Serfs

Agricultural producers in medieval Europe who were bound to the soil, physically dependent on feudal lords and subject to their enslavement and oppression. Serfdom was widespread in medieval Europe. Serfs did not own the land for farming, but they could rent the land of serf-owners, to whom they paid rent and performed unpaid labor. Some serfs also had a few implements of labor. Serfs were different from slaves. Unlike slaves who labored on the conditions of production of others, the serfs appropriated the means of production necessary for realizing their own labor in order to maintain their means of life and production, and engaged in independent labor. Since the serf was tightly attached to the land of the serf-owner, the serf was also subjected to the serf-owner in terms of personality. Unlike slaves, the serfs had a higher status than the slaves. They could generally not be slaughtered, but be punished or sold, mortgaged or transferred with the land at will. In the late period of feudal society, with the development of the productive forces of society and the conflict and change of class contradictions, the form of ground-rent also developed from labor-rent to rent in kind, and then to money-rent. The personal dependence of serfs on serf-owners gradually relaxed, and they gained greater independence, which transformed them into free peasants, and some of them entered cities to become free workers.