The State: Its History and Development Viewed SociologicallyOppenheimer, Franz
History
The State: Its History and Development Viewed Sociologically
Oppenheimer, Franz
State, The
[D] Ratzel, l. 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 life. They turn entire oases
into demesne lands, visited at the harvest time in order to rob the
inhabitants; a domination characteristic of the desert.”
Great is the progress between the first stage and the second. Long is
the forward step, both economically and politically. In the beginning,
as we have seen, the acquisition by the tribe of herdsmen was purely an
occupying one. Regardless of consequences, they destroyed the source
of future wealth for the enjoyment of the moment. Henceforth the
acquisition becomes economical, because all economy is based on wise
housekeeping, or in other words, on restraining the enjoyment of the
moment in view of the needs of the future. The herdsman has learned to
“capitalize.” It is a vast step forward in politics when an utterly
strange human being, prey heretofore like the wild animals, obtains a
value and is recognized as a source of wealth. Although this is the
beginning of all slavery, subjugation, and exploitation, it is at the
same time the genesis of a higher form of society, that reaches out
beyond the family based upon blood relationship. We saw how, between
the robbers and the robbed, the first threads of a jural relation were
spun across the cleft which separated those who had heretofore been
only “mortal enemies.” The peasant thus obtains a semblance of _right_
to the bare necessaries of life; so that it comes to be regarded as
_wrong_ to kill an unresisting man or to strip him of everything.
And better than this, gradually more delicate and softer threads are
woven into a net very thin as yet, but which, nevertheless, brings
about more human relations than the customary arrangement of the
division of spoils. Since the herdsmen no longer meet the peasants
in combat only, they are likely now to grant a respectful request,
or to remedy a well grounded grievance. “The categorical imperative”
of equity, “Do to others as you would have them do unto you,” had
heretofore ruled the herdsmen only in their dealings with their own
tribesmen and kind. Now for the first time it begins to speak, shyly
whispering in behalf of those who are alien to blood relationship.
In this, we find the germ of that magnificent process of external
amalgamation which, out of small hordes, has formed nations and unions
of nations; and which, in the future is to give life to the concept
of “humanity.” We find also the germ of the internal unification
of tribes once separated, from which, in place of the hatred of
“barbarians,” will come the all comprising love of humanity, of
Christianity and Buddhism.
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