Summoning Hunger: Polanyi, Piers Plowman, and the Labor Market

The “plowing of the half-acre” episode in Langland’s Piers Plowman includes a chilling passage in which Piers summons Hunger to force able but unwilling laborers to work the land. This chapter approaches the episode by way of the economic history of Karl Polanyi, whose critiques of free-market ideology are receiving renewed attention in the context of globalization and the international economic crisis. One of Polanyi’s key points is that the threat of starvation is a prerequisite to the institution of a true labor market—meaning that first the networks of collective support that peasants rely on for survival need to be undermined. The summoning of Hunger shows that Langland is actually more free market in his ideology than are the landowning supporters of the labor statutes.