The correct answer is: to provide ruling elites with low-cost quasi-slave labor.
William Chambliss (1933-2014) published the article, “A Sociological Analysis of the Laws of Vagrancy” (1964).
Based on Marx’s analysis, of the 14th through 16th-century English vagrancy laws, which had classified peasants made landless under the enclosure movement as vagrants, Chambliss argued that those laws were enacted by ruling elites throughout history to provide themselves with low-cost quasi-slave labor.
