Via workingclasshistory : On this day, 8/aug/1845, UK Parliament passed an enclosure act, taking away common land, and appointing enclosure commissioners who could enclose more land without submitting a request to Parliament. From the 17th to 20th centuries, the British government passed over 5,000 enclosure acts, enclosing 6.8 million acres of common land, which the public previously had rights to use. Often, military force was used to crush anyone who resisted. In his work, Capital, Karl Marx explained: "The proletariat created by the breaking up of the bands of feudal retainers and by the forcible expropriation of the people from the soil, this free' proletariat could not possibly be absorbed by the nascent manufactures as fast as it was thrown upon the world. On the other hand, these men, suddenly ragged from their wonted mode of life, could not as suddenly adapt themselves to the discipline of their new condition. They were turned en masse into beggars, robbers, vagabonds, partly...