"these are the demands of a peasantry, not a working class"

[AdHocSolver]

16. A more descriptive term than peasantry might be peons.

According to Wikipedia:

"A peasant is an agricultural worker who generally works land owned or rented by/from a noble, but is classified socioeconomically above a squire with regards to the era. The peasant was bound to the land and could not move or change their occupation unless they became a yeoman (free person), which generally happened by buying their freedom. The peasant also generally had to give most of their crops to the noble."

(Peon) "has a range of meanings but its primary usage is to describe laborers with little control over their employment conditions."

In American usage, "in a historical and legal sense, peon generally only had the meaning of someone working in an unfree labor system (known as peonage). The word often implied debt bondage and/or indentured servitude."

More discussion about peonage:

"Labor was in great need to support the expanding agriculture, mining, industrial, and public-work jobs that arose from conquerors settling in the Americas. To account for these jobs a system came about where creditors forced debtors to work for them. This system of involuntary servitude was called peonage."

"After the Civil War, the Thirteenth Amendment was added to the United States Constitution, which prohibited involuntary servitude such as peonage for all but convicted criminals."


The U.S. has the largest prison population (many of whom work for private corporations), and probably the highest amount of student debt of any country. Does anyone see a pattern here?