O Estado - Franz Oppenheimer - Tradução colaborativa

O Livro:

O Estado (1903) foi um diferencial gigantesco para as teorias da formação do estado. Antigamente, as teorias mais comuns eram as contratualistas (o estado se formou de forma voluntária) e a teoria de estratificação social do socialista Friedrich Engels (com a introdução da propriedade privada, as classes surgiram e os ricos criaram o estado para explorar os pobres). Franz Oppenheimer introduziu evidências antropológicas robustas dando origem à teoria da conquista para a formação do estado. Anatomia do Estado, de Murray Rothbard, é baseado, em grande parte, nesse livro. Os antropólogos sempre citam o sociólogo alemão em suas obras sobre formação do estado primitivo.

Algumas concepções importantes do livro:

Meios políticos e meios econômicos: quando se tem um objetivo, a pessoa pode tentar atingi-lo através do meio político, ou seja, roubo, violência, ou pelo meio econômico, ou seja, voluntário, consensual entre todas as partes envolvidas.

Os seis estágios de formação do Estado: pilhagem > trégua > tributo > ocupação > monopólio > estado primitivo

Como contribuir?

A ideia do tópico é que cada pessoa pegue uma parte do livro e traduza para o português E/OU revise as traduções já feitas até que consigamos traduzir o livro por completo. Esse livro é muito importante e é até estranho que nunca tenha sido traduzido. [link do livro em inglês e espanhol no final]

Sumário
• Prefácio do Autor
• Introdução
- • (a) As teorias do Estado
- • (b) A ideia sociológica do Estado
• Capítulo I – A gênese do Estado
- • (a) Meios políticos e econômicos
- • (b) Pessoas sem Estado: caçadores e coletores
- • (c) Povos anteriores ao Estado: pastores e vikings
- • (d) A gênese do Estado
• Capítulo II – O Estado feudal primitivo
- • (a) A forma de domínio
- • (b) A integração
- • (c) A diferenciação: teorias de grupo e psicologia de grupo
- • (d) O Estado feudal primitivo de grau superior
• Capítulo III – O Estado marítimo
- • (a) Tráfico na era pré-histórica
- • (b) Comércio e Estado primitivo
- • (c) A gênese do Estado marítimo
- • (d) Essência e questão do Estado marítimo
• Capítulo IV – O desenvolvimento do Estado feudal
- • (a) A gênese da propriedade territorial
- • (b) O poder central no Estado feudal primitivo
- • (c) A desintegração política e social do Estado feudal primitivo
- • (d) A amalgamação(mistura) étnica
- • (e) O Estado feudal desenvolvido
• Capítulo V – O desenvolvimento do Estado constitucional
- • (a) A emancipação dos camponeses
- • (b) A gênese do Estado industrial
- • (c) As influências da economia do dinheiro
- • (d) O Estado constitucional moderno
• Capítulo VI – A tendência do desenvolvimento do Estado
• Notas

Links para o livro:

Em inglês: [Tens de ter uma conta e sessão iniciada para poderes visualizar este link]
Em espanhol: [Tens de ter uma conta e sessão iniciada para poderes visualizar este link]

Capa:

[Tens de ter uma conta e sessão iniciada para poderes visualizar este link]

Eu começo:

Introdução

(a) As teorias do Estado

Este tratado fala sobre o Estado apenas do ponto de vista sociológico – e não do jurídico-sociológico – como eu entendo a palavra, sendo tanto uma filosofia da história quanto uma teoria da economia. Nosso objetivo é traçar o desenvolvimento do Estado desde sua gênese sociopsicológica até sua forma constitucional moderna; depois disso, procuraremos apresentar um prognóstico bem fundamentado sobre seu desenvolvimento futuro. Como rastrearemos apenas o ser interior e essencial do Estado, não precisamos nos preocupar com as formas externas de direito sob as quais sua vida internacional e intranacional é assumida. Este tratado é, em suma, uma contribuição para a filosofia do desenvolvimento do Estado; mas apenas na medida em que a lei do desenvolvimento aqui traçada, a partir de sua forma genérica, afeta também os problemas sociais comuns a todas as formas do Estado moderno.

Com essa limitação de tratamento em mente, podemos descartar todas as doutrinas concebidas de direito constitucional já de início. Mesmo um exame superficial das teorias convencionais do Estado é suficiente para mostrar que elas não fornecem explicação de sua gênese, essência e propósito. Essas teorias representam todas as variações entre todos os extremos imagináveis. Rousseau deriva o Estado de um contrato social, enquanto Carey atribui sua origem a um bando de ladrões. Platão e os marxistas dotam o Estado de onipotência, tornando-o o senhor absoluto do cidadão em todas as questões políticas e econômicas; Platão chega até ao ponto de desejar que o Estado regule as relações sexuais. A Escola de Manchester, por outro lado, indo ao extremo oposto pelo liberalismo, faria o Estado exercer apenas funções de segurança e justiça, e, portanto, logicamente teria como resultado um anarquismo científico que deveria exterminar completamente o Estado. Dessas visões diversas e conflitantes, é impossível estabelecer um princípio fixo ou formular um conceito satisfatório da verdadeira essência do Estado. Esse conflito irreconciliável de teorias é facilmente explicado pelo fato de nenhuma das teorias convencionais tratar o Estado do ponto de vista sociológico. No entanto, o Estado é um fenômeno comum a toda a história, e sua natureza essencial só pode ser esclarecida por um estudo amplo e abrangente da história universal. Exceto no campo da sociologia, a estrada imperial da ciência, nenhum tratamento do Estado seguiu esse caminho até agora. Todas as teorias do Estado anteriores foram teorias de classes. Para antecipar um pouco o resultado de nossas pesquisas, todo Estado foi e é um Estado de classes, e toda teoria do Estado foi e é uma teoria de classes.

Uma teoria de classes vem, no entanto, da necessidade, não do resultado da investigação e da razão, mas um subproduto dos desejos e da vontade. Seus argumentos não são usados para estabelecer a verdade, mas como armas na disputa por interesses materiais. O resultado, portanto, não é ciência, mas ignorância. Ao entender o Estado, podemos de fato reconhecer a essência das teorias sobre o Estado. Mas o inverso não é verdadeiro. Uma compreensão das teorias sobre o Estado não nos dará nenhuma pista de sua essência.

O seguinte pode ser declarado como um conceito predominante, particularmente dominante no ensino universitário, da origem e essência do Estado. Representa uma visão que, apesar dos múltiplos ataques, continua sendo afirmada:

Defende-se que o Estado é uma organização da vida comunitária do ser humano, que se origina em razão de um instinto social implantado nos homens pela natureza (doutrina estoica); ou então é provocada por um impulso irresistível de acabar com a “guerra de todos contra todos” e coagir o selvagem, que se opõe ao esforço organizado, a uma vida comunitária pacífica em vez da luta antissocial na qual todos os brotos do progresso são destruídos (doutrina epicurista). Esses dois conceitos aparentemente inconciliáveis foram fundidos pela intermediação da filosofia medieval. Isso, fundamentado no raciocínio teológico e na crença na Bíblia, desenvolveu a opinião de que o homem, originalmente e por natureza uma criatura social, é, através do pecado original, o fratricídio de Caim e a transgressão na Torre de Babel, dividido em inúmeras tribos, que lutam ao máximo, até que se unam pacificamente como um Estado.

Essa visão é totalmente insustentável. Confunde o conceito lógico de uma classe com algumas espécies subordinadas. Dado que o Estado é uma forma de coesão política organizada, é preciso lembrar também que é uma forma com características específicas. Todo Estado da história foi ou é um Estado de classes, uma sociedade de grupos sociais superiores e inferiores, baseada em distinções de posição ou de propriedade. Esse fenômeno deve, então, ser chamado de “Estado”. A história se ocupa com isso apenas.

É justificável, portanto, designarmos todas as outras formas de organização política pelo mesmo termo, sem diferenciação adicional, caso nunca tenha existido outra coisa senão um Estado de classes ou tenha sido a única forma concebível. Pelo menos, uma prova pode ser adequadamente solicitada, para mostrar que cada organização política concebível, mesmo que originalmente não representasse uma política de classes sociais e econômicas superiores e inferiores, uma vez que é necessariamente sujeita a leis inerentes ao desenvolvimento, deve o final ser resolvido na forma específica de classe da história. Se houvesse tal prova, ela ofereceria de fato apenas uma forma de mistura política, exigindo, por sua vez, diferenciação em vários estágios de desenvolvimento, a saber, o estágio preparatório, quando não existe distinção de classe, e o estágio de maturidade, quando este está totalmente desenvolvido.

Ex-alunos da filosofia do Estado estavam vagamente conscientes desse problema. E eles tentaram apresentar a prova exigida de que, devido às tendências inerentes ao desenvolvimento, toda organização política humana deve gradualmente se tornar um Estado de classes. Filósofos da lei canônica transmitiram essa teoria aos filósofos da lei da natureza. A partir disso, através da mediação de Rousseau, tornou-se parte dos ensinamentos dos economistas; e até hoje isso domina os seus pontos de vista e os desvia dos fatos.

Essa prova presumida baseia-se no conceito de uma “acumulação primitiva”, ou um estoque original de riqueza, em terras e bens móveis, produzido por meio de forças puramente econômicas; uma doutrina justamente ridicularizada por Karl Marx como um “conto de fadas”. Seu método de raciocínio se aproxima disto:

Em algum lugar, em um país fértil e de grande extensão, vários homens livres, de status igual, formam uma união para proteção mútua. Gradualmente, eles se diferenciam em classes proprietárias. Os que são mais dotados de força, sabedoria, capacidade de economia, indústria e cautela, adquirem lentamente uma quantidade básica de bens imóveis ou móveis; enquanto os estúpidos e menos eficientes, os que negligenciam e desperdiçam, permanecem sem posses. Os abastados emprestam sua propriedade produtiva para os menos abastados em troca de tributo, aluguel ou terreno e, assim, tornam-se continuamente mais ricos, enquanto os outros sempre permanecem pobres. Essas diferenças de posse gradualmente desenvolvem distinções de classe social; pois em todos os lugares os ricos têm preferência, enquanto somente eles têm o tempo e os meios para se dedicar aos assuntos públicos e transformar as leis por eles administradas em seu próprio proveito. Assim, com o tempo, desenvolve-se uma classe dominante e possuidora de propriedades, e um proletariado, uma classe sem propriedade. O Estado primitivo de companheiros livres e iguais torna-se um Estado de classes, por uma lei inerente ao desenvolvimento, porque em toda massa concebível de homens há, como pode ser visto com facilidade, fortes e fracos, espertos e tolos, cautelosos e esbanjadores.

Isso parece bastante plausível e coincide com a experiência de nossa vida cotidiana. Não é nem um pouco incomum ver um membro especialmente talentoso da classe baixa subir de seu ambiente anterior e até mesmo alcançar uma posição de liderança na classe alta; ou, inversamente, ver algum membro esbanjador ou mais fraco do grupo superior “perder sua classe” e descer ao proletariado.

E, no entanto, toda essa teoria está totalmente errada; é um “conto de fadas”, ou é uma teoria de classes usada para justificar os privilégios das classes altas. O Estado de classes nunca se originou dessa maneira e nunca poderia ter se originado dessa maneira. A história mostra que não; e a economia mostra dedutivamente, com um testemunho absoluto, matemático e vinculativo, que não poderia. Um problema simples na aritmética elementar mostra que a suposição de uma acumulação original é totalmente errônea e não tem nada a ver com o desenvolvimento do Estado de classes.

A prova é a seguinte: todos os professores de direito natural, etc, declararam por unanimidade que a diferenciação em classes de renda e classes sem propriedade só pode ocorrer quando todas as terras férteis estiverem ocupadas. Enquanto o homem tiver ampla oportunidade de ocupar terras desocupadas, “ninguém”, diz Turgot, “pensaria em entrar ao serviço de outro;” podemos acrescentar: “pelo menos em relação aos salários, que não estão propensos a serem mais altos do que os ganhos de um camponês independente que trabalha em uma propriedade não hipotecada e suficientemente grande”; embora a hipoteca não seja possível enquanto a terra ainda estiver livre para trabalhar ou ser apropriada, tão livre quanto o ar e a água. A matéria que pode ser apropriada não tem valor que possibilite que ela seja penhorada, uma vez que ninguém concede um empréstimo de coisas que podem ser adquiridas em troca de nada.

Os filósofos da lei natural, então, assumiram que a ocupação completa do solo devia ter ocorrido muito cedo, por causa do aumento natural de uma população originalmente pequena. Eles estavam com a impressão de que, na época, no século XVIII, isso havia acontecido muitos séculos antes, e eles ingenuamente deduziram o grupo de classes existente das condições assumidas naquele longo período de tempo. Nunca passou pela cabeça deles resolver o problema; e, com poucas exceções, seu erro foi copiado por sociólogos, historiadores e economistas. Apenas recentemente, meus números foram calculados e são realmente surpreendentes. *

Podemos determinar, com precisão aproximada, a quantidade de terras de fertilidade média na zona temperada e também a quantidade suficiente para permitir que uma família de camponeses exista confortavelmente ou quanto essa família pode trabalhar com suas próprias forças, sem se envolver com ajuda exterior ou servos permanentes da fazenda. Na época da migração dos bárbaros (350 a 750 d.C.), o lote de cada homem saudável era cerca de trinta morgen (igual a vinte acres) em terras médias, em terreno muito bom, apenas dez a quinze morgen (igual a sete ou dez acres), sendo quatro morgen iguais a um hectare. Desse terreno, pelo menos um terço, e às vezes metade, é deixado sem cultivo a cada ano. O restante dos quinze a vinte morgen era suficiente para alimentar e engordar as imensas famílias desses alemães produtores de crianças, e isso apesar da técnica primitiva, pela qual se perdia pelo menos metade da capacidade produtiva de um dia. Vamos supor que, nestes tempos modernos, trinta morgen (igual a vinte acres) para o camponês médio sejam suficientes para sustentar uma família. Assumimos então um terreno suficientemente grande para atender a qualquer objeção. A Alemanha moderna, povoada como é, contém uma área agrícola de trinta e quatro milhões de hectares (igual a oitenta e quatro milhões, quinze mil, quatrocentos e oitenta acres). A população agrícola, incluindo trabalhadores rurais e suas famílias, soma dezessete milhões; de modo que, assumindo cinco pessoas para uma família e uma divisão igual das terras agrícolas, cada família teria dez hectares (iguais a vinte e cinco acres). Em outras palavras, nem mesmo na Alemanha de nossos dias chegaria a um ponto em que, de acordo com as teorias dos adeptos da lei natural, a diferenciação em classes começaria.

Aplique o mesmo processo a países menos densamente povoados, como, por exemplo, os Estados do Danúbio, a Turquia, a Hungria e a Rússia, e resultados ainda mais surpreendentes aparecerão. De fato, ainda existem na superfície da Terra setenta e três bilhões, duzentos milhões de hectares (igual a cento e oitenta bilhões, oitocentos e oitenta milhões e quatrocentos e dezesseis mil acres); dividindo na primeira quantidade o número de seres humanos de todas as profissões, seja qual for, um bilhão, oitocentos milhões, cada família de cinco pessoas poderia possuir cerca de trinta morgen (igual a dezoito e meio acres) e ainda deixar cerca de dois terços do planeta desocupado.

Se, portanto, as causas puramente econômicas conseguirão diferenciar as classes pelo crescimento de uma classe trabalhadora sem propriedade, o tempo ainda não chegou; e o ponto crítico no qual a propriedade da terra causará uma escassez natural é lançada no futuro sombrio – se é que pode chegar.

De fato, porém, nos séculos passados, em todas as partes do mundo, tivemos um Estado de classes, possuindo classes no topo e uma classe operária sem propriedade na base, mesmo quando a população era muito menos densa do que é hoje. Agora é verdade que o Estado de classes só pode surgir onde toda a área fértil foi ocupada completamente; e desde que eu mostrei que, mesmo no presente momento, todo o terreno não está ocupado economicamente, isso deve significar que ele foi antecipado politicamente. Como a terra não poderia ter adquirido “escassez natural”, a escassez deve ter sido “legal”. Isso significa que a terra foi antecipada por uma classe dominante contra sua classe de subordinados, e o assentamento impedido. Portanto, o Estado, como Estado de classes, não pode ter se originado de outra maneira senão através da conquista e subjugação.

Essa visão, a chamada “ideia sociológica do Estado”, como mostramos a seguir, é sustentada de maneira ampla por fatos históricos bem conhecidos. E, no entanto, a maioria dos historiadores modernos a rejeitaram, sustentando que ambos os grupos, amalgamados pela guerra em um Estado, antes desta época haviam, cada um por si mesmo, formado um “Estado”. Como não há método para obter provas históricas contrárias, uma vez que os primórdios da história da humanidade são desconhecidos, devemos chegar a um veredito de “não comprovado”, se não, dedutivamente, há a certeza absoluta de que o Estado, como a história mostra, o Estado de classes, não poderia ter acontecido, exceto através da subjugação bélica. A massa de evidências mostra que nosso cálculo simples exclui qualquer outro resultado.

(b) A ideia sociológica de Estado

À ideia original, puramente sociológica, de Estado, acrescentei a fase econômica e a formulei da seguinte maneira:

O que é, então, o Estado como um conceito sociológico? O Estado, completamente em sua gênese, essencial e quase completamente durante os primeiros estágios de sua existência, é uma instituição social, forçada por um grupo vitorioso de homens sobre um grupo derrotado, com o único objetivo de regular o domínio do grupo vitorioso sobre os vencidos e protegendo-se contra a revolta interna e os ataques externos. Teleologicamente, esse domínio não tinha outro propósito senão a exploração econômica dos vencidos pelos vencedores.

Nenhum Estado primitivo conhecido na história originou-se de qualquer outra maneira. Sempre que uma tradição confiável relata o contrário, ela diz respeito à fusão de dois Estados primitivos totalmente desenvolvidos em um corpo de organização mais completa; ou então, é uma adaptação aos homens da fábula das ovelhas que fez do seu urso um rei para se proteger do lobo. Mas, mesmo neste último caso, a forma e o conteúdo do Estado tornaram-se precisamente os mesmos daqueles Estados em que nada interveio e que se tornaram imediatamente “Estados lupinos”.

A pouca história aprendida em nossos dias de escola é suficiente para provar essa doutrina genérica. Em todo lugar, encontramos uma tribo guerreira de homens selvagens rompendo as fronteiras de algumas pessoas menos guerreiras, estabelecendo-se como nobreza e fundando seu Estado. Na Mesopotâmia, o mesmo ocorre [onda segue onda/wave follows wave], Estado segue Estado – babilônios, amoritanos, assírios, árabes, medos, persas, macedônios, partos, mongóis, seldshuks, tártaros, turcos; no Nilo, hicsos, núbios, persas, gregos, romanos, árabes, turcos; na Grécia, os Estados dóricos são exemplos típicos; na Itália, romanos, ostrogodos, lombardos, alemães; na Espanha, cartagineses, visigodos, árabes; na Gália, romanos, francos, borgonheses, normandos; na Grã-Bretanha, saxões, normandos. Na Índia, ondas atrás de ondas de clãs bélicos selvagens inundaram o país até as ilhas do Oceano Índico. O mesmo acontece com a China. Nas colônias europeias, encontramos o mesmo tipo, sempre que um elemento estabelecido da população foi encontrado, como por exemplo, na América do Sul e no México. Onde esse elemento está ausente, onde apenas caçadores errantes são encontrados, que podem ser exterminados, mas não subjugados, os conquistadores recorrem ao recurso de importar de longe massas de homens a serem explorados, sujeitos perpetuamente ao trabalho forçado e, portanto, o comércio de escravos surge.

Uma aparente exceção é encontrada apenas nas colônias europeias nas quais é proibido substituir a falta de uma população indígena domiciliada pela importação de escravos. Uma dessas colônias, os Estados Unidos da América, está entre as formações de Estado mais poderosas de toda a história. A exceção encontrada deve ser explicada por isso: a massa de homens a serem explorados e trabalhados sem interrupção importa a si mesma, pela emigração em grandes hordas vindas de Estados primitivos ou daqueles em estágios mais avançados de desenvolvimento nos quais a exploração se tornou insuportável, enquanto liberdade de movimento foi alcançada. Nesse caso, pode-se falar de uma infecção vinda de longe, com “Estado” sendo trazido pelos infectados de terras estrangeiras. Onde, no entanto, nessas colônias, a imigração é muito limitada, seja por causa de distâncias excessivas e consequente alto custo para se mudar de casa, seja por causa de regulações que limitam a imigração, percebemos uma aproximação ao fim final do desenvolvimento do Estado, que hoje reconhecemos como o resultado necessário e final, mas para os quais ainda não encontramos uma terminologia científica. Aqui, novamente, no desenvolvimento dialético, uma mudança na quantidade está ligada a uma mudança na qualidade. A forma antiga é preenchida com novos conteúdos. Ainda encontramos um “Estado” na medida em que representa a regulação tensa, garantida pela força externa, na qual é assegurada a convivência social de grandes corpos de homens; mas não é mais o “Estado” em seu sentido antigo. Não é mais o instrumento de dominação política e exploração econômica de um grupo social por outro; não é mais um “Estado de classes”. Assemelha-se bastante a uma condição que parece ter surgido através de um “contrato social”. Esse estágio é aproximado pelas colônias australianas, exceto Queensland, que, após a maneira feudal, ainda explora os meio escravizados kanakas. É quase atingido na Nova Zelândia.

Enquanto não houver concordância geral quanto à origem e essência dos Estados historicamente conhecidos ou ao significado sociológico da palavra “Estado”, seria inútil tentar forçar o uso de um novo nome para as comunidades mais avançadas. Eles continuarão a ser chamados de “Estados” apesar de todos os protestos, especialmente por causa do prazer de usar conceitos confusos. Para os propósitos deste estudo, no entanto, propomos empregar um novo conceito, uma alavanca verbal diferente, e falaremos do resultado do novo processo como uma “Cidadania dos Homens Livres”.

Esta sucinta pesquisa dos Estados do passado e do presente deve, se houver espaço, ser complementada por um exame dos fatos oferecidos pelo estudo dos povos e dos Estados que não são examinados em nossa falsamente chamada “História Universal”. Neste sentido, a garantia pode ser aceita de que aqui novamente nossa regra geral é válida sem exceção. Em todo lugar, seja no arquipélago malaio ou no “grande laboratório sociológico da África”, em todos os lugares deste planeta onde o desenvolvimento das tribos atingiu uma forma mais elevada, o Estado cresceu da subjugação de um grupo de homens por outro. Sua justificativa básica, sua razão de ser, foi e é a exploração econômica dos subjugados.

A revisão sumária feita até agora pode servir como prova da premissa básica deste esboço. O descobridor, a quem, antes de todos os outros, somos gratos por essa linha de investigação é o professor Ludwig Gumplowicz de Graz, jurista e sociólogo, que coroou uma vida corajosa por uma corajosa morte escolhida por si. Podemos, então, em contornos nítidos, seguir nos sofrimentos da humanidade o caminho que o Estado seguiu em seu progresso através dos tempos. Propomos agora traçar desde o estado primitivo fundado na conquista até a “cidadania dos homens livres”.

Capítulo I - A gênese do Estado

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 cooperated 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) Meios políticos e econômicos

Existem dois meios fundamentalmente opostos pelos quais o homem, necessitando de sustento, é impelido a obter os meios necessários para satisfazer seus desejos. Estes são trabalho e roubo, o próprio trabalho de uma pessoa e a apropriação forçada do trabalho de outras pessoas. Roubo! Apropriação forçada! Estas palavras transmitem-nos ideias acerca de crime e presídio, pois somos contemporâneos de uma civilização desenvolvida, baseada especificamente na inviolabilidade da propriedade. E essa percepção não se perde quando estamos convencidos de que o roubo em terra e no mar é a relação primitiva da vida, assim como o comércio de guerreiros – o que também, durante muito tempo, é apenas roubo em massa organizado – constitui a mais respeitada das ocupações. Tanto por isso, como também pela necessidade de possuirmos no desenvolvimento posterior deste estudo, termos concisos, claros e nitidamente opostos para esses contrastes tão importantes, proponho na discussão a seguir chamar o trabalho próprio e a troca equivalente do próprio trabalho pelo trabalho de outros, os “meios econômicos” para a satisfação das necessidades, enquanto a apropriação não correspondida do trabalho de outros será chamada de “meios políticos”.

A ideia não é totalmente nova; os filósofos da história sempre encontraram essa contradição e tentaram formulá-la. Mas nenhuma dessas fórmulas levou a premissa ao seu fim lógico completo. Em nenhum lugar é demonstrado claramente que a contradição consiste apenas nos meios pelos quais o mesmo objetivo, a aquisição de objetos econômicos de consumo, deve ser obtido. No entanto, este é o ponto crítico do raciocínio. No caso de um pensador do calibre de Karl Marx, pode-se observar que confusão ocorre quando o objetivo econômico e os meios econômicos não são estritamente diferenciados. Todos esses erros, que no final levaram a esplêndida teoria de Marx para tão longe da verdade, tiveram como base a falta de diferenciação clara entre os meios de satisfação econômica das necessidades e o seu fim. Isso o levou a designar a escravidão como uma “categoria econômica” e a força como uma “força econômica” – meias verdades que são muito mais perigosas do que inverdades totais, uma vez que sua descoberta é mais difícil e falsas conclusões delas são inevitáveis.

Por outro lado, nossa própria diferenciação nítida entre os dois meios para o mesmo fim nos ajudará a evitar tal confusão. Esta será a nossa chave para a compreensão do desenvolvimento, da essência e do propósito do Estado; e uma vez que toda a história universal até agora foi apenas a história dos Estados, será a chave para uma compreensão da história universal também. Toda a história do mundo, desde os tempos primitivos até a nossa própria civilização, apresenta uma única fase, uma competição entre os meios econômicos e políticos; e pode apresentar apenas esta fase até que tenhamos alcançado a cidadania livre.

(b) Pessoas sem Estado: caçadores e coletores

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” (glebce 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.*

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) Povos anteriores ao Estado: pastores e 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 Sir-jaenes 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,* 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

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 “vagince 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 aegis 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 Phoenicians 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, Dalmatian 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) A gênese do Estado

As hordas de caçadores são incomparavelmente mais fracas do que os pastores com quem ocasionalmente se encontram, tanto em número quanto na força dos guerreiros individualmente. Naturalmente, eles não podem suportar o impacto. Eles fogem para os planaltos e montanhas, onde os pastores não tendem a segui-los, não só por causa das dificuldades físicas envolvidas, mas também porque seu gado não encontra pasto ali; ou então entram em uma forma de relação clientelista, como acontecia frequentemente na África, especialmente em tempos muito antigos. Quando os hicsos invadiram o Egito, esses caçadores dependentes os seguiram. Os caçadores costumam pagar pela proteção um tributo desprezível na forma de espólios da caça, e são usados para reconhecimento e vigilância. Mas o caçador, sendo um “anarquista prático”, muitas vezes provoca a sua própria destruição em vez de se submeter ao trabalho regular. Por essas razões, nenhum “Estado” jamais surgiu desse contato.
Os camponeses lutam como recrutas indisciplinados e com seus únicos combatentes indisciplinados; de modo que, a longo prazo, embora sejam numerosos, não são mais capazes de resistir ao ataque dos pastores fortemente armados do que os caçadores. Mas o campesinato não foge. O camponês está apegado ao seu terreno e está habituado ao trabalho regular. Ele permanece, cede à sujeição e paga tributo ao seu conquistador; essa é a gênese dos Estados terrestres no Velho Mundo.
No Novo Mundo, onde os maiores animais de pastoreio, gado, cavalos, camelos, não eram indígenas, descobrimos que, em vez do pastor, o caçador é o conquistador do camponês, pela sua habilidade infinitamente superior no uso de armas e na disciplina militar.
“No mundo das licitações, descobrimos que o contraste entre pastores e camponeses desenvolveu a civilização; no Novo Mundo, o contraste é entre as tribos sedentárias e nômades. Os toltecks, dedicados à agricultura, lutaram contra tribos selvagens (com uma organização militar altamente desenvolvida) invadindo do norte, tão indefinidamente quanto o Irã com Turan”.25
Isso se aplica não apenas ao Peru e ao México, mas América por inteira, um fundamento forte para a opinião de que a base fundamental da civilização é a mesma em todo o mundo, sendo seu desenvolvimento consistente e regular nas mais diversas condições econômicas e geográficas. Sempre que a oportunidade se apresenta, e o homem possui o poder, ele prefere os meios políticos aos econômicos para a preservação de sua vida. E talvez isso não seja verdade apenas para o homem, pois, de acordo com o livro A Vida das Abelhas, de Maeterlinck, um enxame que uma vez fez a experiência de obter mel de uma colmeia estrangeira, por roubo em vez de por construção tediosa, é daí em diante estragado pelos “meios econômicos”. Das abelhas trabalhadoras, desenvolvem-se as abelhas ladras.
Deixando de lado as formações do Estado do Novo Mundo, que não têm grande significado na história universal, a causa da gênese de todos os Estados é o contraste entre camponeses e pastores, entre operários e ladrões, entre bosques e pradarias. Ratzel, a respeito da sociologia do ponto de vista geográfico, expressa isso de forma inteligente:
“É preciso lembrar que os nômades nem sempre destroem a civilização oposta do povo sedentário. Isso se aplica não apenas às tribos, mas também aos Estados, mesmo aos de certo poderio. O caráter bélico dos nômades é um grande fator na criação de Estados. Isso se manifesta nas imensas nações da Ásia controladas por dinastias e exércitos nômades, como a Pérsia, governada pelos turcos; China, conquistada e governada pelos mongóis e manchus; e nos Estados mongol e radjaputa da Índia, bem como nos Estados na fronteira do Sudão, onde a mistura dos elementos anteriormente hostis ainda não se desenvolveu, embora eles estejam unidos por benefício mútuo. Em nenhum lugar é demonstrado tão claramente como aqui, na fronteira dos povos nômades e camponeses, que os grandes movimentos do impulso para a civilização por parte dos nômades não são o resultado de atividade civilizadora, mas de façanhas bélicas, prejudicial para o trabalho pacífico a princípio. Sua importância reside na capacidade dos nômades de manter unidas os povos sedentários que, de outra forma, desmoronariam facilmente. No entanto, isso não exclui o grande aprendizado que eles obtêm de seus súditos... Ainda assim, todas essas pessoas trabalhadoras e inteligentes não tinham e não podiam ter a vontade e o poder de governar, e nem o espírito militar e o senso para a ordem e subordinação que convém a um Estado. Por essa razão, os senhores do Sudão nascidos no deserto governam seu povo negro, assim como os manchus governam seus súditos chineses. Isso ocorre de acordo com uma lei, válida de Tombuctu a Pequim, onde formações de Estado vantajosas surgem em ricas terras de camponeses adjacentes a uma vasta pradaria; onde uma alta cultura material de povos sedentários é violentamente subjugada ao serviço dos habitantes das pradarias com energia, capacidade bélica e desejo de governar”.26
Na gênese do Estado, a partir da sujeição de um povo camponês a uma tribo de pastores ou a nômades do mar, há seis estágios que podem ser distinguidos.
Na discussão a seguir, não se deve presumir que o atual desenvolvimento histórico deve, em cada um dos casos, escalar todos os estágios um por um. Apesar disso, o argumento não depende de pura construção teórica, uma vez que cada estágio em particular é encontrado em diversos exemplos, tanto na história do mundo quanto na etnologia, e há Estados que aparentemente progrediram por todos eles. Mas há muito mais Estados que pularam um ou mais desses estágios.

Estágio 1. O Saque.

O primeiro estágio trata de roubo e morte em lutas por fronteira, combates intermináveis que não são interrompidos nem pela paz nem pelo armistício. É marcado pelo assassinato de homens, rapto de crianças e mulheres, pilhagem de rebanhos e queima de residências. Mesmo que os invasores sejam derrotados no começo, eles retornam em grupos cada vez mais fortes, impelidos pelo dever de uma vingança de sangue. Às vezes, o grupo camponês pode se reunir, organizar sua milícia e talvez derrotar o ágil inimigo temporariamente; mas a mobilização é muito lenta e os suprimentos a serem trazidos para o deserto muito caros para os camponeses. A milícia camponesa não carrega, como faz o inimigo, seu estoque de comida – seus rebanhos – para o campo.

No sudoeste da África, os alemães recentemente experimentaram as dificuldades que uma força bem disciplinada e superior, equipada com um trem de suprimentos, com uma ferrovia voltando para sua base de suprimentos, e com os milhões do Império Alemão atrás, pode ter com um um punhado de pastores guerreiros, que foram capazes de fazer os alemães recuarem definitivamente.
No caso das arrecadações primitivas, essa dificuldade é aumentada pelo espírito limitado do camponês, que leva em consideração apenas sua própria vizinhança, e o fato de que, enquanto a guerra está acontecendo, as terras não são cultivadas. Portanto, em tais casos, a longo prazo, o grupo pequeno, mas compacto e facilmente mobilizável, constantemente derrota a massa maior, mas desarticulada, da mesma forma que a pantera triunfa sobre o búfalo.

Este é o primeiro estágio da formação dos Estados. O Estado pode permanecer estacionário neste ponto por séculos, por milhares de anos. A seguir está um exemplo totalmente característico:

“Anteriormente, toda a extensão de uma tribo turcomana limitava-se a um largo cinturão que poderia ser designado como seu ‘distrito de pilhagem’. Tudo ao norte e a leste de Chorassan, embora nominalmente sob domínio persa, por décadas pertenceu mais aos turcomanos, jomudes, goklenes e outras tribos das planícies limítrofes, do que propriamente aos persas. Os tekinzes, de maneira semelhante, saquearam toda a área de Kiwa a Bucara, até que outras tribos turcomanas serem coagidas com sucesso, pela força ou pelo suborno, a agirem como uma espécie de amortecedor. Inúmeros outros exemplos podem ser encontrados na história da série de oásis que se estende entre a Ásia Oriental e Ocidental diretamente através das estepes de sua parte central, onde desde os tempos antigos os chineses exerceram uma influência predominante por possuírem todos os centros estratégicos importantes, como o Oásis de Chami. Os nômades, vindo do norte e do sul, tentavam constantemente pousar nessas ilhas de solo fértil, que deviam se parecer como as Ilhas dos Abençoados para eles. E toda horda, carregada de espólio ou fugindo após a derrota, era protegida pelas planícies. Embora as ameaças mais imediatas tenham sido evitadas pelo enfraquecimento contínuo dos mongóis, e pelo atual domínio do Tibete, a última insurreição dos dunganes mostrou com que facilidade as ondas de uma tribo móvel rompem essas ilhas de civilização. Somente após a destruição dos nômades, impossível por enquanto houver vastas planícies na Ásia Central, sua existência poderá ser garantida definitivamente”.27
Toda a história do Velho Mundo está repleta de exemplos bem conhecidos de expedições em massa, que devem ser atribuídas ao primeiro estágio de desenvolvimento do Estado, na medida em que visavam, não a conquista, mas diretamente o saque. A Europa Ocidental sofreu com essas expedições nas mãos dos celtas, alemães, hunos, ávaros, árabes, magiares, tártaros, mongóis e turcos por terra; enquanto os vikings e os sarracenos a molestaram por mar. Essas hordas inundaram continentes inteiros muito além dos limites de seu território de pilhagem costumeiro. Elas desapareceram, voltaram, foram absorvidas e deixaram para trás apenas terras devastadas. Em muitos casos, porém, elas avançaram em alguma parte do distrito inundado diretamente para o sexto e último estágio da formação do Estado, em casos onde estabeleceram um domínio permanente sobre a população camponesa. Ratzel descreve essas migrações em massa de maneira excelente da seguinte forma:

“As expedições das grandes hordas de nômades contrastam com esse movimento, gota a gota e passo a passo, pois transbordaram com uma força tremenda, principalmente na Ásia Central e em todos os países vizinhos. Os nômades deste distrito, assim como os da Arábia e do Norte da África, unem a mobilidade em seu modo de vida com uma organização que une toda a sua massa como um único objeto. Parece ser uma característica dos nômades que eles desenvolvam facilmente um poder despótico e de longo alcance a partir da coesão patriarcal da tribo. Assim, passam a existir governos de massa, que se comparam a outros movimentos entre os homens da mesma forma que a enchente de um riacho  se compara ao fluxo constante mas difuso de um afluente. A história da China, Índia e Pérsia, não menos que a da Europa, mostra a sua importância histórica. Assim como eles se moviam de lugar para lugar em suas fileiras com suas esposas e filhos, escravos e carroças, rebanhos e toda sua parafernália, e então inundavam as terras fronteiriças. Embora esse lastro possa tê-los privado de velocidade, aumentou seu ímpeto. Os habitantes assustados desapareciam de sua frente e, como uma onda, passaram por cima dos países conquistados, absorvendo suas riquezas. Como eles carregavam tudo consigo, suas novas moradas eram equipadas com todos os seus pertences e, portanto, seus assentamentos finais eram de importância etnográfica. Desta forma, os magiares inundaram a Hungria, os manchus invadiram a China, os turcos, os países da Pérsia ao Adriático”.28

O que foi dito aqui de hamitas, semitas e mongóis, pode ser dito também, pelo menos em parte, das tribos de pastores arianas. Aplica-se também aos verdadeiros negros, pelo menos àqueles que vivem inteiramente de seus rebanhos:

“As tribos móveis e guerreiras dos kafirs possuem um poder de expansão que precisa apenas de um objeto atraente para alcançar efeitos violentos e derrubar as relações etnológicas dos vastos distritos. A África Oriental oferece tal objeto. Aqui o clima não proibia a pecuária, como nos países do interior, e não paralisava o poder de impacto dos nômades desde o começo, embora numerosos povos agrícolas pacíficos encontrassem espaço para seu desenvolvimento. Tribos errantes de kafirs se espalharam como riachos devastadores nas terras frutíferas do Zambeze e até nas terras altas entre Tanganica e a costa. Aqui eles encontraram a guarda avançada do Watusi, uma onda de erupção Hamite, vinda do norte. Os antigos habitantes desses distritos ou foram exterminados ou, como servos, cultivaram as terras que antes possuíam; ou eles ainda continuaram a lutar; ou ainda, permaneceram imperturbáveis em assentamentos deixados de lado pelo fluxo da conquista”.29

Tudo isso aconteceu diante de nossos olhos. Algumas coisas ainda estão acontecendo. Durante milhares de anos isso “abalou toda a África Oriental, do Zambeze ao Mediterrâneo”. A incursão dos hicsos, pela qual por mais de quinhentos anos o Egito esteve sujeito às tribos pastoras dos desertos orientais e setentrionais – “parentes dos povos que até os dias atuais pastoreiam seu gado entre o Nilo e o Mar Vermelho”30 – é a primeira base autêntica de um Estado. Esses Estados foram seguidos por muitos outros, tanto no próprio país do Nilo quanto mais ao sul, até o Império de Muata Jamvo, na borda sul do distrito central do Congo, que comerciantes portugueses em Angola relataram já no final de século XVI, e até o Império de Uganda, que somente em nossos dias finalmente sucumbiu à organização militar superior da Europa. “A terra e a civilização do deserto nunca se encontram pacificamente lado a lado; mas suas batalhas são todas parecidas e cheias de repetições”.31

“Parecidas e cheias de repetições”! Isso pode ser dito da história universal em suas linhas básicas. O ego humano em seu aspecto fundamental é quase o mesmo em todo o mundo. Atua uniformemente, em obediência às mesmas influências de seu ambiente, com raças de todas as cores, em todas as partes da Terra, tanto nos trópicos como nas zonas temperadas. É preciso recuar tão longe quanto o suficiente e escolher um ponto de vista tão alto que o aspecto variado dos detalhes não esconda os grandes movimentos da massa. Nesse caso, nossos olhos perdem o “modo” de lutar, vagar, trabalhar da humanidade, enquanto sua “substância”, sempre semelhante, sempre nova, sempre duradoura durante a mudança, se revela sob leis uniformes.

Estágio 2: Trégua

Gradualmente, a partir desse primeiro estágio, desenvolve-se o segundo, no qual o camponês, por meio de milhares de tentativas malsucedidas de revolta, aceitou seu destino e cessou todas as resistências. Mais ou menos nessa época, começa a surgir na consciência do pastor selvagem que um camponês morto não pode mais arar e que uma árvore frutífera cortada não mais produzirá. Em seu próprio interesse, então, sempre que possível, ele deixa o camponês viver e a árvore em pé. A expedição dos pastores chega como antes, todos os membros eriçados em armas, mas já não pretendem nem esperam a guerra e a apropriação violenta. Os invasores queimam e matam apenas na medida do necessário para impor um respeito salutar ou para quebrar uma resistência isolada. Mas, em geral, principalmente de acordo com um direito consuetudinário em desenvolvimento – o primeiro germe do desenvolvimento de todo direito público – o pastor agora se apropria apenas do excedente do camponês. Ou seja, ele deixa ao camponês sua casa, seus apetrechos e suas provisões para a próxima safra.* O pastor do primeiro estágio é como o urso, que com o propósito de roubar a colmeia, a destrói. No segundo estágio, ele é como o apicultor, que deixa às abelhas mel suficiente para carregá-las durante o inverno.

Grande é o progresso entre o primeiro estágio e o segundo. Longo é o passo adiante, tanto econômica quanto politicamente. No início, como vimos, a aquisição pela tribo de pastores era puramente de ocupação. Independentemente das consequências, eles destruíram a fonte de riqueza futura para o gozo do momento. A partir de então, a aquisição torna-se econômica, porque toda economia se baseia em uma organização interna inteligente, ou seja, na contenção do prazer momantâneo em consideração às necessidades do futuro. O pastor aprendeu a “capitalizar”. É um grande passo adiante na política quando um ser humano totalmente estranho, até então uma presa assim como os animais selvagens, obtém um valor e é reconhecido como uma fonte de riqueza. Embora este seja o início de toda escravidão, subjugação e exploração, é, ao mesmo tempo, a gênese de uma forma superior de sociedade, que estende além da família baseada na relação de sangue. Vimos como, entre os assaltantes e os assaltados, os primeiros fios de uma relação jurídica foram tecidos na fenda que separava aqueles que até então haviam sido apenas “inimigos mortais”. O camponês obtém assim parecido com o direito às necessidades básicas da vida; de modo que passa a ser considerado errado matar um homem que não resiste ou despojá-lo de tudo.
E melhor do que isso, fios cada vez mais delicados e mais macios são tecidos em uma rede ainda muito fina, mas que, no entanto, traz mais relações humanas do que o arranjo habitual da divisão dos saques. Como os pastores não mais enfrentam os camponeses apenas em combate, é provável que agora atendam a um pedido respeitoso ou solucionem uma queixa bem fundamentada. “O imperativo categórico” da equidade, “Faça aos outros o que gostaria que fizessem a você”, até então governava os pastores apenas em suas relações com seus próprios membros e tipo. Agora, pela primeira vez, ele começa a falar, sussurrando timidamente em nome daqueles que são estranhos à relação de sangue. Nisto encontramos o germe daquele magnífico processo de mistura externa que, a partir de pequenas hordas, formou nações e uniões de nações; e que, no futuro, dará vida ao conceito de “humanidade”. Encontramos também o germe da unificação interna das tribos uma vez separadas, do qual, no lugar do ódio dos “bárbaros”, virá o amor que tudo abrange da humanidade, do Cristianismo e do Budismo.

O momento em que o conquistador poupou sua vítima para explorá-la permanentemente através do trabalho produtivo foi de importância histórica incomparável. Ela deu origem à nação e ao Estado, ao direito e à economia superior, com todos os desenvolvimentos e ramificações que cresceram e que crescerão a partir deles. A raiz de tudo que é humano desce até o escuro solo do animal – amor e arte, não menos do que Estado, justiça e economia.
Outra tendência vincula ainda mais estreitamente essas relações psíquicas. Para voltar à comparação entre o pastor e o urso, há no deserto, ao lado do urso que vigia as abelhas, outros ursos que também desejam mel. Mas nossa tribo de pastores bloqueia seu caminho e protege suas colmeias com a força das armas. Os camponeses habituam-se, quando o perigo ameaça, a convocar os pastores, que não consideram mais ladrões e assassinos, mas protetores e salvadores. Imagine a alegria dos camponeses quando o bando de vingadores, retornando, traz de volta à aldeia as mulheres e crianças raptadas, com as cabeças ou escalpos dos inimigos. Esses laços não são mais fios, mas fitas fortes e cheias de nós.

Aqui está uma das principais forças dessa “integração”, por meio da qual, no desenvolvimento posterior, aqueles que originalmente não eram do mesmo sangue, e muitas vezes de grupos diferentes que falam línguas diferentes, tornar-se-ão um só povo, com um único discurso, um único costume e um único sentimento de nacionalidade. Essa unidade cresce gradualmente a partir do sofrimento e da necessidade em comum, vitória e derrota em comum, alegria e tristeza em comum. Um novo e vasto domínio se abre quando senhor e escravo servem aos mesmos interesses; então surge uma corrente de simpatia, um senso de serviço em comum. Ambos os lados compreendem e gradualmente reconhecem a humanidade em comum com o outro. Gradualmente, os pontos de semelhança são percebidos, no lugar das diferenças de construção e vestuário, de linguagem e religião, que até então haviam causado apenas antipatia e ódio. Gradualmente, eles aprendem a se entender, primeiro por meio de um discurso em comum e, depois, por meio de um hábito mental em comum. A rede das inter-relações psíquicas se fortalece.

Nesse segundo estágio da formação dos Estados, a base, em em sua essência, foi mapeada. Nenhuma outro estágio pode ser comparado em importância à transição pela qual o urso se torna um apicultor. Por isso, referências breves devem ser suficientes.

Estágio 3: Tributo

O terceiro estágio chega quando o “excedente” obtido pelos camponeses é levado por eles regularmente às tendas dos pastores como “tributo”, um regulamento que proporciona vantagens autoevidentes e consideráveis a ambas as partes. Desta forma, os camponeses ficam totalmente isentos das pequenas irregularidades ligadas ao antigo método de tributação, como alguns homens golpeados na cabeça, mulheres violentadas ou fazendas incendiadas. Os pastores, por outro lado, não precisam mais dedicar a este “negócio” qualquer “despesa” ou trabalho, para usar uma expressão mercantil; e eles dedicam o tempo e a energia assim liberados para uma “extensão dos trabalhos”, em outras palavras, para subjugar outros camponeses.

Esta forma de tributo é encontrada em muitos casos bem conhecidos na história: hunos, magiares, tártaros, turcos, obtiveram a sua maior renda de seus tributos europeus. Às vezes, o caráter do tributo pago pelos súditos a seu senhor é um tanto confuso, e o ato assume o disfarce de pagamento por proteção, ou mesmo de subsídio. A história é bem conhecida, pela qual Átila foi retratado como um príncipe vassalo pelo imperador covarde em Constantinopla; enquanto o tributo que ele pagou ao huno aparecia como uma taxa.

Estágio 4: Ocupação

O quarto estágio, mais uma vez, é de grande importância, pois acrescenta o fator decisivo ao desenvolvimento do Estado como estamos acostumados a vê-lo, isto é, a união de ambos grupos étnicos em uma faixa de terra.* (É bem notório que não se pode chegar a nenhuma definição jurídica de Estado sem o conceito de território de Estado). A partir de agora, a relação dos dois grupos, que era originalmente internacional, gradualmente se torna mais e mais intranacional.

Esta união territorial pode ser causada por influências externas. Pode ser que hordas mais fortes tenham empurrado os pastores adiante, ou que seu aumento populacional tenha atingido o limite estabelecido pela capacidade nutritiva das estepes ou pradarias; pode ser que uma grande peste bovina tenha forçado os pastores a trocar a extensão ilimitada das pradarias pelos estreitos de algum vale de rio. Em geral, porém, bastam as causas internas para que os pastores passem a viver nas proximidades dos seus camponeses. O dever de proteger seus afluentes contra outros “ursos” os obriga a manter uma leva de jovens guerreiros na vizinhança de seus súditos; e esta é, ao mesmo tempo, uma excelente medida de defesa, uma vez que evita que os camponeses cedam ao desejo de romper seus grilhões ou de permitir que outros pastores se tornem seus senhores. Esta última ocorrência não é rara, pois, se a tradição estiver correta, é o meio pelo qual os filhos de Rurik vieram para a Rússia.

Por enquanto, a justaposição local não significa uma comunidade de Estado em seu sentido mais estrito; isto é, uma organização unitária.
Caso os pastores estejam lidando com assuntos totalmente não relacionados à guerra, eles continuam sua vida nômade, vagando pacificamente para cima e para baixo e pastoreando seu gado entre seus perioike e hilotas. É o caso dos wahumas de pele clara,32 “os homens mais bonitos do mundo” (Kandt), na África Central, ou do clã Tuareg do Hadanara dos Asgars, “que ocuparam seus lugares entre os imrads e tornaram-se saqueadores errantes. Esses imrads são a classe que serve os asgars, que dependem deles para viver, embora os imrads pudessem colocar em campo dez vezes mais guerreiros; a situação é análoga à dos espartanos em relação aos seus hilotas”33. O mesmo pode ser dito dos tedas entre os borkus vizinhos:
“Assim como a terra está dividida em um semideserto que sustenta os nômades e jardins com bosques de tâmaras, a população é dividida entre nômades e povo assentado. Embora quase iguais em número, dez a doze mil ao todo, não é preciso dizer que estes últimos são súditos dos primeiros”.34

E o mesmo se aplica a todo o grupo de pastores conhecidos como Galla Masi e Wahuma.

“Embora as diferenças de posse sejam consideráveis, eles têm poucos escravos, como classe servil. Estes são representados por povos de uma casta mais baixa, que vivem separados e à parte deles. É o rebanho que é a base da família, do Estado e, junto com estes, do princípio da evolução política. Neste vasto território, entre Scehoa e as suas fronteiras meridionais, por um lado, e Zanzibar, pelo outro, não se encontra poder político forte algum, apesar da articulação social altamente desenvolvida”.35

Caso o país não esteja adaptado para pastorear o gado em larga escala – como universalmente era o caso na Europa Ocidental – ou onde uma população menos pacífica pudesse fazer tentativas de insurreição, o grupo de lordes se torna mais ou menos assentado de forma permanente, tomando lugares íngrimes ou pontos estrategicamente importantes para seus acampamentos, castelos ou cidades. A partir desses centros, eles controlam seus “súditos”, principalmente com o propósito de arrecadar seu tributo, sem prestar atenção a eles em outros aspectos. Eles os deixam administrar seus negócios, continuar com seu culto religioso, resolver suas disputas e ajustar seus métodos de economia interna. Sua constituição doméstica, seus funcionários locais, de fato, não sofrem interferências.

Se Frants Buhl relata corretamente, esse foi o início do governo dos israelitas em Canaã.36 Abissínia, aquela grande força militar, embora à primeira vista possa parecer um Estado totalmente desenvolvido não parece, no entanto, ter avançado além do quarto estágio. Ao menos Ratzel afirma:

“O principal cuidado dos abissínios consiste no tributo, em que seguem o método dos monarcas orientais dos tempos antigos e modernos, em que não se deve interferir na gestão interna e na administração da justiça de seus povos subjugados”.37

O melhor exemplo do quarto estágio se encontra na situação do México antigo antes da conquista espanhola:

“A confederação sob a liderança dos mexicanos tinha ideias de conquista um pouco mais progressistas. Apenas as tribos que ofereceram resistência foram exterminadas. Em outros casos, os derrotados eram meramente saqueados e então obrigados a pagar tributo. A tribo derrotada governava a si mesma assim como antes, por meio de seus próprios funcionários. Foi diferente no Peru, onde a formação de um império compacto segiu o primeiro ataque. No México, a intimidação e a exploração foram os únicos objetivos da conquista. E assim aconteceu que o então chamado Império do México representava apenas um grupo de tribos indígenas intimidadas na época da conquista, cuja federação entre si foi impedida por seu medo de expedições de pilhagem vindas de algum forte inexpugnável em seu meio”.38

Será observado que não se pode falar disso como um Estado em nenhum sentido adequado. Ratzel mostra isso na seguinte nota:
“É certo que os vários pontos mantidos em sujeição pelos guerreiros de Montezuma foram separados uns dos outros por trechos de território ainda não conquistados. Uma condição muito parecida com o governo de Hova em Madagascar. Não se diria que espalhar algumas guarnições, ou melhor, colônias militares, pelo território, é uma marca de domínio absoluto, pois essas colônias, com grande dificuldade, mantêm uma faixa de poucos quilômetros em sujeição”.39

Estágio 5: Monpólio

A lógica dos eventos leva rapidamente do quarto ao quinto estágio, e modela quase totalmente o Estado completo. Surgem batalhas entre aldeias ou clãs vizinhos, que os senhores já não permitem que sejam travadas, pois com isso a capacidade de serviço dos camponeses seria prejudicada. Os senhores assumem o direito de arbitrar e, em caso de necessidade, de executar sua sentença. No final, acontece que em cada “tribunal” do rei da aldeia ou chefe do clã há um agente oficial que exerce o poder, enquanto aos chefes é permitido manter a aparência de autoridade. O Estado dos incas mostra, em uma condição primitiva, um exemplo típico desse arranjo.

Aqui encontramos os incas unidos em Cuzco, onde tinham suas terras e moradias patrimoniais.40 Um representante dos incas, o Tucricuc, entretanto, residia em todos os distritos do tribunal do chefe nativo. Ele “supervisionava todos os assuntos de seu distrito; ele reunia as tropas, supervisionava a entrega do tributo, ordenava o trabalho forçado nas ruas e pontes, supervisionava a administração da justiça e, em suma, supervisionava tudo em seu distrito”.41

As mesmas instituições que foram desenvolvidas por caçadores americanos e pastores semitas também são encontradas entre os pastores africanos. Em Axante, o sistema do Tucricuc foi desenvolvido de forma típica; 42 e os duallas estabeleceram aos seus súditos que viviam em aldeias segregadas, “uma instituição baseada na conquista que se situa entre o sistema feudal e a escravidão”.43

O mesmo autor relata que os barotses têm uma constituição correspondente ao estágio inicial da organização feudal medieval:

“Suas aldeias são... via de regra, cercadas por um círculo de aldeias menores onde vivem seus servos. Eles cultivam os campos de seus senhores na vizinhança mais próxima, plantam grãos ou pastoreiam o gado”.44

A única coisa que não é típica aqui consiste nos senhores não viverem em castelos ou grandes edifícios, mas se estabelecerem em aldeias juntos aos seus súditos.

Estágio 6: Estado primitivo

É apenas um pequeno passo dos incas aos dórios na Lacedemônia, Messênia ou Creta; e nenhuma grande distância separa os fulbes, duallas e barotses dos Estados feudais dos, em comparação, rigidamente organizados impérios negros africanos de Uganda, Unyoro, etc; e dos impérios feudais correspondentes da Europa Oriental e Ocidental e de toda a Ásia. Em todos os lugares, os mesmos resultados são obtidos pela força das mesmas causas sociopsicológicas. A necessidade de manter os súditos em ordem e, ao mesmo tempo, de mantê-los em sua plena capacidade de trabalho leva, passo a passo, do quinto ao sexto estágio, no qual o Estado, por adquirir total intranacionalidade e pela evolução da “Nacionalidade”, é desenvolvido em todos os sentidos. Torna-se cada vez mais frequente a necessidade de interferir, apaziguar dificuldades, punir ou coagir a obediência; e assim desenvolve-se o hábito de governar e os usos do governo. Os dois grupos, separados, no início, e depois unidos em um território, são, no começo, apenas deixados um ao lado do outro, depois são dispersos um pelo outro como uma mistura mecânica, como o termo é usado em química, até que gradualmente se tornam cada vez mais um “composto químico”. Eles se misturam, se unem, se mesclam até se tornarem unidade, nos costumes e hábitos, nas palavras e no culto. Logo os laços de relacionamento unem as camadas superior e inferior. Em quase todos os casos, a classe dos senhores escolhe as virgens mais bonitas das raças de súditos como suas concubinas. Uma raça de bastardos se desenvolve assim, às vezes levada para a classe dominante, às vezes rejeitada, e então, por causa do sangue dos senhores em suas veias, tornam-se os líderes natos da raça de súditos. Em forma e conteúdo, o Estado primitivo é concluído.

* 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.”

* This statement of Lippert is not quite correct. The higher developed domiciled huntsmen and fishermen of Northwest America have both nobles and slaves.

*Ratzel, 1. 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 lifer They turn entire oases into demesne lands, visited at the harvest time in order to rob the inhabitants; a domination characteristic of the desert.”

* 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 (1. 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.”

Capítulo II – O Estado feudal primitivo

(a) A forma de domínio

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 mediaeval dominion in the lands of the Germanic nobility. Finally, the knight becomes the owner and administrator of the knight’s fee.* 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.

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 spermatozoon —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 spermatozoon, 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 spermatozoon, 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) A integração

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) A diferenciação: teorias de grupo e psicologia de grupo

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” * 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

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 “squirearchical” 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 super-sensitiveness to personal honor, which degenerates into madness.

At this point a small digression: Caesar 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) O Estado feudal primitivo de grau superior

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 Stippans 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 mediaeval 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, Lacedsemon 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.*

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 f ear of their magical powers. All the elements were at hand in a developed state for the formation of sharply differentiated castes.54

How the cooperation 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.*

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 distributon 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.*

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 modem 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.



* 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,

* Compare this with the prevalent justification of “honest graft” in municipal or political contracts.—Translator.

* 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»

* 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.—Ratael II, page 596.

* 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 off spring, capitalism, hardly came into being; while in addition, it has worked out to a considerable degree the problems of cooperative production and of cooperative distribution.

Capítulo III – O Estado marítimo

THE course of life and the path of suffering of the State founded by sea nomads, as has been stated above, is determined by commercial capital; just as that of the territorial State is determined by capital vested in realty; and, we may add, that of the modern constitutional State by productive capital. The sea nomad, however, did not invent trade or merchandising, fairs or markets or cities; these preexisted, and since they served his purpose, were now developed to suit his interests. All these institutions, serving the economic means, the barter for equivalents, had long since been discovered.

Here for the first time in our survey we find the economic means not the object of exploitation by the political means, but as a cooperating agent in originating the State, one might call it the “chain” passing into the “lift” created by the feudal state to bring forth a more elaborate structure. The genesis of the maritime State would not be thoroughly intelligible, were we not to premise a statement concerning traffic and interchange of wares in prehistoric times. Furthermore, no prognosis of the modern state is complete, which does not take into account the independently formed economic means of aboriginal barter.

(a) Tráfico na era pré-histórica

The psychological explanation of barter has brought forth the theory of the marginal utility, its greatest merit. According to this theory, the subjective valuation of any economic good decreases in proportion to the number of objects of the same kind possessed by the same owner. When even two proprietors meet, each having a number of similar articles, they will gladly barter, provided political means are barred, i.e., if both parts are apparently equally strong and well-armed, or in the very early stage, are within the sacred circle of relationship. By barter, each one receives property of very high subjective value, in place of property of very low subjective value, so that both parties are gainers in the transaction. The desire of primitive people for bartering must be stronger than that of cultured ones. For at this stage man does not value his own goods, but covets the things belonging to strangers, and is hardly affected by calculated economic considerations.

On the other hand, we must not forget that there are primitive peoples for whom barter has no attraction whatever, “Cook tells of tribes in Polynesia, with whom no intercourse was possible, since presents made absolutely no impression on them, and were afterward thrown away; everything shown them they regarded with indifference, and with no desire to own it, while with their own things they would not part; in fact, they had no conception of either trade or barter.”58 So Westermarck is of the opinion that “barter and traffic are comparatively late inventions.” In this he stands in opposition to Peschel, who, would have it that man in the earliest known stage of development engaged in barter. Westermarck states that there is no proof “that the cave-dwellers of Perigord from the reindeer period obtained their rock-crystals, their shells from the Atlantic, and the horns of the Saiga antelope from (modern) Poland by way of barter.”59

In spite of these exceptions, which admit other explanations—perhaps the natives feared sorcery—the history of primitive peoples shows that the desire to trade and barter is a universal human characteristic. It can, however, take effect only when these primitive men on meeting with strangers are offered new enticing objects, since in the immediate circle of their own blood kinsmen every one has the same kinds of property, and in their natural communism, on the average about the same amount.

Yet even then, barter, the beginning of all regular trading, can take place only when the meeting with foreigners is a peaceable one. But is there any possibility for peaceable meeting with foreigners? Is not primitive man, through his entire life, and especially at the period when barter begins, still under the apprehension that every one of a different horde is an enemy to be feared as the wolf?

After trade is developed, it is, as a rule, strongly influenced by the “political means,” “trade generally follows robbery.”60 But its first beginnings are chiefly the result of the economic means, the outcome of pacific, not warlike, intercourse.

The international relations of primitive huntsmen with one another must not be confused with those existing either between the huntsmen or herdsmen and their peasants, or amongst the herdsmen themselves. There are, undoubtedly, blood-feuds, or feuds because of looted women, or possibly because of violation of the districts set aside for hunting grounds; but these lack that strong incentive, which is the consequence of avarice alone, of the desire to despoil other men of the products of their labor. Therefore, the “wars” of primitive huntsmen are scarcely real wars, but rather scuffles and single combats, carried on frequently—as are the German student duels —according to an established ceremonial, and prolonged only up to the point of incapacity to fight, as one might say, “until claret has been drawn.”61 These tribes, numerically very weak, wisely limit bloodshed to the indispensable amount—e. g., in case of a blood vendetta feud—and thus avoid starting new vendetta blood feuds.

For this reason, pacific relations with their neighbors on an equal economic scale are much stronger, and also freer from the incentive to use political means, both among huntsmen and among primitive peasants, than among herdsmen. There are numerous examples where the former meet peaceably to exploit natural resources in common. “While yet in primitive stages of civilization, great masses of people gather together, from time to time, at places where useful objects may be found. The Indians of a large part of America made regular pilgrimages to the flint grounds; others assembled annually at harvest time at the Zizania swamps of the lakes of the Northwest. The Australians, living scattered in the Barku district, assemble from all directions for the harvest festivals at the swamp beds of the corn bearing Marsiliacae. When the bonga-bonga trees in Queensland produce a superabundant crop, and a greater store is on hand than the tribe can consume, foreign tribes are permitted to share therein.”63 “Various tribes agree on the common ownership of definite strips of territory, and likewise of the quarries of phonolite for hatchets.”64 Numerous Australian tribes have common consultations and sessions of the elders for judgment. In these, the remainder of the population form the bystanders, a custom similar to the Germanic “Umstand” in the primitive folk-moot.65

It is but natural that such meetings should bring about barter. Perhaps this explains the origin of those “weekly fairs held by the Negroes of Central Africa in the midst of the primaeval forest wider special arrangements for the peace”66 and likewise the great fairs, said to be very ancient, of the fur hunters of the extreme north of the Tschuktsche,

All these things presuppose the development of pacific forms of intercourse between neighboring groups. These forms are to be found almost universally. They could very easily be developed at this period, since the discovery had not yet been made that men can be utilized as labor motors. At this stage, the stranger is treated as an enemy only in doubtful cases. If he comes with apparently peaceable intent, he is treated as a friend. Therefore, a whole code of public law ceremonies grew up, intended to demonstrate the pacific intent of the newcomer.* One puts aside one’s arms and shows one’s unarmed hand, or one sends heralds in advance, who are always inviolable.

It is clear that these forms represent some kind of claim to hospitality, and in fact it is by this guest-right that peaceful trade is first made possible. The exchange of guest-gifts precedes, and appears to introduce, barter proper. It becomes, therefore, important to investigate the source of hospitality.

Westermarck, in his recent monumental work (1907), Origin and Development of Moral Concepts,68 states that the custom of hospitality results from two causes, curiosity for news from the stranger from afar, and still more from the fear that the stranger may be endowed with powers of sorcery, imputed to him just because he is a stranger.* In the Bible, hospitality is recommended for the reason that one can not know that the stranger may not be an angel. The superstitious race fears his curse (the Erinys of the Greeks) and hastens to propitiate the stranger. Having been accepted as a guest he is inviolable and enjoys the sacred right of the blood-related group, and is regarded as belonging to it during his stay. Therefore he partakes of the benefits of the aboriginal communism reigning in the group, and shares its property. The host demands and receives whatever he claims, the stranger obtains in turn what hie asks for. When the peaceable intercourse becomes more frequent, the mutual giving of guest-presents may develop into a trading arrangement, because the trader gladly returns to the spot where he found good entertainment and a profitable exchange and where he is protected by the laws of hospitality, instead of seeking new places, where, often with danger to his life, he would first have to acquire the right to hospitality.

The existence of an “international” division of labor is, of course, presupposed before the development of a regular trade relation can begin. Such a division of labor exists much earlier and to a greater extent than is generally believed. “It is quite erroneous to suppose that the division of labor takes place only on a high scale of economic development. There are in the interior of Africa villages of iron-smiths, nay, of such as only turn out dart-knives; New Guinea has its villages of potters, North America its arrow-head makers.”69 From such specialties there develops trade, whether through roving merchants, or by gifts to one’s hosts, or by peace-gifts from tribe to tribe. In North America, the Kaddu trade in bows. “Obsidian was universally employed for arrow heads and knives; on the Yellowstone, on the Snake River, in New Mexico, but especially in Mexico. Thence the precious article was distributed all over the entire country as far as Ohio and Tennessee, a distance of nearly two thousand miles.” 70

According to Vierkandt: “From the purely home-made products of primitive peoples, there results a system of trade totally distinct from that prevailing under modern conditions... Each separate tribe has developed special aptitudes, leading to interexchange. Even among the comparatively uncivilized Indian tribes of South America, we find such differentiations.... By such a trade, products may be distributed over extraordinary distances, not in any direct way through professional traders, but through a gradual passing along from tribe to tribe. The origin of such a trade, as Bueeher has shown, is to be traced back to the exchange of guest-gifts.” 71

Besides this exchange of guest-gifts, a trade may grow from the peace offerings which adversaries after a fight exchange as a sign of reconciliation. Sartorius reports on Polynesia: “After a war between different islands, the peace offerings for each group were something novel; and if the present and return present pleased both parties, a repetition took place, and thus again the way for exchange of products was opened. But, these, in contrast to guest-gifts, were the bases of continuing intercourse. Here, in place of the contact of individuals, tribes and peoples met. Women are the first object of barter; they form the connecting link between strange tribes, and according to evidence from many sources, women are exchanged for cattle.”72

We meet here an object of trade, exchangeable even without “international division of labor.” And it appears as though the exchange of women had, in many ways, smoothed the way for the traffic in merchandise, as though it had been the first step toward the peaceable integration of tribes, which accompanied the warlike integration of the formation of the State. Lippert, however, believes that the peaceful exchange of fire antedates this barter.73 Conceding that this custom is very ancient, he can nevertheless trace it only from rudiments of observances and of law; and since proof is no longer accessible, we shall not pursue the question further in this place.

On the other hand, the exchange of women is observed universally, and doubtless exerts an extraordinarily strong influence in the development of peaceable intercourse between neighboring tribes, and in the preparation for barter of merchandise. The story of the Sabine women, who threw themselves between their brothers and their husbands, as these were about to engage in battle, must have been an actuality in a thousand instances in the course of the development of the human race. All over the world, the marriage of near relatives is considered an outrage, as “incest,” for reasons not within the scope of this book.74 This directs the sexual longing toward the women of neighboring tribes, and thus makes the loot of women a part of the primary intertribal relations; and in nearly all cases, unless strong feelings of race counteract it, the violent carrying off of women is gradually commuted to barter and purchase, the custom resulting from the relative undesirability of the women of one’s own blood in comparison to the wives to be had from other tribes.

Where division of labor made at all possible the exchange of goods, the relations among the various tribes would thereafter be made serviceable to it; the exogamic groups gradually become accustomed regularly to meet on a peaceful basis. The peace, originally protecting the horde of blood relations, thereafter comes to be extended over a wider circle. One example from numberless instances: “Each of the two Camerún tribes has its own ‘bush countries,’ places where its own tribesmen trade, and where, by intermarriage, they have relatives. Here also exogamy shows its tribe-linking power.”

These are the principal lines of growth of peaceful barter and traffic; from the right to hospitality and the exchange of women, perhaps also from the exchange of fire, to the trade in commodities. In addition to this, markets and fairs, and perhaps also traders, were almost uniformly regarded as being under the protection of a god who preserved peace and avenged its violation. Thus we have brought the fundamentals of this most important sociological factor to the point where the political means enters as a cause to disturb, rearrange, and then to develop and affect the creations of the economic means.

(b) O comércio e o Estado primitivo

There are two very important reasons why the robber-warrior should not unduly interfere with such markets and fairs as he may find within his conquered domain.

The first, which is extra-economic, is the superstitious fear that the godhead will avenge a breach of the peace. The second, which is economic, and probably is the more important —and I think I am the first to point out this connection—is that the conquerors can not well do without the markets.

The booty of the primitive victors consists of much property which is unavailable for their immediate use and consumption. Since valuable articles at that period exist in but few forms, while these few occur in large quantity, the “marginal utility” of any one kind is held very low. This applies especially to the most important product of the political means, slaves. Let us first take up the case of the herdsman: his need of slaves is limited by the size of his herds; he is very likely to exchange his surplus for other objects of greater value to him: for salt, ornaments, arms, metals, woven materials, utensils, etc. For that reason, the herdsman is not only at all times a robber, always in addition he is a merchant and trader and he protects trade.

He protects trade coming his way in order to exchange his loot against the products of another civilization—from the earliest times, nomads have convoyed the caravans passing through their steppes or deserts in consideration of protection money—but he also protects trade even in places conquered by him in prehistoric times. Quite the same sort of consideration which influenced the herdsmen to change from bear stage to bee-keeper stage, must have influenced them to maintain and protect ancient markets and fairs. One single looting, in this case, would mean killing the hen that lays the golden eggs. It is more profitable to preserve the market and rather to extend the prevailing peace over it, since there is not only the profit to be had from an exchange of foreign wares against loot, but also the protection money, the lords’ toll, to be collected. For that reason princes of feudal states of every stage of development extended over markets, highways and merchants, their especial protection, the “king’s peace,” often indeed reserving to themselves the monopoly of foreign trade. Everywhere we see them busily engaged in calling into being new fairs and cities by the grant of protection and immunity.

This interest in the system of fairs and markets makes it thoroughly credible that tribes of herdsmen respected existing market places in their sphere of influence to such an extent that they suspended the exertion of the political means so completely as not even to exercise “dominion” over them. The story told by Herodotus is inherently probable, though he was astonished that the Argippseans had a sacred market amidst the lawless Scythian herdsmen, and that their unarmed inhabitants were effectively protected through the hallowed peace of their market place. Many similar phenomena make this the more easily believable.

“No one dare harm them, since they are considered holy; and yet they have no arms; but it is they who allay the quarrels of their neighbors, and whoever has escaped to them as a runaway may not be touched by any other man.”76 Similar instances are found frequently: “It is always the same story of the Argippæans, the story of the ‘holy,’ ‘unarmed,’ ‘just,’ bartering, and strife-settling tribelet in the midst of a Bedouin-like, nomadic population.”77 Cære may be taken as an example of a higher type. Strabo says of its inhabitants: “The Greeks thought highly of their bravery and justice, because although powerful in a great degree, they abstained from robbery.” Mommsen, who quotes this passage, adds: “This does not exclude piracy, which was engaged in by the merchants of Cære as well as by all other merchants, but rather that Casre was a sort of free harbor for the Phoenicians as for the Greeks.”78

Cære is not like the fair of the Argippæans, a market place in the interior of a district of land nomads, but is in the midst of a domain of sea nomads, a port endowed with its own peace. This is one of those typical formations whose importance, in my estimation, has not been appreciated at its real value. They have, it seems to me, exercised a mighty influence on the genesis of maritime states.

Those reasons by which we saw the land nomads forced to preserve, if not to create, market places, must with even more intensity, have coerced the sea nomads to similar demeanor. For the transportation of loot, especially of herds and of slaves, is difficult and dangerous on the trails across the desert or the steppes: the slow progress invites pursuit. But with war-canoe and “dragon-ship” this transportation is easy and safe. For that reason, the Viking is even much more a trader and merchant than is the herdsman. As is said in Faust, “War, Commerce, and Piracy are inseparable.”

(c) A gênese do Estado marítimo

In many cases, I believe, trade in the loot of piracy is the origin of those cities around which, as political centers, the city-states of the antique or Mediterranean civilization grew up; while in very many other cases, the same trade cooperated to bring them to the same point of political development.

These harbor markets developed from probably two general types: they grew up either as piratical fortresses directly and intentionally placed in hostile territory, or else as “merchant colonies” based on treaty rights in the harbors of foreign primitive or developed feudal states.

Of the first type, we have a number of important examples from ancient history which correspond exactly to the fourth stage of our scheme, where an armed colony of pirates plants itself down at a commercially and strategically defendable point on the seacoast of a foreign state. The most notable instance is Carthage; and in like manner, the Greek sea nomads, Ionians, Dorians and Achaeans, settled in their sea castles on the Adriatic and Tyrrhenian coasts of Southern Italy, on the islands of these seas, and on the gulfs of Southern Gaul. Phoenicians, Etruscans,* Greeks, and according to modern investigation, Carians, all about the Mediterranean, founded their “States” after the same type, with identical class division into masters and servile peasantry of the neighboring territory.79

Some of these states on the coast developed into feudal states of the type of the territorial states; and the master class then became a landed aristocracy. The factors in this change Were: first, geographical conditions, lack of good harbors, and a wide stretch of hinterland cultivated by peaceful peasants; and secondly, very probably, the acquired organization into classes taken with them from their original homes. In many cases, they were fugitive nobles, the vanquished of domestic feuds, or younger sons, sometimes an entire generation of youth of both sexes, who thus started “on the viking,” and having at home had lands and serfs, as petty lords, they again sought in foreign lands what they regarded as their due. The occupation of England by the Anglo-Saxons, and of Southern Italy by the Normans, are examples of this method; so too are the Spanish and Portuguese colonizations of Mexico and of South America. The Achaean colonies of Greater Greece in Southern Italy furnish additional and very important instances of this development of territorial feudal states by sea nomads: “This Achaean League of cities was a true colonization. The cities were without harbors—Croton only had a fair roadstead—and were without any trade of their own; the Sybarite could boast of his growing gray in his water town between his home bridges, while buying and selling were carried on by Milesians and Etruscans. On the other hand, the Greeks in this region not only controlled the fringe of the shore, but ruled from sea to sea;... the native agricultural inhabitants were forced into a relation of clientage or serfdom, and were required to work the farms of their masters or to pay tribute to them.”80 It is probable that most of the Doric colonies in Crete were similarly organized.

But in the course of universal history these “territorial states,” whether they arose more or less frequently, did not acquire any such importance as did those maritime cities which devoted their principal energies to commerce and to privateering. Mommsen contrasts in distinct and well chosen sentences the Achaean landed squire with the “royal merchants” of the Greek Colonies in Southern Italy: “In no way did they spurn agriculture or the increase of territory; the Greeks were not satisfied, at least not after they became powerful, to remain within the confined space of a fortified commercial factory in the midst of the country of the barbarians, as the Phoenicians had done. Their cities were founded primarily and exclusively for purposes of trade, and unlike the Achæan colonies, were universally situated at the best harbors and landing places.” 81 We are certain, in the case of the Ionic colonies, and may well assume it for the other cases, that the founders of these cities were not landed squires, but seafaring merchants.

But such maritime states or cities, in the strict sense, came into being not only through warlike conquest, but also through peaceable beginnings, by a more or less mixed pénétration pacifique.

Where, however, the Vikings did not meet peaceable peasants, but feudal states in the primitive stage, willing to fight, they offered and accepted terms of peace and settled down as colonies of merchants.

We know of such cases from every part of the world, in harbors and on markets held on shore. To take the instances with which Germans are most conversant, there are the settlements of North German merchants in countries along the German ocean and the Baltic Sea, the German Steel Yard in London, the Hansa in Sweden and Norway, on the Island of Schönen, and in Russia, at Novgorod. In Wilna, the capital of the Grand Dukes of Lithuania, there was such a colony; and the Fondaco dei Tedeschi in Venice is another example of a similar institution. The strangers in nearly every instance settle down as a compact mass, subject to their own laws and their own jurisdiction. They often acquire great political influence, sometimes extending to dominion over the state. One would think the following tale of Ratzel, concerning the coast and islands of the Indian Ocean, were a contemporaneous narrative of the Phoenician or Greek invasion of the Mediterranean at about 1,000 R.C.: “Whole nations have, so to say, been liquefied by trade, especially the proverbially clever, zealous, omnipresent Malays of Sumatra; as well as the treacherous Bugi of Celebes. These can be met with at every place from Singapore to New Guinea. Latterly, especially in Borneo, they have immigrated in masses on the call of the Borneo chieftains. Their influence was so strong that they were permitted to govern themselves according to their own laws, and they felt themselves so strong that repeatedly they attempted to achieve independence. The Achinese formerly occupied a similar position. Malacca had been made the principal mart by Malays from Sumatra, and after its decline, Achin became the most frequented harbor of this distant east, especially for the first quarter of the seventeenth century, the pivotal period of the development of that corner of the world.” 82 The following, from among numberless instances, demonstrate the universality of this form of settlement: “In Urga, where they politically dominate, the merchants are crowded together into a separate Chinese Town.”83 In the Jewish States there were “small colonies of foreign merchants and mechanics, set apart in distinct quarters of the cities. Here, under the king’s protection, they could live according to their own religious customs.”84 We may also compare with this, First Kings XX, 34. “King Omri of Ephraim was forced by the military success of his opponent, the King of Damascus, to grant to the Aramaic merchants the use of certain parts of the city of Samaria, where under royal protection they could trade. Later, when the turn of war favored his successor, Ahab, the latter demanded the same privilege for the Ephraimitic merchants in Damascus.”85 “The inhabitants of Italy, wherever they were, held together as solid and organized masses, the soldiers as legionaries, the merchants of all large cities as corporations; while the Roman citizens domiciled or dwelling in the various provincial circuits, were organized as a ‘convention of Roman citizens’ with their own communal government.”86 We may recall the mediæval Ghettos, which, before the great persecution of the Jews in the Middle Ages, were similar merchant colonies. The settlements of Europeans in the ports of strong foreign empires at the present time show similar corporate organizations, having their own constitution and [(consular) jurisdiction. China, Turkey and Morocco must continue to bear this mark of inferiority, while recently Japan has been able to rid herself of that badge.

The most interesting point about these colonies, at least for our study, consists in their general tendency to extend their political influence into complete domination. And there is good reason for this. Merchants have a mass of movable wealth, which is likely to be used as a decisive factor in the political upheavals constantly disturbing all feudal states, be it in international wars between two neighboring states, or in intranational fights, such as wars of succession. In addition to this the colonists, in many cases, may rely on the power of their home state, basing their claim on ties of blood and on uncommonly strong commercial interests; while there is besides, the fact that in many cases they have in their warlike sailor-folk and their numerous slaves an effective and compact force of their own, capable of accomplishing much in a limited sphere.

The following story of the rôle played by Arab merchants in East Africa appears tome to show a historical type heretofore not sufficiently appreciated: “When Speke, as the first European, made this trip in 1857, the Arabs were merchants, living as aliens in the land. When in 1861 he passed the same way, the Arabs resembled great landed proprietors with rich estates and were waging war with the native territorial ruler. This process, repeatedly found in many other regions in the interior of Africa, is the necessary consequence of the balance of power. The foreign merchants, be they Arabs or Suaheli, ask the privilege of transit and pay tribute for it; they establish warehouses, which the chiefs favor, as these seem both to satisfy their vanity and to extend their connections; then incurring the suspicion, oppression and persecution of the chiefs, the merchants refuse to pay the rack tolls and dues, which have grown with their increased prosperity. At last, in one of the inevitable fights for the succession, the Arabs take the side of one pretender if he is pliable enough, and are thus brought into internal quarrels of the country and take part in the often endless wars,”87

This political activity of the merchant denizens (metoikoi) is a constantly recurring type. “In Borneo there developed from the settlements of Chinese gold diggers separate states.”88 Properly speaking, the entire history of colonization by Europeans is a series of examples of the law that, with any superior force, the factories and larger settlements of foreigners tend to grow into domination, unless they approximate to the primal type of simple piracy, such as the Spanish and Portuguese conquests, or the East India Companies, both the English and the Dutch. “There lies a robber state beside the ocean, between the Rhine and the Scheldt,” are the accusing words of the Dutch Multatuli. All East Asiatic, American and African colonies of all European peoples arose as one or the other of these two types.

But the aliens do not always obtain unconditional mastery. Sometimes the host state is too strong, and the newcomers remain politically powerless but protected aliens; as, for example, the Germans in England. Sometimes the host state, although subjugated, becomes strong enough to shake off the foreign domination; so, for instance, Sweden drove out the Hanseats who had imposed on her their sovereignty. In some cases, a conqueror overcomes both merchants and host state, and subjugates both; as happened to the republics of Novgorod and Pskov, when the Russians annexed them. In many cases, however, the rich foreigners and the domestic nobility amalgamate into one group of rulers, following the type of the formation of territorial states, in which we saw this take place whenever two about equally strong groups of rulers came into conflict. It seems to me that this last named situation is the most probable assumption for the genesis of the most important city states of antiquity, for the Greek maritime cities, and for Rome.

Of Greek history, to use the terms of Kurt Breysig, we know only the “Middle Ages,” of Roman history, only its “Modern Times.” For the matters that preceded, we must be extremely careful in drawing deductions from fancied analogies. But it seems to me that enough facts are proved and admitted to permit the conclusion that Athens, Corinth, Mycenæ, Rome, etc., became states in the manner already set forth. And this would follow, even if the data from all known demography and general history were not of such universal validity as to permit the conclusion in itself.

We know accurately from the names of places (Salamis: Island of Peace, equivalent to Market-Island), from the names of heroes, from monuments, and from immediate tradition, that in many Greek harbors there existed Phœnician factories, while the hinterland was occupied by small feudal states with the typical articulation of nobles, common freemen, and slaves. It can not seriously be disputed that the development of the city states was powerfully advanced by foreign influences; and this is true, though no specific evidence can be adduced to show that any of the Phoenician, or of the still more powerful Carian merchants were either allowed to intermarry with the families of the resident nobility, or were made full citizens, or finally even became princes.

The same applies to Rome, concerning which Mommsen, a cautious author, states: “Rome owes its importance, if not its origin, to these commercial and strategic relations. Evidence of this is found in many traces of far greater value than the tales of historical novels pretending to be authentic. Take an instance of the primaeval relations existing between Rome and Cære, which was for Etruria what Rome was for Latium, and thereafter was its nearest neighbor and commercial friend; or the uncommon importance attributed to the bridge over Tiber and the bridge building (Pontifex Maximus) in every part of the Roman State; or the galley in the municipal coat of arms. To this source may be traced the primitive Roman harbor dues to which, from early times, only those goods were subject which were intended for sale (promercale) and not what entered the harbor of Ostia, for the proper use of the charterer (usuarium), and which constituted therefore an impost on trade. For that reason we find the comparatively early use of minted money, and the commercial treaties of states oversea with Rome. In this sense, then, Rome may, as the story of its origin states, have been rather a created than a developed city, and among the Latin cities rather the youngest than the eldest.” 89

It would require the work of a lifetime of historical research to investigate these possibilities, or rather these probabilities; and then to write the constitutional history of these preeminently important city states, and to draw thence the very necessary conclusions. It seems to me that along this path there would be found much information on many an obscure question, such as the Etruscan dominion in Rome, or the origin of the rich families of Plebeians, or concerning the Athenian metoikoi, and many other problems.

Here we can only follow the thread which holds out the hope of leading us through the labyrinth of historical tradition to the issue.

(d) Essência e QUESTÃO (ISSUE) do Estado marítimo

All these are true “States” in the sociologic sense, whether they arose from the fortresses of sea-robbers, or from harbors of original land nomads as merchant colonies which obtained dominion or which amalgamated with the dominating group of the host people. For they are nothing but the organization of the political means, their form is domination, their content the economic exploitation of the subject by the master group.

So far as the principle is concerned, they are not to be differentiated from the States founded by land nomads; and yet they have taken a different form, both from internal and external reasons, and show a different psychology of classes.

One must not believe that class feeling was at all different in these and in the territorial states. Here as there the master class looks down with the same contempt on the subjects, on the “Rantuses,” on the “man with the blue fingernails,” as the German patrician in the Middle Ages looked on a being with whom, even when free born, no intermarriage or social intercourse was permitted. Little indeed does the class theory of the καλο-κἀγαθόι (well-born) or of the patricians (children of ancestors) differ from that of the country squires. But other circumstances here bring about differences, consonant, naturally, with class interests. In any district ruled by merchants, highway robbery can not foe tolerated, and therefore it is considered, e. g., among the maritime Greeks, a vulgar crime. The tale of Theseus would not in a territorial state have been pointed against the highwaymen. On the other hand, “piracy was regarded by them, in most remote times, as a trade nowise dishonorable... of which ample proof may be found in the Homeric poems; while at a much later period Polycrates had organized a well developed robber-state on the Island of Samos.” “In the Corpus Juris, mention is made of a law of Solon in which the association of pirates (ἐπὶ λείαν οἰχόμενοι) is recognized as a permissible company.”90

But quite apart from such details, mentioned only because they serve to cast a clear light on the growth of the “ideologic superstructure,”* the basic conditions of existence of maritime states, utterly different from those of territorial states, called into being two exceedingly important phenomena, which are of universal historical importance, viz., the growth of a democratic constitution, whereby the gigantic contest between the sultanism of the Orient and the civic freedom of the West was to be fought out (according to Mommsen the true content of universal history); and in the second place the development of capitalistic slave-work, which in the end was to annihilate all these states.

Let us first consider the inner or socio-psychological causes of this contrast between the territorial and the maritime state.

States are maintained by the same principle from which they arise. Conquest of land and populations is the ratio essendi of a territorial state; and by the repeated conquest of lands and populations it must grow, until its natural growth is checked by mountain ranges, desert, or ocean, or its sociological bounds are determined by contact with other states of its own kind, which it can not subjugate. The maritime state, on the other hand, came into being from piracy and trade; and through these two means, it must strive to extend its power. For this purpose, no extended territory need be absolutely subjected to its sway. There is no need to carry its development beyond the first five stages. The maritime states rarely, and only when compelled, proceed beyond the fifth stage, and attain to complete intranationality and amalgamation. Usually, it is enough if other sea nomads and traders are kept away, if the monopoly of robbery and trade is secured, and if the “subjects” are kept quiet by forts and garrisons. Important places of production are, of course, actually “dominated”; and this applies especially to mines, to a few fertile grain belts, to woods with good lumber, to salt works, and to important fisheries. Domination here, therefore, means permanent administration, by making the subjects work these for the ruling class. It is only later in the development, that there arises a taste for “lands and serfs” and large domains for the ruling class beyond the confines of the narrow and original limits of the State. This happens when the maritime state by the incorporation of subjugated territories has become a mixture of the territorial and the maritime forms. But even in that case, and in contradistinction to territorial states, large landed properties are merely a source of money rentals, and are in nearly all cases administered as absentee-property. This we find in Carthage and in the later Roman Empire.

The interests of the master class, which in the maritime state as well as in every other state, governs according to its own advantage, are different from those in the territorial state. In the latter the feudal territorial magnate is powerful because of his ownership of lands and people; while conversely, the patrician of the maritime city is powerful because of his wealth. The territorial magnate can dominate his “State” only by the number of men-at-arms maintained by him, and in order to have as many of these as possible, he must increase his territory as much as possible. The patrician, on the other hand, can control his “state” only by movable wealth, with which he can hire strong arms or bribe weak souls; such wealth is won faster by piracy and by trade than by land wars and the possession of large estates in distant territories. Furthermore, in order thoroughly to use such property, he would be obliged to leave his city to settle down on it, and to become a regular squire; because in a period when money has not yet become general, where a profitable division of labor between town and country has not yet come about, the exploitation of large estates can only be carried on by actually consuming their products, and absentee ownership as a source of income is inconceivable. Thus far, however, we have not reached that portion of the development. We are still examining primitive conditions. No patrician of any city state would, at this time, think of leaving his lively rich home, in order to bury himself among barbarians, and thus with one move cut himself off in his state from any political rôle. All his economic, social and political interests impel him with one accord toward maritime ventures. Not landed property, but movable capital, is the sinew of his life.

These were the moving causes of the actions of the master class in the maritime cities; and even where geographical conditions permitted an extensive expansion beyond the adjoining hinterland of these cities, they turned the weight of effort toward sea-power rather than toward territorial growth. Even in the case of Carthage, its colossal territory was of far less importance to it than its maritime interests. Primarily it conquered Sicily and Corsica more in order to check the competition of the Greek and Etruscan traders than for the sake of owning these islands; it extended its territories toward the Lybians largely to insure the security of its other home possessions; and finally, when it conquered Spain, its ultimate reason was the need of owning the mines. The history of the Hansa shows many points of similarity to the above. The majority of these maritime cities, moreover, were not capable of subjugating a large district. Even had there been the will to conquer, there were extraneous, geographical conditions that hindered. AH along the Mediterranean, with the exception of some few places, the coastal plain is extremely narrow, a small strip fenced off by high mountain ranges. That was one cause which prevented most of the states grouped about some trading harbor from growing to anything like the size we should naturally assume to be probable; while in the open country, ruled by herdsmen, and this very early, immense realms came into being. The second cause for the small beginnings of these states is found in this, that the hinterland whether in the hills or on the few plains of the Mediterranean was occupied by warlike tribes. These tribesmen, either hunters or warlike herdsmen, or else primitive feudal states of the same master race as the sea nomads, were not likely to be subjugated without a severe contest. Thus in Greece the interior was saved from the maritime states.

For these reasons the maritime State, even when most developed, always remains centralized, one is tempted to say centered, on its trading harbor; while the territorial State, strongly decentralized from the start, for a long time continues to develop as it expands a still more pronounced decentralization. Later, we shall see how this is affected by the adoption of those forms of government and of economic achievement which first were perfected in the “city-state,” and which thus obtained the strength to counteract the centrifugal forces, and to build up the central organization which is characteristic of our modern states. This is the first great contrast between the two forms of the State.

No less decisive is the second point of contrast, whereby the territorial State remains tied up to natural economies as opposed to money economies, toward which the maritime State quickly turns. This contrast grows also out of the basic conditions of their existence.

Wherever a State lives in natural economy, money is a superfluous luxury—so superfluous that an economy developed to the use of money retrogrades again into a system of payments in kind as soon as the community drops back into the primitive form. Thus after Charlemagne had issued good coins, the economic situation expelled them. Neustria—not to mention Austrasia—under the stress of the migration of the peoples reverted to payment in kind. Such a system can well do without money as a standard of values, since it is without any developed intercourse and traffic The lord’s tenants furnish as tribute those things that the lord and his followers consume immediately; while his ornaments, fine fabrics, damascened arms, or rare horses, salt, etc., are procured in exchange with wandering merchants for slaves, wax, furs and other products of a warlike economic system of exchange in kind.

In city life, at any advanced stage of development, it is impossible to exist without a common measure of values. The free mechanic in a city can not, except in rare cases, find some other craftsman in need of the special thing which he produces, prepared to consume it immediately. Then, too, in cities the inevitable retail trade in food products, where every one must purchase nearly everything required, makes the use of coined money quite inevitable. It is impossible to conduct trade in its more limited sense, not between merchant and customers, but between merchant and merchant, without having a common measure of value. Imagine the case of a trader entering a port with a cargo of slaves, wishing to take cloth as a return cargo, and finding a cloth merchant who at the time may not want slaves but iron, or cattle, or furs. To accomplish this exchange, at least a dozen intermediate trades would have to take place before the object could be achieved. That can be avoided only if there exists some one commodity desired by all. In the system of payment in kind of the territorial states this may be taken by cattle or horses, since they may be used by any one at some time; but the ship owner can not load with cattle as a means of payment, and thus gold and silver become recognized as “money.”

From centralization and from the use of money, which are the necessary properties of the maritime or the city State, as we shall hereafter call it, its fate follows of necessity.

The psychology of the townsman, and especially of the dweller in the maritime commercial city, is radically different from that of the countryman. His point of view is freer and more inclusive, even though it be more superficial; he is livelier, because more impressions strike him in a day than a peasant in a year. He becomes used to constant changes and news, and thus is always novarum rerum cupidus He is more remote from nature and less dependent on it than is the peasant, and therefore he has less fear of “ghosts.” One consequence of this is that an underling in a city State is less apt to regard the “taboo” regulations imposed on him by the first and second estates of rulers. And as he is compelled to live in compact masses with his fellow subjects, he early finds his strength in numbers, so that he becomes more unruly and seditious than the serf who lives in such isolation that he never becomes conscious of the mass to which he belongs and ever remains under the impression that his overlord with his followers would have the upper hand in every fight.

This in itself brings about an ever progressive dissolution of the rigid system of subordinated groups first created by the feudal state. In Greece the territorial states alone were able to keep their subjects for a long time in a state of subjection: Sparta its Helots, Thessaly its Penestœ. In all the city States, on the other hand, we early find an uprising of the proletariat against which the master class was unable to oppose an effective resistance.

The economic situation tends toward the same result as the conditions of settlement. Movable wealth had far less stability than landed property: the sea is tricky, and the fortunes of maritime war and piracy not less so. The rich man of to-day may lose all by a turn of Fortune’s wheel; while the poorest man may, by the same swing, land on top. But in a commonwealth based entirely on possessions, loss of fortune brings with it loss of rank and of “class,” just as the converse takes place. The rich Plebeian becomes the leader of the mass of the people in their constitutional fight for equal rights and places all his fortune at risk in that struggle. The position of the patricians becomes untenable; when coerced they have ever conceded the claims of the lower class. As soon as the first rich Plebeian has been taken into their ranks, the right of rule by birth, defended as a holy institution, has forever become impossible. Henceforth it follows that what is fair for one is fair for the other; and the aristocratic rule is followed first by the plutocratic, then by the democratic, finally by the ochlocratic régime, until either foreign conquest or the “tyranny” of some “Savior of the Sword” rescues the community from chaos.

This end affects not only the State, but in most cases its inhabitants so profoundly that one may speak of a literal death of the peoples, caused by the capitalistic exploitation of slave labor. This latter is a social institution inevitably bound to exist in every state founded on piracy and maritime ventures and thus coming to use money as a means of exchange. In the primitive stages of feudalism, whence it was derived, slavery was harmless, as is true in all economic systems based on exchange and use in kind, only to become an ulcerating cancer, utterly destructive of the entire life of the State as soon as it is exploited by the “capitalist” method, i.e., as soon as slave labor is applied, not to be used in a system of a feudal payment in kind, but to supply a market paying in money.

Numberless slaves are brought into the country by piracy, privateering, or by the commercial wars. The wealth of their owners permits them to work the ground more intensively, and the owners of realty within the confines of the city limits draw ever increasing revenues from their possessions, and become more and more greedy of land. The small freeholder in the country, overburdened by the taxes and military service of wars waged in the interests of this great merchant class, sinks into debt, becomes a slave for debt, or migrates into the city as a pauper. But even so there is no hope for him, since the removal of the peasants has damaged the craftsmen and small traders, for the peasants were wont to purchase in the city, while the great estates, constantly increasing by the removal of the peasantry, supply their own needs by their own slave products. The evil attacks other parts of the body politic. The remaining trades are gradually usurped by masters exploiting slave labor, which is cheaper than free labor. The middle class thus goes to pieces; and a pauper, good-for-nothing mob, a genuine bob-tail proletariat” comes into being, which, by reason of the democratic constituton achieved in the interim, is the sovereign of the commonwealth. The full course, political as well as military, is then a mere question of time. It may take place without a foreign invasion; which, however, usually sets in, when by reason of the physical breakdown caused by the immense depopulation, by the consumption of the people in its literal sense, the final stage is attained. This is the end of all these states. Within the scope of this treatise we can not dilate on this phase.

Only one city State was able to maintain itself throughout the centuries, because it was the ultimate conqueror of all the others, and because it was enabled to counteract the consumption of population by the only method of sanitation possible; by extensive recreations of middle class populations, both in cities and in country districts, as well as by vast colonizations of peasants on lands taken from the vanquished.

The Roman Empire was that state. But even this gigantic organism finally succumbed to the consumption of population, caused by capitalistic slave exploitation. In the interval, however, it had created the first imperium, i.e., the first tensely centralized state on a large scale, and had overcome and amalgamated all territorial states of both the Mediterranean shores and its neighboring countries, and had thereby for all time set before the world the model of such an organized dominion. In addition to this it had developed the organization of cities and of the system of money economy to such an extent that they never were utterly destroyed, even in the turmoil of the barbarian migration. In consequence of this, the feudal territorial states that occupied the territory of the former Roman Empire either directly or indirectly received those new impulses which were to carry them beyond the condition of the normal primitive feudal State,



* In this category must be reckoned the salutation, still in use in some parts, “Peace Be With You.” It is expressive of the perversity of Tolstoi’s later years that he misapprehends this characteristic mark of a time when war was the normal state of affairs, as the remnant of a golden age of peace. The Importance of the Russian Revolution (German translation by A. Hess, p. 17).

* This may account for the use made of old women as heralds. They are doubly available for that purpose, since they are worthless for warfare, and are supposed to be endowed with specific powers of sorcery (Westermarck), even more than old men, who also are treated cautiously, since they may soon become “ghosts.”

* Whether the Etruscans were immigrants into Italy by land who took up piracy after having made war successfully on land, or whether as sea nomads they had already settled the country along the sea named after them, has not been determined.

* How characteristic of these relations it is that Great Britain, the only “maritime state” of Europe, even at this present day will not surrender the right to arm privateers.

Capítulo IV – O desenvolvimento do Estado feudal

(a) A gênese da propriedade territorial

WE now return, as stated above, to that point where the primitive feudal State gave rise to the city State as an offshoot, to follow the upward growth of the main branch. As the destiny of the city State was determined by the agglomeration of that form of wealth about which the State swung in its orbit, so the fate of the territorial State is conditioned by that agglomeration of wealth which in turn controls its orbit, the ownership of landed property.

In the preceding, we followed the economic differentiation in the case of the shepherd tribes, and showed that even here the law of the agglomeration about existing nuclei of wealth begins to assert its efficacy, as soon as the political means comes into play, be it in the form of wars for booty or still more in the form of slavery. We saw that the tribe had differentiated nobles and common freemen, beneath whom slaves, being without any political rights, are subordinated as a third class. This differentiation of wealth is introduced into the primitive state, and sharpens very markedly the contrast of social rank. It becomes still more accentuated by settlement, whereby private ownership in lands is created. Doubtless there existed even at the time when the primitive feudal state came into being, great differences in the amount of lands possessed by individuals, especially if within the tribe of herdsmen the separation had been strongly marked between the prince-like owners of large herds and many slaves, and the poorer common freemen. These princes occupy more land than do the small freemen.

At first, this happens quite harmlessly, and without a trace of any consciousness of the fact that extended possession of land will become the means of a considerable increase of social power and of wealth. Of this, there is at this time no question, since at this stage the common freemen would have been powerful enough to prevent the formation of extended landed estates had they known that it would eventually do them harm. But no one could have foreseen this possibility. Lands, in the condition in which we are observing them, have no value. For that reason the object and the spoils of the contest were not the possession of lands, but of the land and its peasants, the latter being bound to the soil (glebœ adscripti of our later law) as labor substrat and labor motors, from the conjunction of which there grows the object of the political means, viz., ground rent.

Every one is at liberty to take as much of the uncultivated land existing in masses as he needs and will or can cultivate. It is quite as unlikely that any one would care to measure off for another parts of an apparently limitless supply, as that any one would apportion the supply of atmospheric air.

The princes of the noble clans, probably from the start, pursuant to the usage of the tribe of herdsmen, receive more “lands and peasants” than do the common freemen. That is their right as princes, because of their position as patriarchs, war lords, and captains maintaining their warlike suites of half-free persons, of servants, of clients, or of refugees. This probably amounts to a considerable difference in the primitive amounts of land ownership. But this is not all. The princes need a larger surface of the “land without peasants” than do the common freemen, because they bring with them their servants and slaves. These have, however, no standing at law, and are incapable, according to the universal concepts of folk law, of acquiring title to landed property. Since, however, they must have land in order to live, their master takes it for them, so as to settle them thereon. In consequence of this, the richer the prince of the nomad tribe the more powerful the territorial magnate becomes.

But this means that wealth, and with it social rank, is consolidated more firmly and more durably than in the stage of herdsman ownership. For the greatest herds may be lost, but landed property is indestructible; and men bound to labor, bringing forth rentals, reproduce their kind even after the most terrible slaughter, even should they not be obtainable full grown in slave hunts.

About this fixed nucleus of wealth, property begins to agglomerate with increasing rapidity. Harmless as was the first occupation, men must soon recognize the fact that rental increases with the number of slaves one can settle on the unoccupied lands. Henceforth, the external policy of the feudal state is no longer directed toward the acquisition of land and peasants, but rather of peasants without land, to be carried off home as serfs, and there to be colonized anew. When the entire state carries on the war or the robbing expedition, the nobles obtain the lion’s share. Very often, however, they go off on their own account, followed only by their suites, and then the common freeman, staying at home, receives no share in the loot. Thus the vicious circle constantly tends rapidly to enlarge with the increasing wealth of the lands owned by the nobles. The more slaves a noble has, the more rental he can obtain. With this, in turn, he can maintain a warlike following, composed of servants, of lazy freemen, and of refugees. With their help, he can, in turn, drive in so many more slaves, to increase his rentals.

This process takes place, even where some central power exists, which, pursuant to the general law of the people, has the right to dispose of uncultivated lands; while it is, in many cases, not only by sufferance, but often by the express sanction of that authority. As long as the feudal magnate remains the submissive vassal of the crown, it lies in the king’s interest to make him as strong as possible. By this means his military suite, to be placed at the disposal of the crown in times of war, is correspondingly increased. We shall adduce only one illustration to show that the necessary consequence in universal history is not confined to the well-known effect in the feudal states of Western Europe, but follows from these premises even under totally different surroundings: “The principal service in Fiji consisted in war duty; and if the outcome was successful it meant new grants of lands, including therein the denizens, as slaves, and thus led to the assumption of new obligations.” 91

This accumulation of landed property in ever increasing quantity in the hands of the landed nobility brings the primitive feudal state of a higher stage to the “finished feudal state” with a complete scale of feudal ranks.

Reference to a previous work by the author, based on a study of the sources, will show the same causal connection for German lands;92 and in that publication it was pointed out that in all the instances noted a process takes place, identical in its principal lines of development. It is only on this line of reasoning that one can explain the fact, to take Japan as an example, that its feudal system developed into the precise details which are well known to the students of European history, although Japan is inhabited by a race fundamentally different from the Arians; and besides (a strong argument against giving too great weight to the materialistic view of history) the process of agriculture is on a totally different technical basis, since the Japanese are not cultivators with the plow, but with the hoe.

In this instance, as throughout this book, it is not the fortune of a single people that is investigated; it is rather the object of the author to narrate the typical development, the universal consequences, of the same basic traits of mankind wherever they are placed. Presupposing a knowledge of the two most magnificent examples of the expanded feudal state, Western Europe and Japan, we shall, in general, limit ourselves to cases less well known, and so far as possible give the preference to material taken from ethnography, rather than from history in its more restricted sense.

The process now to be narrated is a change, gradually consummated but fundamentally revolutionary, of the political and social articulation of the primitive feudal state: the central authority loses its political power to the territorial nobility, the common freeman sinks from his status, while the “subject” mounts.

(b) O poder central no Estado feudal primitivo

The patriarch of a tribe of herdsmen, though endowed with the authority which flows from his war-lordship and sacerdotal functions, generally has no despotic powers. The same may be said of the “king” of a small settled community, where, generally speaking, he would exercise very limited command. On the other hand, as soon as some military genius manages to fuse together numerous tribes of herdsmen into one powerful mass of warriors, despotic centralized power is the direct, inevitable consequence.93 As soon as war exists, the truth of the Homeric

oὐκ ἀγαθὴ πολυκοιρανιὴ, εἷς κοίρανος ἔστω εἷς βασιλεúς*

is admitted by the most unruly tribes, and becomes a fact to be acted on. The free primitive huntsmen render to their elected chief unconditioned obedience, while on the war-path; the free Cossacks of the Ukraine, recognizing no authority in times of peace, submit to their hetman’s power of life and death in times of war. This obedience toward their war-lord is a trait common to every genuine warrior psychology.

The leaders of the great migrations of nomads are all powerful despots: Attila, Omar, Genghis Khan, Tamerlane, Mosilikatse, Ketchwayo. Similarly, we find that whenever a mighty territorial state has come into being as the result of the welding together of a number of primitive feudal states, there existed in the beginning a strong central authority. Examples of this may be seen in the case of Sargon Cyrus, Chlodowech, Charlemagne, Boles-law the Bed. Sometimes, especially as long as the main state has not yet reached its geographical or sociologic bounds, the centralized authority is maintained intact in the hands of a series of strong monarchs, which degenerates, in some instances, to the maddest despotism and insanity of some of the Cæsars: especially do we find flagrant examples of this in Mesopotamia and in Africa. We shall merely touch on this phase: the more so, as it has little general effect on the final development of the forms of government. This point should, however, be stated, that the development of the form of government of a despotism depends in the main, on what the sacerdotal status of the rulers may be, in addition to their position as war-lords, and whether or not they hold the monopoly of trade as an additional regalian right.

The combination of Caesar and Pope tends in all cases to develop the extreme forms of despotism; while the partition of spiritual and temporal functions brings it about that their exponents mutually check and counterbalance one another. A characteristic example may be found in the conditions prevailing among the Malay states of the East Indian Archipelago, genuine “maritime states,” whose genesis is an exact counterpart of that of the Greek maritime states. Generally speaking, the prince has just as little power among these, as, shall we say, the king at the opening of the history of the Attie states. The chieftains of the clans (in Sulu the Dato, in Achin the Panglima), as in the case of Athens, have the real power. But where, “as in Tobah, religious motives endow the rulers with the position of a Pope in miniature, an entirely different phase is found. The Panglima then depend entirely on the Rajah, and are merely officials.” 94 To refer to a well-known fact, when the aristocrats and chiefs of the clans in Athens and in Rome abolished the kingdom, they preserved at least the old title, and granted its use to a dignitary otherwise politically impotent, in order that the gods might have their offerings presented in the accustomed manner. For the same reason, in many cases, the descendant of the former tribal king is preserved as a dignitary, otherwise totally powerless, while the actual power of government has long since been transferred to some war chief; as in the later Merovingian Empire, the Carolingian Mayors of the palace (Majordomus) ruled alongside a “long locked king,” rex crinitus, of the race of Merowech, so, in Japan, the Shogun ruled beside the Mikado, and in the Empire of the Incas, the commander of the Inca beside the Huillcauma, who had been gradually limited to his sacerdotal functions.* 95

In addition to the office of supreme pontiff, the power of the head of the state is frequently increased enormously by the trading monopoly, a function exercised by the primitive chieftains as a natural consequence of the peaceful barter of guest-gifts. Such a trade monopoly, for example, was exercised by King Solomon; and latterly by the Roman Emperor Friedrich II.† 96

As a rule, the negro chieftains are “monopolists of trading”;97 as is the King of Sulu.98 Among the Galla, wherever the supremacy of a head chief is acknowledged, he becomes “as a matter of course, the tradesman for his tribe; since none of his subjects is allowed to trade with strangers directly.”99 Among the Barotse and Mabunda, the king is “according to the strict interpretation of the law, the only trader of his country.” 100

Ratzel notes, in telling language, the importance of this factor: “In addition to his witchcraft, the chief increases his power by a monopoly of trading. Since the chief is the sole intermediary in trade, everything desired by his subjects passes through his hands, and he becomes the donor of all longed-for gifts, the fulfiller of the fondest wishes. In such a system, there lie certainly the possibilities of great power.” 101 If, in conquered districts, where the power of government is apt to be more tensely exercised, there is added the monopoly of trade, the royal power may become very great.

It may be stated as a general rule, that even in the apparently most extreme cases of despotism, no monarchical absolutism exists. The ruler may, undeterred by fear of punishment, rage against his subject class; but he is checked in no small degree by his feudal followers. Ratzel, in speaking of the subject generally, remarks: “The so-called ‘court assemblage’ of African or of ancient American chiefs is probably always a council.... Although we meet with traces of absolutism with all peoples on a low scale, even where the form of government is republican, the cause of absolutism is not in the strength of either the state or of the chieftain, but in the moral weakness of the individual, who succumbs without any effective resistance to the powers wielded over him.” 102 The kingdom of the Zulu is a limited despotism, in which very powerful ministers of state (Induna) share the power; with other Caffir tribes it is a council, sometimes dominating both people and chieftains.103 In spite of this control “under Tshaka every sneezing or hawking in the presence of the tyrant, as well as every lack of tears at the death of some royal kinsman, was punished with death.” 104 The same limitation applies to the West African kingdoms of Dahomy and Ashanti, notorious because of their frightful barbarities. “In spite of the waste of human life, in war, slave trade, and human sacrifices, there existed at no place absolute despotism.... Bowditch remarks on the similarity of the system prevailing in Ashanti, with its ranks and orders, with the old Persian system as described by Herodotus.” 105

One must be very careful, and this may again be insisted upon, not to confuse despotism with absolutism. Even in the feudal states of Western Europe, the rulers exercised, in many cases, power of life and death, free from the trammels of law; but nevertheless such a ruler was impotent as against his “magnates.” So long as he does not interfere with the privileges of the classes, he need not restrain his cruelty, and he may even occasionally sacrifice one of the great men; but woe to him were he to dare to touch the economic privileges of his magnates. It is possible to study this very characteristic phase, completely free, from the standpoint of law, and yet closely hemmed in by political checks, in the great East African empires: “The government of Waganda and Wanyoro is, in theory, based on the rule of the king over the whole territory; but in reality this is only the semblance of government, since, as a matter of fact, the lands belong to the supreme chieftains of the empire. It was they who represented the popular opposition to foreign influences, in the time of Mtesa; and Muanga did not dare, for fear of them, to carry out any innovations. Although the kingship is limited in reality, yet in form it occupies an imposing position in unessentials. The ruler is absolute f master over the lives and limbs of his subjects, the mass of the people, and feels himself restrained only in the narrowest circle of the chief courtiers.” 106

Precisely the same statement applies to the inhabitants of Oceania, to mention the last of the great societies that created states: “At no place does one find an entire absence of a representative mediation between prince and people.... The aristocratic principle corrects the patriarchal. Therefore, the extremes of despotism depend more on class and caste pressure than on the overpowering will of any individual.” 107

(c) A desintegração política e social do Estado feudal primitivo

Space forbids our detailing the innumerable shadings under which the patriarchal-aristocratic (in some cases plutocratic) mixture of form of government in the primitive feudal state is shown in either an ethnographic, historical or juristic survey. This is likewise of the greatest importance for the subsequent development.

It is indifferent how much power the ruler may have had at the beginning, an inevitable fate breaks down his power in a short while; and does this, one may say, the faster, the greater that power was, i.e., the larger the territory of the primitive feudal state of higher grade.

Taking into account the process already set forth, which, through the occupation and settlement of unused lands by means of newly acquired slaves, made for the increase of power of the separate nobles, a result came about which might prove uncomfortable for the central power. Mommsen in speaking of the Celts says: “When in a clan numbering about eighty thousand armed men, a single chieftain could appear at convocation with ten thousand followers, exclusive of his serfs and debtors, it becomes clear that such a noble was rather an independent prince than a mere citizen of his clan.” 108 And the same may apply to the “Heiu” of the Somali, where a great landed proprietor maintained hundreds of families in dependence on his lands, “so that conditions in Somaliland tend to recall those existing in mediaeval Europe during feudal times.” 109

Although such a preponderance of isolated territorial magnates can come about in the feudal state of low development, it nevertheless reaches its culmination in the feudal state of higher grade, the great feudal state; this happens by reason of the increased power given to the landlords by the bestowal of public official functions.

The more the state expands, the more must official power be delegated by the central government to its representatives on the borders and marches, who are constantly threatened by wars and insurrectionary outbreaks. In order to preserve his bailiwick in safety for the state, such an official must be endowed with supreme military powers, joined with the functions of the highest administrative officials. Even should he not require a large number of civil employees, he still must have a permanent military force. And how is he to pay these men? With one possible exception, to be noted hereafter, there are no taxes which flow into the treasury of the central government and then are poured back again over the land, since these presuppose an economic development existing only where money is employed. But in communities having a system of payments in kind, such as these “territorial states” all are, there are no taxes payable in money. For that reason, the central government has no alternative but to turn over to the counts, or border wardens, or satraps, the income of its territorial jurisdiction. Such an official, then, receives the dues of the subjects, determines when and where forced labor is to be rendered, receives the deodands, fees and penalties payable in cattle, etc.; and in consideration of these must maintain the armed force, place definite numbers of armed men at the disposal of the central government, build and maintain highways and bridges, feed and stable the ruler and his following, or his “royal messengers,” and finally, furnish a definite “Sergeantry” consisting of highly valuable goods, easily transported to the court, such as horses, cattle, slaves, precious metals, wines, etc.

In other words, he receives an immensely large fief for his services. If previously he was not, he now becomes the greatest man in his country, though before he probably was the most powerful landlord in his official district. He will hereafter do exactly what his equals in rank are doing, although they may not have his official position; that is to say, he will, only on a larger scale, continue to settle new lands with ever newly recruited serfs. By this he increases his military strength; and this must be wished for and aided by the central government. For it is the fate of these states, that they must fatten those very local powers, that are to engulf them.

Conditions arise which enable the warden of the marches to impose the terms of his military assistance, especially in the inevitable feuds which arise over the right of succession to the central government. Thereby he obtains further valuable concessions, especially the formal acknowledgment of the heritability of his official fief, so that office and lands come to be held by an identical tenure. By this means, he gradually becomes almost independent of the central authority, and the complaint of the Russian peasant, “The sky is high up and the Tsar is far off,” tends to become of universal application. Take this characteristic example from Africa: “The empire of Lunda is an absolute feudal state. The chieftains (Muata, Mona, Muene) are permitted independent action in all internal affairs, so long as it pleases the Muata Jamvo. Usually, the great chieftains, living afar, send their caravans with their tribute once a year to the Mussumba; but those living at too great a distance, sometimes for long periods omit making any payments of their tribute; while similar chiefs in the neighborhood of the capital forward tribute many times a year.” 110

Nothing can show more plainly than this report, how, because of inadequate means of transportation, extent of distance becomes politically effective in these states loosely held together and in a state of payment in kind. One is tempted to say that the independence of the feudal masters grows in proportion to the square of their distance from the seat of the central authority. The crown must pay more and more for their services, and must gradually confirm them in all the sovereign powers of the state, or else permit their usurpation of these powers after they have seized them one after the other. Such are heritability of fiefs, tolls on highways and commerce, (in a later stage the right of coinage), high and low justice, the right to exact for private gain the public duties of repair of ways and bridges (the old English trinodis nécessitas) and the disposal of the military services of the freemen of the country.

By these means, the powerful frontier wardens gradually attain an ever greater, and finally a complete, de facto independence, even though the formal bond of feudal suzerainty may for a long time apparently keep together the newly developed principalities. The reader, of course, recalls instances of these typical transitions; all mediaeval history is one chain of them; not only the Merovingian and Carolingian Empires, not only Germany, but also France, Italy, Spain, Poland, Bohemia, Hungary, as well as Japan and China,111 have passed through this process of decomposition, not only once, but repeatedly. And this is no less true of the feudal states of Mesopotamia: great empires follow each other, acquire power, burst asunder time after time, and again are re-united. In the case of Persia, we are expressly told: “Separate states and provinces, by a successful revolt, obtained freedom for a longer or shorter time, and the ‘great king’ at Susa did not always have the power to force them to return to their obedience; in other states, the satraps or warlike chieftains ruled arbitrarily, carrying on the government faithlessly and violently, either as independent rulers or tributary under-kings of the king of kings. The Persian world-empire went to its disintegration an agglomeration of states and lands, without any general law, without ordered administration, without uniform judicial system, without order and enforcement of law, and without possibility of help.” 112

A similar fate overtook its neighbor in the valley of the Nile: “Princes spring from the families of the usurpers, free landlords, who pay land-taxes to nobody but to the king, and rule over certain strips of land, or districts. These district princes govern a territory specifically set apart as pertaining to their official position, and separate from their family possessions.

“Later successful warlike operations, perhaps filling in the gap between the Ancient and the Middle (Egyptian) Empire, together with the gathering in of captives of the wars, who could be utilized as labor motors, brought a more stringent exploitation of the subjects, a definite determination of the tributes. During the Middle Empire, the power of the princes of the clans rose to an enormous height, they maintained great courts, imitating the splendor of the royal establishment.”113 “With the decline of the royal authority during a period of decay, the higher officials use their power for personal aims, in order to make their offices hereditary within their families.” *114

But the operation of this historical law is not restricted to the “historical” peoples. In speaking of the feudal states of India, Ratzel states: “Even beyond Radshistan, the nobles often enjoyed a great measure of independence, so that even in Haiderabad, after the Nizam had acquired the sole rule over the country, the Umara or Nabobs maintained troops of their own, independently of the army of the Nizam. These smaller feudatories did not comply with the increased demands of modern times as regards the administration of Indian states as often as did the greater princes.” 115

In Africa finally, great feudal states come and pass away, as do bubbles arising and bursting from the stream of eternally similar phenomena. The powerful Ashanti empire, within one and a half centuries, has shriveled to less than one-fifth of its territory;116 and many of the empires that the Portuguese encountered have since disappeared without leaving a trace of their existence. And yet these were strong feudal powers: “Stately and cruel negro empires, such as Benin Dahomy or Ashanti, resemble in many respects ancient Peru or Mexico, having in their vicinity politically disorganized tribes. The hereditary nobility of the Mfumus, sharply separated from the rest of the state, had mainly the administration of the districts, and together with the more transitory nobility of service, formed in Loango strong pillars of the ruler and his house.” 117

But whenever such a state, once powerful, has split into a number of territorial states either de facto or juristically independent, the former process begins anew. The great state gobbles up the smaller ones, until a new empire has arisen. “The greatest territorial magnates later become emperors,” says Meitzen laconically of Germany.118 But even this great demesne vanishes, split up by the need of equipping warlike vassals with fiefs. “The Kings soon found that they had donated away all their belongings; their great territorial possessions in the Delta had melted away,” says Schneider (1. c. page 38) of the Pharaohs of the sixth dynasty. The same causes brought about like effects in the Frankish Empire among both Merovingians and Carolingians; and later in Germany in the case of the Saxon and Hohenstaufen Emperors.119 Additional references are unnecessary, as every one is familiar with these instances.

In a subsequent part of this treatise, we shall examine into the causes that finally liberated the primitive feudal state from this witch’s curse, this circling from agglomeration to disintegration without end. Our present task is to take up the social side of the process, as we have already taken up the historical phase of it. It changes the articulation of classes in the most decisive manner.

The common freemen, the lower strata of the dominating group, are struck with overpowering force. They sink into bondsmen-ship. Their decay must go along with that of the central power; since both, allied one might say, by nature, are menaced simultaneously by the expanding power of the great territorial lords. The crown controls the landed magnate so long as the levy of the common freemen of the district is a superior force to his guards, to his “following.” But a fatal need, already set forth, impels the crown to deliver over the peasants to the landed lordling, and ‘from the moment when the county levy has [become weaker than his guards, the free peasants are lost. Where the sovereign powers of the state are delegated to the territorial magnate, i.e., where he has developed more or less into an independent lord of the region, the overthrow of the liberties of the peasants is carried out, at least in part, under the color of law, by forcing excessive military services, which ruin the peasants, and which are required the more often as the dynastic interests of the territorial lord require new lands and new peasants, or by abusing the right to compulsory labor, or by turning the administration of public justice into military oppression.

The common freemen, however, receive the final blow either by the formal delegation or by the usurpation of the most important powers of the crown, the disposition of unoccupied lands or “commons.” Originally, this land belonged to all the “folk” in common; i.e., to the freemen for common use; hut in accordance with an original custom, probably universal, the patriarch enjoys disposal of it. This right of disposition passes to the territorial magnate with the remaining royal privileges—and thus he has obtained the power to strangle any few remaining freemen. He now declares all unoccupied lands his property, and forbids their settlement by free peasants, while those only are permitted access who recognize his superior lordship; i.e., who have commended themselves to him, or are his serfs.

That is the last nail in the coffin of the common freemen. Heretofore their equality of possessions has been in some way guaranteed. Even if a peasant had twelve sons, his patrimony was not split up, because eleven of them broke new hides of land in the commons of the community, or else in the general land not yet distributed to other villages. That is henceforth impossible; hides tend to divide where large families grow up, others are united when heir and heiress marry: henceforth there come into existence “laborers,” recruited from the owners of half, a quarter, or even an eighth of a hide who help work a larger area. Thus the free peasantry splits into rich and poor; this begins to loosen the bond which hitherto had made the bundle of arrows unbreakable. When, therefore, some comrade is overwhelmed by the exactions of the lord and has become his liegeman, or if bond peasants are settled among the original owners, either to occupy some hide vacated by the extinction of the family or fallen into the hands of the lord because of the indebtedness of its occupant, then every social cohesion is loosened; and the peasantry, split apart by class and by economic contrasts, is handed over without power of resistance to the magnate.

On the other hand, the result is the same where the magnate has no usurped regalian powers of the state. In such cases, open force and shameless violation of rights accomplish the same ends. The ruler, far off and impotent, bound to rely on the good will and help of the violators of law and order, has neither the power nor the opportunity of interference.

There is hardly any need of adducing instances. The free peasantry of Germany were put through the process of expropriation and declassification at least three times. Once it happened in Celtic times.120 The second overthrow of the free peasants of the old German Empire took place in the ninth and tenth centuries. The third tragedy of the same form began with the fifteenth century, in the countries formerly Slavic, which they had conquered and colonized.121 The peasants fared worse in those lands, in the “republics of nobles,” where there was no monarchical central authority, whose community of interests with their subjects tended to deprive oppression of its worse features. The Celts in the Gaul of Cæsar’s time are one of the earliest examples. Here “the great families exercised an economic, military and political preponderance, They monopolized the leases of the lucrative rights of the state. They forced the common freemen, overwhelmed by the taxes which they had themselves imposed, to borrow of them, and then, first as their debtors, afterward legally as their serfs, to surrender their liberty. For their own advantage they developed the system of followers: L e., the privilege of the nobility to have about them a mass of armed servants in their pay, called ambacti, with whose aid they formed a state within a state. Relying on these, their own men-at-arms, they defied the lawful authorities and the levies of the freemen, and thus were able to burst asunder the commonwealth.... The only protection to be found was in the relation of serfdom, where personal duty and interest required the lord to protect his clients and to avenge any wrong to his men. Since the state no longer had the power to protect the freemen, these in growing numbers became the vassals of some powerful noble.” 122 We find these identical conditions fifteen hundred years later in Kurland, Livonia, in Swedish Pomerania, in Eastern Holstein, in Mecklenburg, and especially in Poland. In the German territories the petty nobles subjugated their peasantry, while in Poland their prey was the formerly free and noble Schlachziz. “Universal history is monotonous,” says Ratzel. The same procedure overthrew the peasantry of ancient Egypt: “After a warlike intermezzo, there follows a period in the history of the Middle Empire, which brings about a deterioration of the position of the peasantry in Lower Egypt. The number of landlords decreases, while their territorial growth and power increases. The tribute of the peasants is hereafter determined by an exact assessment on their estates, and definitely fixed by a sort of Doomsday Book. Because of this pressure, many peasants soon enter the lord’s court or the cities of the local rulers, and take employment there either as servants, mechanics, or even as overseers in the economic organization of these manors or courts. In common with any available captives, they contribute to the extension of the prince’s estates, and to further the general expulsion of the peasantry from their holdings.”123

The example of the Roman Empire shows, as nothing else can, how inevitable this process becomes. When we first meet Rome in history the conception of serfdom or bondage has already been forgotten. When the “modern period” of Rome opens, only slavery is known. And yet, within fifteen centuries, the free peasantry again sink into economic dependence, after Rome has become an overextended, unwieldy empire, whose border districts have more and more dissolved from the central control. The great landed proprietors, having been endowed with the lower justice and police administration on their own estates have “reduced their servants, who may originally have been free proprietors of the eager privatus vectigalis’ to a state of servitude, and have thus developed a sort of actual glebce adscriptus, within the boundaries of their ‘immunities.’”124 The invading Germans found this feudal order worked out in Gaul and the other provinces. At this particular time, the immense difference formerly existing between slaves and free settlers (coloni) had been completely obliterated, first in their economic position, and then, naturally, in their constitutional rights.

Wherever the common freemen sink into political and economic dependence on the great territorial magnates, when, in other words, they become bound either to the court or to the lands, the social group formerly subject to them tend in a corresponding measure to improve their status. Both layers tend to meet half-way, to approximate their position, and finally to amalgamate. The observations just made concerning the free settlers and the agricultural slaves of the later Roman Empire hold true everywhere. Thus in Germany, freemen and serfs together formed, when fused, the economic and legally unital group of Grundholde, or men bound to the soil.125

The elevation of the former “subjects,” hereafter for the sake of brevity to be called “plebs,” flows from the same source as the debasement of the freeman, and arises by the same necessity from the very foundations on which these states are themselves erected, viz., the agglomeration of the landed property in ever fewer hands.

The plebs are the natural opponents of the central government—since that is their conqueror and tax imposer; while they naturally oppose the common freemen, who despise them and oppress them politically, besides crowding them back economically. The great magnate also is the natural opponent of the central government—an impediment in his path toward complete independence, and he is at the same time also a natural enemy of the common freemen, who in turn not only support the central government; but also block with their possessions his path toward territorial dominion, while with their claims to equality of political rights they annoy his princely pride. Since the political and social interests of the territorial princes and of the plebs coincide, they must become allies; the prince can attain complete independence only if, in his fight for power against the crown and the common freemen, he controls reliable warriors and acquiescent taxpayers; the plebs can only then be freed from their pariah-like declassification, both economically and socially, if the hated and proud common freemen are brought down to their level.

This is the second time that we have noted the identity of interest between the princes and their subjects. The first time we found a weakly developed solidarity in our second stage of state formation. This causes the semi-sovereign prince to treat his dependent tenants as kindly as he ill-treats the free peasants of his territory; in consequence, they will fight the more willingly for him and contribute taxes, while the more readily will the oppressed freemen succumb to the pressure, especially as their share of political power in the state, coincident with the decline of the central power, has become only a meaningless phrase. In some cases, as in Germany toward the end of the tenth century, this was done with full consciousness of its effects 126—some prince exercises a particularly “mild” rule, in order to draw the subjects of a neighboring potentate into his lands, and thus to increase his own strength in war and taxation, and to weaken his opponent’s. The plebs come to possess, both legally and actually, constantly increasing rights, enlarged privileges of the law of ownership, perhaps self-government in common affairs, and their own administration of justice; thus they rise in the same degree as the common freemen sink, until the two classes meet and they are amalgamated into one body on approximately the same jural and economic plane. Half serfs, half subjects of a state, they represent a characteristic formation of the feudal state, which does not as yet recognize any clear distinction between public and private law; in its turn an immediate consequence of its own historical genesis, the dominion in the form of a state for the sake of economic private rights.

(d) A amalgamação (MISTURA) étnica

The juristic and social amalgamation of the degraded freemen and the uplifted plebs henceforth inevitably tends toward ethnic interpénétration. While at first the subject peoples were not allowed either to intermarry or to have social intercourse with the freemen, now no such obstacles can be maintained; in any single village the social class is no longer determined by descent from the ruling race, but rather by wealth. And the case may frequently arise where the pure-blooded descendant of the warrior herdsman must earn his living as a field hand in the hire of the equally pure-blooded descendant of the former serfs. The social group of the subjects is now composed of a part of the former ethnic master group and a part of the former subject group.

We say from a part only, because the other part has by this time been amalgamated with the other part of the old ethnic master group into a unital social class. In other words, a part of the plebs has not only attained the position to which the mass of the common freemen have sunk, but has climbed far beyond it, in that it has been completely received into the dominating group, which in the meantime, has not only risen enormously, but has been as greatly diminished in numbers.

And that, too, is a universal process found in all history; because everywhere it follows with equally compelling force from the very premises of feudal dominion. The primus inter pares, whether the holder of the central power or some local potentate, taking the rank of a prince, requires more supple tools for his dominion than are to be found among his “peers.” The latter represent a class whom he must put down if he wants to rise—and that is and must be the aim of every one, since in this stage aiming for power is identical with the aim of self-preservation. In this effort he is opposed by his obnoxious and stiff-necked cousins and by his petty nobles—and for this reason, we find at every court, from that of the sovereign king of a mighty feudal empire down to the lord of what is hardly more than a big estate, men of insignificant descent as confidential officials alongside representatives of the master group, who in many cases under the mask of officials of the prince, as a matter of fact, are “ephors,” sharers of the power of the prince as the plenipotentiaries of their group. Let us but recall the Induna at the court of the Bantu kings. There is no wonder, then, that the prince rather places confidence in his own men than in these annoying and pretentious advisers, in men whose position is indissolubly bound up with his own, and who would be ruined by his fall.*

Here, too, historical references are nearly superfluous. Every one is familiar with the fact that at the courts of the western European feudal kingdoms, besides the relatives of the king and some noble vassals, there were also elements from the lower groups, occupying high positions, clerics and great warriors of the plebeian class. Among the immediate following of Charlemagne all the races and peoples of his empire were represented. Also in the tales of Theodoric the Goth in the Dietrich Saga of the Niebelungen Lied, this rise of brave sons of the subject races finds its reflection. In addition to these, there follow some less well-known instances.

In Egypt, as far back as the Old Empire, there is found alongside the royal officials of the feudal nobility, who are the descendants of the Shepherd conquerors, administering their districts as representatives of the crown, with plenary powers as deputies, “a mass of court officials trusted with determined functions of government.” It “originated with the servants employed at the courts of the princes, such as prisoners of war, refugees etc.”127 The fable of Joseph shows a state of affairs known at that time to be a usual occurrence, of the rise of a slave to the position of an all powerful minister of state. At the present day such a career is within the realm of possibility at any oriental court, such as Persia, Turkey, or Morocco, etc. In the case of old Marshal Derflinger, in the time of Friedrich Wilhelm I., the Great Elector, at a much later date, we have an example from the transition of the developed feudal state to a more modern form of the state, which might be multiplied by the examples of innumerable other brave swordsmen.

Let us add a few instances from the peoples “disregarded by history.” Ratzel tells of the realm of Bornu: “The freemen have not lost the consciousness of their free descent, in contrast with the slaves of the sheik; but the rulers place more confidence in their slaves than in their own kinsmen and free associates of their tribe. They can count on the devotion of the former. Not only positions at court, but the defense of the country was from ancient times preferably confided to slaves. The brothers of the prince, as well as the more ambitious or more efficient sons, are objects of suspicion; and while the most important places at court are in the hands of slaves, the princes are put at posts far from the seat of government. Their salaries are paid from the incomes of the offices and the taxes from the provinces.” 128

Among the Fulbe “society is divided into princes, chieftains, commons and slaves. The slaves of the king play a great rôle as soldiers and officials, and may hope for the highest offices in the state.”129

This nobility of the court’s creation may, in certain cases, be admitted to the great imperial offices, so that according to the method stated above, it may achieve the sovereignty over a territory. In the developed feudal state, it represents the high nobility; and usually manages to preserve its rank, even when some more powerful neighbor has mediatized it by incorporating the state. The Frankish higher nobility certainly contains such elements from the original lower group;130 and since from its blood the entire upper nobility of the European civilized states has been descended at least in direct line by marriage, we find an ethnic amalgamation, both in the present day group of subjects and in the highest order of the ruling class. And the same applies to Egypt: “With the sinking of the royal authority in the time of the decay, the higher officials abuse their power for personal ends, to make their offices hereditary in their families, and thereby to call into existence an official nobility not differentiated from the rest of the population.” 131

And finally, the same process, from the same causes, takes hold of the present middle class, the lower stratum of the master class, the officials and officers of the great feudatories. At first there still exists a social difference between, on the one hand, the free vassals, the subfeudatories of the great landlord, kinsmen, younger sons of other noble families, impoverished associates from the same district, in isolated cases freeborn sons of peasants, free refugees and professional ruffians of free descent; and on the other, if the term may be allowed, the subalterns of the guards of plebeian descent. But lack of freedom advances, while freedom sinks in social value; and here too the ruler places more reliance on his creatures than on his peers. Here also, sooner or later, the process of amalgamation becomes complete. In Germany, as late as 1085, the non-free nobility of the court ranks between “servi et lit ones” while a century afterward it is placed with the “liberiet nobiles.” In the course of the thirteenth century, it has been completely absorbed, along with the free vassals, into the nobility by chivalry. The two orders in the meantime tend to become equal economically; both have subinfeudations, fiefs on the obligation of service in warfare, and the service feuds of the bondsmen; while all the fiefs of the “ministerials” or sergeants have in the meantime become as heritable as are those of the free vassals, as much so as are the patrimonies of the few surviving smaller territorial lords belonging to the original nobility, who may still have escaped the grasp of the great territorial principalities.

In ways quite analogous to this the development went on in all other feudal states of Western Europe; while its exact counterpart is found in the extremest Orient on the edge of the Eurasian continent, in Japan. The daimio are the higher nobility; the samurai, the chivalry, the nobility of the sword.

(e) O Estado feudal desenvolvido

With this the feudal state has reached its pinnacle. It forms, politically and socially, a hierarchy of numerous strata; of which, in all cases, the lower is bound to render service to the next above it, and the superior is bound to render protection to the one below. The pyramid rests on the laboring population, of whom the major part are as yet peasants; the surplus of their labor, the ground rental, the entire “surplus value” of the economic means is used to support the upper strata of society. This ground rent from the majority of estates is turned over to the small holders of fiefs, except where these estates are still in the immediate possession of the prince or of the crown and have not as yet been granted as fiefs. The holders of them are bound in return to provide the stipulated military service, and also, in certain cases, to render labor of an economic value. The larger vassal is in turn bound to serve the great tenants of the crown; who in their turn are, at least at strict law, under similar obligation toward the bearer of the central power; while emperor, king, sultan, shah, or Pharaoh in their turn, are regarded as the vassals of the tribal god. Thus there starts from the fields, whose peasantry support and nourish all, and mounts up to the “king of heaven” an artificially graded order of ranks, which constricts so absolutely all the life of the state, that according to custom and law neither a bit of land nor a man can be understood unless within its fold. Since all rights originally created for the common freemen have either been resumed by the state, or else have been distorted by the victorious princes of territories, it comes about that a person not in some feudal relation to some superior must in fact be “without the law,” be without claim for protection or justice, i.e., be outside the scope of that power which alone affords justice. Therefore the rule, nulle terre sans seigneury, appearing to us at first blush as an ebullition of feudal arrogance, is as a matter of fact the codification of an existing new state of law, or at the very least the clearing away of some archaic remnants, no longer to be tolerated, of the completely discarded primitive feudal state.

Those philosophers of history who pretend to explain every historic development from the quality of “races,” give as the center of their strategic position the alleged fact, that only the Germans, thanks to their superior “political capacity,” have managed to raise the artistic edifice of the developed feudal state. Some of the vigor of this argument has departed, since the conviction began to dawn on them that in Japan, the Mongol race had accomplished this identical result. No one can tell what the negro races might have done, had not the irruption of stronger civilizations barred their way, and yet Uganda does not differ very greatly from the empires of the Carolingians or of Boleslaw the Red, except that men did not have in Uganda any “values of tradition” of mediaeval culture: and these values were not any merit of the Germanic races, but a gift wherewith fortune endowed them.

Shifting the discussion from the negro to the “Semites,” we find the charge made that this race has absolutely no capacity for the formation of states. And yet we find, thousands of years ago, this same feudal system developed, by Semites, if the founders of the Egyptian kingdom were Semites. One would think the following description of Thurnwald were taken from the period of the Hohenstaufen emperors: “Whoever entered the following of some powerful one, was thereafter protected by him as though he had been the head of the family. This relation... betokens a fiduciary relation similar to vassalage. This relation of protection in return for allegiance tends to become the basis of the organization of all Egyptian society. It is the basis of the relations of the feudal lord to his sergeants and peasants, as it is that of the Pharaoh to his officials. The cohesion of the individuals in groups subject to common protecting lords, is founded on this view, even up to the apex of the pyramid, to the king himself regarded as ‘the vicar of his ancestors,’ as the vassal of the gods on earth.... Whosoever stands without this social grasp, a ‘man without a master,’ is without the pale of protection and therefore without the law.” 133

The hypothesis of the endowment of any particular race has not been used by us, and we have no need of it. As Herbert Spencer says, it is the stupidest of all imaginable attempts to construct a philosophy of history.

The first characteristic of the developed feudal state is the manifold gradation of ranks built up into the one pyramid of mutual dependence. Its second distinctive mark is the amalgamation of the ethnic groups, originally separated.

The consciousness formerly existent of difference of races has disappeared completely. There remains only the difference of classes.

Henceforth we shall deal only with social classes, and no longer with ethnic groups. The social contrast is the only ruling factor in the life of the state. Consistently with this the ethnic group consciousness changes to a class consciousness, the theories of the group, to the theories of the class. Yet they do not thereby change in the least their essence. The new dominating classes are just as full of their divine right as was the former master group, and it soon is seen that the new nobility of the sword manages to forget, quickly and thoroughly, its descent from the vanquished group; while the former freemen now declassed, or the former petty nobles sunk in the social scale, henceforth swear just as firmly by “natural law” as did formerly only the subjected tribes.

The developed feudal state is, in its essentials, exactly the same thing as it was when yet in the second Stage of state formation. Its form is that of dominion, its reason for being, the political exploitation of the economic means, limited by public law, which compels the master class to give the correlative protection, and which guarantees to the lower class the right of being protected, to the extent that they are kept working and paying taxes, that they may fulfil their duty to their masters. In its essentials government has not changed, it has only been disposed in more grades; and the same applies to the exploitation, or as the economic theory puts it, “the distribution” of wealth.

Just as formerly, so now, the internal policy of these states swings in that orbit prescribed by the parallelogram of the centrifugal thrust of the former group contests, now class wars, counteracted by the centripetal pull of the common interests. Just as formerly, so now, its foreign policy is determined by the striving of its master class for new lands and serfs, a thrust for extension caused at the same time by the still existing need of self-preservation. Although differentiated much more minutely, and integrated much more powerfully, the developed feudal state is in the end nothing more than the primitive state arrived at its maturity.



*“The rule of the many is not a good thing, over the many there should be one king.”

* In Egypt we find a similar state of affairs, beside the bigoted Amenhotep IV., the Majordomus of the palace Haremheb, who “managed to unite in his hands the highest military and administrative functions of the empire, until he exercised the powers of a regent of the state.” Schneider, Civilization and Thought of the Ancient Egyptians. Leipzig, 1907, page 22.

† Cf. Acta Imperii, or Huillar-Breholles, H. D. Fred. II. —Translator.

*Maspero says, New Light on Ancient Egypt, pp. 218-9s “Until then, in fact, the high priest had been chosen and nominated by the king; from the time of Rameses III. he was always chosen from the same family, and the son succeeded his father on the pontifical throne. From that time events marched quickly. The Theban mortmain was doubled with a veritable seigniorial fief, which its masters increased by marriages with the heirs Of neighboring fiefs, by continual bequests from one branch of the family to the other, and by the placing of cadets of each generation at the head of the clergy of certain secondary towns. The official protocol of the offices filled by their wives shows that a century or a century and a half after Rameses III., almost the whole of the Thebaid, about a third of the Egyptian territory was in the hands of the High Priest of Ammon and of his family.”—Translator’s Note {and italics).

*One of the most notable instances may be found in the case of Markward of Annweiler, Marquis of Ancona and Duke of Ravenna, seneschal of Henry VI., who after the death of the Emperor Henry VI. disputed the power of the Regent Constance acting for her son, Frederick II. (See Boehmer-Ficker, Begesta Imperii, V, vol. 1, No. 511. v. ad. annum 1197.)—Translator.

Capítulo V – O desenvolvimento do Estado constitucional

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) A emancipação dos camponeses

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) A gênese do Estado industrial

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 cooperation of the political with economic means, as a market place, or because of some religious need, as the environs of some temple.* 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.

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.