The State: Its History and Development Viewed SociologicallyOppenheimer, Franz
History
The State: Its History and Development Viewed Sociologically
Oppenheimer, Franz
State, The
As both Capitalism and Socialism had their origins in England,
these new ideas were certain to find their first expression in that
country. So that we find Gerrard Winstanley, the leader of the “true
levellers” of Cromwell’s time, arraying the facts of history against
this anti-historical theoretical assumption. He showed that the
English ruling class (the Squirearchy) was composed essentially of the
victorious conquerors, the Normans, and that the subject class were the
conquered English Saxons. But his demonstration had little influence.
It was only when the great French Revolution brought the contrast out
sharply that the thought sunk in. No less a person than Count St.
Simon, acknowledged as the founder of the science of modern sociology,
and the no less scientific Socialism, discovered in the dominant class
of his country the Frankish and Burgundian conquerors, and in its
subject population, the descendants of the Romanized Celts. It was
the publication of this discovery that gave birth to Western European
sociology. The conclusions drawn from it were carried further by St.
Simon’s disciple, August Comte, in his _Philosophy of History_, and
by the Saint Simonists, Enfantin and Bazard. These thinkers had great
influence on the economic development of the next century; but their
chief contribution was the elaboration of the sociologic idea of the
State.
Among the peoples of Western Europe, the new sociology found a readier
acceptance than it did among those of Eastern Europe. The reason for
this can easily be seen when it is remembered that in the East the
contrast between the “State” and “Society,” had not been so definitely
realized, as it had been in the West. Even in the West, this contrast
was only fully appreciated, as a social fact, in England, France, the
Netherlands and Italy, because in these countries only the class of
mobile wealth which had worked its way up as the third estate, had
succeeded in ousting the feudal “State.” In France, the league of the
capitalists with the Crown against the then armed and active nobility
had succeeded in subjecting the Frondeurs under the absolute power of
the King. From this time on, this new estate represented itself as
the Nation, and the term “National Economy” takes the place of the
older term “Political Economy.” The members of this third estate felt
themselves to be those subjects of the State whose rights and liberties
had been curtailed by the privileges of the two dominant estates of
the nobility and the clergy. Henceforth, the Third Estate proclaims
the rights of “Society” and against the “State,” opposes the eternal
Law of Nature--that of original equality and freedom--against the
theoretic-historical rights of the Estates. The concept of Society as a
contrast to the concept of the State, first appears in Locke, and from
his time on this contrast was more and more defined, especially in the
writings of the physiocrat school of economists.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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