In 16th century England laws were enacted to prevent dispossessed peasants from roaming the countryside and pouring into town centres.  Rules against beggars were enforced using draconian measures such as cutting or branding miscreants, and deporting them to their place of origin, their parish of birth.  The Poor Law system was established on the basis that benefits (alms) would only be given to the impoverished within the boundaries of their birth parish, thereby effectively confining dispossessed peasants to impoverishment within the district where they were ‘dispossessed’.  Identifying such authorised beggars was made possible by forced ‘badge’ wearing, like yellow Star of David identification in Nazi Germany. And the idea gives food for thought regarding the use of ‘badging’ within contemporary online education!

What caused the 16th century crisis of vagabondage in England was not just ‘technology’ (new farming methods and implements) but a new social relationship, which changed the balance of power between producer peasants and expropriating ‘superiors’.  The nature of the latter also went through change, with the ‘stewards’ of ancestral common lands being either ousted and outlawed completely (the dissolution of the church and monastic estates) or converted into an absolute owner of ‘private’ property.  Though technical change (following the Black Death and population decline) played a role, this initially gave the whip hand to the peasant labourers, who were in short supply (Black Death in 1348 > Peasant Revolt in 1381).  Labourers incomes rose in 15th century England.  With the old ‘relationships’ in crisis, the (ruling class) reaction was to change the connection between (direct) producers – the peasants – and the means of production – the land.  Dispossession (propertyless-ness) became the defining characteristic of capital accumulation in creating a class of waged labourers destined to scour the earth in search of sustenance and survival – first in England, then Ireland and Scotland, before the ‘colonies’ in East and West became the main means of ‘absorption’.

In the 21st century, what, if anything, has really changed?

On the one hand the bourgeois ruling ‘sensibility’ still decries roaming beggars and vagabonds, although the land over which such dispossessed people ‘roam’ is much larger – it is the globe.  Yet, on the other, the very same ‘sensibility’ lauds advances in technology as either part of the ‘inevitable’ march of progress or as the saviour of the system – a key means of ‘restoring’ the profitability of companies forced to increase productivity on an infinite basis, an important aspect of which is to compete with companies using cheaper labour power in distant realms.  Of course, cheaper workers is a sign of already existing abundant supply in those realms and not just skill or technological differentiation.  There is a constant imbalance which both pushes and draws the available labour power from one pole to the other.  Vagabondage (and its systems of badging, branding, placing in stocks, and incarceration) has become global, though there is no global equivalent of England’s 16th century absolute monarch.

What of the role of artificial intelligence (AI) as a new technology entering this process?  It has been claimed it will lead to another ‘industrial revolution’ with far reaching consequences for those in ‘middle class jobs’, that is, within the ‘metropole’.  Of course, if this is the case, then pressure on ‘wages’ could be relieved as far as employers are concerned – there will be an excess supply of skilled labour power where it is needed.

But application of AI will be across all industries, increasing output from regional and national firms, ultimately turning them into ones which need global markets as they outgrow their national context.  The pressures on the existing system of global vagabondage would be clear, and this is where a lesson from the past would need to be learned.  The old Poor Law system collapsed because it became untenable to keep workers in their parish of birth.  First, it chocked off the supply of labour power from where it was most needed and, second, it raised the costs of maintaining an ‘industrial reserve army’ (reliant on ‘benefits’ or revenue expenditure) out of local taxation in an already underdeveloped economy.

A drive towards greater ‘growth’ in the economy is a contemporary, common mantra, and one under which it is presumed (claimed) that ‘growth’ will benefit all classes.  But the historical record of neo-liberalism demonstrates this to be a myth, with successive ‘booms’ not only leading to cyclical busts but heightened levels of inequality between ‘core’ and ‘peripheral’ (precarious) workers.  Gordon Brown’s ‘longest boom’ was followed by the longest recession and period of austerity.  On what basis do proponents of growth claim that a new spurt of ‘economic growth’, based on AI technologies, will somehow, miraculously, lead to an alternate outcome (greater equality) this time around? Or, more predictably, will it lead to just another ‘bust’?  Isn’t AI going to exacerbate the current migration of labour power as it restructures the world by garnering even more skill and wealth in a few, already overdeveloped, places? The moral of the tale: if you don’t fancy dealing with a migration crisis then stop accumulating ‘capital’, because that’s not progress.