Ask Lemmygrad

There's a podcast called "We're Not So Different" that has covered many aspects of everyday life for working people in (mostly) medieval Europe. It's super informal and insightful, both co-hosts are Marxists and one is a history professor. I know they've specifically talked about the "peasants had more days off" point, but I can't remember when. But for anyone who's interested in getting deeper into the subject (but maybe, like me, sucks at reading) I'd give it a big recommend.

Here's the Spotify link, but you can probably find it on your preferred platform too: https://open.spotify.com/show/5dd2yPjrJJA48s1QXyENZN

So firstly feudal could be 1000 years and half a continent if we stick to Europe. A lot of things changed, feudalism is a term falling out of favour for manorialism among historians btw, because it's more myth than reality.

Materially? No. Illness and pain were common, labour was backbreaking, women were deeply oppressed. Child birth was extremely dangerous, punishments harsh, exploitation ubiquitous, recreation limited.

Socially it is harder to say. In many ways life was very communal, they did not have the same epidemics of alienation and isolation. Many people appear to have found happiness. While they did not really have "free time" as we do they spent more time working on things which directly improved the lives of themselves and those around them. In some places and times life was relatively cosmopolitan, others deeply monocultural.

There were large and lavish celebrations, big communal events bringing people together. However you also had to like maintain your personal crops/animals/clothing/house etc during this time. Frozen meals and movie nights these holidays were not.

Also you were probably in pain a lot of the time, I need to emphasise just how impossibly cool medicine and especially dental care are when you actually have good access to them.

We shouldn't look to the past as a place to return to, but a place where we can find lessons. We can see some ways in which peasants might have been more fulfilled. Some are not so useful, like the sureness that comes from a religious monoculture, some perhaps we can ask "Why do we live such isolated lives? Why do we not have shared communal holidays? Why do we work so many hours for others and have so little time for our community?"

No. We should finally end this myth. It serves nothing but fuel the primitivist bullshit and its derivations from anarcho-whatever and chuds retvrn-to-tradition. We should value progress, just the controlled one instead of capitalist anarchy of production.

I mean, purely on the medical part, I'd say no. Dentistry and lowering infant mortality rate along with lowering maternity mortality rate is a very very very recent thing, although dispersal and access to these qualities aren't evenly distributed today, globally and even among class divides in the imperial core.

Anyway, I just can't imagine likely dying to childbirth in the course of having 10+ kids where 3-4 survive to adulthood if you're lucky being Better :/

!! Also no baby formula. If you have a hard time producing [enough] milk (this is a common problem!) your infant is likely to have a hard time thriving. Animal milks are NOT a substitute for human milk for an infant. Peasant women who recently had a child/still produced milk would often be the ones providing nursemaid services for higher class families. Many other points about pests (even royalty had fleas...) and hygiene also. I'm yammering a lot but obligatory: technological progress in these measures aren't necessarily brought about by specific economic models, eg not specifically capitalism in and of itself.

It depends when in the (European) feudal period. Very early feudal era was basically slavery with extra steps. It's like if we look at capitalism in the 60s and 70s, where you didn't have to have a college degree to make a living wage and could buy a house on one income, and think this applies to all of capitalism. But if we compare capitalism to itself I still prefer 2025 capitalism to 1860 capitalism.

Hickel studied this though and his results was that extreme poverty, ie the inability to fulfill shelter, food or clothing needs, did not meaningfully exist prior to capitalism.

Mostly just no. Feudalism was a highly variable system from one lord to the next but just like under capitalism the most exploitive policies were the most common because the ruling class nearly always chooses short term profits over long term.

Peasant paid variable amounts taxes to their lord and got next to nothing in return. When times were hardest for the peasants the lords made things worse by demanding more taxes to make up the short fall. The church took an additional 10% of everything peasants produced and was the source of the little amount of social services.

Roads, sewage removal, and basic infrastructure like that was usually built and maintained by the peasants out of their own pocket/free time but could easily be claimed by a lord who could then charge people to use the infrastructure in order to raise extra taxes.

Peasants were bound to the land/lord. If a disaster struck and the land became unlivable a lord might sell his peasants to another lord but likely only the most useful and the rest would just die.

Peasants often got conscripted into wars with no training often having to supply their own weapons.

I think a much more interesting comparison to make is between modern western workers and bronze age societies. A lot of the societies in the bronze age were quite advanced. Way nicer than feudal Europe imo.

Something i found online at https://www.ariacunningham.com/?faq=daily-life-bronze-age

It’s easy to imagine our ancestors hanging around the great table, drinking wine, and devising plots to overthrow their kings and queens. It’s far harder to imagine what the daily life of an average person might be. When I was studying Classics back at Berkeley, I was surprised to realize how advanced the common person’s life truly was.

Once a civilization gets past a basic level of survival needs, society breaks into specialized trades. A person can focus on one skill set or talent, instead of spending all their time hunting and gathering. In the Bronze Age, there were several different trades people employed, and they bartered with one another in a trade system that used slag metal or strait trade goods for payment. Coins weren’t minted for several hundred more years.

In Greece, common trades were working in textiles, pottery, metal, and wood working. The majority of lands lived under a “Palatial System”, meaning a strong central king who collected tribute from his subjects, and usually provided protection and some measure of subsistence security. In many ways, it was very similar to the vassal/serf system of the Middle Ages, except citizens of the ancient world had more rights.

The palaces would own large workshops where most of the elite goods were crafted. Craftsmen in the employ of the crown would work from sun up to mid-day, then they were free to work in their own shops. Certain Masters gained notoriety and would stamp their work. It was prestigious to study under such a ‘Master’.

HOWEVER – Merchants, people who would resell other people’s goods for a profit, were considered vulgar, their profession distrusted.

Slaves were an unfortunate fact of life. However, even slaves had rights in the ancient world and could own some of the fruits of their labor. This was probably because, high or low, anybody could—and sometimes did—become a slave. Slaves were made from warfare, and it wasn’t tradition to consider one region of people as holistically a lesser class.

This is a larger question than can be addressed in a simple post, especially when we get into superstitions, religious beliefs, and differences across kingdoms. But the idealized life on grecian urns is less likely to be a realistic portrayal of the Bronze Age citizen’s reality.

Honestly it seems like physical pain was far more prevalent, for the average person

You’d probably find this video interesting.

https://lemmygrad.ml/post/4968445

Edit: changed link to original post

I’ve heard that peasants had more holidays and rest

This is the claim I see most often -- basically, that we work more now than in the past.

Even taking the claim as true, a big quality of life factor it doesn't address is how strenuous your work is. A lot of jobs today don't require any manual labor, and even today's manual labor jobs require a lot less of it than in the past. On-the-job access to climate control, quality food and water, entertainment, etc. have also vastly improved.

There's a good argument to be made that these improvements are due to technology, not capitalism, but then why claim that feudal workers had it better because they worked less if there's so much more to "having it better" than how many hours one works?

I don't think this is a great argument to make overall. Your comparison point (feudal societies) is so varied and ancient that it's easy to argue against because no one really knows the truth.