On purging Milo

There seems to have been absolutely zero enthusiasm among these serfs for the proposition that they should be freed without their land.

Well, not zero, because there were in fact significant numbers of runaway serfs, but they seem to have run away primarily from private ownership, and we see no substantial political movement in favor of freeing the serfs without their land, in favor of simply making it legal for serfs to leave. Among those advocating emancipation, we see no equivalent of the underground railway.

But the serfs did not want to become tenant farmers, or at least people who claimed to speak for the serfs and agitated on their behalf did not want them to become tenant farmers.

Converting them to free tenant farmers, where the owner of the land had no property right in the serf, and the serf had no property right in the land would have been the economically efficient solution, but it would have had to have been imposed on the serfs with fire and steel. There would have been clearances like the Highland Clearances, and these would be remembered in anger to this day, as the Highland Clearances are remembered.

England says to the Scottish serfs: “Hey you are free. And, by the way, your land belongs to the Lord.”
Highland lord says “Hey, what are all the these useless pain-in-the-neck freemen doing on my land? Chase them away for me, please.”

Freeing the serfs without giving them their lord’s land would have enabled a transition to more efficient, more productive, less labor intensive agriculture. Fewer people would have produced more food, resulting in a more urban population. But that is not in fact in the interests of the low level person who works on the land. Such efficiency results in a transfer of wealth to large farmers fom poor agricultural laborers. Serfdom protected the interests of the serfs, not the lords, and the problem was that when you already had gross economic inefficiency because of a system that protects the interests of the poorest, there was agitation for reforms that would protect them even more.

The point of serfdom was to take care of the serf, not the lord.

Obshchina were a gross mistake, but they are the consequence of inefficient bureaucracy. Rather than having taxmen hunt people down for taxes, they decided it was far easier to just force them into collective farms, and tax the farms, not worrying about the individual families and persons.

I don’t think so. Rather, the problem was that the typical serf was not competent to run a small farm. He needed someone standing over him to tell him what to do. The Obshchina were an unsuccessful attempt to replace the Lord.

Serfdom was a favor done to the serfs, just as slavery was a favor done to the blacks. The economically efficient solution would have been to free the serfs without their land, give the land to the lords – who would have promptly replaced 90% of the former serfs with plowhorses and grazing cattle. It would have been the Highland Clearances all over again but with much more bloodshed.

Jim, why do you expect that Russian nobles, who mostly go their estates by being bureaucrats, would be good estate managers?

Typical noble smarter than the typical peasant. Typical bureaucrat smarter than the average peasant. And if he is not, will hire a Jewish estate manager.

Russian nobles already had the right to sell serfs apart from the land.

They had no such right. They tended to do it, but it was not exactly legal, and could not be done on any substantial scale. Such deals tended to be like dope deals, done between friends, and required a reasonably cooperative serf. Such deals were small scale, and involved serfs who were not in fact doing agricultural work – typically the maid pregnant with her employer’s child.

You and I are in agreement that the efficient solution was to free the serfs without the land. Can you find anyone in Russia who supported the efficient solution? Everyone who wanted to free the serfs, wanted to find some alternate way of looking after the serfs, of caring for the serfs.

You think the efficient solution would be the lord gets the land, the serfs get freedom, and then the lord rents small farmlets to the former serfs. That last step not going to happen. No one in Russia believed it would happen.

That was Pyotr Stolypin’s program – except that most peasants were incapable of managing that land. So the land needed to wind up in the hands of the able peasants, with the less able becoming landless laborers working under the supervision of more able peasants, or pushed of the land to go to the cities. Needless to say, the latter aspect of Pyotr Stolypin’s program was violently unpopular and the Czar just was not able to push it through in the face of violently hostile public opinion.

The fact is most people are incapable of supporting themselves without supervision, and a significant minority of those are reluctant to accept necessary supervision. Some, you put under supervision contractually, wage labor. Some you have to put under supervision with a greater or lesser degree of coercion, or put them on welfare. And a poor society cannot afford welfare. Come to that, a rich society cannot really afford welfare either.

Stolypin’s program would have put those peasants capable of working under contractual supervision under contractual supervision, and he had no clear idea of what he was going to do with the more problematic peasants.

Checking page 61 of the text, I see that freeing serfs without land was considered immoral, was discouraged, and was sometimes illegal – that to give a serf his freedom and no land was felt to be an act of oppression, and that nobles frequently did sneaky workarounds or looked for excuses to get rid of serfs without giving them land.

The book tells us that the landlords terribly oppressed their serfs in a multitude of horrible ways – and one of the horrible ways in which they horribly oppressed the poor pitiful serfs was to set them free without making any provision for their welfare and survival.

Which is exactly the lord driving the serfs off the land. What we see on page 61 is a law against actions similar to the Highland Clearances.

From emancipation to the collapse of communism, looks to me like a non stop series of crises of land being in the hands of people incompetent to use it. The kulaks were competent, and were hated for it. Pyotr Stolypin’s program was to get land into the hands of those competent to use it, and he was hated for it.

Serfdom was a form of paternalistic socialism, to care for the serfs rather than exploit them, and the problem was that the reforms were in the direction of more paternalism rather than less. Kind of like Obamacare. Socialism leads to more socialism.

The obvious solution that you and I favor, the serfs get freedom and the lords get the land, (that rights go to those people in the best position to use them in an economically efficient way) was unpopular, viewed as immoral and oppressive, viewed as hyperexploitation of the serfs, and in some cases illegal (no Highland style clearances allowed) Therefore everyone involved in the problem believed that serfdom was generally better for serfs than that solution, than the economically efficient solution that you and I favor.

In addition, I think even though there was some restrictions its clear from the text the Russian lords could have sold the serfs apart from the land and did so

The text argues that the lords could hyperexploit and hyperoppress the serfs and sometimes did so. But it is equally clear that this was not normal – it is like feminists using drunken wifebeating as argument against indissoluble marriage. Freeing a serf without making provision for his welfare was also immoral and frequently illegal. And the same text that tells us that those horrible wicked lords frequently sold serfs without land, also tells us that those horrible wicked lords frequently freed serfs without land. How totally dreadful of them!

The same text that tells us how bad the lords were and how rough serfdom was on the serfs, tells us that the solution that you and I favor, was bad for the serfs.

Suppose the serfs were purely slaves. The text you cites argues this, but it clearly was not true. But suppose it was true. It is clear that serfs could own property. A rational competent serf with long time preference could get more value out of ownership of himself than the lord could get out of owning him. Therefore a rational competent serf with long time preference could and would cut a deal with his lord leading to his freedom. Regardless of the initial allocation of property rights, if transfers of property rights are permitted and are legal and safe, property rights will end up in the hands of those most capable of using them.

Russian intellectuals aren’t exactly known for supporting anything except for a grinding tyranny

That is just not true. Russian intellectuals were a bunch of leftists kissing the asses of British left wing intellectuals, for example Lavrov, Bakunin, Chernyshevsky, Radischchev, Novikov, and Nechayev.

Russian nobles were service nobles, not hereditary, every son started at the bottom rank

Estate ownership was hereditary. Although you could be granted an estate from crown lands and crown serfs through politics, you could not easily lose an estate through politics. You could, however, and frequently did, lose an estate through poor management or spending too much money.

the serf could not get the deal if signed to be enforced since the lord could revoke it at any time and the aforementioned short time preference likely meant he would.

Serfs generally had substantial private property, therefore their private property rights, contrary to your sources, were reasonably secure. Therefore they could make the deal. Your sources depict them as actual slaves, but typically the farm equipment was privately owned by them, not the lord.

The natural outcomes of economics were that estates tended to be in the hands of competent nobles (incompetent nobles winding up titled but impoverished), and serfs tended to be people incapable of managing their own lives (competent serfs with long time preference winding up free). And when the serfs were freed, the immediate result was that government continually took actions predicated on the proposition that the emancipated serfs could not in fact manage their own lives and needed to be looked after.