The State: Its History and Development Viewed SociologicallyOppenheimer, Franz
History
The State: Its History and Development Viewed Sociologically
Oppenheimer, Franz
State, The
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,[C] 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]
[C] This statement of Lippert is not quite correct. The higher
developed domiciled huntsmen and fishermen of Northwest America have
both nobles and slaves.
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.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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