The State: Its History and Development Viewed SociologicallyOppenheimer, Franz
History
The State: Its History and Development Viewed Sociologically
Oppenheimer, Franz
State, The
The explanation of the proletarian theory according to which the
capitalistic process of production itself produces the “free laborers,”
by setting up again and again new labor-saving machines, is also
based on a logical fallacy and is likewise contradicted by all known
facts.[145]
The evidence of all facts shows rather, and the conclusion may be
deduced without fear of contradiction, _that the oversupply of “free
laborers” is descended from the right of holding landed property in
large estates_; and that emigration into towns and oversea from these
landed properties are the causes of the capitalistic distribution.
Doubtless there is a growing tendency in economic development whereby
the ruin of vast landed estates will be accomplished. The system
is their bleeding to death, without hope of salvation, caused by
the freedom of the former serfs--the necessary consequence of the
development of the cities. As soon as the peasants had obtained the
right of moving about without their landlords’ passport (German
_Freizuegigkeit_), there developed the chance of escape from the
countries which formerly oppressed them. The system of emigration
created “the competition from oversea,” together with the fall,
on the Continent, of prices for farm products, and made necessary
perpetually rising wages. By these two factors ground rent is reduced
from two sides, and must gradually sink to the zero point, since here
too no counterforce is to be recognized whereby the process might be
diverted.[146] Thus the system of vast territorial estates falls apart.
When, however, it has disappeared, there can be no oversupply of “free
laborers.” On the contrary “two masters will run after one laborer and
must raise the price on themselves.” There will be no “surplus value”
for the capitalist class, because the laborer himself can form capital
and himself become an employer. By this the last remaining vestige
of the political means will have been destroyed, and economic means
alone will exercise sway. The _content_ of such a society is the “pure
economics”[147] of the equivalent exchange of commodities against
commodities, or of labor force against commodities, and the political
_form_ of this society will be the “freemen’s citizenship.”
This theoretical deduction is moreover confirmed by the _experience
of history_. Wherever there existed a society in which vast estates
did not exist to draw an increasing rental, there “pure economics”
existed, and society approximated the form of the state to that of the
“freemen’s citizenship.”
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