Socialism: A Summary and Interpretation of Socialist Principles Part 6

VI

Feudalism is the essential politico-economic system of the Middle Ages.

Obscure as its origin is, and indefinite as the date of its first appearances, there can be no doubt whatever that the break-up of the Roman system, and the modification of the existing form of slavery, const.i.tuted the most important of its sources. Whether, as some writers have contended, the feudal system of land tenure and serfdom is traceable to Asiatic origins, being adopted by the ruling cla.s.s of Rome in the days of the economic disintegration of the empire, or whether it rose spontaneously out of the Roman conditions, matters little to us.

Whatever its archaeological interest, it does not affect the narrower scope of our present inquiry whether economic necessity caused the adoption of an alien system of land tenure and agricultural production, or whether economic necessity caused the creation of a new system. The central fact is the same in either case.

That period of history which we call the Middle Ages covers a span of well-nigh a thousand years. If we arbitrarily date its beginning from the successful invasion of Rome by the barbarians in the early part of the fifth century, and its ending with the final development of the craft guilds in the middle of the fourteenth century, we have a sufficiently exact measure of the time during which feudalism developed, flourished, and declined. There are few things more difficult than the bounding of epochs in social evolution by exact dates. Just as the ripening of the wheat fields comes almost imperceptibly, so that the farmer can say when the wheat is ripe, yet cannot say when the ripening occurred, so with the epochs into which social history divides itself.

There is the unripe state and the ripe, but no chasm yawns between them; they are merged together. We speak of the "end" of chattel slavery, and the "rise" of feudalism, therefore, in a wide, general sense. As a matter of fact, chattel slavery survived to some extent for centuries, existing alongside of the new form of servitude; and its disappearance took place, not simultaneously throughout the civilized world, but at varying intervals. Likewise, there is a vast difference between the first, crude, ill-defined forms of feudalism and its subsequent development.

The theory of feudalism is the "divine right of kings." G.o.d is the Supreme Lord of all the earth, the kings are His vice-regents, devolving their authority in turn upon whomsoever they will. All land is held as belonging to the king, G.o.d's chosen representative. He divides the realm among his barons, to rule over and defend. For this they pay tribute to the king--military service in times of war and, at a later period, money. In turn, the barons divide the land among the lesser n.o.bility, receiving tribute from them. By these divided among the freemen, who also pay tribute, the land is tilled by the serfs, who pay service to the freeman, the lord of the manor. The serf pays no tribute directly to the king, only to his liege lord; the liege lord pays to his superior, and so on, up to the king. This is the economic framework of feudalism; with its ecclesiastical side we are not here concerned.

At the base of the whole superstructure, then, was the serf, his relation to his lord differing only in degree, though in material degree, from that of the chattel slave. He might be, and often was, as brutally ill-treated as the slave before him had been; he might be ill-fed and ill-housed; his wife or daughters might be ravished by his master or his master's sons. Yet, withal, his condition was better than that of the slave. He could maintain his family life in an independent household; he possessed some rights, chief of which perhaps was the right to labor for himself. Having his own allotment of land, he was in a much larger sense a human being. Compelled to render so many days'

service to his lord, tilling the soil, clearing the forest, quarrying stone, and doing domestic work, he was permitted to devote a certain, often an equal, number of days to work for his own benefit. Not only so, but the service the lord rendered him, in protecting him and his family from the lawless and violent robber hordes which infested the country, was considerable.

The feudal estate, or manor, was an industrial whole, self-dependent, and having few essential ties binding it to the outside world. The barons and their retainers, lords, thanes, and freemen, enjoyed a certain rude plenty, some of the richer barons enjoying a considerable amount of luxury and splendor. The _villein_ and his sons tilled the soil, reaped the harvests, felled trees for fuel, built the houses, raised the necessary domestic animals, and killed the wild animals; his wife and daughters spun the flax, carded the wool, made the homespun clothing, brewed the mead, and gathered the grapes which they made into wine. There was little real dependence upon the outside world except for articles of luxury.

Such was the basic economic inst.i.tution of feudalism. But alongside of the feudal estate with its serf labor, there were the free laborers, no longer regarding labor as shameful and degrading. These free laborers were the handicraftsmen and free peasants, the former soon organizing themselves into guilds. There was a specialization of labor, but, as yet, little division. Each man worked at a particular craft and exchanged his individual products. The free craftsman would exchange his product with the free peasant, and sometimes his trade extended to the feudal manor. The guild was at once his master and protector; rigid in its rules, strict in its surveillance of its members, it was strong and effective as a protector against the impositions and invasions of feudal barons and their retainers. Division of labor first appears in its simplest form, the a.s.sociation of independent individual workers for mutual advantage, sharing their products upon a basis of equality. This simple cooperation involved no fundamental, revolutionary change in society. That came later with the development of the workshop system, and the division of labor upon a definite, predetermined plan. Men specialized now in the making of _parts_ of things; no man could say of a finished product, "This is _mine_, for I made it." Production had become a social function.

VII

At first, in its simple beginnings, the cooperation of many producers in one great workshop did not involve any general or far-reaching changes in the system of exchange. But as the new methods spread, and it became the custom for one or two wealthy individuals to provide the workshop and necessary tools and materials for production, the product of the combined laborers being appropriated in its entirety by the owners of the agencies of production, who paid the workers a money wage representing less than the actual value of their product, and based upon the cost of their subsistence, the whole economic system was once more revolutionized. The custom of working for wages, hitherto rare and exceptional, became general and customary; individual production for use, either directly or through the medium of personal exchange, was superseded by social production for private profit. The wholesale exchange of social products for private gain took the place of the personal exchange of commodities. The difference between the total cost of the production of commodities, including the wages of the producers, and their exchange value--determined at this stage by the cost of producing similar commodities by individual labor--const.i.tuted the share of the capitalist, his profit, and the objective of his investment.

The new system did not spring up spontaneously and full-fledged. Like feudalism, it was a growth, a development of existing forms. And just as chattel slavery lingered on after the rise of the feudal regime, so the old methods of individual production and direct exchange of commodities for personal use lingered on in places and isolated industries long after the rise of the system of wage-paid labor and production for profit. But the old methods of production and exchange gradually became rare and almost obsolete. In accordance with the stern economic law that Marx afterward developed so clearly, the man whose methods of production, including his tools, are less efficient and economical than those of his fellows, thereby making his labor more expensive, must either adapt himself to the new conditions or fall in the struggle which ensues. The triumph of the new system of capitalist production, with its far greater efficiency arising from a.s.sociated production upon a plan of specialized division of labor, was, therefore, but a question of time.

The cla.s.s of wage-workers thus gradually increased in numbers; as men found that they were unable to compete with the new methods, they accepted the inevitable and adapted themselves to the new conditions.

The industrial revolution which established capitalism was, like the great revolutions which ushered in preceding social epochs, the product of man's tools.

FOOTNOTES:

[60] Edward Clodd, _Pioneers of Evolution from Thales to Huxley_, page 1.

[61] _Socialism and Modern Science_, by Enrico Ferri, page 96.

[62] _Studies in the Evolution of Industrial Society_, by R. T. Ely, page 3.

[63] Cf. Seligman, _The Economic Interpretation of History_.

[64] Clodd, _Pioneers of Evolution from Thales to Huxley_, page 8.

[65] Seligman, _The Economic Interpretation of History_, page 50.

[66] _Ma.s.s and Cla.s.s_, by W. J. Ghent, page 9.

[67] Seligman, _The Economic Interpretation of History_, page 4.

[68] Schiller, _Philosophical Letters_, Preamble.

[69] Seligman, _The Economic Interpretation of History_, page 86.

[70] Karl Marx, _Notes on Feuerbach_ (written in 1845), published as an Appendix to _Feuerbach, The Roots the Socialist Philosophy_, by Friederich Engels. English translation by Austin Lewis (1903).

[71] _Christianity and the Social Crisis_, by Walter Rauschenbusch (1907), page 4.

[72] For a very scholarly discussion of this subject, the reader is referred to the series of articles by my friend, M. Beer, on _The Rise of Jewish Monotheism_, in the _Social Democrat_ (London), 1908.

[73] Cf. _The Economic Foundations of Society_, by Achille Lorio, page 26.

[74] _Capital_, by Karl Marx (Kerr edition). Vol. I, page 91.

[75] Cf. _Karl Marx on Sectarianism and Dogmatism_ (A letter written to his friend, Bolte), in the _International Socialist Review_, March, 1908, page 525.

[76] Very significant of the possibilities of a study of religious movements from this economic and social viewpoint is Professor Thomas C.

Hall's little book, _The Social Meaning of Modern Religious Movements in England_ (1900).

[77] Appendix to F. Engels' _Feuerbach, the Roots of the Socialist Philosophy_, translated by Austin Lewis, 1903.

[78] _The Eighteenth Brumaire._

[79] Quoted from _The Sozialistische Akademiker_, 1895, by Seligman, _The Economic Interpretation of History_, page 142.

[80] _Idem_, page 143.

[81] _Karl Marx's Nationaloekonomische Irrlehren_, von Ludwig Slonimski, Berlin, 1897.

[82] I have not attempted to give a history of the development of the theory. For a more minute study of the theory, I must refer the reader to the writings of Engels, Seligman, Ferri, Ghent, Bax, and others quoted in these pages.

[83] _Capital_, Vol. I, page 406 n. (Kerr edition).

[84] Liebknecht, _Memoirs of Karl Marx_, page 91.

[85] _Charles Darwin and Karl Marx, A Comparison_, by Edward Aveling, London, 1897.

[86] See Thorold Rogers, _The Economic Interpretation of History_, second edition, 1891, pages 10-12.

[87] For various reasons, chief of which is that it would take me too far away from my present purpose, I do not attempt to develop the serious consequences of these events to Europe. See _The Economic Interpretation of History_, Chapter I, for a brief account of this.

[88] _Ancient Society, or Researches in the Lines of Human Progress from Savagery through Barbarism to Civilization_, by Lewis H. Morgan. New edition, Chicago, 1907.

[89] Darwin, _The Descent of Man_, second edition, page 163.

[90] _Mutual Aid a Factor of Evolution_, by Peter Kropotkin, pages 5-6.

[91] _Idem_, page 74.

[92] Cf. _Ancient Society_, by Lewis H. Morgan, and _The Origins of the Family, Private Property, and the State_, by Friederich Engels.

[93] Engels, _Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State_, p.

182.