>>100702794>Your average peasant had a lot more freedom than we have today, as the farmers lifestyle was largely self sufficient outside of paying for various public goods provided by the governmentThis is simply wrong, peasants were not more free than the modern working class. Peasants had almost 0 control over what happened in their lives, because they didn't own the land they worked, their lord did, and he wanted rent for that land that he graciously allowed you to survive on, perhaps you were also left with some extra to sell/barter, but hardly anything significant. So your lord took everything you made and left you enough to keep you alive to keep working for him on his land. The only public goods your lord provided in return was a promise of a certain level of stability because he was the best in the immediate area at meting out violence. His lordship could also demand that in times of war you fight for him and risk your life for his right to be in charge of you.
This varied from place to place of course, but as a general rule quality of life ranged from pretty alright to literally being considered property of your lord, see (
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serfdom) for more on that.
There is a good reason that nobody who actually understands economics takes the communist manifesto seriously, and its because it vastly oversimplifies complicated topics and flat out ignores anything that conflicts with the inexorable march towards utopia, such as trivial details like scarcity of resources.
Wage slavery is a real thing, but not in the way you think it is. Being forced to get a job to pay for the goods and services you require to stay alive is not wage slavery, thats called being alive. The key point of slavery is that you cannot opt out of it, wage slavery is very real in places like India where people will literally be imprisoned and trapped in a vicious cycle of increasing debt to their captors, who force them to work in shitty conditions until they die.
