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Questions.
Is feudalism a backwards movement in the development of an administrative body? I think/know that feudalism usually develops when there is not a market and there is a big autocratic state. (Han?) China, the Islamic Caliphate, the Frankish Empire, Persia, all of this states have been through some kind of feudalism.
Marx/Engels though that feudalism developed when a tribal society conquers a advanced society, but the chinese didn't conquered china, they weren't nomads (Again, I think so?)
Can someone shed me some light here? I don't have time to read an actual book on it, I'm already reading two books and lots of homework right now
Feudalism? That's where you have a Landlord and a Serf.
The Landlord, whether an individual or a government, owns the land a serf lives on and farms on.
The Serf, as rent, or a tithe it was called, will send a portion of what he farms to the landlord, and keep a portion for himself to consume.
Fuedalism according to wikipedia: ''Feudalism was a combination of legal and military customs in medieval Europe that flourished between the 9th and 15th centuries. Broadly defined, it was a way of structuring society around relationships derived from the holding of land in exchange for service or labour.''
Labor was done by serfs who in turn delivered their products to their landlord. This was given to Count/mayor. Which in turn was given to duke. Then at the top of the pyramid was a king/high king/emperor. Each gains money from the dues each step of the hierarchy gives them. As you progress, the wealth is focused on less and less people. However the specifics depends on where you were in the world. So it varied in between places like France and Japan. However the basics were the same
I think they mean the mongol conquest of China in the 11th century and the Persian conquest of Mesopotamia during the early centuries BC. However you don't need a nomadic culture to install feudalism, Look at Japan for example.
Re-formulating.
Is feudalism the result of administrative backwards, and a non-market economy?
I have already have read wikipedia and some books on it (Man's worldly goods?? that's the name?) I need to know why and how it supersedes previous modes of production.
Feudalism is not a market economy. There is production, but no market exchange.
Can someone give me an answer?
If not, does someone know some marxist/marxian/marx[insert fucking term here]/commie historian?
I'm kind of baffled where you got this idea of feudalism.
"Feudalism" as a concept these days is kind of falling out of vogue. To Marx, Feudalism was a pre-capitalist mode of production in which land holdings were the primary form of property, where labor was most often bonded in the form of serfs or peasants legally bound to the land they worked for their lord. There were markets and market exchange in the cities, but it wasn't what the economy was based upon, as it is in capitalism.
I don't know how well Marx's conception of feudalism holds up today though.
I'm on some sickle-hammer shit
Collective Bruce Banner shit
FKA: #FF0000, AKA Mistake Not My Current State Of Joshing Gentle Peevishness For The Awesome And Terrible Majesty Of The Towering Seas Of Ire That Are Themselves The Milquetoast Shallows Fringing My Vast Oceans Of Wrath
Market exists in feudalism. It's middle east equivalent 'bazaar' emerged very long time before capitalism.
"Property is theft."
Pierre-Joseph Proudhon
"the system of wage labor is a system of slavery"
Karl Heinrich Marx
Ah, no one understood me (That's quite normal, I can't put the right words at the right place in english). Let's go for the long haul.
Rome was a big, powerful, mostly centralized state, with a fully-monetized economy, where inter-provincial trade was conducted with ease (eventhough in it's end the self-sufficiency characteristic of feudalist relations were already weakening the inter-provincial trade), and there were massive slave-industries that produced a shitton of iron stuff, there were massive slave-plantations where a large quantity of food was produced. There was a bureaucratic machinery, a organized administration with various layers, judges, all leading to the greatest power, the Emperor. There was also the Senate, but we know that they didn't have much power, although they had prestige. That's quite a difference from feudalism and closer to how the Modern States work.
Oh, it had a wealthy bourgeois-esque class, the equites.
Feudalism was a system where there was not a fully-monetized economy, with product-for-product exchange being quite common, the trade was much restricted to products that can only be brought from outside (Scando-Russian furs, Spices, Silk, some Dyes, blablabla) with most regions being self-sufficient, there was a little standing army, because there was little bureaucratic and administrative machinery, the lands were given as fiefs to nobles whose administrated these fiefs and in turn gave their military aid to the King. As most regions were self-sufficient, there were no big industries, no big plantations, and because of this more obsolete techniques were used by the artisans and by the peasants. The dominant class was the aristocracy
There was a clear degradation in the administrative, bureaucratic, judicial machinery. This didn't happened (Or at least it wasn't so abrupt) in the Eastern Roman Empire.
As the markets grew in size, the economy more monetized, the administrative-bureaucratic-judicial machinery grew in size, the kings allied with the mercantile-usurary bourgeoisie in order to ever maintain a strong standing army (See Habsburgs+Fugger) and to promote the monetization of the economy. There was no more need of a functioning nobility, however there was still a need for them as a class because they sustain and give legitimacy to the monarchy
Happy now for this 20-minutes text?
Now I DO know that this happened in MANY OTHER REGIONS. Apart from the Arab Iqta, I doubt that they were caused by the tribes conquering sedentary populations (Wich is the reason Engels/Marx states in a book, I think Origins-S,F+PP or The German Ideology), but I think that exactly the degradation of administrative, bureaucratic and judicial machinery led to the establishment of lord-vassal relations, blablabla. I want to know this, and not if my vision of feudalism is wrong (Because I know it is!) as I had already said, I DON'T HAVE TIME to read books on feudalism, I'm already reading too much and I still have too much things to do (And yet, I want to do many things more I will probably not do...), so I'm asking a simple question to see if I am correct on WHY AND HOW the transition TO AND FROM feudalism occurs.
Now, if someone can ANSWER MY FUCKING QUESTION, I would be waaaaay happy.
I don't think China was ever a feudal society. Japan was, and its feudalism didn't originate from a clash of cultures similar to that between Ancient Rome/Germanic tribes.Is feudalism a backwards movement in the development of an administrative body? I think/know that feudalism usually develops when there is not a market and there is a big autocratic state. (Han?) China, the Islamic Caliphate, the Frankish Empire, Persia, all of this states have been through some kind of feudalism.
Marx/Engels though that feudalism developed when a tribal society conquers a advanced society, but the chinese didn't conquered china, they weren't nomads (Again, I think so?)
Can someone shed me some light here? I don't have time to read an actual book on it, I'm already reading two books and lots of homework right now
A good read on this is Perry Anderson's Passages from Antiquity to Feudalism, which deals extensively with the paradox of Japanese feudalism, and with the (in)famous "Asiatic mode of production" and its relations to the real societies of medieval China, Islam, and India.
Also Marx's Formen would be of interest on the issue.
I also think you overestimate the extent of the monetisation of Ancient Roman "economy" - which remained largely rural and non-commodified.
Luís Henrique
The world is not as it is, but as it is constructed.
Falsely attributed to Lenin
Oh! Finally, a book, instead of blatantly attacking what I don't care if it's attacked.
Result of old history atlas
There is an interesting pamphlet on the subject as below.
Paul Lafargue
The Evolution of Property
CHAPTER IV
Feudal Property
https://www.marxists.org/archive/laf.../4-feudal.html
My take on it is that there was a division of labour in primitive societies one of which was the military protection of settled societies.
This kind formalised into a kind of caste system with a military caste.
The military caste themselves may have got involved in a bit of aggressive appropriation of property of other groups tribes or clans or whatever.
The best and most recent example in western Europe was probably the Scottish clan system as it was still operating in the highlands in the 1700’s.
Thus the Scottish military caste would engage in periodic cattle rustling which was an important part of the economy however they were still ‘genuinely’ paternalistic rather than openly repressive towards their own people.
Elsewhere in it more fully developed form the military caste had evolved towards a more exploitative form of ‘protection’ turning it into a racket.
It carried over in a different ‘form’ but the same ‘content’ into the modern era with the Mafia economic system.
It could take another often coexistent form with a ‘priest class’ which could be viewed as a division of labour re bureaucratic/ ideological/ judicial functions?
In Western Europe from 1110’s?
I suppose that was the catholic church.
They didn’t always exactly get on with each other they fell out big style under King John of magna carta fame where the church went on strike for a while.
And the knights templars who became a pseudo religious organisation engaging in finance, loan sharking and merchant capitalism whilst controlling the trade routes to the far east etc, I think.
Somewhere in that pamphlet, I think, Lafargue sort of accidentally and anecdotally anticipates the state capitalist ecomomic system as regards the economy of the Roman catholic church re the monastic system.
Re a system that was geared up to in part commodity production but lacked private ownership of the means of production.
With the hierarchal organisation functioning and developing under a kind of meritocratic system with a dose of nepotism thrown in.
Cf the mature and fully developed Bolshevik system and Stalisnism etc.
Henry VIII nationalised the monastic economic as going economic concerns and sold them off to emerging petty capitalists who bought them with money borrowed from and accumulated by the merchant capitalist class?
Discuss?
It’s a theory anyway.
When you say that the administrative, bureaucratic and judicial machinery led to the establishment of the lord-vassal relationships, I think you've substituted cause and effect. The establishment of the lord-vassal relationship (the economic base), is the precondition for the emergence of the feudal administrative, bureaucratic and judicial machinery.
When analysing the emergence of feudalism (at least in a European context), it is important to start with the internal contradictions in the slave economy. In the slave economy, the exploitation of surplus labor was pretty much absolute, and the slaves didn't receive more than the absolute minimum of what they needed for reproduction. This caused them to resent their work, not having any interest in it, often damaging finer equipment and tools used in the fields, thus hindering the further development of the productive forces. At the same time, the slave economy was built on a constant influx of slaves, which were provided by the army, by conquering new lands. The soldiers that made up the army were from the strata of free craftsmen and farmers. As the number of slaves increased, the slave-based farms and properties became bigger, bankrupting the free craftsmen and farmers, thus undermining the very foundation of the slave-based economy. The negative development of the slave-based society led to the degradation of its administrative and judicial bodies, not the other way around.
With this in mind, we can start looking at the emergence of feudalism. The basic economic organisation of feudalism was the relation between lord and serf, which is a progress from the slave-based economy. The new relationship allows the productive forces to develop further, because the serf now has a bigger interest in the work he does. The serf, working seven days a week, works part of this week on the property of his lord, and part on his own property. Often, while doing work on the property of the lord, the serf has to bring his own tools, which he does not want to destroy. In turn, this allows the development of more effective and finer tools and equipment. This feudal relationship develops from both the destruction of the large latifundias in Rome, and from the influx of Germanic tribes, in which tribal leaders have been able to gather wealth around themselves. In this sense, feudalism represents a progression from the slave-based economy. The new economy also creates the prerequisites for the organisation of a new superstructure (one part of which is the state).
As the for the transition from feudalism, it also has to do with the internal contraditions inherent within the economic system. With the rise of the bourgeoisie in the cities, where craftmanship and trade was centered, the decentralised system of feudalism becomes an obstacle. When doing trade, the more unitary laws, tolls and tax systems, the better. To exemplify, in a Bavarian village in the beginning of the 1800's, existing parallell are five different sets of laws (Bavarian, Prussian, Ansbacher, and so on), while in western Germany, up to 71 different varieties of coins was to be found. Obviously, this makes trading difficult, which in turn creates a need for feudalism to disappear, because it now hinders the development of a commodity-based economy (ie capitalism). Apart from this, the development of the productive forces came to a halt in the cities due to the craftmen's organisation hindering them. There is thus a sharp contradiction between the aristocracy and the bourgeoisie. As you say, the latter often allied with the king, thus creating early centralised states such as Sweden (in the 16th century).
At the same time, the development of trade, and foremost slave trade, had created vast fortunes, which the bourgoiesie could invest in manufacturing. Another prerequisite for the capitalist mode of production to develop was the existance of a proletariat. In the United Kingdom, this had been created by the enclosure movement, which drove the peasants from their land, and in to the cities.
So, to try and answer your question. I don't think it's correct to describe feudalism as a backwards body, or a regression in the administrative bodies. Rather, the feudal superstructure corresponded to the feudal mode of production, just as the slave-based superstructure corresponded to the slave-based mode of production. The feudal superstructure was, when it replaced the slave-based superstructure, progressive, in the sense that it contributed to the development of productive forces, but it later became regressive, when it hindered the development of the commodity-based economy and the forces of production (as an example, one can look at the reemergence of materialism as the new bourgeoisie's way of looking at the world, versus the idealist views of the church and feudal nobility).
I also don't think it's correct to say that feudalism develops when a tribal society absorbs an advanced one, because there are way more factors at play than just a basic contradiction between tribal societies and advanced societies. As for the world outside of Europe, I couldn't help you, because my knowledge of them is limited.
I hope I somewhat answered your questions, even though I realise that my text may not be all that coherent. I've tried to describe the internal contradictions within the two economic systems, as I have understood them. I haven't really discussed the struggle between slaves and slave-owners or feudal lords and their serfs, which of course are central to the development of both economic systems, and I've left out some other contradictions as well.
A very good text Absolut (At least compared to the first posts...), thank you very much.
I guess that text's explanation might do until I have time to read the books Luís suggested.
I can say that Rome and China weren't necessarily feudal. Rome was a slave holding society that depended on slave labor in order to properly function, this meant that Rome had massive slave markets which were centers of labor. Feudalism wasn't slavery because feudalism is with payment in the form of land to reap and a hierarchy of payment. Slavery in rome however had no such thing.
The most common thing we envision in feudalism is English/French feudalism.
In Albania for example feudalism didn't exist. Our ancestors were shepherds with either massive flocks of sheep that would serve for food or farmers who lived in small villages. These produces would be traded with merchants in cities. These villages swore fealty to the Pasha (governer) of the area.
Other than the standard Marxist definition for feudalism (agricultural factors of production, serf and landlord classes, etc.), feudalism appears to be a "fall-back" position of sorts that arises after the collapse of a major civilization and the social networks/services that come with it.
In any case, China was not a "feudal" society by any means; it was divided by a number of regional kingdoms with heavily-populated cities and a strong (pre-capitalist) market economy. Then again, certain elements of feudalism may have coexisted (indebted serfs and large landholders, landed aristocracy, etc.).
An injury to one is an injury to all -Industrial Workers of the World
The free development of each is the condition for the free development of all -Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels
While there is a lower class, I am in it, while there is a criminal element, I am of it, and while there is a soul in prison, I am not free -Eugene V. Debs
I would really recommend this book for a brief overview of the slave-based society, feudalism and capitalism (amongst other things):
https://www.marxists.org/subject/economy/authors/pe/
I don't quite know how you managed to read my ramblings and think I was saying Rome was feudal.
But I wouldn't doubt that's possible.
EDIT: Probably this: "(eventhough in it's end the self-sufficiency characteristic of feudalist relations were already weakening the inter-provincial trade)"
'54? Anyway, will read it. Thanks.
