Um, that was confusingly worded. What I mean to say is that a couple of decades after the Black Death living conditions had improved for individual peasants but there were fewer of them. Can the last politician to go out the revolving door please turn the lights off?
In eastern europe the peasants got a worse deal after the Black Death. Similar conditions as in the west, but here the nobility succeeded in enforcing a harsher serfdom, tying the peasants to the land and denying them the freedom to move about. Thus robbing them of their negotiating power.
Changing the material base of the society changes the society, but in what direction depends on what people do about it. And I have a nagging feeling that todays version of nobility is already acting. A vote for PES is a vote for EPP! A vote for EPP is a vote for PES! Support the coalition, vote EPP-PES in 2009!
