§ 17. The main features of Western European feudalism
Whatis feudalism.
Classical Middle Ages in Europe ". - XIII centuries) was the heyday of feudalism. The word "feudalism" comes from the word "feud" - hereditary land ownership for service. The person who received the fief was a vassal (servant) of the one who provided him with land. The one who endowed the feud was the lord (senior). Both seniors and vassals were called feudal lords. The feudal lord was also a lord for all residents
his fief.
By X-XI no. in Europe, almost all the land was divided into fiefs. At that time they said: "There is no land without a lord." All feudal lords became virtually independent rulers in their domains. However, a connection remained between the feudal lords, which protected the states from complete collapse. This connection is depicted in the form of the so-called "feudal ladder". On its upper step was the king or emperor - the supreme owner of all lands and the supreme lord of the state. It was believed that the king distributed large areas to his vassals - princes, dukes, counts. Those. in turn, they allocated separate parts of their principalities, duchies and counties to their own vassals - barons. The barons also have 61.1:111 vassals - knights. The word "knight" in translation from German means a rider, a cavalryman. As a fief, the knights received an estate - a village or part of a village. The knights constituted the bottom rung of the "feudal ladder".
There was a rule: "The vassal of my vassal is not my vassal." This meant that the vassal served only his immediate lord. The king, for example, could not call on the service of a baron - a vassal of dukes, and a duke - a simple knight. very weak.
The lord gave the vassal land, helped him and protected him from enemies. The vassal, at the call of the master, became in the ranks of his army. As a rule, military service was compulsory for the vassal for 40 days a year. For the rest of the days. held and saddle, he was getting! senior person to> pay. In certain cases, the vassal also gave gifts to the lord, redeemed him from captivity, etc. The feud after the death of the owner was inherited by his eldest son.
Reasons for the rise of feudalism.
During the Middle Ages, wars were common. After the collapse of the empire of Charlemagne, all the countries of Europe were shaken by bloody strife. Even worse in the IX-X centuries. there were devastating raids of the Normans (inhabitants of Scandinavia and Denmark), Arabs, Hungarians, who at times threatened the very existence of European society. To save from complete extermination and ruin, it was necessary to have a reliable army. Improvements in military affairs (for example, the introduction of regiments for horses and stirrups for saddles) dramatically raised the importance of a professional knightly army (riders with heavy weapons and heavy armor). Thanks to horseshoes, the horse could carry a heavily armed, iron-clad knight, who, leaning on stirrups, hit the enemy with a spear and sword.
The knight became a formidable force, but each such warrior and his horse now had to be supported by dozens of people. The mass militias are being replaced by small detachments of professional warriors. The feudal order ensured the existence of a sufficiently reliable military force to protect the whole society.
Three Estatesfeudal society.
In the Middle Ages, people were divided into classes of praying, fighting and working. These estates differed in their rights and obligations, which were established by laws and customs.
V class of belligerents(feudal lords) included descendants of noble people of barbarian tribes and noble inhabitants of the Western Roman Empire conquered by them. The situation of the belligerents was different. The richest owned entire regions, and some simple knights were sometimes very poor. However, only feudal lords had the right to own land and rule over other people.
V working class went as the descendants of impoverished free people from among the barbarians and Roman citizens, as well as the descendants of slaves and columns. The vast majority of those who worked are peasants. They fell into two categories. Some peasants remained free people, but lived on the lands of feudal lords. The feud was divided into master's land and peasant allotments. It was believed that these allotments were provided to the peasants by the feudal lord. For this, the peasants worked on the master's land (corvée) and paid taxes to the feudal lord (tire). The feudal lord promised the population of his fief, levied fines for breaking the laws. Another category of peasants was called serfs. They were considered "attached" to their allotments and could not leave them. The duties of the serfs (corvee, dues) were more difficult than those of the free. They were personally dependent on the feudal lords, they were sold and bought together with the land. The property of the serfs was considered the property of the lord. Servants-serfs were in fact the position of slaves.
In addition to the warring and working, there were class of worshippers. He was considered the main and was called the first. It was believed that the feudal lord or peasant was not able to fully comprehend the full depth of the teachings of Christ and independently communicate with God. In addition, people are constantly tempted by the devil. Only the Christian church and its ministers - the clergy - could explain the divine laws to everyone, connect a person with God, protect him from the wiles of the devil and atone for his sins before God. The main duty of the class of worshipers was worship. Priests also baptized children, married newlyweds, received confessions from the penitents and remitted their sins, and communed the dying.
Unlike those at war and working, the clergy were an open estate. People from two other classes could become priests. For the maintenance of the first estate, the workers were charged a tax in the amount of a tenth of the income (church tithe). Considerable land was in the direct possession of the church.
Peasants.
Peasants in the Middle Ages, in addition to farming and cattle breeding, hunted, fished, collected honey and wax from forest bees. They sewed their own clothes and shoes, built dwellings and baked bread, paved roads and built bridges, dug canals and drained swamps. But agriculture remained their main business. The needs of its development turned many villagers into genuine inventors. The success of agriculture is largely due to the invention by the peasants heavy plow with coulter - device for dumping the earth. They also invented a collar for a horse. He allowed the use of these animals for plowing the fields.
Peasants mastered three fields. Were bred winter varieties plants resistant to winter cold. Manure and other fertilizers began to be applied to the fields. The cultivation of vegetables and fruits has become widespread. Vineyards gradually spread not only in the southern, but also in the relatively northern regions, right up to England.
Each peasant family cultivated its allotment. This allotment was a long strip of land in a large field. Allotments of other families were located nearby, as well as strips of the master's land. After the harvest, cattle were driven out to a large field. He not only grazed, but fertilized the arable land. Therefore, the work on the plots had to be carried out by the villagers at the same time, and everyone had to plant the same crops. Fellow villagers helped neighbors in trouble, jointly defended fields and herds from robbers, cleared new fields, used forests and meadows.
The villagers resolved the most important issues at meetings, elected the headman - the head of the peasant communities. The community was necessary for the peasants and To their relationship with the feudal lord. The headman monitored the full payment of dues and at the same time ensured that the peasants were not charged in excess of the norm.
Feudal lords.
Near the village was the fortified dwelling of her lord - lock. Castles were built simultaneously with the folding of feudalism itself. In IX-X iv. they were erected to protect against the Normans, Arabs and Hungarians. 13 castles sheltered the inhabitants of the entire district. At first, castles were built of wood, then of stone. These fortresses were often surrounded by a moat with water over which a drawbridge was thrown. The most impregnable place of the castle was a multi-storey tower - donjon. Upstairs in the donjon lived the feudal lord with his family, and downstairs - his servants. There was a dungeon in the basement. Each floor of the donjon, if necessary, turned into a small fortress. From the upper floor in the wall of the tower, a secret spiral staircase to the basement was often laid. There was an underground passage from the full to a remote place. Therefore, even when capturing the castle, the feudal lord could avoid death or captivity. However, it was almost impossible to take the castle by storm. Only after a long siege could the defenders surrender due to starvation. But the castle usually kept large supplies of food.
Chivalry.
The whole life of the belligerent class was spent in campaigns and battles. The sons of feudal lords began to prepare for knightly service from childhood. Without many years of training, it was impossible not only to fight in the heavy armor of a knight, but even to move around in them. From the age of 7, the boys became pages, and at the age of 14 they became the squires of the knights. The knights came to the service of the lord with pages and squires, with lightly armed servants. This small detachment led by a knight was called a "spear", the feudal army consisted of such detachments. In battle, the knight fought with the knight, the squire fought with the squire, the rest of the soldiers showered the enemy with arrows. At the age of 18, squires became knights. The senior at the same time handed him a belt, sword and spurs.
Gradually formed regulations knightly honor. Loyalty to the lord and generosity to vassals were considered one of the clay qualities. An even more important quality was valor. A valiant knight must constantly strive for exploits, show courage and even recklessness in battle, despise death. Valor is associated with nobility and courtesy towards the enemy. A real knight will never attack secretly, but, on the contrary, will warn the enemy about the upcoming battle, during the duel with him he will have the same weapon, etc. Sacred for the knights was military friendship, as well as revenge for an insult.
The rules of knightly honor prescribed to protect the church and its ministers, as well as all the weak - widows, orphans, beggars. There were many other rules. True, in real life they are very often violated. Among the knights there were many unbridled, cruel and greedy people.
The favorite pastimes of the feudal lords were hunting and tournaments - military competitions of knights in the presence of spectators. True, the church condemned tournaments. After all, the knights spent their time and effort on them, which were necessary to fight the enemies of Christianity.
K.V. Islanders
Lecture delivered at the Higher Party School of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, 1945
1. The emergence of the feudal system
The era of the domination of feudalism in Western Europe covers a long period, approximately 13 centuries, starting from the 5th century. n. e. until the 18th century
The first stage - the emergence of feudalism - begins in the 5th century. and ends in the middle of the 11th century.
Feudalism arose on the ruins of the Roman slave empire. Some scholars explain its occurrence by the fact of the conquest of the Roman Empire by the barbarians. This point of view is fundamentally wrong.
Conquest in itself cannot create a new mode of production unless the conditions for it are ripe in material production, and above all in the area of the productive forces.
Engels, criticizing the theory of violence, pointed out that the banker's fortune, contained in papers, cannot be seized at all if the invader does not submit to the conditions of production and circulation of the conquered country.
Concerning the causes of the emergence of feudalism, Marx and Engels wrote:
“Feudalism was by no means carried over ready-made from Germany; its origin is rooted in the organization of military affairs among the barbarians during the conquest itself, and this organization only after the conquest - thanks to the influence of the productive forces found in the conquered countries - developed into real feudalism.
Feudalism arose through the interaction between the new productive forces and elements of new feudal relations, which originated in the form of colonies in the Roman Empire, and the military organization of the barbarian tribes that conquered it.
Slavery has outlived itself, and the historical conditions for wage labor have not yet taken shape. Under these conditions, a further step forward in the development of the productive forces could only be made on the basis of the economy of a small dependent producer, who was to a certain extent interested in his labour.
At the end of the existence of the Roman Empire, the process of enslavement of the columns developed rapidly.
The columns were obliged to cultivate the landowner's land, pay him a significant share of the harvest they harvested, and, in addition, perform a number of duties: build and repair roads and bridges, serve both people and goods with their horses and carts, work in bakeries, etc. e. Colon was more and more attached to the earth, became, as the ancients expressed it, "the slave of the earth." It was allowed to sell and buy land only together with columns.
At the same time, the process of enslavement of artisans was also taking place.
With the cessation of the influx of slaves, an acute shortage of labor began to be experienced primarily by enterprises engaged in the extraction of iron ore, the production of all kinds of fabrics and luxury goods, as well as enterprises associated with work to supply the population of cities.
A number of decrees were issued forbidding artisans to leave factories and change their profession. Gunsmiths even had a special brand burned on their arm to make it easier to catch them in case of flight.
There were other draconian measures aimed at enslaving artisans.
This is how the process of feudalization took place in the bowels of the decaying Roman slave empire.
The collapse of the slave system was accompanied by an enormous destruction of the productive forces. “The last centuries of the declining Roman Empire and the very conquest of it by the barbarians,” wrote Marx and Engels in The German Ideology, “destroyed a mass of productive forces; agriculture fell into decay, industry, due to the lack of sales, fell into decay, trade froze or was forcibly interrupted, the rural and urban population declined.
Farming has become almost the only occupation of the population.
Thus, the Germanic tribes that conquered the Roman Empire found there the germs of feudal relations. These tribes themselves had a military organization. They were going through the stage of decomposition of the primitive communal system and the development of patriarchal slavery - that stage in the development of society when, according to Engels, war and military organization become normal functions of people's life, when war begins to be waged, "for the sake of robbery it becomes a constant trade" . The strengthening and development of the military organization of the barbarian tribes was facilitated by their direct proximity to the Romans, with whom they waged constant wars. These wars, as we know, eventually led to the conquest of the Roman Empire by the barbarians.
On the ruins of the once mighty Roman Empire, many small states arose. The very fact of the conquest greatly accelerated the disintegration of the tribal system, which was still preserved among the barbarians. The tribal system was incompatible with the new relations established as a result of the conquest of the Roman Empire by the barbarians; “... it was impossible,” says Engels, “neither to accept the masses of the Romans into tribal associations, nor to dominate them through the latter ... The organs of the tribal system had therefore to turn into organs of the state, and, moreover, under the pressure of circumstances, very quickly. But the closest representative of the conquering people was the military leader. The protection of the conquered region from internal and external danger required the strengthening of his power. The moment has come for the transformation of the power of the military leader into royal power, and this transformation has taken place.
The military organization of the barbarian tribes made it easier for them to assimilate the new feudal relations that developed on the territory of the former Roman Empire.
“The existing relations and the method of conquest determined by them,” say Marx and Engels, “developed, under the influence of the military system of the Germans, feudal property.”
The Germans, Huns and other tribes who conquered the Ancient Roman Empire appropriated and divided among themselves approximately 2/3 of the entire occupied land.
Part of the conquered lands remained in the common possession of individual tribes and clans. The kings appropriated these lands to themselves and began to distribute them to their warriors, close associates, etc.
“So,” says Engels, “at the expense of the people, the basis of the new nobility was created.”
The royal power was still weak. Each large landowner had his own army, tried to be independent of the royal power and sought to seize neighboring lands. Hence the constant wars and civil strife between individual states, as well as between individual feudal lords. The free peasantry suffered particularly hard from these internecine strife. By the beginning of the 9th century, free farmers were completely ruined. The feudal lords plundered them, seized their lands. Weak royal power could not protect them. On the other hand, the peasants themselves, driven to despair by robberies and exactions, were often forced to resort to the protection of noble feudal lords and the church. But this protection came to them at an extremely high price - the price of renouncing land ownership rights and giving themselves into bondage to noble and powerful patrons.
One of the enslaving letters relating to the history of the Frankish state of the 9th century says: “Mr. brother such and such ... Everyone knows that extreme poverty and grave worries have befallen me, and I have absolutely nothing to live and dress with. Therefore, at my request, you did not refuse, in my greatest poverty, to give me so many solidi out of your money, and I have absolutely nothing to pay these solidi with. And so I asked you to complete and approve the enslavement of my free personality to you, so that from now on you will have complete freedom to do with me everything that you are authorized to do with your born slaves, namely: sell, barter, punish.
So the peasants gradually lost not only land, but also personal freedom and turned into serfs.
A huge amount of land and serfs was concentrated in the hands of the church and monasteries. The Church was an authoritative ideological and political force, which each feudal lord sought to have on his side in the struggle against other feudal lords. The authority of the church was also necessary for the feudal lords in order to keep the serfs in check. Because of this, kings and large feudal lords gave the church land and estates.
Many peasants were also forced to go into bondage to the monasteries for the same reasons that pushed them into bondage to the feudal lords, with the only difference that in this case the bondage took on a religious shell.
So, in one of the letters relating to France in the 11th century, it is said about a certain Rogers, descended from a free family, who, driven by the fear of God, having nothing more valuable to offer to the almighty God, gave himself into the personal serfdom of St. Martin.
As a result, the church in feudal society grew into a huge, not only ideological, but also economic and political force.
This is how the feudal mode of production developed in Western Europe.
The process of feudalization in Russia began in the 11th century. Prior to this, the land was at the disposal of peasant agricultural communities.
The community was a collection of several large patriarchal families. Some families numbered 50 or more people. This number of families was dictated by the low level of development of the productive forces. The system of slash and shift agriculture dominated, requiring colossal labor.
Until the XV-XVI centuries. Russia was a collection of separate independent principalities. There were constant civil strife and wars between the princes.
Under these conditions, the peasantry lived extremely hard. It was completely defenseless, subjected to numerous requisitions, suffered from endless violence and wars that took place between the princes. This forced the peasants to go under " high hand» any prince or monastery. As a result, the "patron" - the prince, boyar or monastery - took the peasant land and turned the peasants into dependent people, serfs, obliged to work for him.
Usury was also a means of enslaving the peasants.
As a result, the princes and boyars became the owners of huge estates, numbering thousands of acres, and the monasteries turned into huge economic enterprises with colossal land wealth and owned a huge number of serfs.
In the XVI century. in many principalities of ancient Russia, from 60 to 95% of the entire territory was in the local ownership of princes, boyars, monasteries.
Until the middle of the XV century. the peasants were not yet attached to the land. They had the right to move from one landowner to another. In 1447, Ivan III issued a law, by virtue of which a peasant could move from one landowner to another only in the fall, after the completion of field work, on the so-called St. George's Day. In the reign of Ivan IV, at the end of the 16th century, this right was also taken away from the peasants - they were completely attached to the land, turned into serfs.
2. The essence of feudal exploitation
Under the feudal system basis of industrial relations is the property of the feudal lord in the means of production and incomplete ownership of the worker in production - the serf, whom the feudal lord cannot kill, but whom he can sell, buy. Along with feudal property, there is individual property of the peasant and craftsman in the instruments of production and in his private economy, based on personal labor.
The difference between feudal exploitation and slaveholding, therefore, consisted, firstly, in the incomplete ownership of the feudal lord over the production worker - the serf, and, secondly, in the fact that the serf was the sole owner of the instruments of production and his private economy, based on personal labor.
Thus, the enserfed individual peasant economy was an organic part of the feudal mode of production, in contrast to the slave-owning mode, where it was a separate way of life.
The main means of production under feudalism was land. The land was the property of the feudal lords. It was divided into two parts: the lord's land and the peasant's. The manor of the feudal lord with all the services was located on the land of the lord. Not far from the manor's estate was the peasant land, that is, the land that the feudal lord provided for the use of the peasants.
Gibbins in the "Industrial History of England" draws the following features of an English estate of the XI-XIII centuries.
The land around the manor-house (castle) absolutely belonged to the lord and was cultivated by slaves or indebted settlers under his personal supervision or under the supervision of the headman. All other lands that were in the use of obligated villagers were called quitrent lands.
The arable land, which was in common use by the obligated villagers, was divided into many strips located: in different fields.
The peasants shared pastures.
The forest and flood meadows belonged to the lord. For the use of them, the lord took a special fee.
In addition to the stripes in general field, some peasants could use separate sections in a specially fenced field, which the manor-lord always left behind and rented out in parts for a high fee.
On wastelands (uncultivated lands), peasants enjoyed the right to pasture, and could also dig peat and cut bushes.
The fortress village was organized according to the type of agricultural community. The feudal lord had a decisive influence on the affairs of the community.
“When a feudal lord, spiritual or secular,” says Engels, “acquired peasant property, he also acquired the rights associated with this property in the mark. Thus, the new landowners became members of the mark and initially enjoyed only equal rights within the mark along with the rest of the free and dependent community members, even if they were their own serfs. But soon, despite the stubborn resistance of the peasants, in many places they acquired privileges in the mark, and often they even managed to subordinate it to their master's power. And yet the old brand community continued to exist, albeit under the master's tutelage.
The feudal lord appropriated for his own benefit the surplus labor of the serf in the form feudal rent. A distinctive feature of feudal rent is that it includes all the surplus labor of the serf, and often a significant part of the necessary labor.
Feudal rent went through three stages in its development - labor rent, rent in products and cash rent. The first two forms of rent are characteristic of early feudalism; monetary rent becomes dominant at the stage of disintegration of feudalism. Let us dwell first of all on labor rent.
As labor rent, or corvee, the feudal lord directly appropriated the surplus labor of the serf.
A serf peasant, for example, worked half the time for himself on allotment land, and the other half - on lordly land for the benefit of the landowner. The land allotment in this case was, according to Lenin, a form of wages in kind. The feudal lord, giving the serf a plot of land for use, gave him the opportunity to reproduce his labor power, necessary to create a surplus product in favor of the feudal lord.
Thus, the work of the serf for the feudal lord and for himself was strictly divided here in space and time.
The type of work that a serf was supposed to do was extremely diverse: plowing, harrowing and other agricultural work - transporting agricultural products, logs, firewood, hay, straw, bricks, sawing forests, clearing cattle yards, repairing buildings, harvesting ice, etc.
Since the work of a serf for a landowner was forced labor, here, as in a slave-owning society, one of the acute problems was the problem of organizing the work of a peasant.
The peasants had no internal motivation to increase the productivity of their labor in cultivating the landlords' land. Therefore, the feudal lord resorted to means based on intimidation, such as: the guard's stick, a fine, assignment to work overtime. "The feudal organization of social labor," says Lenin, "was kept on the discipline of the stick, in the extreme darkness and downtroddenness of the working people, who were robbed and mocked by a handful of landowners."
Hence, one of the central figures of the feudal estate was the clerk - the immediate superior of the yard people and peasants.
Labor rent, or corvee, corresponds to the most early stage in the development of feudalism. With the growth of productive forces, labor rent was replaced by food rent or quitrent.
What is the essence of quitrent and its difference from corvée?
If under corvée the landowner appropriated the surplus labor of the serf, then during quitrent he directly appropriates the surplus product, i.e., the peasant is obliged to annually deliver to the landowner a certain amount of products in kind free of charge. The corvée required the most vigilant supervision of the landowner or his supervisor over the labor of the serfs and was associated with a whole system of measures based on intimidation. During quitrent, the landowner demanded that the peasant supply a certain amount of food, leaving him to distribute his work time. The replacement of corvée with dues was a progressive phenomenon for that time.
However, the quitrent reached such enormous proportions that it often absorbed not only the entire surplus product of the serf, but also a significant part of the necessary product. To pay dues, the peasant had to lead a half-starved existence. The landowner, by the most cruel measures, extorted dues from the serf.
Even under the corvée system, there was inequality in property between individual peasant families. It followed from the sole ownership of the serfs to the instruments of production. Those who had the best tools and had more workers in the family were in a better financial position. This inequality increased with the transition to the quitrent system.
For the more prosperous peasantry, quitrent opened certain possibilities for enriching and expanding their economy. Therefore, with the transition from corvée to dues, property stratification grows in the feudal village.
The development of commodity-money relations leads to the fact that corvée and dues are replaced cash rent. Monetary rent, as we shall see later, already marks the period of the disintegration of feudalism and the development in its depths of the capitalist mode of production.
The indicated forms of feudal rent far from exhausted the ways in which the feudal lords appropriated the surplus product of the serf.
The feudal lord, using a monopoly on certain means of production, such as mills, forges, etc., taxed the serfs with an additional tax in his favor.
He obliged the peasants dependent on him to use the services of his enterprises only, for example, to grind bread only at his mill. For grinding, he took a significant part of the bread. In case of violation of this rule, the peasant was obliged to pay a fine to the feudal lord. The feudal lord could confiscate all the ground bread and even the horse that carried this bread.
Especially difficult and humiliating for the serfs were such privileges of the feudal lord as the right of the “first night”, according to which every girl who marries had to be given first of all to the landowner; the right of the “dead hand”, which granted the landowner the right to inherit part of the property remaining after the death of the serf; the right of trial and punishment: the imposition of fines and corporal punishment.
The serf was obliged to give part of his product in favor of the church. “On the peasant,” says Engels, “the whole social pyramid lay down with its weight: princes, officials, nobility, priests, patricians and burghers. Whether it belonged to a prince, an imperial baron, a bishop, a monastery or a city, it was treated everywhere like a thing or a pack animal, or even worse ... Most of his time he had to work on his master's estate; and from what he managed to work out during the few free hours for himself, he had to pay tithes, chinsh, requisitions, taxes ... local and general imperial taxes.
Feudal exploitation, like slave-owning exploitation, rested on the relationship of direct non-economic dominance and submission.
This non-economic coercion was expressed in the fact that the serf had no right to dispose of his labor force, was attached to the landowner's land and was obliged to work for the landowner. The landowner had the right to use violent methods to force the serf to work, to execute judgment and reprisals on him.
Marx pointed out that under feudalism, personal dependence characterizes the social relations of material production to the same extent as other spheres of life built on this basis.
Feudal economy in its overwhelming part, especially in the initial period of its development, was an economy natural type. It satisfied its needs mainly by its own production.
The craft was an auxiliary production in agriculture. There were serf craftsmen on the estates: potters, coopers, turners, blacksmiths, tanners, carpenters, etc.
The few jobs that could not be done by their own serfs were done by itinerant artisans who moved from one feudal estate to another.
Only a small part of the product went on sale. Trade was extremely poorly developed and was predominantly external. She has not yet penetrated deep into the feudal estate. The main objects of trade were luxury items: rare fabrics, weapons, jewelry, spices, etc., which were brought mainly from the East and bought by feudal lords. Trade was conducted only by itinerant merchants. In those days, it was often associated with enormous difficulties. The caravan had to travel with armed guards to protect it from attacks by robbers and knights.
The essentially natural economy of the feudal estate was based on low production techniques. Agricultural implements were primitive: plow, harrow, hoe, sickle, flail, etc. were the main tools of production. Shifting and two-field farming systems dominated.
Due to the low technology of agriculture, there were constant crop failures, accompanied by famine and epidemics that claimed a huge number of lives.
Lenin characterizes the feudal mode of production with the following features: “... firstly, the dominance of natural economy. The serf estate was supposed to be a self-sufficient, closed whole, located in a very weak connection with the rest of the world ... Secondly, for such an economy it is necessary that the direct producer be endowed with the means of production in general and land in particular; not only that, it should be attached to the land, because otherwise the landowner is not guaranteed working hands ... Thirdly, the condition for such a system of economy is the personal dependence of the peasant on the landowner. If the landowner did not have direct power over the personality of the peasant, then he could not force a person who was endowed with land and who ran his own household to work for him. Therefore, “non-economic coercion” is necessary ... Finally, fourthly, the condition and consequence of the described economic system was an extremely low and routine state of technology, for the management of the economy was in the hands of small peasants, crushed by need, humbled by personal dependence and mental darkness.
The feudal mode of production was more progressive than the slave-owning mode and opened up more scope for the development of the productive forces.
Advantage of the feudal system economy before the slave system consisted in the fact that it contained a certain incentive that pushed the serf peasant onto the path of developing his production, while the slave system killed any incentive for the slave to increase the intensity and productivity of his labor.
A certain interest of the serf in labor stemmed from the fact that part of the time he worked for himself and was the owner of the tools of labor and his private individual farm. That part of the time that the serf worked for himself on allotment land, he tried to use with the greatest intensity and productivity.
Radishchev in his "Journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow" cites a typical conversation with a peasant whom he met on a hot holiday in the field plowing the land with "great care" and turning the plow with surprising ease. Radishchev immediately deduced from this the conclusion that this was not the master's land, and asked the peasant if he was working for his master in this way. The peasant answered him that it would be a sin to work for the master like that, since the landowner on arable land has "a hundred hands for one mouth", and he, the peasant, has "two for seven mouths." “Yes, although stretch out at the master’s work,” he concluded, “they won’t say thank you.”
This opportunity to work part of the time on allotment land for one's own benefit was the advantage of the feudal mode of production over the slave-owning one.
Marx says: “... the productivity of the remaining days of the week, which the direct producer himself can have at his disposal, is a variable quantity that necessarily develops with the growth of his experience, just like the new needs that arise in him, just like the expansion market for his product, the increasing security of employing this part of his labor force will encourage him to intensify the labor force, and it should not be forgotten that the use of this labor force is by no means limited to agriculture, but includes rural domestic industry. Here the possibility of a certain economic development is given, of course, depending on more or less favorable circumstances ... ".
Economic interest forced the landlords to take this factor into account as well. The landowners, like the slave owners, were guided in their economic activity the desire to extract as much surplus product as possible from the labor of serfs. But in order to satisfy this desire of theirs, the landowners were compelled, along the sea of development of feudal economy, to transfer the serf from corvée to quitrent, from quitrent to cash rent, to use his personal interest in increasing the intensity and productivity of his labor.
The landowner appropriated the results of the more intensive and productive labor of the serf peasant for his own benefit, intensifying his exploitation in every possible way.
The feudal system of economy, in addition to some interest of the serf in his work, had other advantages arising from large landed property.
Large landed property, which is the basis for the exploitation of large masses of the serfs, opened up the possibility of a significant division of labor within the feudal estates, both along the lines of agriculture and handicrafts.
This is evidenced by the instruction of the Frankish king Charles, sent by him to the administrators of the royal estates.
This instruction says:
"one. We wish that our estates, which we have appointed to serve our own needs, wholly serve us, and not other people ...
20. Let every steward see to it that products flow to the [lord's] court in abundance throughout the year ...
35. We wish that lard is made from fat sheep, also from pigs; in addition, let them keep at least two fattened bulls on each estate, [to] either use them on the spot for lard, or bring them to us ...
38. To always have enough fattened geese and fattened chickens for our needs ...
44. From Lenten ... annually send for our table, namely: vegetables, fish, cheese, butter, honey, mustard, vinegar, millet, millet, dried and fresh herbs, radishes and turnips, wax, soap and other trifles ...
45. That every manager should have good craftsmen in his charge, namely: blacksmiths, silversmiths and goldsmiths ... bird-catchers, soap makers, brewers ... bakers ... people who are well able to weave a net for hunting and nets for fishing and catching birds, as well as other employees…”
From the instructions it is clear what an extensive system of various specialties existed on the estates of Karl. This system pursued the task of satisfying the needs of the feudal lord in many ways. The possibility of division of labor within the feudal estate was the advantage of the feudal system of economy over the individual peasant economy.
Such were the possibilities for the development of the productive forces inherent in the feudal mode of production.
At the same time, feudalism, which replaced the slave-owning system, could not immediately develop its advantages over the slave-owning system and, consequently, those opportunities for the development of productive forces that were inherent in it.
This is explained by the fact that feudalism was based on non-economic coercion, on small, enslaved peasant farming with its extremely low technique.
Nevertheless, although slowly, the growth of the productive forces took place under the influence of feudal production relations. Gradually, the advantages of feudalism over slavery were discovered.
On the basis of those incentives for the development of the productive forces that were laid down in the feudal mode of production, by about the 8th and 9th centuries, in the so-called Carolingian era, a significant step forward had already been made in the development of agriculture.
If before that the dominant systems of agriculture were shifting and two-field, now it is planned in many places transition to a three-field. There are also changes in production technology. Among these changes, especially important was the appearance of a plow with iron shares and knives and a harrow with iron teeth instead of wooden ones. Wheat, all kinds of horticultural crops and viticulture are spreading. Animal husbandry is developing, and especially horse breeding, which was associated with the military service of the feudal lords. The development of animal husbandry leads to the expansion of meadow farming. At the same time, sheep breeding is developing in a number of regions due to the growth of wool production. All these are indicators of the growth of productive forces in the field of agriculture.
Marx, speaking about the possibilities of developing the productive forces inherent in the feudal mode of production, pointed out that the peasant had the opportunity to engage in domestic industry in the form of various crafts. Indeed, the growth of the productive forces of feudal society in the countryside took place not only along the line of raising the level of technology and the development of the division of labor between the various branches of agriculture, but also along the line of the development of a whole series of handicrafts.
The development of the productive forces of feudal society took place in an antagonistic form. The feudal lord, as we have seen, used some of the serf's interest in his labor to intensify his exploitation. This led to a greater and greater aggravation of the contradictions between the landowners and serfs, to numerous peasant uprisings, with which the history of feudalism was full. As feudalism developed, the contradiction between feudal property and handicrafts also became more and more aggravated. This contradiction is around the 10th and 11th centuries. develops into an antithesis between town and countryside, and all the further development of feudalism proceeds on the basis of this antithesis.
Marx pointed out that in the Middle Ages, the village is the starting point of history, the further development of which then proceeds in the form of the opposition of the city and the countryside.
3. The growth of the social division of labor, the development of trade, the formation of cities
In the XI century. basically completed the process of formation of the feudal mode of production in the most important countries of Western Europe. Feudalism entered the period of its highest flowering. This period stretches from the 11th to the 15th century. The development of productive forces both in agriculture and handicrafts, achieved at the previous stage, created the preconditions for the growth of the social division of labor and the formation of an internal market.
The process of separating crafts from agriculture and the formation of cities began, which played a huge role in the development and disintegration of feudalism.
For the time being, the craft could develop within the boundaries of the feudal estate. Then came the moment when it outgrew the boundaries of the feudal estate. These frames have become too narrow for him. The further development of the craft required the distribution of its products beyond the boundaries of the feudal estate, the development of the domestic market.
It began with the fact that part of the artisans, with the permission of the feudal lord, went to seasonal work. Moving from one estate to another, the artisans made felt boots on the spot, painted canvases, etc., and after a while returned to their landowner and paid him a certain amount of money. The further growth of the productive forces led to the emergence of a craft that worked for the market. Markets formed around the estates of the largest feudal lords and monasteries. Here cities began to be created. The old cities, which fell into complete decline and desolation after the collapse of the Roman Empire, also began to revive. The medieval city was a fortified place with a fortress wall, a rampart and a moat. Usually, during hostilities, the surrounding population found refuge behind the fortress walls. On the other hand, the city was a craft and trade center. Artisans and merchants flocked here. Cities willingly hosted runaway serf artisans. No wonder in the Middle Ages they said that "city air makes people free."
Engels says: “... new cities were created; always surrounded by protective walls and ditches, they were fortresses much more powerful than noble castles, since they could only be taken with the help of a significant army. Behind these walls and ditches, a medieval craft developed - however, quite saturated with a burgher-guild spirit and narrow-mindedness - the first capitals were accumulated, a need arose for trade relations between cities with each other and with the rest of the world ... ".
As part of the population medieval cities dominated by craftsmen and merchants.
The economic basis of the medieval city was craft and trade.
However, the urban population did not finally break off ties with agriculture. Within the city there were fields and gardens, cattle were kept, etc. The internal organization of the craft bore a feudal imprint.
The industrial population of cities was organized into workshops. The guild was a union, which included all artisans of one or more related crafts living in the same city. Persons not included in the workshop could not engage in this craft. Each workshop had its own elected board and its charter.
The guild regulated handicraft production in the most detailed way: it set the number of workers in each workshop, the price and quality of goods, wages and working hours.
To illustrate, here are excerpts from the French statute of wool weavers dating back to the 13th-14th centuries:
"one. No one can be a wool weaver in Paris unless he buys the craft from the king...,
8. Each wool weaver in his house can have no more than one apprentice, but he cannot have one for less than 4 years of service and for 4 Parisian livres ...
32. All cloth must be entirely of wool and as good in the beginning as in the middle, if they are but such, the one to whom they belong is subject to 5 sous fine for each piece of cloth ...
35. No weaver, dyer, or fuller can fix prices in their workshops by any community. ..
47. ... None of the aforementioned workshop should start work before sunrise under the threat of a fine ...
51. Apprentice weavers must leave work as soon as the first strike of the bell for vespers chimes ... ".
The workshop took over the supply of raw materials to craft enterprises, organized common warehouses.
City governments gave the shops a monopoly on the production of trade in the cities.
Unusually developed regulation of production and monopoly - these are the main features of the urban craft system in the Middle Ages. In addition, the workshop was a mutual aid organization and a religious corporation.
Each workshop during the war was a separate combat unit.
The structure of the urban craft class bore the imprint of the feudal hierarchy.
Within this class, a system of apprentices and apprentices developed, creating a hierarchy in the cities similar to that of the rural population.
The members of the workshop were divided into categories: masters, apprentices, students. The guild master had his own workshop and worked mainly to order for a certain small circle of buyers or for the local market. He was the owner of the means of production: the workshop, handicraft tools, raw materials, as well as the owner of handicraft products. This followed from the nature of handicraft tools, which were designed for individual use.
“The means of labor - land, agricultural tools, workshops, handicraft tools - were the means of labor of individuals, designed only for individual use, and, therefore, but the needs remained small, dwarf, limited. But that's why they, as a rule, belonged to the manufacturer himself.
The nature of the tools of labor determined the very size of the handicraft enterprise. It included from two to five workers: family members of the master, apprentices and apprentices. Due to the small scale of production, the master was forced to participate in production by personal labor.
Thus, his ownership of handicraft products was based on personal labor. True, the master derived a certain income from the work of apprentices and apprentices.
He used to give his journeyman a table and an apartment in his house, and a little extra money. The work of apprentices and apprentices created more value than what their maintenance cost the master.
However, the superior position of the master in relation to apprentices and apprentices was based not so much on ownership of the means of production, but on his skill.
Marx notes that the relation of a master to apprentices and apprentices is not the relation of a capitalist, but the relation of a craftsman. His highest position in the corporation, and at the same time in relation to apprentices and apprentices, rests on his own skill in the craft.
This was again explained by the nature of the craft technique. Manual labor dominated. The division of labor within the workshop was extremely poorly developed due to the small scale of production. The artisan typically produced the entire product from start to finish. Hence, the personal art of the craftsman, the ability to use the instrument, and professional training were of particular importance.
The craftsman, in the words of Lafargue, "had his craft in his fingers and his brain"; "... each craft was a mystery, the secrets of which were revealed to the initiates only gradually" . The craftsman was a true master of his craft. Many works of artisans are still wonderful examples of genuine folk art.
Therefore, the craft required a long apprenticeship.
Thus, although the exploitation of apprentices and apprentices took place in the medieval craft, it played a comparatively minor role.
The goal of handicraft production, the goal of the master's economic activity was not so much the pursuit of money, enrichment, but "a decent existence for his position."
“The limitation of production within the framework of a given consumption as a whole,” says Marx, “is the law here.”
For apprentices and apprentices, working with a master was a temporary condition. After working for several years with some master, the apprentice passed the apprenticeship exam. Then, as an apprentice, he was obliged to serve for hire from the master for a certain number of years. After that, the apprentice passed the exam for the master and received the right to independently conduct business. Thus, each apprentice and journeyman expected to become a master later on.
Therefore, at the first stages of the development of the guild craft, despite the exploitation of apprentices and apprentices by masters, the conflict of their interests did not develop much. However, as commodity production grew, apprentices and apprentices became more and more workers, and the contradictions between foremen, on the one hand, and apprentices and apprentices, on the other, became more and more aggravated.
What caused the guild organization of urban crafts?
On the one hand, the guild system, corporate ownership in cities reflected the impact of the feudal structure of landed property.
Marx and Engels in "The German Ideology" write that "... the feudal structure of landownership corresponded in the cities to corporate ownership, the feudal organization of crafts."
On the other hand, the guild organization of handicrafts was caused by the development of commodity production in the depths of feudalism.
The development of a commodity economy gave rise to competition between artisans. By creating guild organizations, the artisans of the city, first of all, sought in this way to protect themselves from the competition of their fellow craftsmen, as well as from the competition of serfs who fled from their masters and sought refuge in the cities. This competition was especially strongly felt due to the limited trade relations, the narrowness of the market.
By doing this, the guilds actually sought to prevent the process of differentiation of artisans, inevitably generated by the development of commodity production, competition between artisans. In conditions of relatively weak development of the commodity economy, the narrowness of the local market, the shops managed to limit competition for the time being. But as soon as the development of commodity production stepped beyond the limits of the local market and began to work for a wider market, a wider field for competition opened up and a process of increased differentiation among artisans began, despite the restrictions of the guilds.
Thus, one can conclude that one of the reasons that gave rise to the workshops was the development of commodity production, but, on the other hand, they could exist and limit competition due to the insufficient development of commodity production.
A number of other additional reasons pushed the artisans to the path of organizing guilds, such as: the general conditions for the production and exchange of manufactured goods, the need for common warehouses, commercial buildings, jointly protecting the interests of this craft from the encroachments of other crafts.
Among the factors that contributed to the organization of workshops, a significant role was played by the continuous wars that the cities had to wage with the feudal lords.
In the future, one of the most important tasks of the workshops was the struggle of masters against apprentices and apprentices.
Marx and Engels in "The German Ideology" give the following explanation of the reasons that gave rise to the guild organization of crafts in a medieval city. “The competition of fugitive serfs constantly arriving in the city; the continuous war of the countryside against the city, and consequently the necessity of organizing an urban military force; bonds of common ownership of a certain specialty; the need for common buildings for the sale of their goods - artisans were at that time merchants at the same time - and the related exclusion of outsiders from these buildings; opposition of interests of separate crafts among themselves; the need to protect the craft learned with such difficulty; the feudal organization of the whole country - these were the reasons for the unification of the workers of each individual craft into workshops.
Under conditions of limited relations of production - the dominance of handicraft technology, an underdeveloped division of labor and a narrow market - the guilds played a progressive role.
Protecting guild crafts from the competition of runaway serfs, organizing the supply of artisans with raw materials, taking care of the production of high-quality products, the guilds thereby contributed to the strengthening and development of urban crafts and the improvement of its technology.
The situation changed dramatically as soon as the development of commodity production placed on the order of the day the question of the transition from handicrafts, first to manufactory, and then to the factory. The workshops then turned into a brake on the development of productive forces.
Cities were not only craft, but also trade centers. The merchant population was grouped into guilds like artisan workshops.
Thus, Engels writes about Venetian and Genoese merchants that they were organized into trading communities. They agreed among themselves on the prices of goods, on the quality of goods, which was certified by the imposition of a brand. Fines were imposed on those merchants who violated the established prices, or a boycott was announced to them, which in those conditions threatened with complete ruin.
In foreign harbors, for example, in Alexandria, Constantinople and others, the trading community had its own living quarters, consisting of living quarters, restaurants, a warehouse, an exhibition space and a store.
Merchant capital under feudalism acted as an intermediary in the exchange of the surplus product appropriated by the feudal lord for all kinds of luxury goods, exported to a large extent from eastern countries, on the other hand, it was an intermediary in the exchange of products of the feudal peasant and the guild artisan.
Trade profit was obtained by non-equivalent exchange, i.e., by buying commodities below their value or selling them at prices above their value, or both.
“Prima facie pure independent trading profit seems impossible,” says Marx, “if products are sold at their value. Buy cheap to sell dear - that is the law of trade.
Since feudalism was basically a subsistence type of economy, the sale of products at their cost was of secondary importance.
Ultimately, the source of trade profit was the labor of a small producer - an artisan and a peasant.
Merchants, usurers, wealthy homeowners and owners of urban lands, the most prosperous craftsmen made up the urban elite, the so-called patriciate. Their strength was wealth. Even the richest craftsman represented only small-scale handicraft production, where the possibilities for accumulating wealth were very limited due to the small scale of production. On the contrary, merchant capital, being an intermediary in the exchange between town and countryside, had the opportunity to accumulate in large sizes cash through the exploitation of a mass of small producers, both in the city and in the countryside. The same applies to usurious capital.
The following data relating to the XIV-XV centuries can give an idea of the accumulation of wealth from merchants and usurers in the medieval cities of Germany and Switzerland:
These data show that merchants and usurers, constituting a comparatively very small percentage of the urban population, concentrated in their hands from 50 to 75% of all urban property.
It is not surprising that this wealthy elite also had political power. In her hands was the city self-government, finances, court, military force. This gave her the opportunity to shift the entire burden of the tax burden and other duties onto the artisans.
Thus, the growth of productive forces, the growth of the social division of labor led to the fact that the feudal world split into an agricultural serf village and a handicraft and trading city.
With the formation of cities in feudal society, a new economic power arose, the power commodity production. The leading role in the development of the productive forces of the feudal mode of production passed to the cities. The relatively rapid development of cities, the growth of handicrafts and trade contrasted with the immobility and routine that prevailed in the feudal countryside.
The urban population increased relatively rapidly at the expense of the rural population. Thus, in England, the urban population increased from 75,000 in 1086 to 168,720 in 1377, and the percentage of the urban population to the total population of England increased from 5 to 12 during the same period. Nevertheless, even by the end of the Middle Ages, urban residents constituted a relatively small percentage of the total population.
4. Opposition between city and countryside under feudalism
The peculiarity of the relationship between city and countryside under feudalism lies in the fact that politically the countryside dominates the city, while economically the city exploits the countryside in the person of the mass of serfs. “If in the Middle Ages,” says Marx, “the countryside exploits the city politically everywhere where feudalism was not broken by the exclusive development of cities, as in Italy, then the city everywhere and without exception exploits the countryside economically by its monopoly prices, its tax system, its guild system. , by its direct merchant's deceit and its usury.
What is the political dominance of the countryside over the city under feudalism?
First of all, cities arise on the land of the feudal lord and at first are his property. The feudal lord collects taxes from the population of the city, obliges him to bear all sorts of duties, to execute judgment and reprisals on him. Moreover, the feudal lord has the right to inherit, sell and mortgage the city that belonged to him.
For example, the city of Arles in the XII century. divided into four parts, separated by a fence and belonging to four owners: one part belonged to the local archbishop, the other part belonged to the same archbishop, together with the Count of Provence. The city market belonged to the Viscount of Marseilles, part of the city belonged to the city judges. One can imagine what complex relationships there were in this city, which belonged in parts to different owners.
Cities arise and develop in a fierce struggle with the feudal lords. The power of the feudal lords hindered the development of crafts and trade in the cities. Cities tried in every possible way to free themselves from this heavy feudal dependence. They fought to give them self-government rights- for the right to court, minting coins, for exemption from numerous taxes, customs duties, etc. In a number of feudal states (France, Italy), cities that acquired independence from feudal lords or a certain autonomy were then called communes.
“It's funny,” writes Marx in a letter to Engels, “that the word "communio" often provoked the same scolding as communism does today. So, for example, the priest Guibert Nozhaisky writes: “The Commune is a new and disgusting word.”
At times, bloody wars were fought between the city and the feudal lords. Cities often paid off the feudal lords with money and in this way gained independence. As the economic and military strength of the cities grew, they more and more threw off the burden of heavy political dependence on the feudal lords and became independent. At the same time, the struggle of the cities against the feudal lords more and more turned into a struggle against the feudal mode of production itself.
Thus, the antithesis between town and countryside was primarily expressed in the antagonism between the feudal lords, who sought to maintain their political dominance over the city and use it for all sorts of extortions, and the cities, which sought to achieve independence from the feudal lords.
The disparate feudal peasantry in the market was opposed by merchants and artisans, organized into merchant guilds and craft workshops.
Thanks to the association in the workshop, artisans had the opportunity to act in the city market as a united front against a fragmented and unorganized village and raise prices for handicraft products.
At the same time, in order to strengthen their monopoly position, the guilds fought in every possible way against the development of handicrafts in the countryside, sometimes not stopping at the forcible destruction of village handicraft workshops. To an even greater extent than the guilds, representatives of commercial capital had the opportunity to whip up flails on objects of urban production. Merchant capital developed primarily on the most severe exploitation of the small producer - the feudal peasant. The merchant bought products from the peasant at low prices, and sold him handicraft products at high prices.
In this way, merchant capital appropriated a significant part of the peasant's labor, taking advantage of his economic dependence, ignorance of the market, and the impossibility of communicating directly with consumers of his products. But not only that, merchant capital supplied the feudal lords mainly with luxury goods, which the feudal lords had to pay at a very high price. In this way, commercial capital appropriated a significant share of their rent, which ultimately led to increased exploitation of the serfs.
The medieval city also exploited the village through usury.
“... The characteristic forms of the existence of usurious capital in the times preceding the capitalist mode of production,” says Marx, “were two. …These two forms are as follows: Firstly, usury by providing money loans to wasteful nobility, mainly landowners; Secondly, usury by granting money loans to small producers who own the conditions of their labor, to which the artisan belongs, but especially the peasant ... ".
The more the countryside was drawn into commodity-money relations, the more the peasant fell into the net of the usurer, who sucked all the life juices out of him.
Merchant and usury capital also exploited the rural handicrafts.
Medium and small feudal lords and knights also fell into the networks of commercial and usurious capital. However, in this case, the same serfs had to pay for their debts.
The usurious interest reached monstrous proportions.
Cities were centers of feudal power, and not only secular, but also spiritual. As the centers of concentration of the apparatus of secular and spiritual power, the cities exploited the countryside with the help of innumerable taxes, duties and all sorts of other fees paid by the peasants in favor of the secular and spiritual feudal lords.
Such were the forms of economic exploitation of the countryside by the city under the conditions of the feudal system.
The development trend was that the cities, as their economic and military power grew and strengthened, were increasingly freed from feudal dependence and subjugated the countryside.
“The struggle of the bourgeoisie against the feudal nobility,” says Engels, “is the struggle of the city against the countryside, industry against land ownership, money economy against subsistence, and the decisive weapon of the bourgeoisie in this struggle was the means at its disposal. economic strength, which continuously increased due to the development of industry, first handicraft, and then turned into manufacture, and due to the expansion of trade.
5. Further growth of trade in feudal society. Crusades and their influence on the development of the economy of feudalism
The separation of the city from the countryside, being an expression of the growth of productive forces, leads to a significant development of both domestic and foreign trade in feudal society.
Internal trade was conducted between urban artisans, on the one hand, and peasants and feudal lords, on the other. Cities were the centers of this trade. Artisans brought their industrial products there, and feudal lords and serfs - agricultural products. This internal local market covered estates and villages, lying at such a distance that if you leave them for the city in the morning, you can return back in the evening.
The further growth of the productive forces and the social division of labor also caused a revival of foreign trade. This revival of trade begins primarily on the old routes of exchange, which were laid in the era of the domination of the slave system. Italy lay on a great trade route from East to West. Therefore, cities such as Venice and Genoa became the largest centers of trade.
Until the 11th century an active role in the field of foreign trade belonged mainly to the Arabs and Byzantine merchants, who brought oriental spices and luxury goods to Western Europe, and took away raw materials, bread, and slaves from there.
In the XI century. the situation in the field of foreign trade has changed dramatically. An active role in foreign trade more and more began to pass to European merchants. In this regard, interest in the eastern countries has greatly increased. Travel to the East began.
These journeys to the East, which are based on economic and trade interests, are at the same time covered by religious motives - a pilgrimage to the "Holy Sepulcher", which, according to legend, was allegedly located in Palestine.
Thus, the growth of productive forces, the development of handicrafts and agriculture made it necessary to revive trade relations between Western Europe and the East. Meanwhile, a very serious obstacle has arisen in the way of the development of these relations.
The Turks captured the Baghdad Caliphate and a significant part of the Byzantine possessions. This seizure slowed down trade between East and West and made the pilgrimage to Jerusalem extremely difficult, which served as an external reason for the emergence of the idea of the Crusades.
The crusades were primarily interested in Western European trading capital, and in particular the cities of Venice and Genoa, through which trade was conducted with the East.
In addition, large feudal lords and numerous chivalry associated their hopes for the capture of new lands with the crusades. An important role was played by the so-called majorat, i.e., such an order of inheritance in which property passes after the death of the feudal lord to the eldest son, and the remaining children are deprived of the right to inherit. Thanks to this, a layer of knights is created, deprived of land, militant, eager to seize lands, greedy for all sorts of adventures.
The Catholic Church gave this whole movement a religious shell, proclaiming its goal to fight against the infidels for the liberation of the "Holy Sepulcher".
As an ideological leader, ruler of the souls of the feudal world, the Catholic Church sought to expand its spiritual power, subordinating the Mohammedan world to its influence. As a major landowner, she hoped to expand her land holdings with the help of the Crusades, and as a major merchant, she was interested in developing trade with the East.
The growth of the domestic and foreign market in another way contributed to the popularity of the idea of the crusades. The development of commodity relations, the growing possibilities of selling the surplus product on the market led to increased exploitation of the peasantry by the feudal lords. If we add to this constant hunger strikes and epidemics, which were the result of low technology and inhuman exploitation of the peasantry, then the desire of the peasants to take part in the crusades in order to escape from the unbearable grip of feudal exploitation becomes understandable.
All of these reasons, ultimately rooted in the economics of the feudal society of that era, led to the Crusades.
The crusades began in 1096 and ended in 1270. There were eight crusades in all. In 1099, the crusaders captured Jerusalem and a large territory that belonged to the Turks. On the occupied territory, they founded a number of cities and principalities. A rather lively trade began between Western Europe and the East, from which Genoa and Venice primarily benefited, allocating large funds for the Crusades.
However, happiness soon betrayed the crusaders. They began to fail. The last, eighth campaign, which took place in 1270, ended in the defeat and death of the crusaders.
The Crusades had a huge impact on the further economic development of Western Europe. Firstly, the crusaders got acquainted with the achievements of eastern technology, borrowed a lot from the eastern peoples and thereby contributed to the more rapid development of productive forces.
Secondly, acquaintance with Eastern culture contributed to the expansion of the demands and needs of the ruling classes of feudal society. And this growth of needs, in turn, gave impetus to the development of the corresponding branches of production and trade.
Thirdly, the Crusades caused a revival of trade with the countries of the East, from where spices, dyes, all kinds of incense were brought, medicines etc. The centers of this trade in the Mediterranean were Venice, Genoa, Florence and other cities. Other centers of foreign trade were the cities of Hamburg, Lübeck, Bremen, Cologne, Magdeburg, Frankfurt and others. Trade in the Baltic and North Seas was concentrated in these cities. They formed the so-called Hanseatic League.
Hanseatic-Venetian companies at the end of the 14th century. and at the beginning of the fifteenth century. on the spice trade, the following percentages of profit were made on the purchase price: pepper - 70-100, ginger - 25-237, cinnamon - 87-287, cloves - 100, nutmeg - 87-237, etc. Robbery of foreign countries and huge trade profits led to the expansion of the domestic market. In particular, trade in textile and metal goods has revived.
Significant development has reached usurious capital, as well as credit. At first, merchants were engaged in credit and usury operations, later bankers emerged from their midst.
The growth of commodity-money relations caused profound changes in the feudal countryside. The transfer of in-kind duties into cash began. The exploitation of the peasantry by the landlords intensified. The process of differentiation of the peasantry, the process of the emergence of capitalist relations in the depths of feudalism, began to develop much more rapidly.
6. The political system of feudalism. The role of the church
The feudal system had hierarchical structure, which was based on the hierarchy of land ownership. Those who owned the most land stood at the top of the hierarchy. Its top was occupied by the king - the largest landowner-feudal lord.
Larger feudal lords - seniors made smaller feudal lords, who were called vassals, dependent on themselves. The foundation of this entire hierarchical ladder was the exploitation of the serfs.
The political structure of feudalism was characterized by extreme fragmentation. All of Europe was divided into many small and large estates - states. At the head of each estate was a large feudal lord - at the same time, the sovereign. Within the limits of his possessions, he had full power, maintained his own army and minted coins.
Petty feudal lords, as we have already pointed out, were usually under the patronage and protection of stronger feudal lords - overlords. For this protection, they were obliged to pay tribute and help their patrons in the war. But the overlords, who had vassals, could in turn be vassals of even larger feudal lords. The largest overlord was the king.
The feudal lords had the right to independently conclude agreements among themselves, wage wars, etc.
This political fragmentation of the feudal world was determined by the economy of feudalism, the weak development of the social division of labor, and consequently, commodity production and exchange. Under the dominance of subsistence farming, economic ties between individual feudal estates were very limited. Each feudal estate at its core was a closed subsistence economy, existing mainly with products of its own production.
In the conditions of economic and political fragmentation of feudal society, the Catholic Church played an important role. It was essentially a political organization that united the fragmented feudal world. The Catholic Church itself was built according to the same hierarchical type that underlay the feudal society. It was headed by the pope, who had unlimited sole power. Such an organization of the Catholic Church was most suitable both for fighting the feudal lords and subordinating them to spiritual authority, and for enslaving the serfs.
At least a third of all land was concentrated in the hands of the church. All this made her the most powerful of the feudal lords. The influence of the church was thus based not only on religious intoxication, but also on its enormous economic strength.
Huge church estates provided a large amount of food that the clergy could not consume. Under the dominance of natural economy, the surplus of production could not be fully converted into money. On this basis, the charitable activity of the church arose, which helped it to strengthen its ideological power over the working masses. In turn, ideological power was used to further increase the economic strength and wealth of the church. The Church established in its favor a kind of tax on land ownership in the form of church tithes and organized a variety of all kinds of exactions for pious purposes.
The further growth of productive forces, the separation of the city from the countryside, and the development of trade relations lead to the strengthening of economic ties between individual regions and states. There is a need to destroy the political fragmentation of the feudal world. The formation of large nation-states in the form of absolute monarchies begins.
The centralization of state power was carried out by the royal power in the fight against the feudal lords, who did not want to give up their independence. In this struggle, royal power relied on the growing urban bourgeoisie. This was the period when, according to Engels, "... the royal power in its struggle with the nobility used the bourgeoisie to restrain one estate with the help of another ...".
7. Decomposition and death of feudalism. Simple commodity economy as a basis for the development of capitalist relations
Feudalism pushed forward the development of the productive forces. This found expression in the strengthening of the social division of labor within the feudal village, in the improvement of agricultural technology, and in the emergence of new industries both in field cultivation and in horticultural crops. Even more progress was made in the field of handicraft production.
Particularly strong progress in the field of productive forces manifested itself in the second half of the Middle Ages. A significant role, as we have already indicated, was played by the Crusades in this respect. The Crusades made it possible for Europeans to get acquainted with a number of technical improvements in the field of horticulture, horticulture, engineering, and technical chemistry.
At the end of the Middle Ages, the progress of labor productivity goes at an accelerated pace and is manifested in many inventions and discoveries that have important practical value: new industries are being created that have a huge impact on the future economic life, blast furnaces appear and iron foundry arises; the technique of navigation is being improved, especially thanks to the invention of the compass; paper, gunpowder, clocks are invented.
The growth of productive forces was accompanied by the expansion of the market.
The expanding market presented an ever-increasing demand for handicraft products, and small-scale handicraft production was less and less able to satisfy it. There was a need for a transition from small-scale handicraft production to large-scale capitalist production, to manufacturing, and then to machine production.
The production relations of feudal society, with their serf labor, guild isolation and narrow-mindedness, became a brake on the further growth of productive forces.
Feudalism entered the stage of its disintegration and the development of capitalist relations. This stage covered the period from the 16th to the 18th century.
The basis for the development of capitalist relations, of the capitalist way of life in the depths of feudalism, was a simple commodity economy in the form of guild craft in the city and peasant farming in the countryside, more and more drawn into the exchange.
A simple commodity economy produces products for the purpose of selling on the market. In this it is fundamentally different from subsistence farming.
The peasant, who lived in a subsistence economy, ate products of his own production, burned a torch in the evenings, wore clothes made of canvas woven from his own linen and hemp, in winter he wore a sheepskin coat and a sheepskin coat sewn from sheepskins from his sheep, etc. The craft was connected with agriculture. The social division of labor was not developed.
Other in the conditions of a commodity economy. The basis of the commodity economy is the social division of labor. By virtue of this, every commodity producer produces only one commodity and, selling this commodity on the market, he buys the commodities necessary for him, produced by other commodity producers.
The peasant, drawn into the exchange, is forced to buy a significant and growing part of the goods in the market: to sew clothes from chintz made at the factory, to light the hut in the evenings with a kerosene lamp bought in the store, to wear shoes made at a leather factory, etc. .
Nevertheless, even in the period of developed commodity relations, peasant economy retains its natural character to a very large extent.
The most typical representative of a simple commodity economy is the craftsman, who produces products for sale and consumes only an insignificant part of the products of his own production.
The second main feature of a commodity economy is the commodity producer's private ownership of the means of production, based on personal labor. This follows from the nature of handicraft tools.
A simple commodity economy is based on manual primitive technology. A self-spinning wheel, a hand loom, a hammer, a plow, etc. - these are the tools of labor characteristic of this economy. These tools of labor are designed for individual use, which leads to the fact that in a simple commodity economy, small handicraft workshops or small agricultural farms, scattered on miserable patches of land, predominate.
Being the owner of the means of production and personally working on his small farm, the small commodity producer is naturally the owner of the products of his labor. The appropriation of the products produced by the small commodity producer is based in this way: 1) on his personal labor and 2) on private ownership of the means of production.
A simple commodity economy is fraught with a profound internal contradiction. On the one hand, it is based on the social division of labor. Thanks to the social division of labor, small commodity producers are connected with each other and work for each other. Consequently, their labor has a social character, although the latter is not directly manifested in the production process, it remains hidden.
On the other hand, the basis of a simple commodity economy is the commodity producer's private ownership of the means of production. Thanks to private ownership of the means of production, small commodity producers find themselves fragmented, working in isolation from each other, outside of any general plan, each solely at his own peril and risk. Thanks to this, the labor of the commodity producer is directly private labour. Consequently, the labor of the commodity producer is both public and private at the same time.
This contradiction between public and private labor is main contradiction simple commodity economy. It generates anarchy commodity production and fierce competition between commodity producers.
And this, in turn, leads to the disintegration of the simple commodity economy and to the development of capitalist relations. “No,” Lenin wrote, “not a single economic phenomenon in the peasantry ... which would not express the struggle and discord of interests, would not mean a plus for some and a minus for others.” Because of this, a simple commodity economy, according to Lenin, "...gives birth to capitalism and the bourgeoisie constantly, daily, hourly, spontaneously and on a mass scale."
What internal laws underlie the development of capitalist relations on the basis of commodity production?
To answer this we must consider the relations behind the exchange of commodities.
A product produced for the purpose of sale is commodity. Every commodity has, first of all, a use-value.
Use value a commodity consists in its ability to satisfy any human need. A product that does not have a use value cannot become a commodity, since no one will buy it.
In exchange, one commodity is equated to another commodity. Let's say 1 ax is equal to 50 kg of bread.
The question arises: what underlies the equality of two goods?
This equality cannot be based on the use-value of a commodity, since the condition of exchange is difference the use-values of the two exchanged commodities. No one will exchange an ax for an ax and bread for bread.
Obviously, the equality of two goods is based on their value.
Items that have the same value are exchanged. By exchanging 1 ax for 50 kg of bread, we thereby say that one ax costs the same as 50 kg of bread. Consequently, in addition to use-value, a commodity must have a value.
What determines the value of a commodity?
Cost of goods determined by the labor involved in its production.
In fact, small commodity producers - artisans and peasants - exchange the products of their labor. “What did they spend in the manufacture of these items? Labor - and only labor: they spent only their own labor power on replacing the tools of labor, on the production of raw materials, on their processing; could they, therefore, exchange these products of theirs for those of other producers, otherwise than in proportion to the labor expended? The labor time spent on these products was not only their only suitable measure for the quantitative determination of the quantities to be exchanged, but any other measure was completely unthinkable.
If in this way the exchange was carried out according to the quantity of labor expended, how was the quantity of labor itself determined?
“Obviously, only through a long process of approaching in zigzags, often in the dark, groping, and, as always, only bitter experience taught people. The need for everyone, by and large, to recover their costs contributed in each individual case to finding the right path, while the limited number of types of objects that came in exchange, along with the unchanging - often over many centuries - the nature of their production, facilitated this task.
Consequently, it is only in the process of exchange that exchange relations between commodities spontaneously develop that generally correspond to their value, determined by the amount of labor expended on them.
The amount of labor expended is measured by time. The more labor time spent on the production of a commodity, the higher its value, and vice versa.
But the point is that, as regards the amount of time spent on the production of a commodity, there are great differences between individual commodity producers. Some work with good tools, others with bad ones, some work with good raw materials, others with bad ones, some more intensively, others less intensively, some are more skillful in their craft, others less skillful.
Consequently, the individual quantities of labor time expended by individual commodity producers on the production of commodities are extremely varied. How long will the cost of goods be determined?
The value of a commodity will be determined not by the individual time spent on the production of a commodity by an individual commodity producer, but socially necessary time spent by most producers. "The socially necessary labor time," says Marx, "is that labor time which is required for the production of some use-value, under the socially normal conditions of production at hand and at the average level of skill and labor intensity in the given society."
Commodity producers who work under better than average conditions, with the help of better tools, with greater skill and intensity, spend less individual labor time on the production of a given commodity, and in the market they sell this commodity at a price determined not by the individual, but by the socially necessary. time. Consequently, they are in more favorable conditions than other commodity producers.
On the other hand, those commodity producers who work under conditions below average, with inferior means of production, with less skill and intensity, are in less favorable conditions than others.
Thus, at the basis of the differentiation of small commodity producers and the development of capitalist relations lies the contradiction between private and social labor, between individual and socially necessary time. By virtue of this contradiction, the competition that is played out between commodity producers leads to the enrichment of some and the ruin of others, to the development of capitalist relations.
8. Decomposition of guild craft
The emergence of shop organizations in the city was the result of the development of commodity production. But at the same time, the guilds could hold on and limit competition only as long as commodity production was still insufficiently developed, as long as the handicraft worked for the local narrow market, when the artisan was at the same time the seller of his goods.
The growth of commodity relations radically changed the situation. If earlier the craftsman worked for an order or for the local market and directly dealt with the consumer, now he was forced to move to work on a wider, unknown market.
This caused the need for an intermediary - a buyer-merchant. The buyer grows out of the artisans themselves. At first, he combines trading operations with crafts, and then devotes himself entirely to trade.
This process of allocation and growth of merchant capital proceeded intensively in the guild craft at the end of the Middle Ages.
On the other hand, the expanding market placed ever greater demands on handicraft products.
The growth of productive forces became in irreconcilable contradiction with the guild system, with its isolation, routine, hostility to all technical innovations, and demanded its elimination.
It is enough to refer to the fact that the workshops did not allow the use of self-spinning wheels, forbade the use of a felting mill in cloth production, etc.
The guild spirit, the desire to hide technical inventions from their competitors also could not but slow down the further growth of productive forces.
Lenin in his work "The Development of Capitalism in Russia" gives a vivid example of the classification of production by handicraftsmen.
“The founders of a new trade or persons who have introduced any improvements into the old trade,” says Lenin, “do their best to hide profitable occupations from their fellow villagers, use various tricks for this (for example, they keep old devices in the establishment to divert eyes), do not let no one to their workshops, they work on the ceiling, they don’t even inform their own children about production ... We read about the village of Bezvodny, Nizhny Novgorod province, famous for its metal craft: “It is remarkable that the inhabitants of Bezvodny still ... carefully hide their skills from neighboring peasants ... they give their daughters to suitors of neighboring villages and, as far as possible, do not take girls from there in marriage.
The petty regulation that existed in guild handicraft production, the prohibition to have apprentices and apprentices in excess of a certain number - all this contradicted the needs of economic development, the needs of the growing capitalist way of life. Therefore, despite all the slingshots that the guild system placed on the development of competition, it penetrated the limits of guild production. Differentiation began among the guild masters. More prosperous craftsmen began to stand out, who expanded production, regardless of the shop rules.
In order to avoid guild slingshots and restrictions, some more prosperous craftsmen and merchants transferred the organization of production to the village, handed out orders for the house there.
This undermined the monopoly position of the shops.
Merchant capital penetrated the guild organizations. More prosperous craftsmen became buyers and usurers. The thirst for accumulation prompted such craftsmen to circumvent and violate those rules of the charters that prevented them from expanding their own production and finally subjugating the farms of poorer craftsmen. So, in the production for export, for the craftsmen who had a direct connection with the market, those decisions of the workshops were embarrassing, which set the price of products and prevented them from buying them cheaply. Often, those articles of the charters that limited the number of employees for an individual master and, therefore, did not allow the expansion of enterprises were not implemented in practice.
The process of differentiation among artisans began, the process of decomposition of the guild craft.
Along with this, the contradictions between masters, on the one hand, and apprentices and apprentices, on the other, are aggravated.
The masters, who became more and more dependent on merchant capital, in order to somehow maintain their vacillating position, intensified the exploitation of apprentices and apprentices, demanded longer and more intensive work from them, paid them less, and provided them worse.
Guild organizations increasingly turned into organizations of the struggle of masters against apprentices. The most energetic measures were taken to make it difficult for apprentices to move into the ranks of masters, because the increase in the number of masters increased competition. Longer periods of apprenticeship and service for hire as apprentices were established. When an apprentice passed the exam for a master, especially strict requirements were imposed. They demanded the presentation of "exemplary works" in which the apprentice had to discover his art, for example, to make a horseshoe without any measurement, by eye, for a horse galloping past, etc. High deposits were set when entering the workshop.
Thus, in France, persons applying for the title of guild master had to pay in the first half of the 14th century. 20 solidi, in the second half of the XIV century. - 40-50 solidi, in the XV century. - 200 solids.
In addition, an apprentice who wanted to become a master had to make gifts to the foremen of the workshop. According to the charter of the Lübeck goldsmiths, dating back to 1492: “Whoever wants to take the position of an independent master in the workshop must (in addition to fulfilling many other requirements) make the following items: a gold ring of openwork work, an English wrist given at betrothal, engraved and blackened, and dagger hilt ring. He must present these jewels to the foremen and the oldest members of the guild.
Changes in the guild structure occurred with considerable speed starting from the 14th century.
The new rules of the workshops were carried out with extreme predilection. For the sons of masters, all sorts of exceptions were made, thanks to which all trials and difficulties often turned into an empty formality, while for people of a different origin, joining the workshop became almost impossible. Guild privileges acquired a narrow class character, they were no longer associated so much with art and knowledge as with origin.
All these innovations provoked a vigorous rebuff from the apprentices, who began to create their own organizations - at first simply religious corporations or mutual material aid unions, which then turned into associations for the struggle for common interests against the masters.
Apprentices often managed to force the masters to various concessions. Masters tried in every possible way to destroy the unions of apprentices and often sought laws prohibiting these unions. But this only achieved that the unions of apprentices turned into secret ones, but did not cease to exist. The main weapons in the struggle of apprentices against masters were strikes and the boycott of entrepreneurs.
Thus, under the influence of the growth of commodity-capitalist relations, the process of decomposition of the guild handicraft took place.
9. Decomposition of the feudal village. Revolts of serfs.The death of feudalism
The same process of the disintegration of feudal relations and the development of capitalist relations took place in the countryside as well.
When the economy of the feudal lord began to turn from natural to barter, the nature of his relations with the serf began to change rapidly. Formerly, under subsistence farming, the extent of corvée and dues found their limit in the extent of the needs of the feudal lord; now that border has disappeared. If under the conditions of a natural economy it made no sense to accumulate too large stocks of grain, then under a money economy their value could be stored in the form of money. The consequence of this was the transition from corvée and dues to cash rent. Needing money, the feudal lord demanded that his peasants pay dues in cash. Numerous in-kind duties were converted into cash. Now the serf peasant had to not only create a surplus product with his labor, but also sell it on the market in order to then pay a cash rent to the feudal lord.
The serf village was thus drawn more and more into the exchange. A rapid process of stratification within the serf peasantry began. On the one hand, the kulak grew, which gradually paid off serfdom and, along with the feudal lord, became the exploiter of the peasantry.
Among the serfs of Count Sheremetev (village Ivanovo, Vladimir province):
a) there were merchants, manufacturers, owners of huge capitals, whose daughters, when they married not count peasants, paid a ransom of 10 thousand rubles. and more;
b) before the reform of 1861, 50 Ivanovo peasants were redeemed. The average buyout price was 20 thousand rubles.
On the other hand, the exploitation of the peasantry by the feudal lords intensified and the ruin of the bulk of the peasantry proceeded at a rapid pace.
Under the influence of the growth of market relations, the feudal lord tried in every possible way to increase the size of the monetary rent levied from the peasantry. Thus, cash payments from peasants in France, according to one estate in Brittany, increased from 200 livres in 1778 to 400 livres in 1786. The feudal lord also tried to expand the size of his own economy and, for this purpose, usually appropriated the lands he had in common use with peasants. The enterprises that constituted the monopoly of the feudal lord, such as mills, bakeries, bridges, now became a means for increased exactions and extortion.
As economic oppression intensified, legal forms of dependence also became more severe. “The robbery of the peasants by the nobility,” says Engels, “became more and more sophisticated every year. The last drop of blood was sucked out of the serfs, dependent people were subjected to new requisitions and duties under all kinds of pretexts and names. Corvee, chinshi, requisitions, duties upon change of ownership, posthumous requisitions, security money, etc., were arbitrarily increased, despite all the old treaties.
Under the influence of the same growth of commodity production and exchange, the exploitation of the peasants by the clergy intensifies. It is not satisfied with church tithes and seeks new sources of income, arranges trade in indulgences (“absolution of sins”), organizes new armies of mendicant monks. With their own serfs, the clergy do no better than other feudal lords.
The unbearable living conditions of the serfs caused peasant revolts and riots. At first, while the social division of labor was poorly developed, while exchange ties remained comparatively narrow and each region lived its own separate life, the peasant uprisings had a local character and were comparatively easily suppressed. The development of commodity relations created the ground for wider peasant uprisings, engulfing entire countries. On the other hand, the sharp increase in the exploitation of the serf peasantry by the feudal lords gave these uprisings a particularly deep and stubborn character. In Italy in the 13th century, in England and France at the end of the 14th century, in Bohemia in the 15th century, in Germany at the beginning of the 16th century. there were real peasant wars, for the suppression of which it took a huge effort on the part of state bodies.
So, in 1358, an uprising of French peasants, known as the Jacquerie, broke out. This uprising was the result of an extraordinary increase in the exploitation of the peasantry ruined by wars and numerous exactions. The uprising was crushed with unprecedented cruelty. Over 20 thousand rebel serfs were physically destroyed. Entire villages were destroyed and demolished and much land and property confiscated.
In England, in 1381, an uprising of English peasants broke out, led by Wat Tyler. It was preceded by an epidemic of plague, from which a large number of people died. As a result, the landowners experienced a particularly acute need for labor and intensified the exploitation of the surviving serfs. The peasantry responded with an uprising. Apprentices and students joined the rebels. The rebels argued that the nobility is a temporary phenomenon and it should disappear. Therefore, sermons on the topic: “When Adam plowed and Eve spun, who was a nobleman then” were especially popular among the peasants?
The peasants demanded liberation from all kinds of personal dependence and slavery. The rebellious peasants and artisans headed for London, burning the estates of the landowners along the way, destroying the castles of the highest nobility. The frightened king agreed to satisfy the demands of the rebels. The peasants, reassured by his promise, went home. Then the king's 40,000-strong army easily destroyed the remnants of the rebel armed forces. Nevertheless, as a result of the uprising, the emancipation of the peasantry intensified, and in the 15th century. In England, serfdom was abolished.
In Spain, after a series of uprisings of serfs, which were also joined by the most exploited elements of the urban population, serfdom was swept away in 1486.
In 1525, an uprising of serfs broke out in Germany, which turned into a real war of peasants against feudal lords.
The history of pre-revolutionary Russia also provides us with vivid examples of grandiose peasant uprisings that shook the foundations of the tsarist empire and made the ruling classes tremble. The most famous of them are the uprisings of Stepan Razin and Emelyan Pugachev.
The enormous revolutionary significance of these uprisings lay in the fact that they shook the foundations of feudalism and were the decisive force that ultimately led to the abolition of serfdom and the death of the feudal system of exploitation.
The disintegration of feudalism and the development of capitalist relations was accompanied, on the one hand, by the growth of the bourgeoisie, and, on the other hand, by the formation of a proletariat from among the ruined small producers - peasants and artisans. Here it is appropriate to compare the historical fate of the feudal mode of production with the slave-owning one. Both here and there, the process of ruin of small producers took place. However, under the conditions of the slave system, the ruined small producer could not find a productive occupation for himself. The slave-owning system could not enter the path of technological development, since slavery, as it spread, more and more turned labor into a shameful deed, unworthy of a free man. Therefore, the ruined small producers under the conditions of the slave-owning system expected the fate of the lumpen proletarians.
On the contrary, feudalism, which was based on the small-scale production of serfs and urban artisans, as it developed, created the conditions for the growth of productive forces, the rise of technology based on the development of the capitalist system that originated in its depths. Under these conditions, the ruined artisans and peasants constituted the cadre of proletarians who were needed by the developing large-scale capitalist industry.
The capitalist mode of production originated in the form of a way of life in the depths of feudal society. But his birth cost the mother's life. The development of the capitalist structure in the womb of feudal society took place with such speed and intensity that a complete discrepancy was soon revealed, on the one hand, between the new productive forces and, on the other, the economic and political system feudalism.
Marx and Engels wrote in The Communist Manifesto that the conditions “... in which the production and exchange of feudal society, the feudal organization of agriculture and industry, in a word, feudal property relations, took place, no longer corresponded to the developed productive forces. They slowed down production instead of developing it. They have become his shackles. They had to be broken, and they were broken.
Their place was taken by free competition, with the social and political system corresponding to it ... "
This coup was carried out by the bourgeoisie through a revolution in which the peasants were given the role of ordinary fighters against feudalism. The bourgeoisie took advantage of the fruits of the revolutionary struggle of the peasantry. The working class was still weak and unorganized. He could not yet lead the peasantry. As a result, one system of exploitation was replaced by another. Feudal exploitation was replaced by capitalist.
While in England and elsewhere European countries the development of capitalism led to the rapid elimination of feudal relations; they still existed in Germany, Romania, and Russia. For a number of reasons, and above all because of the economic backwardness of these countries, they experienced a "relapse" of feudal exploitation in its most cruel form. The opened world market for agricultural products pushed the landowners to expand their own production of these products, which was still based on feudal exploitation, on serf labor. Under these conditions, the expansion of landowner agriculture meant the expansion of the use of serf labor and the intensification of the exploitation of the serfs. The landlords, who were in need of labor, began to switch to corvée and quitrent in kind and completely enslave the peasants in order to squeeze out as much surplus product as possible to sell it on the market. The exploitation of the serfs assumed monstrous proportions, bordering on slavery.
Marx says: “... as soon as the peoples, whose production is still carried out in relatively low forms of slave labor, corvee labor, etc., are drawn into the world market, which is dominated by the capitalist mode of production and which makes the sale of the products of this production abroad the predominant interest , so the civilized horror of excessive labor joins the barbaric horrors of slavery, serfdom, etc. ” .
Serfdom is not some special mode of exploitation, fundamentally different from feudalism. The essence of exploitation is the same here. Serfdom- this is a stage in the development of feudalism, associated with the aggravation and intensification of the exploitation of the peasants by the landlords in the backward countries, drawn into the world market.
Thus, for example, after the peasant uprising, Germany had to go through, in the words of Engels, the "second edition" of serfdom in its most cruel form. Only the revolution of 1848 destroyed serfdom in Germany. However, vestiges of it remained even after that.
They left a huge imprint on the subsequent development of Germany, which Lenin described as the Prussian path of development of capitalism. The remnants of serf relations took place in Germany in the period of developed capitalism. The coming of the Nazis to power led to a sharp increase in reactionary, feudal-serf tendencies in Germany. The fascists, trying to turn back the wheel of history, intensively planted slave-serf orders throughout the territory they temporarily seized, and huge masses of the population were forcibly driven to Germany and turned into slaves and serfs.
In Russia in the XVII, XVIII and partly XIX centuries. serfdom assumed the crudest forms of violence and personal dependence. No wonder Lenin called it "serf slavery."
The landlords, like slave owners, sold serfs, exchanged them for dogs, women were often forced to breastfeed puppies, lost serfs at cards, etc.
In the newspapers of that time, one could often find advertisements for the sale, along with diamonds, racing droshky, cows and dogs of yard girls, tailors, watchmakers, etc.
The best advanced Russian people - Radishchev, the Decembrists, Herzen and Chernyshevsky waged an uncompromising struggle against serfdom.
The Russian people, represented primarily by the many millions of peasants, fought for their liberation with the help of revolutionary uprisings. This revolutionary struggle was the decisive factor that led to the abolition of serfdom in 1861. However, remnants of serfdom existed even after the abolition of serfdom and were finally swept away by the Great October Socialist Revolution, which destroyed landownership with one blow with all its enslaving feudal-serf methods of exploitation .
10. Economic views of the era of feudalism
The enormous power and strength of the Church, both in the field of economics and politics, and in ideology, was expressed in the fact that the literature of that time, disputes, discussions, and argumentation were of a theological nature. The most convincing argument was that of the divine scripture.
The only thing that the Middle Ages “... borrowed from the lost ancient world was Christianity... As a result, as happens at all early stages of development, the monopoly on intellectual education went to the priests, and education itself thus assumed a predominantly theological character... And this is the supreme dominance of theology in all areas of mental activity was at the same time a necessary consequence of the position that the church occupied as the most general synthesis and the most general sanction of the existing feudal system.
Therefore, the economic views of that time were reflected mainly in religious and philosophical works. Among these works, the works of Thomas Aquinas, dating back to the 13th century, deserve to be noted. They are of interest to us insofar as they reflect the economy of feudal society, just as the statements about labor of philosophers, historians and writers of the ancient world reflected the position of labor in a slave society.
The basis of the slave system was the exploitation of slave labor. Hence the view of labor as a shameful occupation, unworthy of a free man. The feudal system was based on the small-scale production of serfs in the countryside and small-scale handicraft production in the city, based on private property and the personal labor of the producer. Moreover, the ruling class - the feudal lords, in an effort to extract the maximum surplus product, were forced, in order to stimulate the labor of the serf peasant, to switch to such forms of rent that gave the latter greater economic independence, developed his initiative, kindled in him the interest of a private owner. Hence the different view of labor in feudal society in comparison with the view of slave owners.
Thomas Aquinas considers labor to be the only legitimate source of wealth and income. Only labor, in his opinion, gives value to other objects.
However, the views of Thomas Aquinas differ to a certain extent from the views of the early Christians. If Augustine considered every work worthy of respect, then Thomas Aquinas approaches this issue differently. He distinguishes between physical labor and spiritual labor. He considers physical labor as simple labor, black labor, mental labor as noble labor.
In this division of labor, Thomas Aquinas sees the basis for the class division of society, which is a characteristic feature of the feudal system.
Just as bees build wax cells and collect honey, and their queens are exempt from this work, so in human society some must engage in physical labor, others in spiritual.
Thomas Aquinas treats wealth differently compared to the ancient Christians. The early Christians condemned private property and wealth.
Thomas Aquinas treats private property and wealth differently. He considers private property to be just as necessary an institution. human life like clothes.
Thomas Aquinas' views on wealth are dominated by the same feudal-estate approach. Each person must dispose of wealth in accordance with the position that he occupies on the feudal hierarchical ladder.
Of great interest is the teaching of Thomas Aquinas on the "just price".
"Fair price" should reflect two factors: 1) the amount of labor spent on the production of goods, and 2) the class position of the producer - it must provide the producer with "a decent existence for his position."
Thomas Aquinas and other medieval writers, condemning the income from trade, nevertheless allowed the receipt of trade profit, since it rewards the labor of transportation and provides the merchant with a decent existence for his position.
With even greater condemnation, medieval Christian writers treated usury. This attitude towards trade and usury reflects the fact that the ideologists of feudalism viewed wealth from a consumer point of view.
However, with the development of commodity production and exchange, the attitude towards trade and usury became more and more tolerant.
The revolutionary struggle of the serfs against feudal exploitation, as well as the struggle between cities and feudal lords, runs like a red thread through the entire history of feudalism. This revolutionary struggle against feudalism was also reflected in the realm of ideology, taking on a religious form. Revolutionary economic and political doctrines appeared in the form of theological heresies.
“Revolutionary opposition to feudalism runs through the entire Middle Ages. It appears, according to the conditions of the time, now in the form of mysticism, now in the form of open heresy, now in the form of an armed uprising.
Insofar as various class groupings were hidden behind the struggle against the rule of the feudal lords, it was waged under various slogans. The programs put forward in this struggle reflected the interests of these groups.
The movement of peasants and plebeians represented the most radical, most revolutionary wing of the feudal opposition.
The peasant-plebeian movement against feudalism also took the form of church heresy. Peasants and plebeians, as well as the burghers and the lower nobility, demanded a return to the early Christian church system. This is not the end of their programs.
They wanted the kind of equality that existed in the early Christian communities. They justified this requirement by the equality of all people as sons of God. Based on this, they demanded the abolition of serfdom, taxes and privileges, and the equalization of the nobles with the peasants.
Thus, during the period of Wat Tyler's uprising in 1381 in England, among the peasants, the speeches of the famous preacher John Ball on the topic "When Adam plowed, Eve spun, who then was a nobleman" enjoyed tremendous success? John Ball sought to emphasize the original natural equality of people who did not know the division into estates.
The leader of the rebellious peasants in Russia, Pugachev, put forward the idea of abolishing the rule of the nobles, the abolition of serfdom, and demanded that all peasants be given land, as well as the release of peasants from taxes, taxes, and bribe-taking judges.
Along with the equalization of the nobles with the peasants, the peasant-plebeian movement put forward the demand for the equalization of the privileged townspeople with the plebeians.
In the peasant-plebeian movement, in its slogans and programs, the tendency to eliminate property inequality, to establish consumer communism of the first Christian communities, was quite clearly pronounced.
During the uprising of 1419, the most radical part of the peasantry in the Czech Republic, represented by the Taborites, demanded a return to original Christianity: the elimination of private property, the introduction of community property and the equality of all before the law. The Taborites tried to put their ideals into practice. So, following the example of the first Christians, they organized communities that had a common cash desk, where the surplus from earnings was paid.
The leader of the revolutionary uprising of peasants and plebeians in Germany, Thomas Müntzer, propagated the idea of a thousand-year kingdom of Christ, in which there will be neither rich nor poor, universal equality and blessed life will reign, and property will belong to the whole society. Here we see how the movement of the most oppressed strata of feudal society strove to go beyond the limits of the struggle against feudalism and the privileged townspeople, beyond the limits of the bourgeois society that was emerging at that time in the depths of feudalism.
However, under feudalism there was no real basis for the realization of such dreams, because the economic need for the transition from feudal to capitalist society was only maturing.
Therefore, “... the desire to go beyond the limits of not only the present, but also the future,” says Engels, “could only be fantastic, only violence against reality, and the very first attempt to put it into practice had to throw back the movement back into those narrow limits that only allowed by the conditions of the time. The attacks on private property, the demand for the community of property, inevitably had to degenerate into a primitive organization of charity; indefinite Christian equality could, at the most, result in bourgeois "equality before the law"; the abolition of all authorities eventually turned into the establishment of republican governments elected by the people. The anticipation of communism in fantasy became in reality the anticipation of contemporary bourgeois relations.
The revolutionary, progressive role of the peasant uprisings consisted in the demands for the elimination of serfdom, which had become a brake on social development, in real revolutionary actions aimed at its destruction. The revolution of the serfs, being the decisive factor in the overthrow of feudalism, thus cleared the way for a more advanced, capitalist mode of production.
11. Fascist falsification of the history of the feudal system
The fascists explain the fall of the slave system by the decline of the Aryan race, which began to interbreed with the "lower races". As a result of this loss of the purity of the northern race, the Roman Empire perished.
The world was saved, according to the fascist falsifiers, by the Germans, who preserved the purity of the Aryan blood intact and who conquered the Roman Empire.
The Nazis claim that the ancient Germans sacredly observed the purity of their Nordic race, as evidenced by the custom of killing weak children.
Thanks to the purity of the race, the Germans allegedly created a truly Nordic medieval culture.
Thus, the fascists explain the emergence of medieval culture, as well as ancient culture, by the same constant all-saving factor - the factor of Aryan life-giving blood.
It is not clear why in some cases the same unchanging Aryan blood leads to a slave system, and in other cases to a feudal one. The fascist obscurantists are powerless to give any intelligible answer to this question.
The Germanic tribes, who at that time were passing through the highest stage of barbarism, undoubtedly played a certain role in the replacement of the slave-owning system by the feudal one. But this role has nothing to do with their Aryan blood.
Feudalism arose as a result of the fact that slavery had outlived itself, and the historical conditions for wage labor had not yet taken shape. Under these conditions, a further step forward in the development of the productive forces could only be made on the basis of the economy of a small dependent producer, who was to a certain extent interested in his labour.
Contrary to the assurances of the Nazis, the ancient Germans were barbarians who stood at a lower level of cultural development.
The collapse of the Roman Empire was accompanied by a huge destruction of the productive forces. In this destruction of the productive forces, a significant role belongs to the Germans, who conquered the Roman Empire.
It took a long time for feudalism to prove its superiority over slavery and move forward the development of the productive forces. But this happened not due to some miraculous properties of Aryan blood, but due to the greater interest of the serf in his work compared to the slave.
Finally, among the Germans themselves - this, according to the Nazis, the race of masters - in the process of feudalization, gentlemen-feudal lords and subordinate serfs arise. Thus, the majority of carriers of Aryan blood become serfs, which, according to the Nazis, is the lot of the "lower races."
Consequently, the conquerors themselves are subject to the same economic laws of development as the “lower races” allegedly conquered by them. All this suggests that in race theory Fascists do not have a grain of science.
Fascists glorify the class organization of feudal society. The closed nature of the estates contributes, according to the Nazis, to the preservation of the purity of the Aryan race.
The domination of the Aryan race in Europe by the Nazis dates back to the 5th-6th centuries, and in Germany - to the 10th-11th centuries. And then comes the decline. This decline, according to the Fascists, is again due to the loss of the purity of the Aryan race. Brave and enterprising Germans seem to perish in the crusades, the isolation of the upper classes decreases. Chivalry is mixed with people of "lower races". In fact, the loss of the purity of Aryan blood had nothing to do with the death of feudalism, just as its preservation had nothing to do with the rise of feudalism.
The productive forces of feudal society have outgrown the framework of feudal production relations. As a result, feudalism entered a stage of its disintegration, which was at the same time a stage in the development of capitalist relations.
The decisive role in the elimination of serfdom belongs to the revolution of the serfs.
Fascist falsifiers, in the interests of their insane policy of conquering the world and enslaving the working people, falsify the history of pre-capitalist formations. They dream of returning the world to the worst times of slavery and serfdom. But slavery and serfdom, which in their time were necessary steps in social development, have gone forever into the past.
A policy built on a return to long-passed steps historical development, is in blatant contradiction with economic laws and the needs of the development of society and is doomed to inevitable failure, as the brilliant victories of the Red Army testify very clearly and convincingly.
K. Marx and F. Engels. Works, vol. 25, part II, p. 143.
With the fall of the Roman Empire under the onslaught of barbarian tribes in Europe, a new form organization of society. The slaveholding system was replaced by feudal relations. It is important to remember that feudalism is a form of social organization where power belongs to those who have personal land ownership and extends to those who live on this land.
The structure of medieval feudal society
The feudal system was an inevitable process for its time. Barbarians, unable to manage vast territories, divided their countries into fiefs, which were much smaller than the country. This, in due course, caused the weakening of royal power. So, in France already XIII century the king is only "first among equals". He was forced to listen to the opinion of his feudal lords and he could not make a single decision without the consent of the majority of them.
Consider the formation of a feudal society on the example of the state of the Franks. Having occupied the vast territories of the former Gaul, the Frankish kings endowed large land plots to their prominent military leaders, famous warriors, friends, prominent political figures, and later ordinary soldiers. Thus began to form a thin layer of landowners.
The land plots that the king endowed his entourage for faithful service were called feuds in the Middle Ages, and the people who owned them were called feudal lords.
So, already by the 8th century, a feudal system was formed in Europe, which finally took shape after the death of Charlemagne.
Rice. 1. Charlemagne.
The key features of the formation of feudalism include:
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- the predominance of subsistence farming;
- personal dependence of workers;
- rent relations;
- the presence of large feudal landholdings and small peasant land use;
- the dominance of a religious worldview;
- a clear hierarchical structure of estates.
An important feature of this era is the formation of three main classes and the basing of society on agriculture.
Rice. 2. Hierarchy of estates in Europe
Table "Estates of feudal society"
| estate | What is responsible for |
|
Feudal lords (dukes, earls, barons, knights) |
Serve the king, protect the state from external aggression. The feudal lords collected taxes from those who lived on their plots, had the right to participate in jousting tournaments and, in the event of hostilities, had to come with a military detachment to the royal army. |
|
Clergy (priests and monks) |
The most literate and educated part of society. Were poets, scientists, chroniclers. Main responsibility- service to faith and God. |
|
workers (peasants, merchants, artisans) |
The main duty is to feed the other two estates. |
Thus, members of the working class had their own private farms, but remained dependent, like slaves. This was expressed in the fact that they were forced to pay rent to the feudal lords for land in the form of corvee ( compulsory works on the lands of the feudal lord), dues (products) or money. The size of the duties was strictly established, which made it possible for the workers to plan the management of their economy and the sale of their products.
Rice. 3. The work of the peasants in the fields.
Each feudal lord allocated to his peasants those forms of duties that he considered necessary. Some feudal lords abandoned the slavish attitude towards the peasants, collecting only symbolic taxes in the form of products for the use of land.
Such relationships could not but affect the development of agriculture. The peasants were interested in increasing the level of land cultivation in order to obtain a larger harvest, which affected their incomes.
What have we learned?
The feudal system was a necessary element in the development of society. Raise the level of production in those historical conditions was possible only with the use of the labor of dependent peasants, offering them a personal interest in labor.
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feudalism and feudal society) - a type of agrarian society in which land ownership is conditioned by military or other service, in which there is a hierarchy of political power based on contractual rights and obligations, usually with a monarch at the head, and unfree peasants cultivate the land as serfs. This term is widely debated, and its definition could be challenged by many participants in the debate. The main areas of debate are: (a) whether feudalism developed only in Europe and Japan or was it more widespread. According to most, much of Western Europe from the period 1000-1400. (that is, the Middle Ages) can be described as feudal, characteristic of later Eastern Europe. Japan during the Tokugawa dynasty (1603-1868) had key similarities with Europe and the term was widely used; (b) whether feudalism is valued as a form of society, or whether it is a collection of institutions that can be found in a range of societies. When evaluating feudalism in the latter sense, political or economic aspects are taken into account. The political ones include the dominance of a paramilitary group of landowners and the hierarchy of vassalage, that is, subordinates are required to be loyal and be in the military service of a superior, who in exchange provides protection and promotion to the vassal. In Europe, a chain of similar relations has developed from the monarch down. In economic terms, this is a concentration around land ownership that produces products (in Europe - flax), and the peasants are not free serfs and, through various forms of rent, give the surplus product to the landowner. As a rule, production was not carried out for the market, although markets developed. If an institutional approach is adopted, then feudal land ownership can be identified in societies where feudal political relations did not exist (in particular, in the haciendas of colonial Spanish America). However, modern sociology (e.g. Mann, 1986; Anderson, 1974) prefers to define feudalism as a type of society that includes specific political, economic, social, and, more problematically, ideological or cultural elements, although differences are recognized (e.g., Anderson) between Southern, Western and Eastern Europe. It is this social approach that leads to the identification of the few examples of feudalism in the world. Some Marxists, like Anderson, maintain a limited use of the term, while others, influenced by Maoist writings, identify feudalism with a range of agrarian societies. See also Feudal mode of production.
2. The main features of European feudalism
The easiest way to start our characterization is by listing what was not in feudal society. There were no related clans as the basis of society. Family ties continued to play a significant role, but they were not the main ones. Feudal ties, in fact, arose precisely because blood ties weakened. The concept of state power was preserved, it was perceived as dominating many small powers, but at the same time the state was extremely weakened and could not perform its functions, in particular, the functions of protection. At the same time, it cannot be said that feudal society differed sharply from a society built on kinship ties, or from a society controlled by the state. It was formed precisely by such societies, and, naturally, retained their imprint. The relations of personal dependence characteristic of him were something like artificial family ties, and the squads at the initial stage were like kindred clans; the power of petty lords, who appeared in multitudes, was for the most part a semblance of royalty.
European feudalism is the result of the collapse of older societies. It will be incomprehensible without the upheavals caused by the invasion of the Germanic tribes, as a result of which there was a forcible combination of two societies located at different stages of development. The structures of one society as well as the other were destroyed, and the social habits and ways of thinking of ancient times reappeared on the surface. Feudalism finally took shape in the atmosphere of the last barbarian onslaughts. This society is slow public life, an almost complete atrophy of monetary exchange, which made it impossible for the functioning of paid bureaucracy, and the switching of consciousness to the sensory perception of the immediately close. As soon as all these characteristics began to change, the feudal society began to change, turning into something else.
Feudal society was a society of inequality rather than a society of hierarchy, a society of masters rather than aristocrats, serfs rather than slaves. If slavery continued to play a significant role in it, the form of proper feudal dependence as applied to the lower classes would not arise. As for society, in an atmosphere of general chaos, adventurers play the main role - people's memory is too short, their social position is too unstable for a clear caste ladder to arise and be maintained.
Meanwhile, the feudal regime assumed the subjugation of many poor people to a small number of powerful ones. Inheriting from the Roman world the rudimentary seigneuries in the form of villas, and from the German villages the institution of elders, this regime strengthened and extended the exploitation of man by man, firmly linking together the right to income from the land with the right to rule, as a result of which real seigneuries arose. To the benefit of the oligarchy of prelates and monks, who are obliged to seek the favor of the heavenly powers. And most importantly, to the benefit of the military oligarchy.
A brief comparative analysis will suffice for us to show: hallmark In feudal societies, there was an almost complete combination of the estate of gentlemen-seigneurs with the estate of professional warriors, heavily armed equestrian knights. We have already managed to make sure: where armed peasants were used as troops, either there were no feudal institutions, like seniors, or both seniors and chivalry were in their infancy - this was the case in Scandinavia, this was the case in the Asturian-Leones kingdoms. An even more striking example of the same is the Byzantine state, since both its policies and its institutions were shaped more consciously. After the anti-aristocratic speeches of the 7th century, the Byzantine government, which had traditionally wielded administrative power since the time of the Roman Empire, in need of a reliable and permanent army, created a system of military tax allotments, their tenants had to supply soldiers to the state. Why not a feud? But unlike the West, it was owned by a modest peasant. From now on, the sovereign had to take care only of the safety of this "soldier's property", protecting both him and other poor people from the encroachments of the rich and powerful. Meanwhile, at the end of the 11th century, due to difficult economic conditions, the peasants, weighed down by debts, begin to lose their independence, and the state, weakened by internal strife, cannot protect them. As a result, the state loses not only taxpayers. It is deprived of its own troops and becomes dependent on the magnates, who alone can now recruit the required number of warriors from among the people dependent on them.
Another feature characteristic of feudal society was the close connection of the subordinate with his immediate master. And so, from bottom to top, from knot to knot, clinging to each other like links in a chain, the most powerless in society were connected with the most powerful. Even the land in this society seemed to be wealth because it made it possible to provide oneself with "people" for whom it served as a reward. “We want land,” the Norman lords say, refusing the jewels, weapons, horses that the duke gives them. And they explain, saying among themselves: “Then we will be able to support many knights, but the duke will not be able to” (341).
It was only necessary to determine the rights of the recipient of land as a reward for service, the term of its possession was made dependent on loyalty. The solution to this problem constitutes another original feature of Western feudalism, and perhaps even the most original. If the service people of the Slavic princes received lands from them as a gift, then the French vassals, after a certain period of uncertainty, began to receive them for life. The reason for this was the following: in the estate, vested with the high honor of serving the master as a weapon, dependence relations arose as a voluntary agreement between two living people. Personal relationships presupposed the existence of certain moral values. But mutual obligations very soon ceased to be personal: the problem of heredity arose, inevitable in a society where the family was still a significant factor; under the influence of economic necessity, the practice of "placement on the earth" arose, culminating in the fact that the service began to depend on the earth, and not at all on human fidelity; finally, homages began to multiply. However, the devotion of the vassal continued in many cases to remain great power. However, this devotion did not become the social cement that would solder society from top to bottom, uniting all classes together, saving this society from the danger of fragmentation and disorder.
To be honest, there was something artificial in the fact that almost all ties in society took on the appearance of vassals. The dying statehood of the Carolingian Empire tried to survive with the help of an institution that arose because it was dying. The system of interdependence itself could serve as a cohesive state, an example of which is the Anglo-Norman monarchy. But in this case central authority had to be strengthened - no, not by the force of the conquerors - but by new moral and material incentives. In the ninth century, the tendency towards fragmentation was too great.
On the map of Western civilization in the era of feudalism, we see several blank spots: the Scandinavian Peninsula, Frisia, Ireland. Perhaps the most important thing to say is that feudal Europe was never entirely feudal, that feudalism affected the countries in which we can observe it to varying degrees and existed in them at different times, none of the countries was completely feudalized. In none of the countries did the rural population fall entirely into personal, inherited dependence. Almost everywhere - more in one area, less in another - allods, large or small, have been preserved. The concept of the state never disappeared, and where the state retained at least some power, people continued to call themselves "free" in the old sense of the word, because they depended only on the head of the whole people and its representatives. Peasant warriors survived in Normandy, Danish England and Spain. Mutual oaths - the opposite of obedience oaths - survived in the "peace movements" and triumphed in urban communes. Of course, the imperfection of the incarnation is the lot of any human undertaking. In the European economy of the beginning of the 20th century, which certainly developed under the sign of capitalism, there are nevertheless institutions that remain outside this scheme.
Starting to imagine a map of feudalism, we thickly shade the area between the Loire and the Rhine, then Burgundy on both banks of the Saone, in the 11th century this area was sharply pushed aside by the Norman conquests towards England and southern Italy; around this central core, the strokes become increasingly pale, barely touching Saxony, León and Castile - such is the zone of feudalism surrounded by whiteness. In the most clearly outlined zone, it is not difficult to guess the areas where the influence of the laws of the Carolingians was the strongest, where the Germanic and Romanesque elements were most closely intertwined, destroying each other, eventually destroying the social structure and giving the opportunity to develop the ancient grains: land seigniory and personal dependence.
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