The State: Its History and Development Viewed SociologicallyOppenheimer, Franz
History
The State: Its History and Development Viewed Sociologically
Oppenheimer, Franz
State, The
For all these reasons, the services to be required of peasants in a
developed feudal state must in some fashion be limited. Henceforth,
all surplus belongs to him free from the control of the landlord.
With this change, the character of landed property has been utterly
revolutionized. Heretofore the landlord, as of right, was entitled to
the entire revenue saving only what was absolutely necessary to permit
his peasants to subsist and continue their brood; while hereafter, the
total product of his work, as of right, belongs to the peasant, saving
only a fixed charge for his landlord as ground rent. The possession
of vast landed estates has developed into (_manorial_) _rights. This
completes the second important step taken by humanity toward its goal._
The first step was taken when man made the transition from the stage
of bear to that of the bee-keeper, and thereby discovered slavery;
this step abolishes slavery. Laboring humanity, heretofore only _an
object_ of the law, now for the first time becomes an entity capable
of enjoying rights. The _labor motor_, without rights, belonging to
its master, and without effective guarantees of life and limb, has now
become the taxpaying subject of some prince. Henceforth the economic
means, now for the first time assured of its success, develops its
forces quite differently. The peasant works with incomparably more
industry and care, obtains more than he needs, and thereby calls
into being the “city” in the economic sense of the term, viz., the
industrial city. The surplus produced by the peasantry calls into
being a demand for objects not produced in the peasant economy; while
at the same time, the more intensive agriculture brings about a
reduction of those industrial by-products heretofore worked out by the
peasant house industry.
Since agriculture and cattle-raising absorb in ever increasing degrees
the energies of the rural family, it becomes possible and necessary to
divide labor between original production and manufacture; the village
tends to become primarily the place of the former, the industrial city
comes into being as the seat of the latter.
(b) THE GENESIS OF THE INDUSTRIAL STATE
Let there be no misunderstanding: we do not maintain that the city
comes thus into being, but only the _industrial city_. There has been
in existence the real historical city, to be found in every developed
feudal state. Such cities came into being either because of a purely
political means, as a stronghold,[134] or by the coöperation of
the political with economic means, _as a market place_, or because
of some religious need, as the environs of some temple.[T] Wherever
such a city in the historical sense exists in the neighborhood, the
newly arising industrial city tends to grow up about it; otherwise it
develops spontaneously from the existing and matured division of labor.
As a rule, it will in its turn grow into a stronghold and have its own
places of worship.
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