THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE CONSTITUTIONAL STATE
If we understand the outcome of the feudal state, in the sense given
above, as further organic development either forward or backward
conditioned by the power of inner forces, but not as a physical
termination, brought about or conditioned by outside forces, then we
may say that the outcome of the feudal state is determined essentially
by the independent development of social institutions called into being
by the economic means.
Such influences may come also from without, from foreign states
which, thanks to a more advanced economic development, possess a
more tensely centralized power, a better military organization, and
a greater forward thrust. We have touched on some of these phases.
The independent development of the Mediterranean feudal states was
abruptly stopped by their collision with those maritime states,
which were on a much higher plane of economic growth and wealth,
and more centralized, such as Carthage, and more especially Rome.
The destruction of the Persian Empire by Alexander the Great may
be instanced in this connection, since Macedonia had at that time
appropriated the economic advances of the Hellenic maritime states.
The best example within modern times is the foreign influence in the
case of Japan, whose development was shortened in an almost incredible
manner by the military and peaceful impulses of Western European
civilization. In the space of barely one generation it covered the road
from a fully matured feudal state to the completely developed modern
constitutional state.
It seems to me that we have only to deal with an abbreviation of
the process of development. As far as we can see--though henceforth
historical evidence becomes meager, and there are scarcely any examples
from ethnography--the rule may be stated that forces from within,
even without strong foreign influences, lead the matured feudal state,
with strict logical consistency, on the same path to the identical
conclusion.
The creators of the economic means controlling this advance are the
cities and their system of money economy, which gradually supersedes
the system of natural economy, and thereby dislocates the axis about
which the whole life of the state swings; in place of landed property,
mobile capital gradually becomes preponderant.
(a) THE EMANCIPATION OF THE PEASANTRY
All this follows as a natural consequence of the basic premise of the
feudal state. The more the great private landlords become a landed
nobility, the more in the same measure must the feudal system of
natural economy break to pieces. The more great landed property rights
become vested in and nurtured by the princes of territorial states,
the more is the feudal system based on payments in kind bound to
disintegrate; one may say that the two keep step in this development.
So long as the ownership of great estates is comparatively limited, the
primitive principle of the bee-keeper, allowing his peasants barely
enough for subsistence, can be carried out. When, however, these
expand into territorial dimensions, and include, as is regularly the
case, accretions of land which are the results of successful warfare,
or by the relinquishment and subinfeudation through heritage or
political marriages of smaller land owners, scattered widely about the
country and far from the master’s original domains, then the policy
of the bee-keeper can no longer be carried out. Unless, therefore,
the territorial magnate means to keep in his pay an immense mass of
overseers, which would be both expensive and politically unwise, he
would have to impose on his peasants some fixed tribute, partly rental
and partly tax. The economic need of an administrative reform unites,
therefore, with the political necessity, to elevate the “plebs,” in
the way which has already been discussed.
The more the territorial magnate ceases to be a private landlord,
the more exclusively he tends to become a subject of public law,
viz., prince of a territory, the more the solidarity mentioned above,
between prince and people grows. We saw that some few magnates even
as far back as the period of transition from great landed estates to
principalities, found it to their greatest interest to carry on a
“mild” government. This accomplished the result, not only of educating
their plebs to a more virile consciousness toward the state, but also
had the effect of making it easy for the few remaining common freemen
to give up their political rights in return for protection; while it
was still more important, in that it deprived their neighbors and
rivals of their precious human material. When the territorial prince
has finally reached complete _de facto_ independence, his self interest
must prompt him steadfastly to persevere in the path thus begun. Should
he, however, again invest his bailiffs or officers with lands and
peasants, he will still have the most pressing political interest to
see to it that his subjects are not delivered over to them without
restraint. In order to retain his control, the prince will limit the
right of the “knights” to incomes from lands to definite payments in
kind and limited forced labor, reserving to himself that required in
the public interests, such as forced labor on highways or on bridges.
We shall soon come to see that the circumstance that in all developed
feudal states the peasants have at least two masters claiming service,
is decisive for their later rise.
For all these reasons, the services to be required of peasants in a
developed feudal state must in some fashion be limited. Henceforth,
all surplus belongs to him free from the control of the landlord.
With this change, the character of landed property has been utterly
revolutionized. Heretofore the landlord, as of right, was entitled to
the entire revenue saving only what was absolutely necessary to permit
his peasants to subsist and continue their brood; while hereafter, the
total product of his work, as of right, belongs to the peasant, saving
only a fixed charge for his landlord as ground rent. The possession
of vast landed estates has developed into (_manorial_) _rights. This
completes the second important step taken by humanity toward its goal._
The first step was taken when man made the transition from the stage
of bear to that of the bee-keeper, and thereby discovered slavery;
this step abolishes slavery. Laboring humanity, heretofore only _an
object_ of the law, now for the first time becomes an entity capable
of enjoying rights. The _labor motor_, without rights, belonging to
its master, and without effective guarantees of life and limb, has now
become the taxpaying subject of some prince. Henceforth the economic
means, now for the first time assured of its success, develops its
forces quite differently. The peasant works with incomparably more
industry and care, obtains more than he needs, and thereby calls
into being the “city” in the economic sense of the term, viz., the
industrial city. The surplus produced by the peasantry calls into
being a demand for objects not produced in the peasant economy; while
at the same time, the more intensive agriculture brings about a
reduction of those industrial by-products heretofore worked out by the
peasant house industry.
Since agriculture and cattle-raising absorb in ever increasing degrees
the energies of the rural family, it becomes possible and necessary to
divide labor between original production and manufacture; the village
tends to become primarily the place of the former, the industrial city
comes into being as the seat of the latter.
(b) THE GENESIS OF THE INDUSTRIAL STATE
Let there be no misunderstanding: we do not maintain that the city
comes thus into being, but only the _industrial city_. There has been
in existence the real historical city, to be found in every developed
feudal state. Such cities came into being either because of a purely
political means, as a stronghold,[134] or by the coöperation of
the political with economic means, _as a market place_, or because
of some religious need, as the environs of some temple.[T] Wherever
such a city in the historical sense exists in the neighborhood, the
newly arising industrial city tends to grow up about it; otherwise it
develops spontaneously from the existing and matured division of labor.
As a rule, it will in its turn grow into a stronghold and have its own
places of worship.
[T] “Every place of worship gathers about it dwellings of the priests,
schools, and rest-houses for pilgrims.”--Ratzel, l. c. II., p. 575.
Naturally, every place toward which great pilgrimages proceed becomes
an extended trade center. We may see the remembrances thereof in the
fact that the great wholesale markets, held at stated times in Northern
Europe, are called _Messen_ from the religious ceremony.
These are but accidental historical admixtures. In its strict economic
sense “city” means the place of the economic means, or the exchange
and interchange for equivalent values between rural production and
manufacture. This corresponds to the common use of language, by which a
stronghold however great, an agglomeration of temples, cloisters and
places of pilgrimage however extensive, were they conceivable without
any place for exchange, would be designated after their external
characteristics as “like a city” or “resembling a city.”
Although there may have been few changes in the exterior of the
historical city, there has taken place an internal revolution on
a magnificent scale. _The industrial city is directly opposed to
the state._ As the state is the developed political means, _so the
industrial city is the developed economic means_. The great contest
filling universal history, nay its very meaning, henceforth takes place
between city and state.
The city as an economic, political body undermines the feudal system
with political and economic arms. With the first the city _forces_,
with the second it _lures_, their power away from the feudal master
class.
This process takes place in the field of politics by the interference
of the city, now a center of its own powers, in the political mechanism
of the developed feudal state, between the central power and the local
territorial magnates and their subjects. The cities are the strongholds
and the dwelling places of warlike men, as well as depots of material
for carrying on war (arms, etc.); and later they become central
supply reservoirs for money used in the contests between the central
government and the growing territorial princes, or between these in
their internecine wars. Thus they are important strategic points or
valuable allies; and may by far-sighted policy acquire important rights.
As a rule, the cities take the part of the crown in fights against
the feudal nobles, from social reasons, because the landed nobles
refuse to recognize the social equality, demanded as of right by
their more wealthy citizens; from political reasons, because the
central government, thanks to the solidarity between prince and
people, is more apt to be influenced by common interests than is
the territorial magnate, who serves only his private interests; and
finally from economic reasons, because city life can prosper only in
peace and safety. The practises of chivalry, such as club law, and
private warfare, and the knights’ practise of looting caravans are
irreconcilable with the economic means; and therefore, the cities are
faithful allies of the guardians of peace and justice, first to the
emperor, later on, to the sovereign territorial prince; and when the
armed citizenship breaks and pillages some robber baron’s fortress,
the tiny drop reflects the identical process happening in the ocean of
history.
In order successfully to carry this political rôle the city must
attract as many citizens as possible, an endeavor also forced on it
by purely economic considerations, since both divisions of labor and
wealth increase with increased citizenship. Therefore cities favor
immigration with all their powers; and once more show in this the polar
contrast of their essential difference from the feudal landlords. The
new citizens thus attracted into the cities are withdrawn from the
feudal estates, which are thereby weakened in power of taxation and
military defense in proportion as the cities are strengthened. The
city becomes a mighty competitor at the auction, wherein the serf is
knocked down to the highest bidder, to the one, that is to say, who
offers the most rights. The city offers the peasant _complete liberty_,
and in some cases house and courtyard. The principle, “city air frees
the peasant” is successfully fought out; and the central government,
pleased to strengthen the cities and to weaken the turbulent nobles,
usually confirms by charter the newly acquired rights.
_The third great move in the progress of universal history is to be
seen in the discovery of the honor of free labor_; or better in its
rediscovery, it having been lost sight of since those far-off times in
which the free huntsman and the subjugated primitive tiller enjoyed
the results of their labor. As yet the peasant bears the mark of the
pariah and his rights are little respected. But in the wall-girt,
well-defended city, the citizen holds his head high. He is a freeman in
every sense of the word, free even at law, since we find in the grants
of rights to many early enfranchised cities (_Ville-franche_) the
provision that a serf residing therein “a year and a day” undisturbed
by his master’s claim is to be deemed free.
Within the city walls there are still various ranks and grades of
political status. At first the old settlers, the men of rank equal
with the nobles of the surrounding country, the ancient freemen of the
burgh, refuse to the newcomers, usually poor artisans or hucksters, the
right of sharing in the government. But, as we saw in the case of the
maritime cities, such gradations of rank can not be maintained within
a business community. The majority, intelligent, skeptical, closely
organized and compact, forces the concession of equal rights. The only
difference is that the contest is longer in a developed feudal state,
because now the fight concerns not only the parties at interest. The
great territorial magnates of the neighborhood and the princes hinder
the full development of the forces by their interference. In the
maritime states of the ancient world, there was no _tertius gaudens_
who could derive any profit from the contests within the city, since
outside the cities there existed no system of powerful feudal lords.
These then, are the political arms of the cities in their contest with
the feudal state: alliances with the crown, direct attack, and the
enticing away of the serfs of the feudal lords into the enfranchising
air of the city. Its economic weapons are no less effective, the change
from payments in kind to the system of _money as a means of exchange_
is inseparably connected with civic methods, is the means whereby the
method of payment in kind is utterly destroyed, and with it the feudal
state.
(c) THE INFLUENCES OF MONEY ECONOMY
The sociological process set into motion by the system of money economy
is so well known and its mechanics are so generally recognized, that a
few suggestions will suffice.
Here, as in the case of the maritime states, the consequence of the
invading money system is that the _central government becomes almost
omnipotent, while the local powers are reduced to complete impotence_.
Dominion is not an end in itself, but merely the means of the rulers
to their essential object, the enjoyment without labor of articles
of consumption as many and as valuable as possible. During the
prevalence of the system of natural economy there is no other way of
obtaining them save by dominion; the wardens of the marches and the
territorial princes obtain their wealth by their political power. The
more peasants who are owned, the greater is the military power and
the larger the scope of the territory subjected, and thus the greater
are the revenues. As soon, however, as the products of agriculture
are exchangeable for enticing wares, it becomes more rational for
every one primarily a private man, i. e., for every feudal lord not a
territorial prince--and this now includes the knights--to decrease as
far as possible the number of peasants, and to leave only such small
numbers as can with the utmost labor turn out the greatest product from
the land, and to leave these as little as possible. The net product
of the real estate, thus tremendously increased, is now taken to the
markets and sold for goods, and is no longer used to keep a fencible
body of guards. Having dissolved this following, the knight becomes
simply the manager of a knight’s fee.[U] With this event, as with one
blow, the central power, that of king or territorial prince, is without
a rival for the dominion, and has become politically omnipotent. The
unruly vassals, who formerly made the weak kings tremble, after a short
attempt at joint rule during the time of the government of the feudal
estates, have changed into the supple courtiers, begging favors at the
hands of some absolute monarch, like Louis XIV. And he furthermore
has become their last resort, since the military power, now solely
exercised by him as the paymaster of the forces, alone can protect them
from the ever-immanent revolt of their tenants, ground to the bone.
While in the time of natural economy the crown was in nearly every
instance allied with peasants and cities against nobility, we now have
the union of the absolute kings, born from the feudal state, with
their nobility, against the representatives of the economic means.
[U] See reference as to the meaning of _Rittergutsbesitz_, ante, page
84.--_Translator._
Since the days of Adam Smith it has been customary to state this
fundamental revolution in some such form, as though the foolish nobles
had sold their birthright for a mess of pottage, when they traded their
dominion for foolish articles of luxury. No view can be more erroneous.
Individuals often err in the safe-guarding of their interests: _a class
for any prolonged period never is in error_.
The fact of the matter is, that the system of money payments
strengthened the central power so mightily and immediately, that even
without the interposition of the agrarian upheaval, any resistance
of the landed nobility would have been senseless. As is shown in the
history of antiquity, the army of a central government, financially
strong, is always superior to feudal levies. Money permits the armament
of peasant sons, and the drilling of them into professional soldiers,
whose solid organization is always superior to the loose confederation
of an armed mass of knights. Besides, at this stage, the central
government could also count on the aid of the well-armed squares of the
urban guilds.
Gunpowder did the rest in Western Europe. Firearms, however, are a
product that can be turned out only in the industrial establishments
of a wealthy city. Because of these technical military reasons, even
that feudal landlord who might not care for the newly established
luxuries and who might only be desirous of maintaining or increasing
his independent position, must subject his territories to the same
agrarian revolution; since, in order to be strong, he now before all
else must have _money_, which in the new order of things, has become
the _nervus rerum_, either to buy arms or to engage mercenaries. A
second capitalistic wholesale undertaking, therefore, has come into
being through the system of payments in money; besides the wholesale
management of landed estates, war is carried on as a great business
enterprise--the condottieri appear on the stage. The market is full of
material for armies of mercenaries, the discharged guards of the feudal
lords and the young peasants whose lands have been taken up by the
lords.
There are instances where some petty noble may mount to the throne of
some territorial principality, as happened many a time in Italy, and as
was accomplished by Albrecht Wallenstein, even as late as the period
of the Thirty Years’ War. But that is a matter of individual fate, not
affecting the final result. The local powers disappear from the contest
of political forces as independent centers of authority and retain
the remnant of their former influence only so long as they serve the
princes as a source of supplies; that is, the state composed of its
feudal estates.
The infinite increase in the power of the crown is then enhanced by a
second creation of the system of payment in money, by _officialdom_.
We have told in detail of the vicious circle which forced the feudal
state into a cul-de-sac between agglomeration and dissolution, as long
as its bailiffs had to be paid with “lands and peasants” and thereby
were nursed into potential rivals of their creator. With the advent of
payments in money, the vicious circle is broken. Henceforth the central
government carries on its functions through paid employees, permanently
dependent on their paymaster.[135] Henceforth there is possible a
permanently established, tensely centralized government, and empires
come into being, such as had not existed since the developed maritime
states of antiquity, which also were founded on the payments in money.
This revolution of the political mechanism was everywhere put into
motion by the development of the money economy--with but one exception,
as far as I can see, viz., Egypt.
Here, according to the statement of experts, no definite information is
to be had, and it seems that the system of money exchanges appears as a
matured institution only in Greek times. Until that time, the tribute
of the peasants was paid in kind;[136] and yet we find, shortly after
the expulsion of the Shepherd Kings, during the New Empire (_circa_
sixteenth century B. C.), that the absolutism of the kings was fully
developed: “The military power is upheld by foreign mercenaries, the
administration is carried on by a _centralized body of officials_
dependent on the royal favor, _while the feudal aristocracy has
disappeared_.”[137]
It may seem that this exception proves the rule. Egypt is a country
of exceptional geographic conformation. Jammed into a narrow compass,
between mountains and the desert, a natural highway, the River Nile,
traverses its entire length, and permits the transportation of bulky
freight with much greater facility than the finest road. And this
highway made it easy for the Pharaoh to assemble the taxes of all his
districts in his own storehouses, the so-called “houses”[138] and from
them to supply his garrisons and civil employees with the products
themselves _in natura_. For that reason Egypt, after it has once
become unified into an empire, stays centralized, until foreign powers
extinguish its life as a “state.” “This circumstance is the source of
the enormous and plenary power exercised by the Pharaoh where payments
are still made in kind; the exclusive and immediate control of the
objects of daily consumption are in his hand. The ruler distributes
to his employees only such quantities of the entire mass of goods as
appears to him good and proper; and since the articles of luxury are
nearly all exclusively in his hands, he enjoys on this account also an
extraordinary plenitude of power.”[139]
With this one exception, where a mighty force executes the task, the
power of circulating money seems in all cases to have dissolved the
feudal state.
The cost of the revolution fell on peasants and cities. When peace is
made, the crown and the petty nobles mutually sacrifice the peasantry,
dividing them, so to say, into two ideal halves; the crown grants to
the nobility the major part of the peasants’ common lands, and the
greatest part of their working powers that are not yet expropriated;
the nobility concedes to the crown the right of recruiting and of
taxing both peasantry and cities. The peasant, who had grown wealthy in
freedom, sinks back into poverty and therefore into social inferiority.
The former feudal powers now unite as allies to subjugate the cities,
except where, as in Upper Italy, these become feudal central powers
themselves. (And even in that case they for the most part all fall
into the power of captains of mercenaries, condottieri.) The power of
attack of the adversaries has become stronger, the power of the cities
has diminished. For with the decay of the peasantry, their purchase
power diminishes and with it the prosperity of the cities, based
thereon. The small cities in the country stagnate and become poorer,
and being now incapable of defense, fall a prey to the absolutist rule
of the territorial princes; the larger cities, where the demand for
the luxuries of the nobles has brought into being a strong trading
element, split up into social groups and thus fritter away their
political strength. The immigration now pouring into their walls is
composed of discharged and broken mercenaries, dispossessed peasants,
pauperized mechanics from the smaller towns; it is in other words a
_proletarian_ immigration. For the first time there appears, in the
terminology of Karl Marx, the “free laborer,” in masses, competing
with his own class in the labor markets of the cities. And again, the
“law of agglomeration” enters to form effective class and property
distinctions, and thus to tear apart the civic population. Wild fights
take place in the cities between the classes; through which the
territorial prince, in nearly every instance, again succeeds in gaining
control. The only cities that can permanently escape the deadly embrace
of the prince’s power are the few genuine “maritime states,” or “city
states.”
As in the case of the maritime states, the pivot of the state’s life
has again shifted over to another place. Instead of circling about
wealth vested in landed estates, it now turns about capitalized wealth,
because in the meantime property in real estate has itself become
“capital.” _Why is it that the development does not, as in the case of
the maritime states, open out into the capitalistic expropriation of
slave labor?_
There are two controlling reasons, one internal, the other external.
The external reason is to be found in this, that slave hunting on a
profitable scale is scarcely possible at this time in any part of the
world, since nearly all countries within reach are also organized
as strong states. Wherever it is possible, as for instance, in the
American colonies of the West European powers, it develops at once.
The external reason may be found in the circumstance that the
peasant of the interior countries, in contrast to the conditions
prevailing in the maritime states, is subject, not to one master, but
to at least two[V] persons entitled to his service, his prince and
his landlord. Both resist any attempt to diminish their peasants’
capacity for service, since this is essential to their interests.
Especially strong princes did much for their peasants, e. g., those of
Brandenburg-Prussia. For this reason, the peasants, although exploited
miserably, yet retained their personal liberty and their standing as
subjects endowed with personal rights in all states where the feudal
system had been fully developed when the system of payments in money
replaced that of payments in kind.
[V] In mediæval Germany the peasants pay tribute in many cases not only
to the landlord and to the territorial prince, but also to the provost
and to the bailiff.
The evidence that this explanation is correct may be found in the
relations of those states which were gripped by the system of exchange
in money, before the feudal system had become worked out.
This applies especially to those districts of Germany formerly occupied
by Slavs, but particularly to _Poland_. In these districts, the feudal
system had not yet been worked out as thoroughly as in the regions
where the demand for grain products in the great western industrial
centers had changed the nobles, the subjects of public law, into the
owners of a _Rittergut_,[W] the subjects of private economic interests.
In these districts, the peasants were subject to the duty of rendering
service only to _one_ master, who was both their liege lord and
landlord; and because of that, there came into being the republics of
nobles mentioned above, which, as far as the pressure of their more
progressed neighbors would permit, tended to approach the capitalistic
system of exploiting of slave labor.[140]
[W] See foot-note on page 84.
The following is so well known that it can be stated briefly. The
system of exchange by means of money matures into capitalism, and
brings into being new classes in juxtaposition to the landowners; the
capitalist demands equal rights with the formerly privileged orders,
and finally obtains them by revolutionizing the lower plebs. In this
attack on the sacredly established order of things, the capitalists
unite with the lower classes, naturally under the banner of “natural
law.” But as soon as the victory has been achieved, the class based on
movable wealth, the so-called middle class, turns its arms on the lower
classes, makes peace with its former opponents, and invokes in its
reactionary fight on the proletarians, its late allies, the theory of
legitimacy, or makes use of an evil mixture of arguments based partly
on legitimacy and partly on pseudo-liberalism.
In this manner the state has gradually matured from the primitive
robber state, through the stages of the developed feudal state, through
absolutism, to the modern constitutional state.
(d) THE MODERN CONSTITUTIONAL STATE
Let us give the mechanics and kinetics of the modern state a moment’s
time.
In principle, it is the same entity as the primitive robber state or
the developed feudal state. There has been added, however, one new
element--_officialdom_, which at least will have this object, that
in the contest of the various classes, it will represent the common
interests of the state as a whole. In how far this purpose is subserved
we shall investigate in another place. Let us at this time study the
state in respect to those characteristics which it has brought over
from its youthful stages.
Its _form_ still continues to be domination, its content still remains
the exploitation of the economic means. The latter continues to be
limited by public law, which on the one hand protects the traditional
“distribution” of the total products of the nation; while on the
other it attempts to maintain at their full efficiency the taxpayers
and those bound to render service. The internal policy of the state
continues to revolve in the path prescribed for it by the parallelogram
of the centrifugal force of class contests and the centripetal impulse
of the common interests in the state; and its foreign policy continues
to be determined by the interests of the master class, now comprising
besides the landed also the moneyed interests.
In principle, there are now, as before, only two classes to be
distinguished: one a ruling class, which acquires more of the total
product of the labor of the people--the economic means--than it has
contributed, and a subject class, which obtains less of the resultant
wealth than it has contributed. Each of these classes, in turn,
depending on the degree of economic development, is divided into more
or fewer sub-classes or strata, which grade of according to the
fortune or misfortune of their economic standards.
Among highly developed states there is found introduced between the two
principal classes a transitional class, which also may be subdivided
into various strata. Its members are bound to render service to the
upper class, while they are entitled to receive service from the
classes below them. To illustrate with an example, we find in the
ruling class in modern Germany at least three strata. First come
the great landed magnates, who at the same time are the principal
shareholders in the larger industrial undertakings and mining
companies: next stand the captains of industry and the “bankocrats,”
who also in many cases have become owners of great estates. In
consequence of this they quickly amalgamate with the first layer.
Such, for example, are the Princes Fugger, who were formerly bankers
of Augsburg, and the Counts of Donnersmarck, owners of extensive mines
in Silesia. And finally there are the petty country nobles, whom we
shall hereafter term _junker_ or “squires.” The subject class, at all
events, consists of petty peasants, agricultural laborers, factory and
mine hands, with small artisans and subordinate officials. The “middle
classes” are the classes of the transition: composed of the owners of
large and medium-sized farms, the small manufacturers, and the best
paid mechanics, besides those rich “bourgeois,” such as Jews, who have
not become rich enough to overcome certain traditional difficulties
which oppose their arrival at the stage of intermarriage with the
upper class. All these render unrequited service to the upper class,
and receive unrequited service from the lower classes. This determines
the result which occurs either to the stratum as a whole or to the
individuals in it; that is to say, either a complete acceptance into
the upper class, or an absolute sinking into the lower class. Of the
(German) transitional classes, the large farmers and the manufacturers
of average wealth have risen, while the majority of artisans have
descended to the lower classes. We have thus arrived at the kinetics of
classes.
The interests of every class set in motion an actual body of associated
forces, which impel it with a definite momentum toward the attainment
of a definite goal. All classes whatever have the same goal; viz., the
total result of the productive labor of all the denizens of a given
state. Every class attempts to obtain as large a share as possible
of the national production; and since all strive for identically the
same object, the _class contest_ results. This contest of classes
is the content of all history of states, except in so far as the
interest of the state as a whole produces common actions. These
we may at this point disregard, since they have been given undue
prominence by the traditional method of historical study, and lead
to one-sided views. Historically this class contest is shown to be a
_party fight_. A party is originally and in its essence nothing save
an organized representation of a class. Wherever a class, by reason
of social differentiation, has split up into numerous sub-classes
with varied separate interests, the party claiming to represent it
disintegrates at the earliest opportunity into a mass of tiny parties,
and these will either be allies or mortal enemies according to the
degree of divergence of the class interests. Where on the other hand
a former class contrast has disappeared by social differentiation,
the two former parties amalgamate in a short time into a new party.
As an example of the first case we may recall the splitting off
of the artisans and Anti-Semite parties from the party of German
Liberalism, as a consequence of the fact that the first represented
descending groups, while the latter represented ascending ones. A
characteristic example of the second category may be found in the
political amalgamation which bound together into the farmers’ union
the petty landed squires of the East Elbian country with West Elbian
rich peasants on large plantations. Since the petty squire sinks and
the farmer rises, they meet half-way. All party policy can have but one
meaning, viz., to procure for the class represented as great a share
as is possible of the total national production. In other words, the
preferred classes intend to maintain their share, at the very least,
at the ancient scale, and if possible, to increase it toward such a
maximum as shall permit the exploited classes just a bare existence, to
keep them fit to do their work, just as in the bee-keeper stages. Their
object is to confiscate the entire surplus product of the economic
means, a surplus which increases enormously as population becomes
more dense and division of labor more specialized. On the other hand,
the group of exploited classes would like to reduce their tribute to
the zero-point, and to consume the entire product themselves; and the
transitional classes work as much as possible toward the reduction of
their tribute to the upper classes, while at the same time they strive
to increase their unrequited income from the classes underneath.
This is the aim and the content of all party contests. The ruling class
conducts this fight with all those means which its acquired dominion
has handed down to it. In consequence of this, the ruling class sees
to it that legislation is framed in its interest and to serve its
purpose--class legislation. These laws are then applied in such wise
that the blunted back of the sword of justice is turned upward, while
its sharpened edge is turned downward--class justice. The governing
class in every state uses the administration of the state in the
interest of those belonging to it under a twofold aspect. In the first
place it reserves to its adherents all prominent places and all offices
of influence and of profit, in the army, in the superior branches of
government service, and in places on the bench; and secondly, by these
very agencies, it directs the entire policy of the state, causes its
class-politics to bring about commercial wars, colonial policies,
protective tariffs, legislation in some degree improving the conditions
of the laboring classes, electoral reform policies, etc. As long as the
nobles ruled the state, they exploited it as they would have managed an
estate; when the bourgeoisie obtain the mastery, the state is exploited
as though it were a factory. And the class-religion covers all defects,
as long as they can be endured, with its “don’t touch the foundation
of society.”
There still exist in the public law a number of political privileges
and economic strategic positions, which favor the master class: such
as, in Prussia, a system of voting which gives the plutocrats an
undue advantage over the less favored classes, a limitation of the
constitutional rights of free assembly, regulations for servants, etc.
For that reason, the _constitutional fight_, carried on over thousands
of years and dominating the life of the state, is still uncompleted.
The fight for improved conditions of life, another phase of the party
and class struggle, usually takes place in the halls of legislative
bodies, but often it is carried on by means of demonstrations in the
streets, by general strikes, or by open outbreaks.
But the plebs have finally and definitely learned that these remnants
of feudal strategic centers, do not, except in belated instances,
constitute the final stronghold of their opponents. It is not in
political, but rather in economic conditions that the cause must
be sought, which has brought it about that even in the modern
constitutional state, the “distribution of wealth” has not been changed
in principle. Just as in feudal times, the great mass of men live in
bitter poverty; even under the best conditions, they have the meager
necessities of life, earned by hard, crushing, stupefying forced
labor, no longer exacted by right of political exploitation, but just
as effectively forced from the laborers by their economic needs. And
just as before in the un-reformed days, the narrow minority, a new
master class, a conglomerate of holders of ancient privileges and of
newly rich, gathers in the tribute, now grown to immensity; and not
only does not render any service therefor, but flaunts its wealth in
the face of labor by riotous living. The class contest henceforth
is devoted more and more to these economic causes, based on vicious
systems of distribution; and it takes shape in a hand-to-hand fight
between exploiters and proletariat, carried on by strikes, coöperative
societies and trades unions. The economic organization first forces
recognition, and then equal rights; then it leads and finally controls
the political destinies of the labor party. In the end therefore the
trade union controls the party. Thus far the development of the state
has progressed in Great Britain and in the United States.
Were it not that there has been added to the modern state an entirely
new element, its _officialdom_, the constitutional state, though more
finely differentiated and more powerfully integrated, would, so far as
form and content go, be little different from its prototypes.
As a matter of principle, the state officials, paid from the funds
of the state, are removed from the economic fights of conflicting
interests; and therefore it is rightly considered unbecoming for any
one in the service of the government to be taking part in any money
making undertaking, and in no well ordered bureaucracy is it tolerated.
Were it possible ever thoroughly to realize the principle, and did not
every official, even the best of them, bring with him that concept
of the state held by the class from which he originated, one would
find in officialdom, as a matter of fact, that moderating and order
making force, removed from the conflict of class interests, whereby the
state might be led toward its new goal. It would become the fulcrum of
Archimedes whence the world of the state might be moved.
But the principle, we are sorry to say, can not be carried out
completely; and furthermore, the officials do not cease being real men,
do not become mere abstractions without class consciousness. This may
be quite apart from the fact that, in Europe at least, a participation
in a definite form of undertakings--viz., handling large landed
estates--is regarded as a favorable means of getting on in the service
of the state, and will continue to be so as long as the landed nobility
preponderates. In consequence of this, many officials on the Continent,
and one may even say the most influential officials, are subject to
pressure by enormous economic interests; and are unconsciously, and
often against their will, brought into the class contests.
There are factors, such as extra allowances made by either fathers or
fathers-in-law, or hereditary estates, and affinity to the persons in
control of the landed and moneyed interest or allied with them, whereby
the solidarity of interest among the ruling class is if anything
increased from the fact that these officials, practically without
exception, are taken from a class with whom since their boyhood days
they have been on terms of intimacy. Were there, however, no such unity
of economic interests the demeanor of the officials would be influenced
entirely by the pure interests of the state.
For this reason, as a rule, the most efficient, most objective and
most impartial set of officials is found in poor states. Prussia, for
example, was formerly indebted to its poverty for that incomparable
body of officials who handled it through all its troubles. These
employees of the state were actually, in consonance with the rule laid
down above, dissociated completely from all interests in money making,
directly or indirectly.
This ideal body of officials is a rare occurrence in the more wealthy
states. The plutocratic development draws the individual more and
more into its vortex, robbing him of his objectivity and of his
impartiality. And yet the officials continue to fulfil the duty which
the modern state requires of them, to preserve the interests of the
state as opposed to the interests of any class. And this interest is
preserved by them, even though against their will, or at least without
clear consciousness of the fact, in such manner that the economic
means, which called the bureaucracy into being, is in the end advanced
on its tedious path of victory, as against the political means. No
one doubts that the officials carry on class politics, prescribed for
them by the constellation of forces operating in the state; and to
that extent, they certainly do represent the master class from which
they sprang. But they do ameliorate the bitterness of the struggle, by
opposing the extremists in either camp, and by advocating amendments
to existing law, when the social development has become ripened for
their enactment, without waiting until the contest over these has
become acute. Where an efficient race of princes governs, whose
momentary representative adopts the policy of King Frederick, which was
to regard himself only as “the first servant of the state,” what has
been said above applies to him in an increased degree, all the more
so as his interests, as the permanent beneficiary of the continued
existence of the state, would before all else prompt him to strengthen
the centripetal forces and to weaken the centrifugal powers. In the
course of the preceding we have in many instances noted the natural
solidarity between prince and people, as an historic force of great
value. In the completed constitutional state, in which the monarch in
but an infinitesimally small degree is a subject of private economic
interests, he tends to be almost completely “an official.” This
community of interests is emphasized here much more strongly than in
either the feudal state or the despotically governed state, where the
dominion, at least for one-half its extent, is based on the private
economic interests of the prince.
Even in a constitutional state, the outer form of government is not
the decisive factor; the fight of the classes is carried on and leads
to the same result in a republic as in a monarchy. In spite of this,
it must be admitted that there is more probability, that, other things
being equal, the curve of development of the state in a monarchy will
be more sweeping, with less secondary incurvity, because the prince is
less affected by momentary losses of popularity, is not so sensitive
to momentary gusts of disapproval, as is a president elected for a
short term of years, and he can therefore shape his policies for longer
periods of time.
We must not fail to mention a special form of officialdom, the
scientific staffs of the universities, whose influence on the upward
development of the state must not be underestimated. Not only is this
a creation of the economic means, as were the officials themselves,
but it at the same time represents an historical force, _the need of
causality_, which we found heretofore only as an ally of the conquering
state. We saw that this need created superstition while the state was
on a primitive stage; its bastard, the taboo, we found in all cases
to be an effective means of control by the master class. From these
same needs then, _science_ was developed, attacking and destroying
superstition, and thereby assisting in preparation of the path of
evolution. That is the incalculable historical service of science and
especially of the universities.