One single force impels all life; one force developed
it, from the single cell, the particle of
albumen floating about in the warm ocean of
prehistoric time, up to the vertebrates, and then
to man. This one force, according to Lippert,
is the tendency to provide for life, bifurcated
into “hunger and love.” With man, however,
philosophy also enters into the play of these
forces, in order hereafter, together with “hunger
and love, to hold together the structure of
the world of men.” To be sure, this philosophy,
this “idea” of Schopenhauer’s, is at its
source nothing else than a creature of the provision
for life called by him “will.” It is an
organ of orientation in the world, an arm in the
struggle for existence. Yet in spite of this,
we shall come to know the desire for causation
as a self-acting force, and of social
facts as coöperators in the sociological process
of development. In the beginning of
human society, and as it gradually develops,
this tendency pushes itself forward in various
bizarre ideas called “superstition.” These are
based on purely logical conclusions from
incomplete observations concerning air and
water, earth and fire, animals and plants, which
seem endowed with a throng of spirits both
kindly and malevolent. One may say that in
the most recent modern times, at a stage attained
only by very few races, there arises also
the younger daughter of the desire for causation,
namely science, as a logical result of complete
observation of facts; science, now required
to exterminate widely branched-out
superstition, which, with innumerable threads,
has rooted itself in the very soul of mankind.
But, however powerfully, especially in the
moment of “ecstasy,”2 superstition may have
influenced history, however powerfully, even in
ordinary times, it may have coöperated in the
development of human communal life, the principal
force of development is still to be found
in the necessities of life, which force man to
acquire for himself and for his family nourishment,
clothing and housing. This remains,
therefore, the “economic” impulse. A sociological—and
that means a socio-psychological—investigation
of the development of history
can, therefore, not progress otherwise than by
following out the methods by which economic
needs have been satisfied in their gradual unfolding,
and by taking heed of the influences of
the causation impulse at its proper place.
There are two fundamentally opposed
means whereby man, requiring sustenance, is
impelled to obtain the necessary means for satisfying
his desires. These are work and robbery,
one’s own labor and the forcible appropriation
of the labor of others. Robbery!
Forcible appropriation! These words convey
to us ideas of crime and the penitentiary, since
we are the contemporaries of a developed civilization,
specifically based on the inviolability
of property. And this tang is not lost when
we are convinced that land and sea robbery is
the primitive relation of life, just as the warriors’
trade—which also for a long time is only
organized mass robbery—constitutes the most
respected of occupations. Both because of
this, and also on account of the need of having,
in the further development of this study, terse,
clear, sharply opposing terms for these very
important contrasts, I propose in the following
discussion to call one’s own labor and the
equivalent exchange of one’s own labor for the
labor of others, the “economic means” for the
satisfaction of needs, while the unrequited appropriation
of the labor of others will be called
the “political means.”
The idea is not altogether new; philosophers
of history have at all times found this contradiction
and have tried to formulate it. But no
one of these formulæ has carried the premise to
its complete logical end. At no place is it
clearly shown that the contradiction consists
only in the means by which the identical purpose,
the acquisition of economic objects of consumption,
is to be obtained. Yet this is the
critical point of the reasoning. In the case of
a thinker of the rank of Karl Marx, one may
observe what confusion is brought about when
economic purpose and economic means are not
strictly differentiated. All those errors, which
in the end led Marx’s splendid theory so far
away from truth, were grounded in the lack of
clear differentiation between the means of economic
satisfaction of needs and its end. This
led him to designate slavery as an “economic
category,” and force as an “economic force”—half
truths which are far more dangerous than
total untruths, since their discovery is more difficult,
and false conclusions from them are inevitable.
On the other hand, our own sharp differentiation
between the two means toward the same
end, will help us to avoid any such confusion.
This will be our key to an understanding of the
development, the essence, and the purpose of
the State; and since all universal history heretofore
has been only the history of states, to an
understanding of universal history as well.
All world history, from primitive times up to
our own civilization, presents a single phase,
a contest namely between the economic and
the political means; and it can present only this
phase until we have achieved free citizenship.
The state is an organization of the political
means. No state, therefore, can come into
being until the economic means has created a
definite number of objects for the satisfaction
of needs, which objects may be taken
away or appropriated by warlike robbery.
For that reason, primitive huntsmen are without
a state; and even the more highly developed
huntsmen become parts of a state structure
only when they find in their neighborhood an
evolved economic organization which they can
subjugate. But primitive huntsmen live in
practical anarchy.
Grosse says concerning primitive huntsmen
in general:
“There are no essential differences of fortune
among them, and thus a principal source
for the origin of differences in station is lacking.
Generally, all grown men within the
tribe enjoy equal rights. The older men,
thanks to their greater experience, have a certain
authority; but no one feels himself bound
to render them obedience. Where in some
cases chiefs are recognized—as with the Botokude,
the Central Californians, the Wedda and
the Mincopie—their power is extremely
limited. The chieftain has no means of enforcing
his wishes against the will of the rest.
Most tribes of hunters, however, have no chieftain.
The entire society of the males still
forms a homogeneous undifferentiated mass,
in which only those individuals achieve prominence
who are believed to possess magical
powers.”3
Here, then, there scarcely exists a spark
of “statehood,” even in the sense of ordinary
theories of the state, still less in the sense
of the correct “sociologic idea of the state.”
The social structure of primitive peasants
has hardly more resemblance to a state than
has the horde of huntsmen. Where the peasant,
working the ground with a grub, is living
in liberty, there is as yet no “state.” The
plow is always the mark of a higher economic
condition which occurs only in a state; that is to
say, in a system of plantation work carried on
by subjugated servants.4 The grubbers live
isolated from one another, scattered over the
country in separated curtilages, perhaps in villages,
split up because of quarrels about district
or farm boundaries. In the best cases,
they live in feebly organized associations, bound
together by oath, attached only loosely by the
tie which the consciousness of the same descent
and speech and the same belief imposes upon
them. They unite perhaps once a year in the
common celebration of renowned ancestors or
of the tribal god. There is no ruling authority
over the whole mass; the various chieftains of
a village, or possibly of a district, may have
more or less influence in their circumscribed
spheres, this depending usually upon their personal
qualities, and especially upon the magical
powers attributed to them. Cunow describes
the Peruvian peasants before the incursion of
the Incas as follows: “An unregulated living
side by side of many independent, mutually
warring tribes, who again were split up into
more or less autonomous territorial unions, held
together by ties of kinship.”5 One may say
that all the primitive peasants of the old and
new world were of this type.
In such a state of society, it is hardly conceivable
that a warlike organization could
come about for purposes of attack. It is
sufficiently difficult to mobilize the clan, or
still more the tribe, for common defense. The
peasant is always lacking in mobility. He is
as attached to the ground as the plants he cultivates.
As a matter of fact, the working of
his field makes him “bound to the soil” (glebæ
adscriptus), even though, in the absence of law,
he has freedom of movement. What purpose,
moreover, would a looting expedition effect in
a country, which throughout its extent is occupied
only by grubbing peasants? The peasant
can carry off from the peasant nothing
which he does not already own. In a condition
of society marked by superfluity of agricultural
land, each individual contributes only a
little work to its extensive cultivation. Each
occupies as much territory as he needs. More
would be superfluous. Its acquisition would
be lost labor, even were its owner able to conserve
for any length of time the grain products
thus secured. Under primitive conditions,
however, this spoils rapidly by reason of change
of atmosphere, ants, or other agencies. According
to Ratzel, the Central African peasant
must convert the superfluous portion of his
crops into beer as quickly as possible in order
not to lose it entirely!
For all these reasons, primitive peasants are
totally lacking in that warlike desire to take the
offensive which is the distinguishing mark of
hunters and herdsmen: war can not better their
condition. And this peaceable attitude is
strengthened by the fact that the occupation of
the peasant does not make him an efficient warrior.
It is true his muscles are strong and he
has powers of endurance, but he is sluggish
of movement and slow to come to a determination,
while huntsmen and nomads by their
methods of living develop speed of motion and
swiftness of action. For this reason, the primitive
peasant is usually of a more gentle disposition
than they.B
To sum up: within the economic and social
conditions of the peasant districts, one finds
no differentiation working for the higher
forms of integration. There exists neither the
impulse nor the possibility for the warlike subjection
of neighbors. No “State” can therefore
arise; and, as a matter of fact, none ever
has arisen from such social conditions. Had
there been no impulse from without, from
groups of men nourished in a different manner,
the primitive grubber would never have
discovered the State.
Herdsmen, on the contrary, even though
isolated, have developed a whole series of the
elements of statehood; and in the tribes which
have progressed further, they have developed
this in its totality, with the single exception
of the last point of identification which completes
the state in its modern sense, that is to
say, with exception only of the definitive occupation
of a circumscribed territory.
One of these elements is an economic one.
Even without the intervention of extra-economic
force, there may still develop among
herdsmen a sufficiently marked differentiation
of property and income. Assuming that, at
the start, there was complete equality in the
number of cattle, yet within a short time, the
one man may be richer and the other poorer.
An especially clever breeder will see his herd
increase rapidly, while an especially careful
watchman and bold hunter will preserve his
from decimation by beasts of prey. The element
of luck also affects the result. One of
these herders finds an especially good grazing
ground and healthful watering places; the
other one loses his entire stock through
pestilence, or through a snowfall or a sandstorm.
Distinctions in fortune quickly bring about
class distinctions. The herdsman who has lost
all must hire himself to the rich man; and sinking
thus under the other, become dependent on
him. Wherever herdsmen live, from all three
parts of the ancient world, we find the same
story. Meitzen reports of the Lapps, nomadic
in Norway: “Three hundred reindeer sufficed
for one family; who owned only a hundred
must enter the service of the richer, whose
herds ran up to a thousand head.”6 The same
writer, speaking of the Central Asiatic Nomads,
says: “A family required three hundred
head of cattle for comfort; one hundred
head is poverty, followed by a life of debt.
The servant must cultivate the lands of the
lord.”7 Ratzel reports concerning the Hottentots
of Africa a form of “commendatio”:
“The poor man endeavors to hire himself to the
rich man, his only object being to obtain cattle.”8
Laveleye, who reports the same circumstances
from Ireland, traces the origin and
the name of the feudal system (système
féodal) to the loaning of cattle by the rich to
the poor members of the tribe; accordingly, a
“fee-od” (owning of cattle) was the first feud
whereby so long as the debt existed the magnate
bound the small owner to himself as “his
man.”
We can only hint at the methods whereby,
even in peaceable associations of herdsmen, this
economic and consequent social differentiation
may have been furthered by the connection of
the patriarchate with the offices of supreme and
sacrificial priesthood if the wise old men used
cleverly the superstition of their clan associates.
But this differentiation, so long as it is
unaffected by the political means, operates
within very modest bounds. Cleverness and
efficiency are not hereditary with any degree
of certainty. The largest herd will be split
up if many heirs grow up in one tent, and fortune
is tricky. In our own day, the richest
man among the Lapps of Sweden, in the shortest
possible time, has been reduced to such complete
poverty that the government has had to
support him. All these causes bring it about
that the original condition of economic and
social equality is always approximately restored.
“The more peaceable, aboriginal, and
genuine the nomad is, the smaller are the tangible
differences of possession. It is touching
to note the pleasure with which an old prince
of the Tsaidam Mongols accepts his tribute or
gift, consisting of a handful of tobacco, a piece
of sugar, and twenty-five kopeks.”9
This equality is destroyed permanently and
in greater degree by the political means.
“Where war is carried on and booty acquired,
greater differences arise, which find their expression
in the ownership of slaves, women,
arms and spirited mounts.”10
The ownership of slaves! The nomad is the
inventor of slavery, and thereby has created the
seedling of the state, the first economic exploitation
of man by man.
The huntsman carries on wars and takes
captives. But he does not make them slaves;
either he kills them, or else he adopts them into
the tribe. Slaves would be of no use to him.
The booty of the chase can be stowed away
even less than grain can be “capitalized.”
The idea of using a human being as a labor
motor could only come about on an economic
plane on which a body of wealth has developed,
call it capital, which can be increased only with
the assistance of dependent labor forces.
This stage is first reached by the herdsmen.
The forces of one family, lacking outside assistance,
suffice to hold together a herd of very
limited size, and to protect it from attacks of
beasts of prey or human enemies. Until the
political means is brought into play, auxiliary
forces are found very sparingly; such as the
poorer members of the clan already mentioned,
together with runaways from foreign tribes,
who are found all over the world as protected
dependents in the suite of the greater owners
of herds.11 In some cases, an entire poor clan
of herdsmen enters, half freely, into the service
of some rich tribe. “Entire peoples take positions
corresponding to their relative wealth.
Thus the Tungusen, who are very poor, try to
live near the settlements of the Tschuktsches,
because they find occupation as herdsmen of
the reindeer belonging to the wealthy Tschuktsches;
they are paid in reindeer. And the
subjection of the Ural-Samojedes by the Sirjaenes
came about through the gradual occupation
of their pasturing grounds.”12
Excepting, however, the last named case,
which is already very state-like, the few existing
labor forces, without capital, are not sufficient
to permit the clan to keep very large
herds. Furthermore, methods of herding
themselves compel division. For a pasture
may not, as they say in the Swiss Alps, be
“overpushed,” that is to say, have too many
cattle on it. The danger of losing the entire
stock is reduced by the measure in which it is
distributed over various pastures. For cattle
plagues, storms, etc., can affect only a part;
while even the enemy from abroad can not drive
off all at once. For that reason, the Hereros,
for example, “find every well-to-do owner
forced to keep, besides the main herd, several
other subsidiary herds. Younger brothers or
other near relatives, or in want of these, tried
old servants, watch them.”13
For that reason, the developed nomad spares
his captured enemy; he can use him as a slave
on his pasture. We may note this transition
from killing to enslaving in a customary rite
of the Scythians: they offered up at their
places of sacrifice one out of every hundred
captured enemies. Lippert, who reports this,
sees in it “the beginning of a limitation, and
the reason thereof is evidently to be found in
the value which a captured enemy has acquired
by becoming the servant of a tribal herdsman.”14
With the introduction of slaves into the tribal
economy of the herdsmen, the state, in its
essential elements, is completed, except that it
has not as yet acquired a definitely circumscribed
territorial limit. The state has thus
the form of dominion, and its economic basis
is the exploitation of human labor. Henceforth,
economic differentiation and the formation
of social classes progress rapidly. The
herds of the great, wisely divided and better
guarded by numerous armed servants than
those of the simple freemen, as a rule, maintain
themselves at their original number:
they also increase faster than those of the freemen,
since they are augmented by the greater
share in the booty which the rich receive, corresponding
to the number of warriors (slaves)
which these place in the field.
Likewise, the office of supreme priest creates
an ever-widening cleft which divides the
numbers of the clan, all formerly equals; until
finally a genuine nobility, the rich descendants
of the rich patriarchs, is placed in juxtaposition
to the ordinary freemen. “The redskins
have also in their progressive organization developed
no nobility and no slavery,C and in
this their organization distinguishes itself most
essentially from those of the old world. Both
arise from the development of the patriarchate
of stock-raising people.”15
Thus we find, with all developed tribes of
herdsmen, a social separation into three distinct
classes: nobility (“head of the house of
his fathers” in the biblical phrase), common
freemen and slaves. According to Mommsen,
“all Indo-Germanic people have slavery as a
jural institution.”16 This applies to the
Arians and the Semites of Asia and Africa as
well as to the Hamites. Among all the Fulbe
of the Sahara, “society is divided into princes,
chieftains, commons and slaves.”17 And we
find the same facts everywhere, as a matter of
course, wherever slavery is legally established,
as among the Hova18 and their Polynesian
kinsmen, the “Sea Nomads.” Human psychology
under similar circumstances brings
about like conditions, independent of color or
race.
Thus the herdsman gradually becomes accustomed
to earning his livelihood through warfare,
and to the exploitation of men as servile
labor motors. And one must admit that his
entire mode of life impels him to make more
and more use of the “political means.”
He is physically stronger and just as adroit
and determined as the primitive huntsman,
whose food supply is too irregular to permit
him to attain his greatest natural physical development.
The herdsman can, in all cases,
grow to his full stature, since he has uninterrupted
nourishment in the milk of his herds
and an unfailing supply of meat. This is
shown in the Arian horse nomad, no less than
in the herdsman of Asia and Africa, e. g., the
Zulu. Secondly, tribes of herdsmen increase
faster than hordes of hunters. This is so, not
only because the adults can obtain much more
nourishment from a given territory, but still
more because possession of the milk of animals
shortens the period of nursing for the mothers,
and consequently permits a greater number of
children to be born and to grow to maturity.
As a consequence, the pastures and steppes of
the old world became inexhaustible fountains,
which periodically burst their confines letting
loose inundations of humanity, so that they
came to be called the “vaginæ gentium.”
Moreover we find a much larger number of
armed warriors among herdsmen than among
hunters. Each one of these herdsmen is
stronger individually, and yet all of them together
are at least as mobile as is a horde of
huntsmen; while the camel and horse riders
among them are incomparably more mobile.
This greater mass of the best individual elements
is held together by an organization only
possible under the ægis of a slave-holding
patriarchate accustomed to rule, an organization
prepared and developed by its occupation,
and therefore superior to that of the young
warriors of the huntsmen sworn to the service
of one chief.
Hunters, it may be observed, work best alone
or in small groups. Herdsmen, on the other
hand, move to the best advantage in a great
train, in which each individual is best protected;
and which is in every sense an armed
expedition, where every stopping place becomes
an armed camp. Thus there is developed
a science of tactical maneuvers, strict
subordination, and firm discipline. “One does
not make a mistake,” as Ratzel says, “if one
accounts as the disciplinary forces in the life
of the nomads the order of the tents which, in
the same form, exists since most ancient times.
Every one and everything here has a definite,
traditional place; hence the speed and order in
setting up and in breaking camp, in establishment
and in rearrangement. It is unheard
of that any one without orders, or without the
most pressing reason, should change his place.
Thanks to this strict discipline, the tents can
be packed up and loaded away within the space
of an hour.”19
The same tried order, handed down from
untold ages, regulates the warlike march of
the tribe of herdsmen while on the hunt, in war
and in peaceable wandering. Thus they become
professional fighters, irresistible until
the state develops higher and mightier organizations.
Herdsman and warrior become
identical concepts. Ratzel’s statement concerning
the Central Asiatic Nomads applies
to them all: “The nomad is, as herdsman, an
economic, as warrior, a political concept. It
is easy for him to turn from any activity to
that of the warrior and robber. Everything
in life has for him a pacific and war-like, an
honest and robber-like, side; according to circumstances,
the one or the other of these phases
appears uppermost. Even fishing and navigation,
at the hands of the East Caspian
Turkomans, developed into piracy.... The
activities of the apparently pacific existence
as a herdsman determine those of the warrior;
the pastoral crook becomes a fighting implement.
In the fall, when the horses return
strengthened from the pasture and the second
cropping of the sheep is completed, the nomads’
minds turn to some feud or robbing expedition
(Baranta, literally, to make cattle, to lift cattle),
adjourned to that time. This is an expression
of the right of self help, which in contentions
over points of law, or in quarrels affecting
dignity, or in blood feuds, seeks both
requital and surety in the most valuable things
that the enemy possesses, namely, the animals
of his herd. Young men who have not been
on a baranta must first acquire the name batir,
hero, and thus earn the claim to honor and respect.
The pleasure of ownership joined to
the desire for adventure develops the triple
descending gradation of avenger, hero and
robber.”20
An identical development takes place with
the sea nomads, the “Vikings,” as with the land
nomads. This is quite natural, since in the
most important cases noted in the history of
mankind, sea nomads are simply land nomads
taking to the sea.
We have noted above one of the innumerable
examples which indicate that the herdsman
does not long hesitate to use for marauding
expeditions, instead of the horse or the
“ship of the desert,” the “horses of the sea.”
This case is exemplified by the East Caspian
Turkomans.21 Another example is furnished
by the Scythians: “From the moment when
they learn from their neighbors the art of navigating
the seas, these wandering herdsmen,
whom Homer (Iliad, XIII, 3) calls ‘respected
horsemen, milk-eaters and poor, the most just
of men,’ change into daring navigators like
their Baltic and Scandinavian brethren.
Strabo (Cas., 301) complains: ‘Since they
have ventured on the sea, carrying on piracy
and murdering foreigners, they have become
worse; and associating with many peoples,
they adopt their petty trading and spendthrift
habits.’”22
If the Phœnicians really were “Semites,”
they furnish an additional example of incomparable
importance of the transformation of
land into “sea Bedouins,” i. e., warlike robbers;
and the same is probably true for the
majority of the numerous peoples who looted
the rich countries around the Mediterranean,
whether from the coast of Asia Minor, Dalmatia,
or from the North African shore.
These begin from the earliest times, as we see
from the Egyptian monuments (the Greeks
were not admitted into Egypt),23 and continue
to the present day: e. g., the Riff pirates.
The North African “Moors,” an amalgamation
of Arabs and of Berbers, both originally
land nomads, are perhaps the most celebrated
example of this change.
There are cases in which sea nomads—that
is to say, sea robbers—arise immediately
from fishermen, with no intermediate herdsman
stage. We have already examined the causes
which give the herdsmen their superiority over
the peasantry: the relatively numerous population
of the horde, combined with an activity
which develops courage and quick resolution
in the individual, and educates the mass as a
whole to tense discipline. All this applies also
to fishermen dwelling on the sea. Rich fishing
grounds permit a considerable density of population,
as is shown in the case of the Northwest
Indians (Tlinkit, etc.); these permit also
the keeping of slaves, since the slave earns
more by fishing than his keep amounts to.
Thus we find, here alone among the redskins,
slavery developed as an institution; and we
find, therefore, along with it, permanent
economic differences among the freemen, which
result in a sort of plutocracy similar to that
noted among herdsmen. Here, as there, the
habit of command over slaves produces the
habit of rule and a taste for the “political
means.” This is favored by the tense discipline
developed in navigation. “Not the
least advantage of fishing in common is found
in the discipline of the crews. They must
render implicit obedience to a leader chosen in
each of the larger fishing boats, since every success
depends upon obedience. The command
of a ship afterward facilitates the command
of the state. We are accustomed to
reckon the Solomon Islanders as complete savages,
and yet their life is subject to one solitary
element, which combines their forces, namely,
navigation.”24 If the Northwest Indians did
not become such celebrated sea robbers as their
likes in the old world, this is due to the fact
that the neighborhoods within their reach had
developed no rich civilization; but all more developed
fishermen carry on piracy.
For this reason, the Vikings have the same
capacity to choose the political means as the
basis of their economic existence as have the
cattle raiders; and similarly they have been
founders of states on a large scale. Hereafter,
we shall distinguish the states founded
by them as “sea states,” while the states
founded by herdsmen—and in the new world
by hunters—will be called “land states.” Sea
states will be treated extensively when we discuss
the consequences of the developed feudal
state. As long, however, as we are discussing
the development of the state, and the primitive
feudal state, we must limit ourselves to the
consideration of the land state and leave the
sea state out of account. This treatment is
convenient, since in all essential things the sea
state has the same characteristics, but its development
can not be followed through the
various typical stages as can the development
of the land state.
The hordes of huntsmen are incomparably
weaker, both in numbers and in the strength of
the single fighters, than are the herdsmen with
whom they occasionally brush. Naturally
they can not withstand the impact. They flee
to the highlands and mountains, where the
herdsmen have no inclination to follow them,
not only because of the physical hardships involved,
but also because their cattle do not find
pasturage there; or else they enter into a form
of cliental relation, as happened often in
Africa, especially in very ancient times.
When the Hyksos invaded Egypt, such dependent
huntsmen followed them. The huntsmen
usually pay for protection an inconsiderable
tribute in the form of spoils of the chase,
and are used for reconnoitering and watching.
But the huntsman, being a “practical anarchist,”
often invites his own destruction rather
than submit to regular labor. For these reasons,
no “state” ever arose from such contact.
The peasants fight as undisciplined levies,
and with their single combatants undisciplined;
so that, in the long run, even though they are
strong in numbers, they are no more able than
are the hunters to withstand the charge of
the heavily armed herdsmen. But the peasantry
do not flee. The peasant is attached to
his ground, and has been used to regular work.
He remains, yields to subjection, and pays
tribute to his conqueror; that is the genesis of
the land states in the old world.
In the new world, where the larger herding
animals, cattle, horses, camels, were not indigenous,
we find that instead of the herdsman
the hunter is the conqueror of the peasant,
because of his infinitely superior adroitness in
the use of arms and in military discipline. “In
the old world we found that the contrast of
herdsmen and peasants developed civilization;
in the new world the contrast is between the
sedentary and the roving tribes. The Toltecks,
devoted to agriculture, fought wild
tribes (with a highly developed military
organization) breaking in from the north, as
endlessly as did Iran with Turan.”25
This applies not only to Peru and Mexico,
but to all America, a strong ground for the
opinion that the fundamental basis of civilization
is the same all over the world, its development
being consistent and regular under the
most varied economic and geographical conditions.
Wherever opportunity offers, and man
possesses the power, he prefers political to
economic means for the preservation of his
life. And perhaps this is true not alone of
man, for, according to Maeterlinck’s Life of
the Bees, a swarm which has once made the
experiment of obtaining honey from a foreign
hive, by robbery instead of by tedious building,
is thenceforth spoiled for the “economic
means.” From working bees, robber bees have
developed.
Leaving out of account the state formations
of the new world, which have no great significance
in universal history, the cause of the
genesis of all states is the contrast between
peasants and herdsmen, between laborers and
robbers, between bottom lands and prairies.
Ratzel, regarding sociology from the geographical
view-point, expresses this cleverly:
“It must be remembered that nomads do not
always destroy the opposing civilization of the
settled folk. This applies not only to tribes,
but also to states, even to those of some might.
The war-like character of the nomads is a
great factor in the creation of states. It finds
expression in the immense nations of Asia controlled
by nomad dynasties and nomad armies,
such as Persia, ruled by the Turks; China,
conquered and governed by the Mongols and
Manchus; and in the Mongol and Radjaputa
states of India, as well as in the states on
the border of the Soudan, where the amalgamation
of the formerly hostile elements has
not yet developed so far, although they are
joined together by mutual benefit. In no
place is it shown so clearly as here on the
border of the nomad and peasant peoples, that
the great workings of the impulse making for
civilization on the part of the nomads are not
the result of civilizing activity, but of war-like
exploits at first detrimental to pacific work.
Their importance lies in the capacity of the
nomads to hold together the sedentary races
who otherwise would easily fall apart. This,
however, does not exclude their learning much
from their subjects.... Yet all these industrious
and clever folk did not have and
could not have the will and the power to rule,
the military spirit, and the sense for the order
and subordination that befits a state. For this
reason, the desert-born lords of the Soudan rule
over their negro folk just as the Manchus rule
their Chinese subjects. This takes place pursuant
to a law, valid from Timbuctoo to
Pekin, whereby advantageous state formations
arise in rich peasant lands adjoining a wide
prairie; where a high material culture of
sedentary peoples is violently subjugated to
the service of prairie dwellers having energy,
war-like capacity, and desire to rule.”26
In the genesis of the state, from the subjection
of a peasant folk by a tribe of herdsmen or
by sea nomads, six stages may be distinguished.
In the following discussion it should not be
assumed that the actual historical development
must, in each particular case, climb the
entire scale step by step. Although, even
here, the argument does not depend upon bare
theoretical construction, since every particular
stage is found in numerous examples, both in
the world’s history and in ethnology, and there
are states which have apparently progressed
through them all. But there are many more
which have skipped one or more of these stages.
The first stage comprises robbery and killing
in border fights, endless combats broken
neither by peace nor by armistice. It is
marked by killing of men, carrying away of
children and women, looting of herds, and
burning of dwellings. Even if the offenders
are defeated at first, they return in stronger
and stronger bodies, impelled by the duty of
blood feud. Sometimes the peasant group
may assemble, may organize its militia, and
perhaps temporarily defeat the nimble enemy;
but mobilization is too slow and supplies to be
brought into the desert too costly for the peasants.
The peasants’ militia does not, as does
the enemy, carry its stock of food—its herds—with
it into the field. In Southwest Africa the
Germans recently experienced the difficulties
which a well-disciplined and superior force,
equipped with a supply train, with a railway
reaching back to its base of supply, and with
the millions of the German Empire behind it,
may have with a handful of herdsmen warriors,
who were able to give the Germans a
decided setback. In the case of primitive
levies, this difficulty is increased by the narrow
spirit of the peasant, who considers only his
own neighborhood, and by the fact that while
the war is going on the lands are uncultivated.
Therefore, in such cases, in the long run, the
small but compact and easily mobilized body
constantly defeats the greater disjointed mass,
as the panther triumphs over the buffalo.
This is the first stage in the formation of
states. The state may remain stationary at
this point for centuries, for a thousand years.
The following is a thoroughly characteristic
example:
“Every range of a Turkoman tribe formerly
bordered upon a wide belt which might be
designated as its ‘looting district.’ Everything
north and east of Chorassan, though
nominally under Persian dominion, has for
decades belonged more to the Turkomans,
Jomudes, Goklenes, and other tribes of the
bordering plains, than to the Persians. The
Tekinzes, in a similar manner, looted all the
stretches from Kiwa to Bokhara, until other
Turkoman tribes were successfully rounded
up either by force or by corruption to act as
a buffer. Numberless further instances can
be found in the history of the chain of oases
which extends between Eastern and Western
Asia directly through the steppes of its central
part, where since ancient times the
Chinese have exercised a predominant influence
through their possession of all important
strategic centers, such as the Oasis of Chami.
The nomads, breaking through from north
and south, constantly tried to land on these
islands of fertile ground, which to them must
have appeared like Islands of the Blessed.
And every horde, whether laden down with
booty or fleeing after defeat, was protected by
the plains. Although the most immediate
threats were averted by the continued weakening
of the Mongols, and the actual dominion of
Thibet, yet the last insurrection of the Dunganes
showed how easily the waves of a mobile
tribe break over these islands of civilization.
Only after the destruction of the nomads, impossible
as long as there are open plains in
Central Asia, can their existence be definitely
secured.”27
The entire history of the old world is replete
with well-known instances of mass expeditions,
which must be assigned to the first stage of
state development, inasmuch as they were
intent, not upon conquest, but directly on looting.
Western Europe suffered through these
expeditions at the hands of the Celts, Germans,
Huns, Avars, Arabs, Magyars, Tartars, Mongolians
and Turks by land; while the Vikings
and the Saracens harassed it on the waterways.
These hordes inundated entire continents far
beyond the limits of their accustomed looting
ground. They disappeared, returned, were
absorbed, and left behind them only wasted
lands. In many cases, however, they advanced
in some part of the inundated district directly
to the sixth and last stage of state formation,
in cases namely, where they established a permanent
dominion over the peasant population.
Ratzel describes these mass migrations excellently
in the following:
“The expeditions of the great hordes of
nomads contrast with this movement, drop by
drop and step by step, since they overflow
with tremendous power, especially Central
Asia and all neighboring countries. The
nomads of this district, as of Arabia and
Northern Africa, unite mobility in their way of
life with an organization holding together their
entire mass for one single object. It seems to
be a characteristic of the nomads that they
easily develop despotic power and far-reaching
might from the patriarchal cohesion of the
tribe. Mass governments thereby come into
being, which compare with other movements
among men in the same way that swollen
streams compare with the steady but diffused
flow of a tributary. The history of China,
India, and Persia, no less than that of Europe,
shows their historical importance. Just as
they moved about on their ranges with their
wives and children, slaves and carts, herds and
all their paraphernalia, so they inundated the
borderlands. While this ballast may have deprived
them of speed it increased their momentum.
The frightened inhabitants were
driven before them, and like a wave they rolled
over the conquered countries, absorbing their
wealth. Since they carried everything with
them, their new abodes were equipped with all
their possessions, and thus their final settlements
were of an ethnographic importance.
After this manner, the Magyars flooded Hungary,
the Manchus invaded China, the Turks,
the countries from Persia to the Adriatic.”28
What has been said here of Hamites, Semites
and Mongolians, may be said also, at least
in part, of the Arian tribes of herdsmen. It
applies also to the true negroes, at least to
those who live entirely from their herds:
“The mobile, warlike tribes of the Kafirs possess
a power of expansion which needs only
an enticing object in order to attain violent
effects and to overturn the ethnologic relations
of vast districts. Eastern Africa offers such
an object. Here the climate did not forbid
stock raising, as in the countries of the interior,
and did not paralyze from the start, the power
of impact of the nomads, while nevertheless
numerous peaceable agricultural peoples found
room for their development. Wandering
tribes of Kafirs poured like devastating
streams into the fruitful lands of the Zambesi,
and up to the highlands between the Tanganyika
and the coast. Here they met the
advance guard of the Watusi, a wave of
Hamite eruption, coming from the north.
The former inhabitants of these districts were
either exterminated, or as serfs cultivated the
lands which they formerly owned; or they still
continued to fight; or again, they remained undisturbed
in settlements left on one side by the
stream of conquest.”29
All this has taken place before our eyes.
Some of it is still going on. During many
thousands of years it has “jarred all Eastern
Africa from the Zambesi to the Mediterranean.”
The incursion of the Hyksos,
whereby for over five hundred years Egypt
was subject to the shepherd tribes of the eastern
and northern deserts—“kinsmen of the
peoples who up to the present day herd their
stock between the Nile and the Red Sea”30—is
the first authenticated foundation of a state.
These states were followed by many others
both in the country of the Nile itself, and
farther southward, as far as the Empire of
Muata Jamvo on the southern rim of the central
Congo district, which Portuguese traders
in Angola reported as early as the end of the
sixteenth century, and down to the Empire
of Uganda, which only in our own day has
finally succumbed to the superior military organization
of Europe. “Desert land and
civilization never lie peaceably alongside one
another; but their battles are all alike and full
of repetitions.”31
“Alike and full of repetitions”! That may
be said of universal history on its basic lines.
The human ego in its fundamental aspect is
much the same all the world over. It acts uniformly,
in obedience to the same influences of
its environment, with races of all colors, in all
parts of the earth, in the tropics as in the temperate
zones. One must step back far enough
and choose a point of view so high that the
variegated aspect of the details does not hide
the great movements of the mass. In such a
case, our eye misses the “mode” of fighting,
wandering, laboring humanity, while its “substance,”
ever similar, ever new, ever enduring
through change, reveals itself under uniform
laws.
Gradually, from this first stage, there develops
the second, in which the peasant,
through thousands of unsuccessful attempts at
revolt, has accepted his fate and has ceased
every resistance. About this time, it begins
to dawn on the consciousness of the wild herdsman
that a murdered peasant can no longer
plow, and that a fruit tree hacked down will
no longer bear. In his own interest, then,
wherever it is possible, he lets the peasant live
and the tree stand. The expedition of the
herdsmen comes just as before, every member
bristling with arms, but no longer intending
nor expecting war and violent appropriation.
The raiders burn and kill only so far as is
necessary to enforce a wholesome respect, or
to break an isolated resistance. But in general,
principally in accordance with a developing
customary right—the first germ of the
development of all public law—the herdsman
now appropriates only the surplus of the peasant.
That is to say, he leaves the peasant his
house, his gear and his provisions up to the
next crop.D The herdsman in the first stage
is like the bear, who for the purpose of robbing
the beehive, destroys it. In the second stage
he is like the bee-keeper, who leaves the bees
enough honey to carry them through the
winter.
Great is the progress between the first stage
and the second. Long is the forward step,
both economically and politically. In the beginning,
as we have seen, the acquisition by
the tribe of herdsmen was purely an occupying
one. Regardless of consequences, they destroyed
the source of future wealth for the enjoyment
of the moment. Henceforth the acquisition
becomes economical, because all
economy is based on wise housekeeping, or in
other words, on restraining the enjoyment of
the moment in view of the needs of the future.
The herdsman has learned to “capitalize.” It
is a vast step forward in politics when an utterly
strange human being, prey heretofore
like the wild animals, obtains a value and is
recognized as a source of wealth. Although
this is the beginning of all slavery, subjugation,
and exploitation, it is at the same time
the genesis of a higher form of society, that
reaches out beyond the family based upon
blood relationship. We saw how, between the
robbers and the robbed, the first threads of a
jural relation were spun across the cleft which
separated those who had heretofore been only
“mortal enemies.” The peasant thus obtains
a semblance of right to the bare necessaries of
life; so that it comes to be regarded as wrong
to kill an unresisting man or to strip him of
everything.
And better than this, gradually more delicate
and softer threads are woven into a net
very thin as yet, but which, nevertheless, brings
about more human relations than the customary
arrangement of the division of spoils.
Since the herdsmen no longer meet the peasants
in combat only, they are likely now to
grant a respectful request, or to remedy a well
grounded grievance. “The categorical imperative”
of equity, “Do to others as you
would have them do unto you,” had heretofore
ruled the herdsmen only in their dealings with
their own tribesmen and kind. Now for the
first time it begins to speak, shyly whispering
in behalf of those who are alien to blood relationship.
In this, we find the germ of that
magnificent process of external amalgamation
which, out of small hordes, has formed nations
and unions of nations; and which, in the future
is to give life to the concept of “humanity.”
We find also the germ of the internal unification
of tribes once separated, from which, in
place of the hatred of “barbarians,” will come
the all comprising love of humanity, of Christianity
and Buddhism.
The moment when first the conqueror
spared his victim in order permanently to exploit
him in productive work, was of incomparable
historical importance. It gave birth
to nation and state, to right and the higher
economics, with all the developments and ramifications
which have grown and which will
hereafter grow out of them. The root of
everything human reaches down into the dark
soil of the animal—love and art, no less than
state, justice and economics.
Still another tendency knots yet more closely
these psychic relations. To return to the comparison
of the herdsman and the bear, there are
in the desert, beside the bear who guards the
bees, other bears who also lust after honey.
But our tribe of herdsmen blocks their way,
and protects its beehives by force of arms.
The peasants become accustomed, when danger
threatens, to call on the herdsmen, whom
they no longer regard as robbers and murderers,
but as protectors and saviors. Imagine
the joy of the peasants when the returning
band of avengers brings back to the village the
looted women and children, with the enemies’
heads or scalps. These ties are no longer
threads, but strong and knotted bands.
Here is one of the principal forces of that
“integration,” whereby in the further development,
those originally not of the same blood,
and often enough of different groups speaking
different languages, will in the end be
welded together into one people, with one
speech, one custom, and one feeling of nationality.
This unity grows by degrees from common
suffering and need, common victory
and defeat, common rejoicing and common
sorrow. A new and vast domain is open when
master and slave serve the same interests; then
arises a stream of sympathy, a sense of common
service. Both sides apprehend, and
gradually recognize, each other’s common humanity.
Gradually the points of similarity
are sensed, in place of the differences in build
and apparel, of language and religion, which
had heretofore brought about only antipathy
and hatred. Gradually they learn to understand
one another, first through a common
speech, and then through a common mental
habit. The net of the psychical inter-relations
becomes stronger.
In this second stage of the formation of
states, the ground work, in its essentials, has
been mapped out. No further step can be
compared in importance to the transition
whereby the bear becomes a bee-keeper. For
this reason, short references must suffice.
The third stage arrives when the “surplus”
obtained by the peasantry is brought by them
regularly to the tents of the herdsmen as “tribute,”
a regulation which affords to both
parties self-evident and considerable advantages.
By this means, the peasantry is relieved
entirely from the little irregularities
connected with the former method of taxation,
such as a few men knocked on the head, women
violated, or farmhouses burned down. The
herdsmen on the other hand, need no longer
apply to this “business” any “expense” and
labor, to use a mercantile expression; and they
devote the time and energy thus set free toward
an “extension of the works,” in other
words, to subjugating other peasants.
This form of tribute is found in many well-known
instances in history: Huns, Magyars,
Tartars, Turks, have derived their largest income
from their European tributes. Sometimes
the character of the tribute paid by the
subjects to their master is more or less blurred,
and the act assumes the guise of payment for
protection, or indeed, of a subvention. The
tale is well known whereby Attila was pictured
by the weakling emperor at Constantinople
as a vassal prince; while the tribute he
paid to the Hun appeared as a fee.
The fourth stage, once more, is of very great
importance, since it adds the decisive factor in
the development of the state, as we are accustomed
to see it, namely, the union on one strip
of land of both ethnic groups.E (It is well
known that no jural definition of a state can
be arrived at without the concept of state territory.)
From now on, the relation of the two
groups, which was originally international,
gradually becomes more and more intra-national.
This territorial union may be caused by
foreign influences. It may be that stronger
hordes have crowded the herdsmen forward, or
that their increase in population has reached
the limit set by the nutritive capacity of the
steppes or prairies; it may be that a great
cattle plague has forced the herdsmen to exchange
the unlimited scope of the prairies for
the narrows of some river valley. In general,
however, internal causes alone suffice to bring
it about that the herdsmen stay in the neighborhood
of their peasants. The duty of protecting
their tributaries against other “bears”
forces them to keep a levy of young warriors in
the neighborhood of their subjects; and this
is at the same time an excellent measure of defense
since it prevents the peasants from giving
way to a desire to break their bonds, or to
let some other herdsmen become their overlords.
This latter occurrence is by no means
rare, since, if tradition is correct, it is the means
whereby the sons of Rurik came to Russia.
As yet the local juxtaposition does not mean
a state community in its narrowest sense; that
is to say, a unital organization.
In case the herdsmen are dealing with utterly
unwarlike subjects, they carry on their
nomad life, peaceably wandering up and down
and herding their cattle among their perioike
and helots. This is the case with the light-colored
Wahuma,32 “the handsomest men of
the world” (Kandt), in Central Africa, or the
Tuareg clan of the Hadanara of the Asgars,
“who have taken up their seats among the Imrad
and have become wandering freebooters.
These Imrad are the serving class of the Asgars,
who live on them, although the Imrad
could put into the field ten times as many warriors;
the situation is analogous to that of the
Spartans in relation to their Helots.”33 The
same may be said of the Teda among the
neighboring Borku: “Just as the land is divided
into a semi-desert supporting the nomads,
and gardens with date groves, so the
population is divided between nomads and settled
folk. Although about equal in number,
ten to twelve thousand altogether, it goes without
saying that these latter are subject to the
others.”34
And the same applies to the entire group of
herdsmen known as the Galla Masi and Wahuma.
“Although differences in possessions
are considerable, they have few slaves, as a
serving class. These are represented by
peoples of a lower caste, who live separate and
apart from them. It is herdsmanship which is
the basis of the family, of the state, and along
with these of the principle of political evolution.
In this wide territory, between Scehoa
and its southernmost boundaries, on the one
hand, and Zanzibar on the other, there is found
no strong political power, in spite of the highly
developed social articulation.”35
In case the country is not adapted to herding
cattle on a large scale—as was universally
the case in Western Europe—or where a less
unwarlike population might make attempts at
insurrection, the crowd of lords becomes more
or less permanently settled, taking either steep
places or strategically important points for
their camps, castles, or towns. From these
centers, they control their “subjects,” mainly
for the purpose of gathering their tribute, paying
no attention to them in other respects.
They let them administer their affairs, carry
on their religious worship, settle their disputes,
and adjust their methods of internal economy.
Their autochthonous constitution, their local
officials, are, in fact, not interfered with.
If Frants Buhl reports correctly, that was
the beginning of the rule of the Israelites in
Canaan.36 Abyssinia, that great military
force, though at the first glance it may appear
to be a fully developed state, does not, however,
seem to have advanced beyond the fourth
stage. At least Ratzel states: “The principal
care of the Abyssinians consists in the
tribute, in which they follow the method of
oriental monarchs in olden and modern times,
which is not to interfere with the internal management
and administration of justice of their
subject peoples.”37
The best example of the fourth stage is
found in the situation in ancient Mexico before
the Spanish conquest: “The confederation
under the leadership of the Mexicans had
somewhat more progressive ideas of conquest.
Only those tribes were wiped out that offered
resistance. In other cases, the vanquished
were merely plundered, and then required to
pay tribute. The defeated tribe governed itself
just as before, through its own officials.
It was different in Peru, where the formation
of a compact empire followed the first attack.
In Mexico, intimidation and exploitation were
the only aims of the conquest. And so it came
about that the so-called Empire of Mexico at
the time of the conquest represented merely a
group of intimidated Indian tribes, whose federation
with one another was prevented by
their fear of plundering expeditions from some
unassailable fort in their midst.”38 It will be
observed that one can not speak of this as a
state in any proper sense. Ratzel shows this
in the note following the above: “It is certain
that the various points held in subjection by
the Warriors of Montezuma were separated
from one another by stretches of territory not
yet conquered. A condition very like the rule
of the Hova in Madagascar. One would not
say that scattering a few garrisons, or better
still, military colonies, over the land, is a mark
of absolute dominion, since these colonies, with
great trouble, maintain a strip of a few miles
in subjection.”39
The logic of events presses quickly from the
fourth to the fifth stage, and fashions almost
completely the full state. Quarrels arise between
neighboring villages or clans, which the
lords no longer permit to be fought out, since
by this the capacity of the peasants for service
would be impaired. The lords assume the
right to arbitrate, and in case of need, to enforce
their judgment. In the end, it happens
that at each “court” of the village king or chief
of the clan there is an official deputy who exercises
the power, while the chiefs are permitted
to retain the appearance of authority.
The state of the Incas shows, in a primitive
condition, a typical example of this arrangement.
Here we find the Incas united at Cuzco
where they had their patrimonial lands and
dwellings.40 A representative of the Incas, the
Tucricuc, however, resided in every district at
the court of the native chieftain. He “had
supervision over all affairs of his district; he
raised the troops, superintended the delivery
of the tribute, ordered the forced labor on
roads and bridges, superintended the administration
of justice, and in short supervised
everything in his district.”41
The same institutions which have been developed
by American huntsmen and Semite
shepherds are found also among African
herdsmen. In Ashanti, the system of the Tucricuc
has been developed in a typical fashion;42
and the Dualla have established for their subjects
living in segregated villages “an institution
based on conquest midway between a
feudal system and slavery.”43 The same
author reports that the Barotse have a constitution
corresponding to the earliest stage of
the mediæval feudal organization: “Their villages
are ... as a rule surrounded by a circle
of hamlets where their serfs live. These
till the fields of their lords in the immediate
neighborhood, grow grain, or herd the
cattle.”44 The only thing that is not typical
here consists in this, that the lords do not live
in isolated castles or halls, but are settled in
villages among their subjects.
It is only a very small step from the Incas to
the Dorians in Lacedæmon, Messenia, or
Crete; and no greater distance separates the
Fulbe, Dualla and Barotse from the comparatively
rigidly organized feudal states of the
African Negro Empires of Uganda, Unyoro,
etc.; and the corresponding feudal empires of
Eastern and Western Europe and of all Asia.
In all places, the same results are brought
about by force of the same socio-psychological
causes. The necessity of keeping the subjects
in order and at the same time of maintaining
them at their full capacity for labor, leads step
by step from the fifth to the sixth stage, in
which the state, by acquiring full intra-nationality
and by the evolution of “Nationality,” is
developed in every sense. The need becomes
more and more frequent to interfere, to allay
difficulties, to punish, or to coerce obedience;
and thus develop the habit of rule and the
usages of government. The two groups, separated,
to begin with, and then united on one
territory, are at first merely laid alongside one
another, then are scattered through one another
like a mechanical mixture, as the term is
used in chemistry, until gradually they become
more and more of a “chemical combination.”
They intermingle, unite, amalgamate to unity,
in customs and habits, in speech and worship.
Soon the bonds of relationship unite the upper
and the lower strata. In nearly all cases the
master class picks the handsomest virgins from
the subject races for its concubines. A race
of bastards thus develops, sometimes taken
into the ruling class, sometimes rejected, and
then because of the blood of the masters in
their veins, becoming the born leaders of the
subject race. In form and in content the
primitive state is completed.
