A class of men who formerly would have lived in the country on the modest income of a small estate cultivated by a hundred serfs, or on a still more modest salary of a functionary in a law court, now made fortunes, or had such yearly incomes as in the times of serfdom were possible only for the land magnates.
Kropotkin discusses the shift in social class dynamics and wealth accumulation after serfdom was abolished.
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We have already, in the facts mentioned in this chapter, an experimental basis for quite a number of means of improving our present methods of culture and of largely increasing the crops.
And yet it is easy to prove that both are totally erroneous: plenty of food could be grown on the territories of Western Europe for much more than their present populations, and an immense benefit would be derived from doing so.
Few books have exercised so pernicious an influence upon the general development of economic thought as Malthus’s Essay on the Principle of Population exercised for three consecutive generations.
And wherever the village-community spirit is maintained, the small industries persist, while no effort is spared to bring the small plots under higher culture.
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