THE PRIMITIVE FEUDAL STATE
(a) THE FORM OF DOMINION
Its form is domination; the dominion of a small warlike minority,
interrelated and closely allied, over a definitely bounded territory
and its cultivators. Gradually, custom develops some form of law in
accordance with which this dominion is exercised. This law regulates
the rights of primacy and the claims of the lords, and the duty
of obedience and of service on the part of the subjects, in such
wise that the capacity of the peasants for rendering service is not
impaired. This word, _praestationsfaehigkeit_, dates from the reforms
of Frederick the Great. The “bee-keepership,” therefore, is governed
by the law of custom. The duty of paying and working on the part of
the peasants corresponds to the duty of protection on the part of
the lords, who ward off exactions of their own companions, as well as
defend the peasants from the attacks of foreign enemies.
Although this is one part of the content of the state concept, there is
another, which in the beginning is of much greater magnitude; the idea
of economic exploitation, the political means for the satisfaction of
needs. The peasant surrenders a portion of the product of his labor,
without any equivalent service in return. “_In the beginning was the
ground rent._”
The forms under which the ground rent is collected or consumed vary.
In some cases, the lords, as a closed union or community, are settled
in some fortified camp and consume as communists the tribute of their
peasantry. This is the situation in the state of the Inca. In some
cases, each individual warrior-noble has a definite strip of land
assigned to him: but generally the produce of this is still, as in
Sparta, consumed in the “syssitia,” by class associates and companions
in arms. In some cases, the landed nobility scatters over the entire
territory, each man housed with his following in his fortified castle,
and consuming, each for himself, the produce of his dominion or lands.
As yet these nobles have not become landlords, in the sense that they
administer their property. Each of them receives tribute from the labor
of his dependents, whom he neither guides nor supervises. This is the
type of the mediæval dominion in the lands of the Germanic nobility.
Finally, the knight becomes the owner and administrator of the knight’s
fee.[F] His former serfs develop into the laborers on his plantation,
and the tribute now appears as the profit of the entrepreneur. This
is the type of the earliest capitalist enterprise of modern times,
the exploitation of large territories in the lands east of the Elbe,
formerly occupied by Slavs and later colonized by Germans. Numerous
transitions lead from one stage to the other.
[F] _Rittergutsbesitz_ is the ultimate molecule of the German feudal
system, a non-urban territory, approximating the concept of knight’s
fee in the Angevin fiscal legislation; in modern Germanic law, the
possession of an acreage, alienable only as an entity, and by recent
legislation, alienable to non-nobles, but subject to and capable
of certain exceptions in law not inhering in other forms of real
estate.--_Translator._
But always, in its essence, is the “State” the same. Its purpose, in
every case, is found to be the political means for the satisfaction
of needs. At first, its method is by exacting a ground rent, so
long as there exists no trade activity the products of which can be
appropriated. Its form, in every case, is that of dominion, whereby
exploitation is regarded as “justice,” maintained as a “constitution,”
insisted on strictly, and in case of need enforced with cruelty.
And yet, in these ways, the absolute right of the conqueror becomes
narrowed within the confines of law, for the sake of permitting the
continuous acquisition of ground rents. The duty of furnishing supplies
on the part of the subjects is limited by their right to maintain
themselves in good condition. The right of taxation on the part of the
lords is supplemented by their duty to afford protection within and
without the state--security under the law and defense of the frontier.
At this point, the primitive state is completely developed in all its
essentials. It has passed the embryonic condition; whatever follows can
be only phenomena of growth.
As compared with unions of families, the state represents, doubtless, a
much higher species; since the state embraces a greater mass of men, in
closer articulation, more capable of conquering nature and of warding
off enemies. It changes the half playful occupations of men into
strict methodic labor, and thus brings untold misery to innumerable
generations yet unborn. Henceforth, these must eat their bread in the
sweat of their brow, since the golden age of the free community of
blood relations has been followed by the iron rule of state dominion.
But the state, by discovering labor in its proper sense, starts in this
world that force which alone can bring about the golden age on a much
higher plane of ethical relation and of happiness for all. The state,
to use Schiller’s words, destroys the untutored happiness of the people
while they were children, in order to bring them along a sad path of
suffering to the conscious happiness of maturity.
A higher species! Paul von Lilienfeld, one of the principal advocates
of the view that society is an organism of a higher kind, has pointed
out that in this respect an especially striking parallel can be drawn
between ordinary organisms and this super-organism. All higher beings
propagate sexually; lower beings asexually, by partition, by budding
and sometimes by conjugation. We have shown that simple partition
corresponds exactly to the growth and the further development of the
association based on blood relationship, which existed before the
state. This grows until it becomes too large for cohesion; it then
loses its unity, divides, and the separate hordes, if they associate
at all, remain in a very loose connection, without any sort of closer
articulation. The amalgamation of exogamic groups is comparable to
conjugation.
_The state, however, comes into being through sexual propagation._
All bisexual propagation is accomplished by the following process:
The male element, a small, very active, mobile, vibrating cell--the
spermatozoön--searches out a large inactive cell without mobility
of its own--the ovum, or female principle--enters and fuses with
it. From this process, there results an immense growth; that is to
say, a wonderful differentiation with simultaneous integration. The
inactive peasantry, bound by nature to their fields, is the ovum,
the mobile tribe of herdsmen the spermatozoön, of this sociologic
act of fecundation; and its resultant is the ripening of a higher
social organism more fully differentiated in its organs, and much more
complete in its integrations. It is easy to find further parallels.
One may compare the border feuds to the manner in which innumerable
spermatozoa swarm about the ovum until finally one, the strongest or
most fortunate, discovers and conquers the micropyle. One may compare
the almost magical attraction which the ovum has for the spermatozoön,
to the no less magical power by which the herdsmen from the steppes are
drawn into the cultivated plains.
But all this is no proof for the “organism.” The problem, however, has
been pointed out.
(b) THE INTEGRATION
We have followed the genesis of the state, from its second stage
onward, in its objective growth as a political and jural form with
economic content. But it is far more important to examine its
subjective growth, its socio-psychological “differentiation and
integration,” since all sociology is nearly always social psychology.
First, then, let us discuss integration.
We saw in the second stage, as set forth above, how the net of
psychical relations becomes ever tighter and closer enmeshed, as the
economic amalgamation advances. The two dialects become one language;
or one of the two, often of an entirely different stock from the other,
becomes extinct. This, in some cases, is the language of the victors,
but more frequently that of the vanquished. Both cults amalgamate to
one religion, in which the tribal god of the conquerors is adored as
the principal divinity, while the old gods of the vanquished become
either his servants, or, as demons or devils, his adversaries. The
bodily type tends to assimilate, through the influence of the same
climate and similar mode of living. Where a strong difference between
the types existed or is maintained,[45] the bastards, to a certain
extent, fill the gap--so that, in spite of the still existing ethnic
contrast, everybody, more and more, begins to feel that the type of the
enemies beyond the border is more strange, more “foreign” than is the
new co-national type. Lords and subjects view one another as “we,” at
least as concerns the enemy beyond the border; and at length the memory
of the different origin completely disappears. The conquerors are held
to be the sons of the old gods. This, in many cases, they literally
are, since these gods are nothing but the souls of their ancestors
raised to godhead by apotheosis.
Since the new “states” are much more aggressive than the former
communities bound together by mere blood relationship, the feeling
of being different from the foreigner beyond the borders, growing in
frequent feuds and wars, becomes stronger and stronger among those
within the “realm of peace.” And in the same measure there grows
among them the feeling of belonging to another; so that the spirit
of fraternity and of equity, which formerly existed only within the
horde and which never ceased to hold sway within the association of
nobles, takes root everywhere, and more and more finds its place in the
relations between the lords and their subjects.
At first these relations are manifested only in infrequent cases:
equity and fraternity are allowed only such play as is consistent
with the right to use the political means; but that much is granted.
A far stronger bond of psychical community between high and low,
more potent than any success against foreign invasion, is woven by
legal protection against the aggression of the mighty. “_Justitia
fundamentum regnorum._” When, pursuant to their own ideals of justice,
the aristocrats as a social group execute one of their own class
for murder or robbery, for having exceeded the bounds of permitted
exploitation, the thanks and the joy of the subjects are even more
heartfelt than after victory over alien foes.
These, then, are the principal lines of development of the psychical
integration. Common interest in maintaining order and law and peace
produce a strong feeling of solidarity, which may be called “a
consciousness of belonging to the same state.”
(c) THE DIFFERENTIATION: GROUP THEORIES AND GROUP PSYCHOLOGY
On the other hand, as in all organic growth, there develops _pari
passu_ a psychic differentiation just as powerful. The interests of the
group produce strong group feelings; the upper and lower strata develop
a “class consciousness” corresponding to their peculiar interests.
The separate interest of the master group is served by maintaining
intact the imposed law of political means; such interest makes for
“conservatism.” The interest of the subject group, on the contrary,
points to the removal of the prevailing rule, to the substitution for
it of a new rule, the law of equality for all inhabitants of the state,
and makes for “liberalism” and revolution.
Herein lies the tap root of all class and party psychology. Hence
there develop, in accordance with definite psychological laws, those
incomparably mighty forms of thought which, as “class theories,”
through thousands of years of struggle guide and justify every social
contest in the consciousness of contemporaries.
“When the will speaks reason has to be silent,” says Schopenhauer, or
as Ludwig Gumplowicz states the same idea, “Man acts in accordance with
laws of nature, as an afterthought he thinks humanly.” Man’s will being
strictly “determined,” he must act according to the pressure which the
surrounding world exerts upon him; and the same law is valid for every
community of men: groups, classes, and the state itself. They “flow
from the plane of higher economic and social pressure to that of lower
pressure, along the line of least resistance.” But every individual and
each community of men believe themselves free agents; and therefore, by
an unescapable psychical law they are forced to consider the path they
are traversing as a freely chosen means, and the point toward which
they are driven as a freely chosen end. And since man is a rational
and ethical being, that is, a social entity, he is obliged to justify
before reason and morality the method and the objective point of his
movement, and to take account of the social consciousness of his time.
So long as the relations of both groups were simply those of
internationally opposed border enemies, the exercise of the political
means called for no justification, because a man of alien blood had
no rights. As soon, however, as the psychic integration develops, in
any degree, the community feeling of state consciousness, as soon as
the bond servant acquires “rights,” and the consciousness of essential
equality percolates through the mass, the political means requires a
system of justification; and there arises in the ruling class the
group theory of “legitimacy.”
Everywhere, the upholders of legitimacy justify dominion and
exploitation with similar anthropological and theological reasoning.
The master group, since it recognizes bravery and warlike efficiency
as the only virtues of a man, declares itself, the victors,--and from
its standpoint quite correctly--to be the more efficient, the better
“race.” This point of view is the more intensified, the lower the
subject race is reduced by hard labor and low fare. And since the
tribal god of the ruling group has become the supreme god in the new
amalgamated state religion, this religion declares--and again from
its view-point quite correctly--that the constitution of the state
has been decreed by heaven, that it is “tabu,” and that interference
with it is sacrilege. In consequence, therefore, of a simple logical
inversion, the exploited or subject group is regarded as an essentially
inferior race, as unruly, tricky, lazy, cowardly and utterly incapable
of self-rule or self-defense, so that any uprising against the imposed
dominion must necessarily appear as a revolt against God Himself and
against His moral ordinances. For these reasons, the dominant group at
all times stands in closest union with the priesthood, which, in its
highest positions, at least, nearly always recruits itself from their
sons, sharing their political rights and economic privileges.
This has been, and is at this day, the class theory of the ruling
group; nothing has been taken from it, not an item has been added to
it. Even the very modern argument by which, for example, the landed
nobility of old France and of modern Prussia attempted to put out
of court the claims of the peasantry to the ownership of lands, on
the allegation that they had owned the land from time immemorial,
while their peasants had only been granted a life tenure therein,--is
reproduced among the Wahuma, of Africa,[46] and probably could be shown
in many other instances.
Like their class theory, their class psychology has been, and is,
at all times the same. Its most important characteristic, the
“aristocrat’s pride,” shows itself in contempt for the lower laboring
strata. This is so inherent, that herdsmen, even after they have lost
their herds and become economically dependent, still retain their pride
as former lords: “Even the Galla, who have been despoiled of their
wealth of herds by the Somali north of the Tana, and who thus have
become watchers of other men’s herds, and even in some cases along
the Sabaki become peasants, still look with contempt upon the peasant
Watokomo, who are subject to them and resemble the Suaheli. But their
attitude is quite different toward their tributary hunting peoples,
namely, the Waboni, the Wassanai, and the Walangulo (Ariangulo) who
resemble the Galla.”[47]
The following description of the Tibbu applies, as though it had been
originally told of them, to Walter Havenaught and the rest of the poor
knights who, in the crusades, looked for booty and lordly domain. It
applies no less to many a noble fighting cock from Germany east of the
Elbe, and to many a ragged Polish gentleman. “They are men full of
self-consciousness. They may be beggars, but they are no pariahs. Many
a people under these circumstances would be thoroughly miserable and
depressed; the Tibbu have steel in their nature. They are splendidly
fitted to be robbers, warriors, and rulers. Even their system of
robbery is imposing, although it is base as a jackal’s. These ragged
Tibbus, fighting against extreme poverty and constantly on the verge
of starvation, raise the most impudent claims with apparent or real
belief in their validity. The right of the jackal, which regards the
possessions of a stranger as common property, is the protection of
greedy men against want. The insecurity of an all but perpetual state
of war brings it about that life becomes an insistent challenge, and
at the same time the reward of extortion!”[48] This phenomenon is in
nowise limited to Eastern Africa, for it is said of the Abyssinian
soldier: “Thus equipped he comes along. Proudly he looks down on every
one: his is the land, and for him the peasant must work.”[49]
Deeply as the aristocrat at all times despises the economic means and
the peasants who employ it, he admits frankly his reliance on the
political means. Honest war and “honest thievery”[G] are his occupation
as a lord, are his good right. His right--except over those who belong
to the same clique--extends just as far as his power. One finds this
high praise of the political means nowhere so well stated as in the
well-known Doric drinking song:
“I have great treasures; the spear and the sword;
Wherewith to guard my body, the bull hide shield well tried.
With these I can plough, and harvest my crop,
With these I can garner the sweet grape wine,
By them I bear the name ‘Lord’ with my serfs.
“But these never dare to bear spear and sword,
Still less the guard of the body, the bull hide shield well tried.
They lie at my feet stretched out on the ground,
My hand is licked by them as by hounds,
I am their Persian king--terrifying them by my name.”[50]
[G] Compare this with the prevalent justification of “honest graft” in
municipal or political contracts.--_Translator._
In these wanton lines is expressed the pride of warlike lords.
The following verses, taken from an entirely different phase of
civilization, show that the robber still has part in the warrior in
spite of Christianity, the Peace of God, and the Holy Roman Empire of
the German Nation. These lines also praise the political means, but in
its most crude form, simple robbery:
“Would you eke out your life, my young noble squire,
Follow then my teaching, upon your horse and join the gang!
Take to the greenwood, when the peasant comes up,
Run him down quickly, grab him then by the collar,
Rejoice in your heart, taking from him whatever he has,
Unharness his horses and get you away!”[51]
“Unless,” as Sombart adds, “he preferred to hunt nobler game and to
relieve merchants of their valuable consignments.” The nobles carried
on robbery as a natural method of supplementing their earnings,
extending it more and more as the income from their property no longer
sufficed to pay for the increasing demands of daily consumption and
luxury. The system of freebooting was considered a thoroughly honorable
occupation, since it met the demand of the essence of chivalry, that
every one should appropriate whatever was within reach of his spear
point or of the blade of his sword. The nobles learned freebooting as
the cobbler was brought up to his trade. The ballad has put this in
merry wise:
“To pillage, to rob, that is no shame,
The best in the land do quite the same.”
Besides this principal point of the “squire-archical” psychology, a
second distinguishing mark scarcely less characteristic is found in
the piety of these folk whether it be of conviction or merely strongly
accentuated in public.
It seems as though the same social ideas always force identical
characteristics on the ruling class. This is illustrated by the form
under which God, in their view, appears as their special National God
and preponderatingly as a God of War. Although they profess God as the
creator of all men, even of their enemies, and since Christianity, as
the God of Love, this does not counteract the force with which class
interests formulate their appropriate ideology.
In order to complete the sketch of the psychology of the ruling class,
we must not forget the tendency to squander, easily understood in those
“ignorant of the taste of toil,” which appears sometimes in a higher
form as generosity; nor must we forget, as their supreme trait, that
death-despising bravery, which is called forth by the coercion imposed
on a minority, their need to defend their rights at any time with arms,
and which is favored by a freedom from all labor which permits the
development of the body in hunting, sport and feuds. Its caricature
is combativeness, and a supersensitiveness to personal honor, which
degenerates into madness.
At this point a small digression: Cæsar found the Celts just at that
stage of their development, in which the nobles had obtained dominion
over their fellow clansmen. Since that time, his classic narrative
has stood as a norm--their class psychology appears as the race
psychology of all Celts. Not even Mommsen escaped this error. The
result is that now, in every book on universal history or sociology,
one may read the palpable error, repeated until contradiction is of
no avail, although a mere glance would have sufficed to show that all
peoples of all races, in the same stage of their development, have
showed the same characteristics; in Europe, Thessalians, Apulians,
Campanians, Germans, Poles, etc. Meanwhile the Celts, and specifically
the French, in different stages of their development, have showed quite
different traits of character. The psychology belongs to the stage of
development, not to the race!
Whenever, on the other hand, the religious sanctions of the “state” are
weak, or become so, there develops as a group theory on the part of the
subjects, the concept, either clear or blurred, of _Natural Law_. The
lower class regards the race pride and the assumed superiority of the
nobles as presumptuous, claims to be of as good race and blood as the
ruling class--and from their standpoint again quite correctly, since
according to their views, labor, efficiency and order are accounted the
only virtues. They are skeptical also as to the religion which is the
helper of their adversaries; and are as firmly convinced as are the
nobles of the directly opposite opinion, namely, that the privileges of
the master group violate law as well as reason. Later development is
not able to add any essential point to the factors originally given.
Under the influence of these ideas, now clearly, now obscurely brought
out, the two groups henceforth fight out their battles, each for its
own interests. The young state would be burst apart under the strain
of such centrifugal forces, were it not for the centripetal pull of
common interests, of the still more powerful state-consciousness. The
pressure of foreigners from without, of common enemies, overcomes the
inner strain of conflicting class interests. An example may be found in
the tale of the secession of the “Plebs” and the successful mission of
Menenius Agrippa. And so the young state would, like a planet, swing
through all eternity in its predetermined orbit, in accordance with
the parallelogram of forces, were it not that it and its surrounding
world is changed and developed until it produces new external and inner
energies.
(d) THE PRIMITIVE FEUDAL STATE OF HIGHER GRADE
Growth in itself conditions important changes; and the young state must
grow. The same forces that brought it into being, urge its extension,
require it to grasp more power. Even were such a young state “sated,”
as many a modern state claims to be, it would still be forced to
stretch and grow under penalty of extinction. Under primitive social
conditions Goethe’s lines apply with absolute truth: “You must rise or
fall, conquer or yield, be hammer or anvil.”
States are maintained in accordance with the same principles that
called them into being. The primitive state is the creation of warlike
robbery; and only by warlike robbery can it be preserved.
The economic want of the master group has no limits; no man is
sufficiently rich to satisfy his desires. The political means are
turned on new groups of peasants not yet subjected, or new coasts
yet unpilfered are sought out. The primitive state expands, until a
collision takes place on the edge of the “sphere of interests” of
another primitive state, which itself originated in precisely the same
way. Then we have for the first time, in place of the warlike robbery
heretofore carried on, true war in its narrower sense, since henceforth
equally organized and disciplined masses are hurled at one another.
The object of the contest remains always the same, the produce of the
economic means of the working classes, such as loot, tribute, taxes
and ground rent; but the contest no longer takes place between a group
intent on exploiting and another mass to be exploited, but between two
master groups for the possession of the entire booty.
The final result of the conflict, in nearly all instances, is the
amalgamation of both primitive states into a greater. This in turn,
naturally and by force of the same causes, reaches beyond its borders,
devours its smaller neighbors, and is perhaps in its turn devoured by
some greater state.
The subjected laboring group may not take much interest in the final
issue of these contests for the mastery; it is a matter of indifference
whether it pays tribute to one or the other set of lords. Their chief
interest lies in the course of the particular fight, which is, in any
case, paid for with their own hides. Therefore, except in cases of
gross ill treatment and exploitation, the lower classes are rightly
governed by their “state-consciousness” when, with all their might they
aid their hereditary master group in times of war. For if their master
group is vanquished, the subjects suffer most severely from the utter
devastation of war. They fight literally for wife and children, for
home and hearth, when they fight to prevent the rule of foreign masters.
The master group is involved completely in the issue of this fight for
dominion. In extreme cases, it may be completely exterminated, as were
the local nobility of the Germanic tribes in the Frankish Empire.
Nearly as bad, if not worse, is the prospect of being thrust into the
group of the serfs. Sometimes a well-timed treaty of peace preserves
their social position as master groups of subordinate rank: e. g., the
Saxon nobility in Norman England, or the Suppans in German territory
taken from the Slavs. In other cases, where the forces are about equal,
the two groups amalgamate into one master group with equal rights,
which forms a nobility whose members intermarry. This, for instance,
was the situation in the Slavic Territories, where isolated Wendish
chieftains were treated as the equals of the Germans, or in mediæval
Rome, in the case of prominent families from the Alban Hills and
Tuscany.
In this new “primitive feudal state of higher grade,” as we shall call
it, the ruling group may, therefore, disintegrate into a number of
more or less powerful and privileged strata. The organization may show
many varieties because of the well-known fact, that often the master
group separates into two subordinated economic and social layers,
developed as we saw them in the herdsmen stage: the owners of large
herds and of many slaves, and the ordinary freemen. Possibly the less
complete differentiation into social ranks in the states created by
huntsmen in the new world, is to be assigned to the circumstance that
in the absence of herds, the concomitants of that form of ownership,
and the original separation into classes, were not introduced into the
state. We shall, later, see what force was exerted on the political and
economic development of states in the old world by the differences in
rank and property of the two strata of rulers.
Similarly, as in the case of the ruling group, a corresponding process
of differentiation divides the subject group in the “primitive feudal
state of a higher grade” into various strata more or less despised
and compelled to render service. It is only necessary to recall the
very marked difference in the social and jural position occupied by
the peasantry in the Doric States, Lacedæmon and Crete, and among the
Thessalians, where the perioiki had clear rights of possession and
fairly well protected political rights, while the helots, in the latter
case the _penestai_, were almost unprotected in life and property.
Among the old Saxons also we find a class, the liti, intermediate
between the common freemen and the serfs.[52] These examples could be
multiplied; apparently they are caused by the same tendencies that
brought about the differentiation among the nobility mentioned above.
When two primitive feudal states amalgamate, their social layers
stratify in a variety of ways, which to a certain extent are comparable
to the combinations resulting from mixing together two packs of cards.
It is certain that this mechanical mixture caused by political forces,
influences the development of _castes_, that is to say, of hereditary
professions, which at the same time form a hierarchy of social classes.
“Castes are usually, if not always, consequences of conquest and
subjugation by foreigners.”[53] Although this problem has not been
completely solved, it may be said that the formation of castes has been
very strongly influenced by economic and religious factors. It is
probable that castes came about in some such way as this: state-forming
forces penetrated into existing economic organizations, and vocations
underwent adaptation, and then became petrified under the influence
of religious concepts, which, however, may also have influenced their
original formation. This seems to follow from the fact that even as
between man and woman there exist certain separations of vocation,
which, so to say, are taboo and impassable. Thus among all huntsmen,
tilling the ground is woman’s work, while among many African shepherds,
as soon as the ox-plow is used, agriculture becomes man’s work, and
then women may not, under pain of sacrilege, use the domestic cattle.[H]
[H] Similarly there are North Asiatic tribes of huntsmen, where women
are definitely forbidden to touch the hunting gear or to cross a
hunting trail.--Ratzel I, page 650.
It is likely that such religious concepts may have brought it about
that a vocation became hereditary, and then compulsorily hereditary,
especially where a tribe or a village carried on a particular craft.
This happens with all tribes in a state of nature, where intercourse
is easily possible, especially in the case of islanders. When some
such group has been conquered by another tribe, the subjects, with
their developed hereditary vocations, tend to form within the new state
entity a pure “caste.” Their caste position depends partly upon the
esteem they had heretofore enjoyed among their own people, and partly
upon the advantage which their vocation affords their new masters.
If, as was often the case, waves of conquest followed one another in
series, the formation of castes might be multiplied, especially if
in the meantime economic development had worked out many vocational
classes.
This development is probably best seen in the group of smiths, who, in
nearly all cases, have occupied a peculiar position, half feared and
half despised. In Africa especially, since the beginning of time, we
find tribes of expert smiths, as followers and dependents of shepherd
tribes. The Hyksos brought such tribes with them into the Nile country,
and perhaps owed their decisive victory to arms made by them; and
until recent times the Dinka kept the iron working Djur in a sort of
subject relation. The same applied also to the nomads of the Sahara;
while our northern sagas are filled with the tribal contrast to the
“dwarfs” and the fear of their magical powers. All the elements were at
hand in a developed state for the formation of sharply differentiated
castes.[54]
How the coöperation of religious concepts affects the beginning of
these formations may be well illustrated by an example from Polynesia.
Here, “although many natives have the ability to do ship-building,
only one privileged class may exercise the craft, so closely is the
interest of the states and the societies bound up in this art. All over
the archipelago formerly, and to this day in Fiji, the carpenters, who
are almost exclusively ship-builders, form a special caste, bear the
high sounding title of ‘the king’s workmen,’ and enjoy the prerogative
of having their own chieftains.... Everything is done in accordance
with ancient tradition; the laying the keel, the completion of the
ship, and the launching, all take place amidst religious ceremonies and
feasts.”[55]
Where superstition has been strongly developed, a genuine system
of castes may come about, based partly on economic and partly on
ethnic foundations. In Polynesia, for example, the articulation of
the classes, through the operation of the taboo, has brought about
a state of affairs very like a most thoroughgoing caste system.[56]
Similar results may be seen in Southern Arabia.[57] It is unnecessary
at this place to enlarge on the important place which religion had in
the origin and maintenance of separate castes in ancient Egypt and in
modern India.[I]
[I] Besides, it seems that the rigidity of the Indian caste-system is
not so harsh in practise. The guild seems as often to break through the
barriers of caste as the converse.--Ratzel II, page 596.
These are the elements of the primitive feudal state of higher
grade. They are more manifold and more numerous than in the lower
primitive state; but in both, legal constitution and political-economic
distribution are fundamentally the same. The products of the economic
means are still the object of the group struggle. This remains now as
ever the moving impulse of the domestic policy of the state, while the
political means continues now as ever to constitute the moving impulse
of its foreign policy in attack or in defense. Identical group theories
continue to justify, both for the upper classes and the lower, the
objects and means of external and domestic struggles.
But the development can not remain stationary. Growth differs from mere
increase in bulk; growth means a constantly heightening differentiation
and integration.
The farther the primitive feudal state extends its dominion, the more
numerous its subjects, and the denser its population, the more there
develops a political-economic division of labor, which calls forth new
needs and new means of supplying them; and the more there come into
sharp contrasts the distinctions of economic, and consequently of
social, class strata, in accordance with what I have called the “law
of the agglomeration about existing nuclei of wealth.” This growing
differentiation becomes decisive for the further development of the
primitive feudal state, and still more for its conclusion.
This conclusion is not meant to be, in any sense, the physical end
of such a state. We do not mean the death of a state, whereby such a
feudal state of the higher type disappears, in consequence of conflict
with a more powerful state, either on the same or on a higher plane
of development, as was the case of the Mogul states of India or of
Uganda in their conflicts with Great Britain. Neither does it mean
such a stagnation as that into which Persia and Turkey have fallen,
which represents for a time only a pause in development, since these
countries, either of their own force or by foreign conquest, must
soon be pushed on the way of their destiny. Neither have we meant the
rigidity of the gigantic Chinese Empire, which can last only so long as
foreign powers refrain from forcing its mysterious gates.[J]
[J] Had we the space, a detailed exposition of this exceptional
development of a feudal state would be tempting. China would be well
worth a more detailed discussion, since, in many aspects it has
approached the condition of “free citizenship” more closely than any
people of Western Europe. China has overcome the consequences of the
feudal system more thoroughly than we Europeans have; and has made,
early in its development, the great property interests in the land
harmless, so that their bastard offspring, capitalism, hardly came into
being; while in addition, it has worked out to a considerable degree
the problems of coöperative production and of coöperative distribution.
The outcome here spoken of means the further development of the
primitive feudal state, a matter of importance to our understanding of
universal history as a _process_. The principal lines of development
into which this issue branches off are twofold and of fundamentally
different character. _But this polar opposition is conditioned by
a like contrast between two sorts of economic wealth each of which
increases in accordance with the “law of agglomeration about existing
nuclei.”_ In the one case, it is movable property; in the other, landed
property. Here it is the capital of commerce, there property in land,
accumulating in the hands of a smaller and smaller number, and thereby
overturning radically the articulation of classes, and with it the
whole State.
The maritime State is the scene of the development of movable wealth;
the territorial State is the embodiment of the development of landed
property. The final issue of the first is _capitalistic exploitation_
by slavery, the outcome of the latter is, first of all, the _developed
feudal State_.
Capitalistic exploitation by slavery, the typical result of the
development of the so-called “antique States” on the Mediterranean,
does not end in the death of states, which is of no importance, but in
the death of peoples, because of the consumption of population. In the
pedigree of the historical development of the State, it forms a side
branch, from which no further immediate growth can take place.
The developed feudal State, however, represents the principal branch,
the continuation of the trunk; and is therefore the origin for
the further growth of the State. Thence it has developed into the
State governed by feudal systems; into absolutism; into the modern
constitutional State; and if we are right in our prognosis, it will
become a “free citizenship.”
So long as the trunk grew only in one direction, i. e., to include the
primitive feudal State of higher grade, our sketch of its growth and
development could and did comprise both forms. Henceforth, after the
bifurcation, our story branches and follows each branch to its last
twig.
We begin, then, with the maritime states, although they are not the
older form. On the contrary, as far back as the dawn of history clears
the fog of prehistoric existence, the first strong states were formed
as territorial states, which then, by their own powers, attained the
scale of developed feudal States. But beyond this stage, at least as
regards those States most interesting to our culture, most of them
either remained stationary or fell into the power of maritime states;
and then, infected with the deadly poison of capitalistic exploitation
through slavery, were destroyed by the same plague.
The further progress of the expanded feudal states of higher grade
could take place only after the maritime states had run their
course: mighty forms of domination and statescraft these became, and
they subsequently influenced and furthered the conformation of the
territorial states that grew from their ruins.
For that reason the story of the fate of maritime states must be first
traced, as these are the introduction to the higher forms of state
life. After first tracing the lateral branch, we shall then return to
the starting point, the primitive feudal State, follow the main trunk
to the development of the modern constitutional State, and anticipating
actual history, sketch the “free citizenship” of the future.