THE GENESIS OF THE STATE
One single force impels all life; one force developed it, from the
single cell, the particle of albumen floating about in the warm ocean
of prehistoric time, up to the vertebrates, and then to man. This one
force, according to Lippert, is the tendency to provide for life,
bifurcated into “hunger and love.” With man, however, philosophy also
enters into the play of these forces, in order hereafter, together with
“hunger and love, to hold together the structure of the world of men.”
To be sure, this philosophy, this “idea” of Schopenhauer’s, is at its
source nothing else than a creature of the provision for life called
by him “will.” It is an organ of orientation in the world, an arm in
the struggle for existence. Yet in spite of this, we shall come to
know the desire for causation as a self-acting force, and of social
facts as coöperators in the sociological process of development. In the
beginning of human society, and as it gradually develops, this tendency
pushes itself forward in various bizarre ideas called “superstition.”
These are based on purely logical conclusions from incomplete
observations concerning air and water, earth and fire, animals and
plants, which seem endowed with a throng of spirits both kindly and
malevolent. One may say that in the most recent modern times, at a
stage attained only by very few races, there arises also the younger
daughter of the desire for causation, namely science, as a logical
result of complete observation of facts; science, now required to
exterminate widely branched-out superstition, which, with innumerable
threads, has rooted itself in the very soul of mankind.
But, however powerfully, especially in the moment of “ecstasy,”[2]
superstition may have influenced history, however powerfully, even in
ordinary times, it may have coöperated in the development of human
communal life, the principal force of development is still to be found
in the necessities of life, which force man to acquire for himself
and for his family nourishment, clothing and housing. This remains,
therefore, the “economic” impulse. A sociological--and that means a
socio-psychological--investigation of the development of history can,
therefore, not progress otherwise than by following out the methods by
which economic needs have been satisfied in their gradual unfolding,
and by taking heed of the influences of the causation impulse at its
proper place.
(a) POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC MEANS
There are two fundamentally opposed means whereby man, requiring
sustenance, is impelled to obtain the necessary means for satisfying
his desires. These are work and robbery, one’s own labor and the
forcible appropriation of the labor of others. Robbery! Forcible
appropriation! These words convey to us ideas of crime and the
penitentiary, since we are the contemporaries of a developed
civilization, specifically based on the inviolability of property. And
this tang is not lost when we are convinced that land and sea robbery
is the primitive relation of life, just as the warriors’ trade--which
also for a long time is only organized mass robbery--constitutes the
most respected of occupations. Both because of this, and also on
account of the need of having, in the further development of this
study, terse, clear, sharply opposing terms for these very important
contrasts, I propose in the following discussion to call one’s own
labor and the equivalent exchange of one’s own labor for the labor of
others, the “economic means” for the satisfaction of needs, while the
unrequited appropriation of the labor of others will be called the
“political means.”
The idea is not altogether new; philosophers of history have at all
times found this contradiction and have tried to formulate it. But no
one of these formulæ has carried the premise to its complete logical
end. At no place is it clearly shown that the contradiction consists
only in the _means_ by which the _identical purpose_, the acquisition
of economic objects of consumption, is to be obtained. Yet this is the
critical point of the reasoning. In the case of a thinker of the rank
of Karl Marx, one may observe what confusion is brought about when
economic purpose and economic means are not strictly differentiated.
All those errors, which in the end led Marx’s splendid theory so far
away from truth, were grounded in the lack of clear differentiation
between the means of economic satisfaction of needs and its end. This
led him to designate slavery as an “economic category,” and force as
an “economic force”--half truths which are far more dangerous than
total untruths, since their discovery is more difficult, and false
conclusions from them are inevitable.
On the other hand, our own sharp differentiation between the two
means toward the same end, will help us to avoid any such confusion.
This will be our key to an understanding of the development, the
essence, and the purpose of the State; and since all universal history
heretofore has been only the history of states, to an understanding
of universal history as well. All world history, from primitive times
up to our own civilization, presents a single phase, a contest namely
between the economic and the political means; and it can present only
this phase until we have achieved free citizenship.
(b) PEOPLES WITHOUT A STATE: HUNTSMEN AND GRUBBERS
The state is an organization of the political means. No state,
therefore, can come into being until the economic means has created a
definite number of objects for the satisfaction of needs, which objects
may be taken away or appropriated by warlike robbery. For that reason,
primitive huntsmen are without a state; and even the more highly
developed huntsmen become parts of a state structure only when they
find in their neighborhood an evolved economic organization which they
can subjugate. But primitive huntsmen live in practical anarchy.
Grosse says concerning primitive huntsmen in general:
“There are no essential differences of fortune among them, and thus a
principal source for the origin of differences in station is lacking.
Generally, all grown men within the tribe enjoy equal rights. The older
men, thanks to their greater experience, have a certain authority;
but no one feels himself bound to render them obedience. Where in
some cases chiefs are recognized--as with the Botokude, the Central
Californians, the Wedda and the Mincopie--their power is extremely
limited. The chieftain has no means of enforcing his wishes against
the will of the rest. Most tribes of hunters, however, have no
chieftain. The entire society of the males still forms a homogeneous
undifferentiated mass, in which only those individuals achieve
prominence who are believed to possess magical powers.”[3]
Here, then, there scarcely exists a spark of “statehood,” even in the
sense of ordinary theories of the state, still less in the sense of
the correct “sociologic idea of the state.”
The social structure of primitive peasants has hardly more resemblance
to a state than has the horde of huntsmen. Where the peasant, working
the ground with a grub, is living in liberty, there is as yet no
“state.” The plow is always the mark of a higher economic condition
which occurs only in a state; that is to say, in a system of plantation
work carried on by subjugated servants.[4] The grubbers live isolated
from one another, scattered over the country in separated curtilages,
perhaps in villages, split up because of quarrels about district or
farm boundaries. In the best cases, they live in feebly organized
associations, bound together by oath, attached only loosely by the
tie which the consciousness of the same descent and speech and the
same belief imposes upon them. They unite perhaps once a year in the
common celebration of renowned ancestors or of the tribal god. There is
no ruling authority over the whole mass; the various chieftains of a
village, or possibly of a district, may have more or less influence in
their circumscribed spheres, this depending usually upon their personal
qualities, and especially upon the magical powers attributed to them.
Cunow describes the Peruvian peasants before the incursion of the Incas
as follows: “An unregulated living side by side of many independent,
mutually warring tribes, who again were split up into more or less
autonomous territorial unions, held together by ties of kinship.”[5]
One may say that all the primitive peasants of the old and new world
were of this type.
In such a state of society, it is hardly conceivable that a warlike
organization could come about for purposes of attack. It is
sufficiently difficult to mobilize the clan, or still more the tribe,
for common defense. The peasant is always lacking in mobility. He is
as attached to the ground as the plants he cultivates. As a matter of
fact, the working of his field makes him “bound to the soil” (_glebæ
adscriptus_), even though, in the absence of law, he has freedom of
movement. What purpose, moreover, would a looting expedition effect in
a country, which throughout its extent is occupied only by grubbing
peasants? The peasant can carry off from the peasant nothing which he
does not already own. In a condition of society marked by superfluity
of agricultural land, each individual contributes only a little work
to its extensive cultivation. Each occupies as much territory as he
needs. More would be superfluous. Its acquisition would be lost labor,
even were its owner able to conserve for any length of time the grain
products thus secured. Under primitive conditions, however, this spoils
rapidly by reason of change of atmosphere, ants, or other agencies.
According to Ratzel, the Central African peasant must convert the
superfluous portion of his crops into beer as quickly as possible in
order not to lose it entirely!
For all these reasons, primitive peasants are totally lacking in that
warlike desire to take the offensive which is the distinguishing mark
of hunters and herdsmen: war can not better their condition. And this
peaceable attitude is strengthened by the fact that the occupation of
the peasant does not make him an efficient warrior. It is true his
muscles are strong and he has powers of endurance, but he is sluggish
of movement and slow to come to a determination, while huntsmen and
nomads by their methods of living develop speed of motion and swiftness
of action. For this reason, the primitive peasant is usually of a more
gentle disposition than they.[B]
[B] This psychological contradiction, though often expressly stated, is
not the absolute rule, Grosse, _Forms of the Family_, says (page 137):
“Some historians of civilization place the peasant in opposition to the
warlike nomads, claiming that the peasants are peace-loving peoples. In
fact one can not state that their economic life leads them to wars, or
educates them for it, as can be said of stock raisers. Nevertheless,
one finds within the scope of this form of cultivation a mass of the
most warlike and cruel peoples to be found anywhere. The wild cannibals
of the Bismarck archipelago, the blood-lusting Vitians, the butchers of
men of Dahome and Ashanti--they all cultivate the ‘peaceable’ acres;
and if other peasants are not quite as bad, it seems that the kindly
disposition of the vast mass appears to be, at least, questionable.”
To sum up: within the economic and social conditions of the peasant
districts, one finds no differentiation working for the higher forms
of integration. There exists neither the impulse nor the possibility
for the warlike subjection of neighbors. No “State” can therefore
arise; and, as a matter of fact, none ever has arisen from such social
conditions. Had there been no impulse from without, from groups of men
nourished in a different manner, the primitive grubber would never have
discovered the State.
(c) PEOPLES PRECEDING THE STATE: HERDSMEN AND VIKINGS
Herdsmen, on the contrary, even though isolated, have developed a whole
series of the elements of statehood; and in the tribes which have
progressed further, they have developed this in its totality, with the
single exception of the last point of identification which completes
the state in its modern sense, that is to say, with exception only of
the definitive occupation of a circumscribed territory.
One of these elements is an economic one. Even without the intervention
of extra-economic force, there may still develop among herdsmen a
sufficiently marked differentiation of property and income. Assuming
that, at the start, there was complete equality in the number of
cattle, yet within a short time, the one man may be richer and the
other poorer. An especially clever breeder will see his herd increase
rapidly, while an especially careful watchman and bold hunter will
preserve his from decimation by beasts of prey. The element of luck
also affects the result. One of these herders finds an especially good
grazing ground and healthful watering places; the other one loses his
entire stock through pestilence, or through a snowfall or a sandstorm.
Distinctions in fortune quickly bring about class distinctions. The
herdsman who has lost all must hire himself to the rich man; and
sinking thus under the other, become dependent on him. Wherever
herdsmen live, from all three parts of the ancient world, we find the
same story. Meitzen reports of the Lapps, nomadic in Norway: “Three
hundred reindeer sufficed for one family; who owned only a hundred
must enter the service of the richer, whose herds ran up to a thousand
head.”[6] The same writer, speaking of the Central Asiatic Nomads,
says: “A family required three hundred head of cattle for comfort; one
hundred head is poverty, followed by a life of debt. The servant must
cultivate the lands of the lord.”[7] Ratzel reports concerning the
Hottentots of Africa a form of “commendatio”: “The poor man endeavors
to hire himself to the rich man, his only object being to obtain
cattle.”[8] Laveleye, who reports the same circumstances from Ireland,
traces the origin and the name of the feudal system (_système féodal_)
to the loaning of cattle by the rich to the poor members of the tribe;
accordingly, a “fee-od” (owning of cattle) was the first feud whereby
so long as the debt existed the magnate bound the small owner to
himself as “his man.”
We can only hint at the methods whereby, even in peaceable associations
of herdsmen, this economic and consequent social differentiation may
have been furthered by the connection of the patriarchate with the
offices of supreme and sacrificial priesthood if the wise old men
used cleverly the superstition of their clan associates. But this
differentiation, so long as it is unaffected by the political means,
operates within very modest bounds. Cleverness and efficiency are not
hereditary with any degree of certainty. The largest herd will be split
up if many heirs grow up in one tent, and fortune is tricky. In our
own day, the richest man among the Lapps of Sweden, in the shortest
possible time, has been reduced to such complete poverty that the
government has had to support him. All these causes bring it about
that the original condition of economic and social equality is always
approximately restored. “The more peaceable, aboriginal, and genuine
the nomad is, the smaller are the tangible differences of possession.
It is touching to note the pleasure with which an old prince of the
Tsaidam Mongols accepts his tribute or gift, consisting of a handful of
tobacco, a piece of sugar, and twenty-five kopeks.”[9]
This equality is destroyed permanently and in greater degree by the
political means. “Where war is carried on and booty acquired, greater
differences arise, which find their expression in the ownership of
slaves, women, arms and spirited mounts.”[10]
The ownership of _slaves_! The nomad is the inventor of slavery, and
thereby has created the seedling of the state, the first economic
exploitation of man by man.
The huntsman carries on wars and takes captives. But he does not make
them slaves; either he kills them, or else he adopts them into the
tribe. Slaves would be of no use to him. The booty of the chase can
be stowed away even less than grain can be “capitalized.” The idea
of using a human being as a labor motor could only come about on
an economic plane on which a body of wealth has developed, call it
capital, which can be increased only with the assistance of dependent
labor forces.
This stage is first reached by the herdsmen. The forces of one family,
lacking outside assistance, suffice to hold together a herd of very
limited size, and to protect it from attacks of beasts of prey or human
enemies. Until the political means is brought into play, auxiliary
forces are found very sparingly; such as the poorer members of the
clan already mentioned, together with runaways from foreign tribes,
who are found all over the world as protected dependents in the suite
of the greater owners of herds.[11] In some cases, an entire poor
clan of herdsmen enters, half freely, into the service of some rich
tribe. “Entire peoples take positions corresponding to their relative
wealth. Thus the Tungusen, who are very poor, try to live near the
settlements of the Tschuktsches, because they find occupation as
herdsmen of the reindeer belonging to the wealthy Tschuktsches; they
are paid in reindeer. And the subjection of the Ural-Samojedes by the
Sirjaenes came about through the gradual occupation of their pasturing
grounds.”[12]
Excepting, however, the last named case, which is already very
state-like, the few existing labor forces, without capital, are not
sufficient to permit the clan to keep very large herds. Furthermore,
methods of herding themselves compel division. For a pasture may
not, as they say in the Swiss Alps, be “overpushed,” that is to say,
have too many cattle on it. The danger of losing the entire stock
is reduced by the measure in which it is distributed over various
pastures. For cattle plagues, storms, etc., can affect only a part;
while even the enemy from abroad can not drive off all at once. For
that reason, the Hereros, for example, “find every well-to-do owner
forced to keep, besides the main herd, several other subsidiary herds.
Younger brothers or other near relatives, or in want of these, tried
old servants, watch them.”[13]
For that reason, the developed nomad spares his captured enemy; he can
use him as a slave on his pasture. We may note this transition from
killing to enslaving in a customary rite of the Scythians: they offered
up at their places of sacrifice one out of every hundred captured
enemies. Lippert, who reports this, sees in it “the beginning of a
limitation, and the reason thereof is evidently to be found in the
value which a captured enemy has acquired by becoming the servant of a
tribal herdsman.”[14]
With the introduction of slaves into the tribal economy of the
herdsmen, the state, in its essential elements, is completed, except
that it has not as yet acquired a definitely circumscribed territorial
limit. The state has thus the _form_ of dominion, and its economic
basis is the exploitation of human labor. Henceforth, economic
differentiation and the formation of social classes progress rapidly.
The herds of the great, wisely divided and better guarded by numerous
armed servants than those of the simple freemen, as a rule, maintain
themselves at their original number: they also increase faster than
those of the freemen, since they are augmented by the greater share
in the booty which the rich receive, corresponding to the number of
warriors (slaves) which these place in the field.
Likewise, the office of supreme priest creates an ever-widening
cleft which divides the numbers of the clan, all formerly equals;
until finally a genuine nobility, the rich descendants of the rich
patriarchs, is placed in juxtaposition to the ordinary freemen. “The
redskins have also in their progressive organization developed
no nobility and no slavery,[C] and in this their organization
distinguishes itself most essentially from those of the old world.
Both arise from the development of the patriarchate of stock-raising
people.”[15]
[C] This statement of Lippert is not quite correct. The higher
developed domiciled huntsmen and fishermen of Northwest America have
both nobles and slaves.
Thus we find, with all developed tribes of herdsmen, a social
separation into three distinct classes: nobility (“head of the house
of his fathers” in the biblical phrase), common freemen and slaves.
According to Mommsen, “all Indo-Germanic people have slavery as a
jural institution.”[16] This applies to the Arians and the Semites
of Asia and Africa as well as to the Hamites. Among all the Fulbe of
the Sahara, “society is divided into princes, chieftains, commons and
slaves.”[17] And we find the same facts everywhere, as a matter of
course, wherever slavery is legally established, as among the Hova[18]
and their Polynesian kinsmen, the “Sea Nomads.” Human psychology under
similar circumstances brings about like conditions, independent of
color or race.
Thus the herdsman gradually becomes accustomed to earning his
livelihood through warfare, and to the exploitation of men as servile
labor motors. And one must admit that his entire mode of life impels
him to make more and more use of the “political means.”
He is physically stronger and just as adroit and determined as the
primitive huntsman, whose food supply is too irregular to permit him
to attain his greatest natural physical development. The herdsman can,
in all cases, grow to his full stature, since he has uninterrupted
nourishment in the milk of his herds and an unfailing supply of meat.
This is shown in the Arian horse nomad, no less than in the herdsman of
Asia and Africa, e. g., the Zulu. Secondly, tribes of herdsmen increase
faster than hordes of hunters. This is so, not only because the adults
can obtain much more nourishment from a given territory, but still
more because possession of the milk of animals shortens the period of
nursing for the mothers, and consequently permits a greater number
of children to be born and to grow to maturity. As a consequence, the
pastures and steppes of the old world became inexhaustible fountains,
which periodically burst their confines letting loose inundations of
humanity, so that they came to be called the “_vaginæ gentium_.”
Moreover we find a much larger number of armed warriors among
herdsmen than among hunters. Each one of these herdsmen is stronger
individually, and yet all of them together are at least as mobile
as is a horde of huntsmen; while the camel and horse riders among
them are incomparably more mobile. This greater mass of the best
individual elements is held together by an organization only possible
under the ægis of a slave-holding patriarchate accustomed to rule, an
organization prepared and developed by its occupation, and therefore
superior to that of the young warriors of the huntsmen sworn to the
service of one chief.
Hunters, it may be observed, work best alone or in small groups.
Herdsmen, on the other hand, move to the best advantage in a great
train, in which each individual is best protected; and which is in
every sense an armed expedition, where every stopping place becomes an
armed camp. Thus there is developed a science of tactical maneuvers,
strict subordination, and firm discipline. “One does not make a
mistake,” as Ratzel says, “if one accounts as the disciplinary forces
in the life of the nomads the order of the tents which, in the same
form, exists since most ancient times. Every one and everything here
has a definite, traditional place; hence the speed and order in setting
up and in breaking camp, in establishment and in rearrangement. It is
unheard of that any one without orders, or without the most pressing
reason, should change his place. Thanks to this strict discipline, the
tents can be packed up and loaded away within the space of an hour.”[19]
The same tried order, handed down from untold ages, regulates
the warlike march of the tribe of herdsmen while on the hunt, in
war and in peaceable wandering. Thus they become professional
fighters, irresistible until the state develops higher and mightier
organizations. Herdsman and warrior become identical concepts. Ratzel’s
statement concerning the Central Asiatic Nomads applies to them all:
“The nomad is, as herdsman, an economic, as warrior, a political
concept. It is easy for him to turn from any activity to that of the
warrior and robber. Everything in life has for him a pacific and
war-like, an honest and robber-like, side; according to circumstances,
the one or the other of these phases appears uppermost. Even fishing
and navigation, at the hands of the East Caspian Turkomans, developed
into piracy.... The activities of the apparently pacific existence as
a herdsman determine those of the warrior; the pastoral crook becomes
a fighting implement. In the fall, when the horses return strengthened
from the pasture and the second cropping of the sheep is completed,
the nomads’ minds turn to some feud or robbing expedition (_Baranta_,
literally, to make cattle, to lift cattle), adjourned to that time.
This is an expression of the right of self help, which in contentions
over points of law, or in quarrels affecting dignity, or in blood
feuds, seeks both requital and surety in the most valuable things that
the enemy possesses, namely, the animals of his herd. Young men who
have not been on a _baranta_ must first acquire the name _batir_, hero,
and thus earn the claim to honor and respect. The pleasure of ownership
joined to the desire for adventure develops the triple descending
gradation of avenger, hero and robber.”[20]
An identical development takes place with the sea nomads, the
“Vikings,” as with the land nomads. This is quite natural, since in the
most important cases noted in the history of mankind, sea nomads are
simply land nomads taking to the sea.
We have noted above one of the innumerable examples which indicate that
the herdsman does not long hesitate to use for marauding expeditions,
instead of the horse or the “ship of the desert,” the “horses of the
sea.” This case is exemplified by the East Caspian Turkomans.[21]
Another example is furnished by the Scythians: “From the moment when
they learn from their neighbors the art of navigating the seas, these
wandering herdsmen, whom Homer (_Iliad_, XIII, 3) calls ‘respected
horsemen, milk-eaters and poor, the most just of men,’ change into
daring navigators like their Baltic and Scandinavian brethren. Strabo
(_Cas._, 301) complains: ‘Since they have ventured on the sea,
carrying on piracy and murdering foreigners, they have become worse;
and associating with many peoples, they adopt their petty trading and
spendthrift habits.’”[22]
If the Phœnicians really were “Semites,” they furnish an additional
example of incomparable importance of the transformation of land into
“sea Bedouins,” i. e., warlike robbers; and the same is probably
true for the majority of the numerous peoples who looted the rich
countries around the Mediterranean, whether from the coast of Asia
Minor, Dalmatia, or from the North African shore. These begin from the
earliest times, as we see from the Egyptian monuments (the Greeks
were not admitted into Egypt),[23] and continue to the present day: e.
g., the Riff pirates. The North African “Moors,” an amalgamation of
Arabs and of Berbers, both originally land nomads, are perhaps the most
celebrated example of this change.
There are cases in which sea nomads--that is to say, sea robbers--arise
immediately from fishermen, with no intermediate herdsman stage.
We have already examined the causes which give the herdsmen their
superiority over the peasantry: the relatively numerous population of
the horde, combined with an activity which develops courage and quick
resolution in the individual, and educates the mass as a whole to tense
discipline. All this applies also to fishermen dwelling on the sea.
Rich fishing grounds permit a considerable density of population, as
is shown in the case of the Northwest Indians (Tlinkit, etc.); these
permit also the keeping of slaves, since the slave earns more by
fishing than his keep amounts to. Thus we find, here alone among the
redskins, slavery developed as an institution; and we find, therefore,
along with it, permanent economic differences among the freemen, which
result in a sort of plutocracy similar to that noted among herdsmen.
Here, as there, the habit of command over slaves produces the habit
of rule and a taste for the “political means.” This is favored by the
tense discipline developed in navigation. “Not the least advantage
of fishing in common is found in the discipline of the crews. They
must render implicit obedience to a leader chosen in each of the
larger fishing boats, since every success depends upon obedience. The
command of a ship afterward facilitates the command of the state. We
are accustomed to reckon the Solomon Islanders as complete savages,
and yet their life is subject to one solitary element, which combines
their forces, namely, navigation.”[24] If the Northwest Indians did not
become such celebrated sea robbers as their likes in the old world,
this is due to the fact that the neighborhoods within their reach had
developed no rich civilization; but all more developed fishermen carry
on piracy.
For this reason, the Vikings have the same capacity to choose the
political means as the basis of their economic existence as have the
cattle raiders; and similarly they have been founders of states on a
large scale. Hereafter, we shall distinguish the states founded by
them as “sea states,” while the states founded by herdsmen--and in the
new world by hunters--will be called “land states.” Sea states will be
treated extensively when we discuss the consequences of the _developed
feudal state_. As long, however, as we are discussing the development
of the state, and the _primitive_ feudal state, we must limit ourselves
to the consideration of the land state and leave the sea state out of
account. This treatment is convenient, since in all essential things
the sea state has the same characteristics, but its development can not
be followed through the various typical stages as can the development
of the land state.
(d) THE GENESIS OF THE STATE
The hordes of huntsmen are incomparably weaker, both in numbers and in
the strength of the single fighters, than are the herdsmen with whom
they occasionally brush. Naturally they can not withstand the impact.
They flee to the highlands and mountains, where the herdsmen have no
inclination to follow them, not only because of the physical hardships
involved, but also because their cattle do not find pasturage there;
or else they enter into a form of cliental relation, as happened often
in Africa, especially in very ancient times. When the Hyksos invaded
Egypt, such dependent huntsmen followed them. The huntsmen usually pay
for protection an inconsiderable tribute in the form of spoils of the
chase, and are used for reconnoitering and watching. But the huntsman,
being a “practical anarchist,” often invites his own destruction rather
than submit to regular labor. For these reasons, no “state” ever arose
from such contact.
The peasants fight as undisciplined levies, and with their single
combatants undisciplined; so that, in the long run, even though they
are strong in numbers, they are no more able than are the hunters to
withstand the charge of the heavily armed herdsmen. But the peasantry
do not flee. The peasant is attached to his ground, and has been used
to regular work. He remains, yields to subjection, and pays tribute
to his conqueror; _that is the genesis of the land states in the old
world_.
In the new world, where the larger herding animals, cattle, horses,
camels, were not indigenous, we find that instead of the herdsman the
hunter is the conqueror of the peasant, because of his infinitely
superior adroitness in the use of arms and in military discipline.
“In the old world we found that the contrast of herdsmen and peasants
developed civilization; in the new world the contrast is between the
sedentary and the roving tribes. The Toltecks, devoted to agriculture,
fought wild tribes (with a highly developed military organization)
breaking in from the north, as endlessly as did Iran with Turan.”[25]
This applies not only to Peru and Mexico, but to all America, a strong
ground for the opinion that the fundamental basis of civilization is
the same all over the world, its development being consistent and
regular under the most varied economic and geographical conditions.
Wherever opportunity offers, and man possesses the power, he prefers
political to economic means for the preservation of his life. And
perhaps this is true not alone of man, for, according to Maeterlinck’s
_Life of the Bees_, a swarm which has once made the experiment of
obtaining honey from a foreign hive, by robbery instead of by tedious
building, is thenceforth spoiled for the “economic means.” From working
bees, robber bees have developed.
Leaving out of account the state formations of the new world, which
have no great significance in universal history, the cause of the
genesis of all states is the contrast between peasants and herdsmen,
between laborers and robbers, between bottom lands and prairies.
Ratzel, regarding sociology from the geographical view-point,
expresses this cleverly: “It must be remembered that nomads do not
always destroy the opposing civilization of the settled folk. This
applies not only to tribes, but also to states, even to those of some
might. The war-like character of the nomads is a great factor in the
creation of states. It finds expression in the immense nations of
Asia controlled by nomad dynasties and nomad armies, such as Persia,
ruled by the Turks; China, conquered and governed by the Mongols and
Manchus; and in the Mongol and Radjaputa states of India, as well as
in the states on the border of the Soudan, where the amalgamation of
the formerly hostile elements has not yet developed so far, although
they are joined together by mutual benefit. In no place is it shown
so clearly as here on the border of the nomad and peasant peoples,
that the great workings of the impulse making for civilization on
the part of the nomads are not the result of civilizing activity,
but of war-like exploits at first detrimental to pacific work. Their
importance lies in the capacity of the nomads to hold together the
sedentary races who otherwise would easily fall apart. This, however,
does not exclude their learning much from their subjects.... Yet all
these industrious and clever folk did not have and could not have the
will and the power to rule, the military spirit, and the sense for
the order and subordination that befits a state. For this reason, the
desert-born lords of the Soudan rule over their negro folk just as
the Manchus rule their Chinese subjects. This takes place pursuant
to a law, valid from Timbuctoo to Pekin, whereby advantageous state
formations arise in rich peasant lands adjoining a wide prairie; where
a high material culture of sedentary peoples is violently subjugated to
the service of prairie dwellers having energy, war-like capacity, and
desire to rule.”[26]
In the genesis of the state, from the subjection of a peasant folk by
a tribe of herdsmen or by sea nomads, six stages may be distinguished.
In the following discussion it should not be assumed that the actual
historical development must, in each particular case, climb the
entire scale step by step. Although, even here, the argument does not
depend upon bare theoretical construction, since every particular
stage is found in numerous examples, both in the world’s history and
in ethnology, and there are states which have apparently progressed
through them all. But there are many more which have skipped one or
more of these stages.
The first stage comprises robbery and killing in border fights, endless
combats broken neither by peace nor by armistice. It is marked by
killing of men, carrying away of children and women, looting of herds,
and burning of dwellings. Even if the offenders are defeated at first,
they return in stronger and stronger bodies, impelled by the duty of
blood feud. Sometimes the peasant group may assemble, may organize
its militia, and perhaps temporarily defeat the nimble enemy; but
mobilization is too slow and supplies to be brought into the desert
too costly for the peasants. The peasants’ militia does not, as does
the enemy, carry its stock of food--its herds--with it into the field.
In Southwest Africa the Germans recently experienced the difficulties
which a well-disciplined and superior force, equipped with a supply
train, with a railway reaching back to its base of supply, and with
the millions of the German Empire behind it, may have with a handful
of herdsmen warriors, who were able to give the Germans a decided
setback. In the case of primitive levies, this difficulty is increased
by the narrow spirit of the peasant, who considers only his own
neighborhood, and by the fact that while the war is going on the lands
are uncultivated. Therefore, in such cases, in the long run, the small
but compact and easily mobilized body constantly defeats the greater
disjointed mass, as the panther triumphs over the buffalo.
This is the first stage in the formation of states. The state may
remain stationary at this point for centuries, for a thousand years.
The following is a thoroughly characteristic example:
“Every range of a Turkoman tribe formerly bordered upon a wide belt
which might be designated as its ‘looting district.’ Everything north
and east of Chorassan, though nominally under Persian dominion, has for
decades belonged more to the Turkomans, Jomudes, Goklenes, and other
tribes of the bordering plains, than to the Persians. The Tekinzes,
in a similar manner, looted all the stretches from Kiwa to Bokhara,
until other Turkoman tribes were successfully rounded up either by
force or by corruption to act as a buffer. Numberless further instances
can be found in the history of the chain of oases which extends
between Eastern and Western Asia directly through the steppes of its
central part, where since ancient times the Chinese have exercised
a predominant influence through their possession of all important
strategic centers, such as the Oasis of Chami. The nomads, breaking
through from north and south, constantly tried to land on these islands
of fertile ground, which to them must have appeared like Islands of
the Blessed. And every horde, whether laden down with booty or fleeing
after defeat, was protected by the plains. Although the most immediate
threats were averted by the continued weakening of the Mongols, and the
actual dominion of Thibet, yet the last insurrection of the Dunganes
showed how easily the waves of a mobile tribe break over these islands
of civilization. Only after the destruction of the nomads, impossible
as long as there are open plains in Central Asia, can their existence
be definitely secured.”[27]
The entire history of the old world is replete with well-known
instances of mass expeditions, which must be assigned to the first
stage of state development, inasmuch as they were intent, not upon
conquest, but directly on looting. Western Europe suffered through
these expeditions at the hands of the Celts, Germans, Huns, Avars,
Arabs, Magyars, Tartars, Mongolians and Turks by land; while the
Vikings and the Saracens harassed it on the waterways. These hordes
inundated entire continents far beyond the limits of their accustomed
looting ground. They disappeared, returned, were absorbed, and left
behind them only wasted lands. In many cases, however, they advanced
in some part of the inundated district directly to the sixth and last
stage of state formation, in cases namely, where they established a
permanent dominion over the peasant population. Ratzel describes these
mass migrations excellently in the following:
“The expeditions of the great hordes of nomads contrast with this
movement, drop by drop and step by step, since they overflow with
tremendous power, especially Central Asia and all neighboring
countries. The nomads of this district, as of Arabia and Northern
Africa, unite mobility in their way of life with an organization
holding together their entire mass for one single object. It seems to
be a characteristic of the nomads that they easily develop despotic
power and far-reaching might from the patriarchal cohesion of the
tribe. Mass governments thereby come into being, which compare with
other movements among men in the same way that swollen streams compare
with the steady but diffused flow of a tributary. The history of China,
India, and Persia, no less than that of Europe, shows their historical
importance. Just as they moved about on their ranges with their wives
and children, slaves and carts, herds and all their paraphernalia, so
they inundated the borderlands. While this ballast may have deprived
them of speed it increased their momentum. The frightened inhabitants
were driven before them, and like a wave they rolled over the conquered
countries, absorbing their wealth. Since they carried everything with
them, their new abodes were equipped with all their possessions, and
thus their final settlements were of an ethnographic importance. After
this manner, the Magyars flooded Hungary, the Manchus invaded China,
the Turks, the countries from Persia to the Adriatic.”[28]
What has been said here of Hamites, Semites and Mongolians, may be said
also, at least in part, of the Arian tribes of herdsmen. It applies
also to the true negroes, at least to those who live entirely from
their herds: “The mobile, warlike tribes of the Kafirs possess a power
of expansion which needs only an enticing object in order to attain
violent effects and to overturn the ethnologic relations of vast
districts. Eastern Africa offers such an object. Here the climate did
not forbid stock raising, as in the countries of the interior, and did
not paralyze from the start, the power of impact of the nomads, while
nevertheless numerous peaceable agricultural peoples found room for
their development. Wandering tribes of Kafirs poured like devastating
streams into the fruitful lands of the Zambesi, and up to the highlands
between the Tanganyika and the coast. Here they met the advance guard
of the Watusi, a wave of Hamite eruption, coming from the north. The
former inhabitants of these districts were either exterminated, or as
serfs cultivated the lands which they formerly owned; or they still
continued to fight; or again, they remained undisturbed in settlements
left on one side by the stream of conquest.”[29]
All this has taken place before our eyes. Some of it is still going
on. During many thousands of years it has “jarred all Eastern Africa
from the Zambesi to the Mediterranean.” The incursion of the Hyksos,
whereby for over five hundred years Egypt was subject to the shepherd
tribes of the eastern and northern deserts--“kinsmen of the peoples
who up to the present day herd their stock between the Nile and the
Red Sea”[30]--is the first authenticated foundation of a state. These
states were followed by many others both in the country of the Nile
itself, and farther southward, as far as the Empire of Muata Jamvo
on the southern rim of the central Congo district, which Portuguese
traders in Angola reported as early as the end of the sixteenth
century, and down to the Empire of Uganda, which only in our own day
has finally succumbed to the superior military organization of Europe.
“Desert land and civilization never lie peaceably alongside one
another; but their battles are all alike and full of repetitions.”[31]
“Alike and full of repetitions”! That may be said of universal history
on its basic lines. The human ego in its fundamental aspect is much the
same all the world over. It acts uniformly, in obedience to the same
influences of its environment, with races of all colors, in all parts
of the earth, in the tropics as in the temperate zones. One must step
back far enough and choose a point of view so high that the variegated
aspect of the details does not hide the great movements of the mass. In
such a case, our eye misses the “mode” of fighting, wandering, laboring
humanity, while its “substance,” ever similar, ever new, ever enduring
through change, reveals itself under uniform laws.
Gradually, from this first stage, there develops the second, in which
the peasant, through thousands of unsuccessful attempts at revolt, has
accepted his fate and has ceased every resistance. About this time,
it begins to dawn on the consciousness of the wild herdsman that a
murdered peasant can no longer plow, and that a fruit tree hacked
down will no longer bear. In his own interest, then, wherever it is
possible, he lets the peasant live and the tree stand. The expedition
of the herdsmen comes just as before, every member bristling
with arms, but no longer intending nor expecting war and violent
appropriation. The raiders burn and kill only so far as is necessary
to enforce a wholesome respect, or to break an isolated resistance.
But in general, principally in accordance with a developing customary
right--the first germ of the development of all public law--the
herdsman now appropriates only the surplus of the peasant. That is to
say, he leaves the peasant his house, his gear and his provisions up
to the next crop.[D] The herdsman in the first stage is like the bear,
who for the purpose of robbing the beehive, destroys it. In the second
stage he is like the bee-keeper, who leaves the bees enough honey to
carry them through the winter.
[D] Ratzel, l. c. II, page 393, in speaking of the Arabs says: “The
difficulty of nourishing slaves makes it impossible to keep them.
Vast populations are kept in subjection and deprived of everything
beyond the necessaries for maintaining life. They turn entire oases
into demesne lands, visited at the harvest time in order to rob the
inhabitants; a domination characteristic of the desert.”
Great is the progress between the first stage and the second. Long is
the forward step, both economically and politically. In the beginning,
as we have seen, the acquisition by the tribe of herdsmen was purely an
occupying one. Regardless of consequences, they destroyed the source
of future wealth for the enjoyment of the moment. Henceforth the
acquisition becomes economical, because all economy is based on wise
housekeeping, or in other words, on restraining the enjoyment of the
moment in view of the needs of the future. The herdsman has learned to
“capitalize.” It is a vast step forward in politics when an utterly
strange human being, prey heretofore like the wild animals, obtains a
value and is recognized as a source of wealth. Although this is the
beginning of all slavery, subjugation, and exploitation, it is at the
same time the genesis of a higher form of society, that reaches out
beyond the family based upon blood relationship. We saw how, between
the robbers and the robbed, the first threads of a jural relation were
spun across the cleft which separated those who had heretofore been
only “mortal enemies.” The peasant thus obtains a semblance of _right_
to the bare necessaries of life; so that it comes to be regarded as
_wrong_ to kill an unresisting man or to strip him of everything.
And better than this, gradually more delicate and softer threads are
woven into a net very thin as yet, but which, nevertheless, brings
about more human relations than the customary arrangement of the
division of spoils. Since the herdsmen no longer meet the peasants
in combat only, they are likely now to grant a respectful request,
or to remedy a well grounded grievance. “The categorical imperative”
of equity, “Do to others as you would have them do unto you,” had
heretofore ruled the herdsmen only in their dealings with their own
tribesmen and kind. Now for the first time it begins to speak, shyly
whispering in behalf of those who are alien to blood relationship.
In this, we find the germ of that magnificent process of external
amalgamation which, out of small hordes, has formed nations and unions
of nations; and which, in the future is to give life to the concept
of “humanity.” We find also the germ of the internal unification
of tribes once separated, from which, in place of the hatred of
“barbarians,” will come the all comprising love of humanity, of
Christianity and Buddhism.
_The moment when first the conqueror spared his victim in order
permanently to exploit him in productive work, was of incomparable
historical importance. It gave birth to nation and state, to right
and the higher economics, with all the developments and ramifications
which have grown and which will hereafter grow out of them._ The root
of everything human reaches down into the dark soil of the animal--love
and art, no less than state, justice and economics.
Still another tendency knots yet more closely these psychic relations.
To return to the comparison of the herdsman and the bear, there are
in the desert, beside the bear who guards the bees, other bears who
also lust after honey. But our tribe of herdsmen blocks their way, and
protects its beehives by force of arms. The peasants become accustomed,
when danger threatens, to call on the herdsmen, whom they no longer
regard as robbers and murderers, but as protectors and saviors. Imagine
the joy of the peasants when the returning band of avengers brings back
to the village the looted women and children, with the enemies’ heads
or scalps. These ties are no longer threads, but strong and knotted
bands.
Here is one of the principal forces of that “integration,” whereby in
the further development, those originally not of the same blood, and
often enough of different groups speaking different languages, will in
the end be welded together into _one_ people, with _one_ speech, _one_
custom, and _one_ feeling of nationality. This unity grows by degrees
from common suffering and need, common victory and defeat, common
rejoicing and common sorrow. A new and vast domain is open when master
and slave serve the same interests; then arises a stream of sympathy, a
sense of common service. Both sides apprehend, and gradually recognize,
each other’s common humanity. Gradually the points of similarity are
sensed, in place of the differences in build and apparel, of language
and religion, which had heretofore brought about only antipathy and
hatred. Gradually they learn to understand one another, first through a
common speech, and then through a common mental habit. The net of the
psychical inter-relations becomes stronger.
In this second stage of the formation of states, the ground work, in
its essentials, has been mapped out. No further step can be compared in
importance to the transition whereby the bear becomes a bee-keeper. For
this reason, short references must suffice.
The third stage arrives when the “surplus” obtained by the peasantry is
brought by them regularly to the tents of the herdsmen as “tribute,” a
regulation which affords to both parties self-evident and considerable
advantages. By this means, the peasantry is relieved entirely from the
little irregularities connected with the former method of taxation,
such as a few men knocked on the head, women violated, or farmhouses
burned down. The herdsmen on the other hand, need no longer apply
to this “business” any “expense” and labor, to use a mercantile
expression; and they devote the time and energy thus set free toward an
“extension of the works,” in other words, to subjugating other peasants.
This form of tribute is found in many well-known instances in history:
Huns, Magyars, Tartars, Turks, have derived their largest income
from their European tributes. Sometimes the character of the tribute
paid by the subjects to their master is more or less blurred, and
the act assumes the guise of payment for protection, or indeed, of
a subvention. The tale is well known whereby Attila was pictured by
the weakling emperor at Constantinople as a vassal prince; while the
tribute he paid to the Hun appeared as a fee.
The fourth stage, once more, is of very great importance, since it
adds the decisive factor in the development of the state, as we are
accustomed to see it, namely, the union on one strip of land of both
ethnic groups.[E] (It is well known that no jural definition of a
state can be arrived at without the concept of state territory.)
From now on, the relation of the two groups, which was originally
international, gradually becomes more and more intra-national.
[E] There is apparently in the case of the Fulbe, a transition stage
between the first three stages and the fourth, in which dominion is
exercised half internationally and half intranationally. According
to Ratzel (l. c. II, page 419): “Like a cuttle-fish, the conquering
race stretches numerous arms hither and thither among the terrified
aborigines, whose lack of cohesion affords plenty of gaps. Thus the
Fulbe are slowly flowing into the Benue countries and quite gradually
permeating them. Later observers have thus quite rightly abstained
from assigning definite boundaries. There are many scattered Fulbe
localities which look to a particular place as their center and as the
center of their power. Thus Muri is the capital of the numerous Fulbe
settlements scattered about the Middle Benue, and the position of Gola
is similar in the Adamawa district. As yet there are no proper kingdoms
with defined frontiers against each other and against independent
tribes. Even these capitals are in other respects still far from being
firmly settled.”
This territorial union may be caused by foreign influences. It may be
that stronger hordes have crowded the herdsmen forward, or that their
increase in population has reached the limit set by the nutritive
capacity of the steppes or prairies; it may be that a great cattle
plague has forced the herdsmen to exchange the unlimited scope of the
prairies for the narrows of some river valley. In general, however,
internal causes alone suffice to bring it about that the herdsmen stay
in the neighborhood of their peasants. The duty of protecting their
tributaries against other “bears” forces them to keep a levy of young
warriors in the neighborhood of their subjects; and this is at the same
time an excellent measure of defense since it prevents the peasants
from giving way to a desire to break their bonds, or to let some other
herdsmen become their overlords. This latter occurrence is by no means
rare, since, if tradition is correct, it is the means whereby the sons
of Rurik came to Russia.
As yet the local juxtaposition does not mean a state community in its
narrowest sense; that is to say, a unital organization.
In case the herdsmen are dealing with utterly unwarlike subjects,
they carry on their nomad life, peaceably wandering up and down and
herding their cattle among their perioike and helots. This is the case
with the light-colored Wahuma,[32] “the handsomest men of the world”
(Kandt), in Central Africa, or the Tuareg clan of the Hadanara of the
Asgars, “who have taken up their seats among the Imrad and have become
wandering freebooters. These Imrad are the serving class of the Asgars,
who live on them, although the Imrad could put into the field ten times
as many warriors; the situation is analogous to that of the Spartans in
relation to their Helots.”[33] The same may be said of the Teda among
the neighboring Borku: “Just as the land is divided into a semi-desert
supporting the nomads, and gardens with date groves, so the population
is divided between nomads and settled folk. Although about equal in
number, ten to twelve thousand altogether, it goes without saying that
these latter are subject to the others.”[34]
And the same applies to the entire group of herdsmen known as the Galla
Masi and Wahuma. “Although differences in possessions are considerable,
they have few slaves, as a serving class. These are represented by
peoples of a lower caste, who live separate and apart from them. It
is herdsmanship which is the basis of the family, of the state, and
along with these of the principle of political evolution. In this wide
territory, between Scehoa and its southernmost boundaries, on the one
hand, and Zanzibar on the other, there is found no strong political
power, in spite of the highly developed social articulation.”[35]
In case the country is not adapted to herding cattle on a large
scale--as was universally the case in Western Europe--or where a less
unwarlike population might make attempts at insurrection, the crowd of
lords becomes more or less permanently settled, taking either steep
places or strategically important points for their camps, castles, or
towns. From these centers, they control their “subjects,” mainly for
the purpose of gathering their tribute, paying no attention to them in
other respects. They let them administer their affairs, carry on their
religious worship, settle their disputes, and adjust their methods
of internal economy. Their autochthonous constitution, their local
officials, are, in fact, not interfered with.
If Frants Buhl reports correctly, that was the beginning of the rule
of the Israelites in Canaan.[36] Abyssinia, that great military force,
though at the first glance it may appear to be a fully developed state,
does not, however, seem to have advanced beyond the fourth stage. At
least Ratzel states: “The principal care of the Abyssinians consists
in the tribute, in which they follow the method of oriental monarchs
in olden and modern times, which is not to interfere with the internal
management and administration of justice of their subject peoples.”[37]
The best example of the fourth stage is found in the situation in
ancient Mexico before the Spanish conquest: “The confederation under
the leadership of the Mexicans had somewhat more progressive ideas of
conquest. Only those tribes were wiped out that offered resistance. In
other cases, the vanquished were merely plundered, and then required to
pay tribute. The defeated tribe governed itself just as before, through
its own officials. It was different in Peru, where the formation of
a compact empire followed the first attack. In Mexico, intimidation
and exploitation were the only aims of the conquest. And so it came
about that the so-called Empire of Mexico at the time of the conquest
represented merely a group of intimidated Indian tribes, whose
federation with one another was prevented by their fear of plundering
expeditions from some unassailable fort in their midst.”[38] It will be
observed that one can not speak of this as a state in any proper sense.
Ratzel shows this in the note following the above: “It is certain that
the various points held in subjection by the Warriors of Montezuma
were separated from one another by stretches of territory not yet
conquered. A condition very like the rule of the Hova in Madagascar.
One would not say that scattering a few garrisons, or better still,
military colonies, over the land, is a mark of absolute dominion, since
these colonies, with great trouble, maintain a strip of a few miles in
subjection.”[39]
The logic of events presses quickly from the fourth to the fifth stage,
and fashions almost completely the full state. Quarrels arise between
neighboring villages or clans, which the lords no longer permit to be
fought out, since by this the capacity of the peasants for service
would be impaired. The lords assume the right to arbitrate, and in case
of need, to enforce their judgment. In the end, it happens that at each
“court” of the village king or chief of the clan there is an official
deputy who exercises the power, while the chiefs are permitted to
retain the appearance of authority. The state of the Incas shows, in a
primitive condition, a typical example of this arrangement.
Here we find the Incas united at Cuzco where they had their patrimonial
lands and dwellings.[40] A representative of the Incas, the Tucricuc,
however, resided in every district at the court of the native
chieftain. He “had supervision over all affairs of his district;
he raised the troops, superintended the delivery of the tribute,
ordered the forced labor on roads and bridges, superintended the
administration of justice, and in short supervised everything in his
district.”[41]
The same institutions which have been developed by American huntsmen
and Semite shepherds are found also among African herdsmen. In Ashanti,
the system of the Tucricuc has been developed in a typical fashion;[42]
and the Dualla have established for their subjects living in segregated
villages “an institution based on conquest midway between a feudal
system and slavery.”[43] The same author reports that the Barotse have
a constitution corresponding to the earliest stage of the mediæval
feudal organization: “Their villages are ... as a rule surrounded by
a circle of hamlets where their serfs live. These till the fields
of their lords in the immediate neighborhood, grow grain, or herd
the cattle.”[44] The only thing that is not typical here consists in
this, that the lords do not live in isolated castles or halls, but are
settled in villages among their subjects.
It is only a very small step from the Incas to the Dorians in
Lacedæmon, Messenia, or Crete; and no greater distance separates the
Fulbe, Dualla and Barotse from the comparatively rigidly organized
feudal states of the African Negro Empires of Uganda, Unyoro, etc.; and
the corresponding feudal empires of Eastern and Western Europe and of
all Asia. In all places, the same results are brought about by force
of the same socio-psychological causes. The necessity of keeping the
subjects in order and at the same time of maintaining them at their
full capacity for labor, leads step by step from the fifth to the sixth
stage, in which the state, by acquiring full intra-nationality and by
the evolution of “Nationality,” is developed in every sense. The need
becomes more and more frequent to interfere, to allay difficulties, to
punish, or to coerce obedience; and thus develop the habit of rule and
the usages of government. The two groups, separated, to begin with,
and then united on one territory, are at first merely laid alongside
one another, then are scattered through one another like a mechanical
mixture, as the term is used in chemistry, until gradually they become
more and more of a “chemical combination.” They intermingle, unite,
amalgamate to unity, in customs and habits, in speech and worship.
Soon the bonds of relationship unite the upper and the lower strata.
In nearly all cases the master class picks the handsomest virgins from
the subject races for its concubines. A race of bastards thus develops,
sometimes taken into the ruling class, sometimes rejected, and then
because of the blood of the masters in their veins, becoming the born
leaders of the subject race. In form and in content the primitive state
is completed.