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5 books
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10 voters
Serfdom Books
Showing 1-34 of 34
Dead Souls (Paperback)
by (shelved 5 times as serfdom)
avg rating 3.98 — 98,281 ratings — published 1842
Sketches from a Hunter's Album (Paperback)
by (shelved 2 times as serfdom)
avg rating 3.96 — 9,186 ratings — published 1852
The Emancipation of the Polish Peasantry (Hardcover)
by (shelved 2 times as serfdom)
avg rating 4.00 — 1 rating — published 1970
The Decline of Serfdom in Medieval England (Paperback)
by (shelved 2 times as serfdom)
avg rating 4.00 — 7 ratings — published
Up from Serfdom: My Childhood and Youth in Russia, 1804-1824 (Hardcover)
by (shelved 2 times as serfdom)
avg rating 3.64 — 119 ratings — published 2001
The Liberation (The Alchemy Wars, #3)
by (shelved 1 time as serfdom)
avg rating 4.13 — 2,627 ratings — published 2016
Lapvona (Kindle Edition)
by (shelved 1 time as serfdom)
avg rating 3.54 — 105,158 ratings — published 2022
A Journey from Saint Petersburg to Moscow (Hardcover)
by (shelved 1 time as serfdom)
avg rating 3.50 — 826 ratings — published 1790
Last Blood (House of Comarré, #5)
by (shelved 1 time as serfdom)
avg rating 4.15 — 1,741 ratings — published 2013
Manpower Shortage and the Fall of the Roman Empire in the West (Hardcover)
by (shelved 1 time as serfdom)
avg rating 3.25 — 4 ratings — published 1974
The Fires of the Gods (Sugawara Akitada #8)
by (shelved 1 time as serfdom)
avg rating 4.21 — 336 ratings — published 2010
The Turn of Midnight (Black Death, #2)
by (shelved 1 time as serfdom)
avg rating 3.99 — 4,729 ratings — published 2018
The Road to Serfdom (Paperback)
by (shelved 1 time as serfdom)
avg rating 4.15 — 26,381 ratings — published 1944
The Last Hours (Black Death, #1)
by (shelved 1 time as serfdom)
avg rating 3.92 — 8,648 ratings — published 2017
Four Russian Serf Narratives (Wisconsin Studies in Autobiography)
by (shelved 1 time as serfdom)
avg rating 3.65 — 23 ratings — published 2009
The New Confessions of an Economic Hit Man (Paperback)
by (shelved 1 time as serfdom)
avg rating 3.93 — 8,512 ratings — published 2016
Serf Life in Russia: The Childhood of a Russian Grandmother (Hardcover)
by (shelved 1 time as serfdom)
avg rating 0.0 — 0 ratings — published 2015
The English Rising of 1381 (Past and Present Publications)
by (shelved 1 time as serfdom)
avg rating 4.20 — 5 ratings — published 1950
Bond Men Made Free: Medieval Peasant Movements and the Rising of 1381 (Kindle Edition)
by (shelved 1 time as serfdom)
avg rating 3.76 — 67 ratings — published 1973
Class Conflict and the Crisis of Feudalism: Essays in Medieval Social History (Paperback)
by (shelved 1 time as serfdom)
avg rating 4.00 — 13 ratings — published 1985
English and French Towns in Feudal Society: A Comparative Study (Past and Present Publications)
by (shelved 1 time as serfdom)
avg rating 3.43 — 7 ratings — published 1992
The Transition from Feudalism to Capitalism (Paperback)
by (shelved 1 time as serfdom)
avg rating 4.02 — 170 ratings — published 1970
The Reeve's Tale (Sister Frevisse #9)
by (shelved 1 time as serfdom)
avg rating 4.10 — 1,218 ratings — published 1999
Catherine the Great: Portrait of a Woman (Hardcover)
by (shelved 1 time as serfdom)
avg rating 3.94 — 108,746 ratings — published 2011
The Currents of Space (Galactic Empire, #2)
by (shelved 1 time as serfdom)
avg rating 3.85 — 22,375 ratings — published 1952
Fathers and Sons (Mass Market Paperback)
by (shelved 1 time as serfdom)
avg rating 4.00 — 103,462 ratings — published 1862
Flashman at the Charge (Flashman Papers, #4)
by (shelved 1 time as serfdom)
avg rating 4.38 — 5,656 ratings — published 1973
Marching Through Peachtree (War Between the Provinces, #2)
by (shelved 1 time as serfdom)
avg rating 3.47 — 129 ratings — published 2001
Grundpacht und Lohnarbeit in der Landwirtschaft des römischen Italien (Europäische Hochschulschriften / European University Studies / Publications Universitaires Européennes) (German Edition)
by (shelved 1 time as serfdom)
avg rating 3.20 — 5 ratings — published 1994
Die Kolonen in Italien und den westlichen Provinzen des Römischen Reiches (German Edition)
by (shelved 1 time as serfdom)
avg rating 3.50 — 2 ratings — published 1983
The Roman Colonate: The Theory of Its Origin (Paperback)
by (shelved 1 time as serfdom)
avg rating 3.50 — 2 ratings — published 1969
The Brenner Debate: Agrarian Class Structure and Economic Development in Pre-industrial Europe (Paperback)
by (shelved 1 time as serfdom)
avg rating 3.88 — 89 ratings — published 1985
“While people will submit to suffering which may hit anyone, they will not so easily submit to suffering which is the result of the decision of authority. It may be bad to be just a cog in an impersonal machine; but it is infinitely worse if we can no longer leave it, if we are tied to our place and to the superiors who have been chosen for us. Dissatisfaction of everybody with his lot will inevitably grow with the consciousness that it is the result of deliberate human decision.
Once government has embarked upon planning for the sake of justice, it cannot refuse responsibility for anybody’s fate or position. In a planned society we shall all know that we are better or worse off than others, not because of circumstances which nobody controls, and which it is impossible to foresee with certainty, but because some authority wills it. And all our efforts directed toward improving our position will have to aim, not at foreseeing and preparing as well as we can for the circumstances over which we have no control, but at influencing in our favor the authority which has all the power. The nightmare of English nineteenth-century political thinkers, the state in which “no avenue to wealth and honor would exist save through the government,” would be realized in a completeness which they never imagined — though familiar enough in some countries which have since passed to totalitarianism.
As soon as the state takes upon itself the task of planning the whole economic life, the problem of the due station of the different individuals and groups must indeed inevitably become the central political problem. As the coercive power of the state will alone decide who is to have what, the only power worth having will be a share in the exercise of this directing power. There will be no economic or social questions that would not be political questions in the sense that their solution will depend exclusively on who wields the coercive power, on whose are the views that will prevail on all occasions.”
― The Road to Serfdom
Once government has embarked upon planning for the sake of justice, it cannot refuse responsibility for anybody’s fate or position. In a planned society we shall all know that we are better or worse off than others, not because of circumstances which nobody controls, and which it is impossible to foresee with certainty, but because some authority wills it. And all our efforts directed toward improving our position will have to aim, not at foreseeing and preparing as well as we can for the circumstances over which we have no control, but at influencing in our favor the authority which has all the power. The nightmare of English nineteenth-century political thinkers, the state in which “no avenue to wealth and honor would exist save through the government,” would be realized in a completeness which they never imagined — though familiar enough in some countries which have since passed to totalitarianism.
As soon as the state takes upon itself the task of planning the whole economic life, the problem of the due station of the different individuals and groups must indeed inevitably become the central political problem. As the coercive power of the state will alone decide who is to have what, the only power worth having will be a share in the exercise of this directing power. There will be no economic or social questions that would not be political questions in the sense that their solution will depend exclusively on who wields the coercive power, on whose are the views that will prevail on all occasions.”
― The Road to Serfdom
“It was pitiful for a person born in a wholesome free atmosphere to listen to their humble and hearty outpourings of loyalty toward their king and Church and nobility; as if they had any more occasion to love and honor king and Church and noble than a slave has to love and honor the lash, or a dog has to love and honor the stranger that kicks him! Why, dear me, ANY kind of royalty, howsoever modified, ANY kind of aristocracy, howsoever pruned, is rightly an insult; but if you are born and brought up under that sort of arrangement you probably never find it out for yourself, and don't believe it when somebody else tells you. It is enough to make a body ashamed of his race to think of the sort of froth that has always occupied its thrones without shadow of right or reason, and the seventh-rate people that have always figured as its aristocracies -- a company of monarchs and nobles who, as a rule, would have achieved only poverty and obscurity if left, like their betters, to their own exertions...
The truth was, the nation as a body was in the world for one object, and one only: to grovel before king and Church and noble; to slave for them, sweat blood for them, starve that they might be fed, work that they might play, drink misery to the dregs that they might be happy, go naked that they might wear silks and jewels, pay taxes that they might be spared from paying them, be familiar all their lives with the degrading language and postures of adulation that they might walk in pride and think themselves the gods of this world. And for all this, the thanks they got were cuffs and contempt; and so poor-spirited were they that they took even this sort of attention as an honor.”
―
The truth was, the nation as a body was in the world for one object, and one only: to grovel before king and Church and noble; to slave for them, sweat blood for them, starve that they might be fed, work that they might play, drink misery to the dregs that they might be happy, go naked that they might wear silks and jewels, pay taxes that they might be spared from paying them, be familiar all their lives with the degrading language and postures of adulation that they might walk in pride and think themselves the gods of this world. And for all this, the thanks they got were cuffs and contempt; and so poor-spirited were they that they took even this sort of attention as an honor.”
―
