial agriculture expanded, it became easier to introduce new agricultural technologies and farming methods. Rising agricultural productivity and food production also helped support population growth and urbanization.

These transformations contributed to the expansion of the labor force and markets necessary for the Industrial Revolution.

However, not everyone benefited equally from this process.

Many poor peasants and small farmers who depended heavily on common land lost part or all of their traditional means of subsistence, and some were eventually absorbed into the growing ranks of agricultural laborers and urban wage workers.

Working conditions in the rapidly expanding industrial cities were also harsh during the early stages of the Industrial Revolution.

Long working hours, low wages, child labor, dangerous workplaces, and unsanitary housing conditions meant that much of the social cost of early industrialization was borne by workers.

Enclosure, therefore, cannot be understood simply as an “efficient land reform that promoted agricultural development,” nor can it be explained solely as “landowners plundering the land of peasants.”

It is more appropriate to understand enclosure as a structural transformation during the transition to capitalism—one that increased agricultural productivity and expanded the market economy while simultaneously disrupting traditional rural communities and ways of life.

Conclusion — How Peasants Separated from the Land Became Wage Laborers

Today, being employed by a company, providing one’s labor, and receiving wages in return seems like an entirely ordinary form of economic activity.

Historically, however, societies centered on wage labor are a relatively recent development.

The Enclosure Movement and the Agricultural Revolution transformed patterns of rural land use, increased agricultural productivity, and played an important role in reorganizing British society around an increasingly market-oriented economy.

At the same time, some peasants were separated from their traditional means of subsistence, including access to land and common resources, and were gradually incorporated into a growing class of wage laborers who increasingly depended on selling their labor power in the market to survive.

When this transformation was combined with technological innovations such as spinning and weaving machinery, water power, and the steam engine, the factory system developed, bringing large numbers of workers together in centralized workplaces.

Ultimately, a vast structural transformation took place:

Land Privatization and the Agricultural Revolution → Restructuring of Rural Society → Labor Migration → Mechanization and the Factory System → Expansion of Wage Labor

This is also why Karl Marx gave enclosure an important place in his analysis of the “primitive accumulation” of capitalism.

The emergence of capitalism required more than machines and capital.

It also required a new kind of worker—one who had to sell his or her labor power in order to survive.

The Enclosure Movement can therefore be understood as one of the important historical processes through which the modern working class emerged.

[Bonus] South Korea’s Industrialization and the Low Grain Price Policy — A Korean Parallel to Enclosure

Although it was by no means identical to the British Enclosure Movement, South Korea’s low grain price policy can be seen as one of the policies that performed a somewhat similar economic function during the country’s industrialization.

During the 1960s and 1970s, the South Korean government pursued policies that kept the prices of major grains, including rice, relatively low as part of its broader industrialization strategy. Keeping grain prices low reduced the food expenses of urban workers, which helped create conditions in which companies could employ a large industrial workforce at relatively low wages.

However, these policies placed a considerable burden on rural communities. As agricultural prices were kept relatively low, the relative profitability of farming declined, while the income gap between urban and rural areas widened. As a result, increasing numbers of people left the countryside in search of better incomes and employment opportunities in industrializing cities.

This rural-to-urban migration supplied a large industrial workforce that found employment in factories, construction sites, and other urban industries, helping to support South Korea’s rapid industrialization.

In this respect, certain similarities can be found between the British Enclosure Movement and South Korea’s experience of industrialization.

In Britain, changes in land use and ownership associated with enclosure contributed to the movement of part of the rural population into wage labor. In South Korea, agricultural and industrial policies—including periods of relatively low grain prices—combined with urban-centered economic growth to encourage large-scale rural-to-urban migration.

British Enclosure Movement → Structural Transformation of Rural Society → Rural-to-Urban Migration → Supply of Industrial Labor

South Korea’s Low Grain Price Policies and Industrialization → Lower Relative Returns to Agriculture and a Growing Urban-Rural Gap → Rural-to-Urban Migration → Supply of Industrial Labor

The two cases, however, differed considerably in their specific mechanisms.

In Britain, enclosure involved the consolidation and enclosure of common land and open fields into more exclusive holdings. This process became particularly systematic through Parliamentary Enclosure, which provided a legal and institutional framework for reorganizing land.

In South Korea, by contrast, the government used grain-price and grain-management policies that placed considerable emphasis on stabilizing food costs for urban consumers and industrial workers. During certain periods, agricultural prices were kept relatively low, affecting the relative profitability of farming.

The effects on rural populations also differed. In Britain, some small farmers and rural poor lost customary rights to common land or other parts of their traditional agricultural livelihood and became increasingly dependent on wage labor. In South Korea, relatively low agricultural incomes, limited employment opportunities in rural areas, and higher wages and expanding job opportunities in cities combined to produce large-scale rural-to-urban migration.

The urban consequences nevertheless displayed an important similarity. In Britain, the expansion of wage labor contributed to the labor supply required by the Industrial Revolution. In South Korea, rural migrants provided large numbers of workers for factories, construction, and industrial areas such as the Guro Industrial Complex and export-oriented industrial zones.

The countryside was also transformed. British enclosure contributed to the concentration and reorganization of landholding and cultivation and to the expansion of commercial and increasingly capitalist agriculture. In South Korea, large-scale rural depopulation accelerated urbanization and, over the longer term, contributed to rural aging and depopulation.

In terms of industrialization, British enclosure contributed to the commercialization of agriculture and the movement of labor that accompanied the development of industrial capitalism. In South Korea, rural labor moved into urban manufacturing and construction, supplying part of the workforce required for the country’s rapid industrialization.

The most important difference is that British enclosure directly involved a transformation of land-use rights and patterns of landholding, whereas the South Korean case was primarily a process of structural population movement associated with industrialization, influenced by agricultural and grain-price policies.

Was South Korea’s Low Grain Price Policy a “Necessary Evil” for a Late-Industrializing Country?

From the perspective of a late-industrializing country such as South Korea at the time, the low grain price policy can be interpreted as a kind of “necessary evil” adopted in pursuit of rapid industrialization.

Compared with advanced industrial economies, South Korea lacked sufficient capital and technology and therefore initially depended heavily on labor-intensive export industries. Keeping grain prices relatively low helped restrain the cost of living for urban workers and reduce upward pressure on wages, which in turn helped lower production costs and strengthen the international competitiveness of Korean exports.

The costs, however, were borne to a considerable extent by farmers. Relatively low agricultural prices reduced the profitability of farming and widened the income gap between urban and rural areas. These conditions also contributed to the movement of rural populations into cities, where many became part of the expanding industrial workforce.

The low grain price policy can therefore be interpreted as a policy instrument that imposed significant costs on farmers but was used by a capital- and technology-scarce late-industrializing country seeking to achieve industrialization within a relatively short period.

However, South Korea’s entire industrialization process should not be explained solely in terms of low grain prices. From the 1970s onward, the government also strengthened policies intended to raise farm incomes, including higher government purchase prices for rice and the implementation of a dual-price system for grain.

[Bonus] China’s Late Industrialization and the Peasant-Based Communist Revolution

In Western Europe, the Industrial Revolution was accompanied by large-scale migration from the countryside to cities, where many former rural inhabitants became wage laborers in factories.

Through this process, a large industrial working class—the proletariat—emerged and became an important social base for trade unions, labor movements, and socialist political parties.

By contrast, during the first half of the 20th century, China had not experienced industrialization and urbanization on the same scale as Western Europe.

Modern factories and industrial workers existed in cities such as Shanghai and Wuhan, but they accounted for only a relatively small proportion of the total population. The overwhelming majority of Chinese people still lived in the countryside and worked as peasants.

This socioeconomic structure had a profound influence on the development of the Chinese communist movement.

Karl Marx regarded the urban wage-working class—the proletariat that expanded with the development of industrial capitalism—as the central revolutionary class in the transition toward socialism. In China, however, this industrial working class had not yet grown large enough to play the same social role envisioned in the classical Marxist model.

Mao Zedong and the Chinese Communist Party therefore adapted their revolutionary strategy to China’s particular social and economic conditions.

Especially after 1927, when the communist movement in the cities suffered severe setbacks, the Chinese Communists increasingly developed a strategy centered on establishing revolutionary base areas in the countryside and mobilizing the peasantry.

In this way, the Chinese Communist Revolution developed along a path significantly different from the worker-centered revolutionary model associated with industrialized European societies.

At the time, many peasants in rural China suffered from unequal land ownership, high rents, debt, and poverty. The Chinese Communist Party sought to transform these grievances into revolutionary support by advocating land reform and the dismantling of the landlord system.

As a result, unlike in Western Europe, it was not the urban industrial working class but the enormous peasant population that became the primary mass base of the communist revolution in China. The Chinese Communist Party established revolutionary bases in rural areas, gradually expanded its power, and pursued a strategy of surrounding the cities from the countryside, eventually establishing the People’s Republic of China in 1949.

The Chinese Communist Revolution can therefore be understood as a representative example of how classical Marxist revolutionary theory, originally developed largely in the context of industrializing Western Europe, was adapted to the conditions of a predominantly agrarian society.

# Western Europe

Industrial Revolution → Rural-to-Urban Migration → Growth of Wage Labor → Formation of the Industrial Proletariat → Growth of Labor and Socialist Movements

# China

Low Levels of Industrialization and Urbanization → Peasants Constituting the Majority of the Population → Rural Land Problems and Poverty → Communist Mobilization of Peasants and Land Reform → Peasant-Based Communist Revolution

Once a Country Becomes Advanced, Growth Should Depend on “Systems,” Not “Sacrifice”

During the early stages of the British Industrial Revolution, economic and social transformations such as enclosure displaced many peasants from their traditional livelihoods or encouraged them to migrate to cities. Industrial workers, meanwhile, endured low wages, long working hours, and harsh and dangerous working conditions. The sacrifices made by peasants and workers represented a dark side of capital accumulation during the early stages of industrialization.

South Korea’s rapid industrialization likewise demanded considerable sacrifices from farmers and workers. Through policies that included relatively low grain prices, large-scale rural-to-urban migration, and a development model characterized by low wages and long working hours, South Korea rapidly accumulated capital, expanded its manufacturing sector, and eventually emerged as a major industrial economy.

However, once a country has become an advanced economy, it cannot continue to grow in the same way.

During the early stages of industrialization, shortages of capital could partly be compensated for through intensive labor and personal sacrifice. Today, however, economic growth should be driven by technological innovation, higher productivity, efficient government and corporate systems, fair market institutions, education and research and development, strong social safety nets, and effective occupational safety systems.

In particular, workplace safety should not depend on the individual attention, caution, or sacrifice of workers. Safety regulations and management systems should be designed to identify and eliminate risks before accidents occur. Workplaces should also provide sufficient personnel and equipment, effective supervision, and clear lines of responsibility so that even when human mistakes occur, the system prevents them from developing into major accidents or loss of life.

The practice of prioritizing speed—such as shortening construction schedules—and cost reduction over safety must also be addressed. Excessively compressed schedules and aggressive cost-cutting can leave worksites without sufficient personnel or time for proper safety management, putting workers’ lives at risk.

Moreover, when adequate materials, construction quality, and safety inspections are sacrificed, the consequences can extend beyond workers themselves. Poor construction can threaten the safety of citizens who later use the buildings and infrastructure.

In other words, a system that sacrifices safety in order to reduce costs and save time is not merely a problem for individual workers. It is a structural problem that threatens the safety of society as a whole.

In an advanced economy, the personnel, time, and financial resources required for safety should therefore be incorporated into construction schedules and budgets from the very beginning. Safety should become a basic principle that cannot be compromised even under competitive pressure between companies.

A country that continues to depend on long working hours, personal sacrifice, and workers accepting greater risks can hardly be regarded as a truly advanced economy.

The goal should not be to achieve growth by making workers work longer hours or endure greater dangers. Instead, an advanced society should build economic and social systems capable of producing greater value within the same amount of time while protecting workers’ lives, health, and safety.

Ultimately, if the blood, sweat, and sacrifice of farmers and workers helped sustain growth during the early stages of industrialization, then growth in an advanced economy should be driven not by continued personal sacrifice, but by technology, institutions, productivity, and robust systems of safety and social protection.