The State: Its History and Development Viewed Sociologically

by Franz Oppenheimer

Among the peoples of Western Europe, the new sociology found a readier acceptance than it did among those of Eastern Europe. The reason for this can easily be seen when it is remembered that in the East the contrast between the “State” and “Society,” had not been so definitely realized, as it had been in the West. Even in the West, this contrast was only fully appreciated, as a social fact, in England, France, the Netherlands and Italy, because in these countries only the class of mobile wealth which had worked its way up as the third estate, had succeeded in ousting the feudal “State.” In France, the league of the capitalists with the Crown against the then armed and active nobility had succeeded in subjecting the Frondeurs under the absolute power of the King. From this time on, this new estate represented itself as the Nation, and the term “National Economy” takes the place of the older term “Political Economy.” The members of this third estate felt themselves to be those subjects of the State whose rights and liberties had been curtailed by the privileges of the two dominant estates of the nobility and the clergy. Henceforth, the Third Estate proclaims the rights of “Society” and against the “State,” opposes the eternal Law of Nature—that of original equality and freedom—against the theoretic-historical rights of the Estates. The concept of Society as a contrast to the concept of the State, first appears in Locke, and from his time on this contrast was more and more defined, especially in the writings of the physiocrat school of economists.

In this struggle between classes and ideas, neither Middle nor Eastern Europe played any important part. In Germany there had once developed a Capitalist class (in the period of the Fuggers of Augsburg) which attained to almost American magnitude. But it was crushed by the Religious Wars and the various French invasions of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, which left Germany a devastated, depopulated desert. At the end of the period there remained a few cities and small states under the absolute domination of princes. Within the cities the artisans were bound together in their craft-leagues, and the rest consisted of those of educational pursuits and academic officials. In a large degree all these were dependent on the State—the members of the craft-guilds because they accepted a privileged condition, the officials because they were servants of the State, and the professional men, because they belonged to the upper estate of the society. For this reason there was no economic or social movement of the third estate in Germany; there was only a literary movement influenced by the flow of ideas from the West. This explains why the contrast between the two ideas of the State and of Society was not present in the minds of the German people. On the contrary, the two terms were used as synonyms, both connotating an essentially necessary conformity to nature.

But there is still another cause for this difference in the mental attitude between Western and Eastern Europe. In England and France, from the time of Descartes, the problems and inquiries of science were set by men trained in mathematics and the natural sciences. Especially in the new study of the philosophy of history, the beginning of our modern sociology, did these men act as guides. In Germany, on the contrary, it was the theologians and especially the Protestant theologians who were the leaders of thought. In their hands the State came to be looked upon as an instrument of Divine fashioning, and, indeed, of immanent divinity. This thought resulted in a worship of the State, which reached its height in the well-known Hegelian system. It thus happened that two rivers of thought flowed for a time side by side—the Sociology of Western Europe, and the philosophy of History of Germany—with occasional intercommunicating streams, such as Althusios and Puffendorf into the French, English and Dutch teaching of natural law, and that of Rousseau into Hegel. In 1840, however, a direct junction was effected through Lorenz Stein, one of Hegel’s most gifted pupils who, later, became the leading German teacher of administrative law, and influenced generations of thinkers. He came to Paris, as a young man, for the purpose of studying Socialism at the fountain head. He became acquainted with the celebrated men of that heroic time—with Enfintin and Bazard, with Louis Blanc, Reybaud, and Proudhon.

Lorenz Stein absorbed the new thought with enthusiasm, and in his fertile mind there was precipitated the creative synthesis between the Western Europe scientific sociological thought and the metaphysical German philosophy of history. The product was called by him the Science of Society (Gesellschaftswissenschaft). It is from the writings of Stein that almost all the important developments of German sociologic thought received their first impulses. Karl Marx, especially (as Struve has shown), as well as Schaeffle, Othmar Spann and Gumplowicz are largely indebted to him.

It is not my purpose to develop this historical theme. I am concerned only in tracing the development of the sociologic idea of the State. The first effect of this meeting of the two streams of thought was a mischievous confusion of terminology. The writers in Western Europe had long ago lost control of the unification of expressions in thinking. As stated above, the Third Estate began by thinking itself to be “Society,” as opposed to the State. But when the Fourth Estate grew to class consciousness and became aware of its own theoretic existence, it arrogated to itself the term “Society” (as may be seen from the selection of the word Socialism), and it treated the Bourgeoisie as a form of the “State,” of the class state. There were thus two widely differing concepts of “Society.” Yet here was an underlying idea common to both Bourgeoisie and Socialist, since they conceived the State as a collection of privileges arising and maintained in violation of natural law, while Society was thought of as the prescribed form of human union in conformity with natural law. They differed in one essential only, namely, that while the Third Estate declared its capitalistic Society to be the result of the processes of natural law, the Socialists regarded their aims as not yet attained, and proclaimed that the ideal society of the future which would really be the product of the processes of natural law, could only be realized by the elimination of all “surplus value.” Though both were in conflict with regard to fundamentals, both agreed in viewing the “State” as civitas diaboli and “Society” as civitas dei.

Stein, however, reversed the objectives of the two concepts. As an Hegelian, and pre-eminently a worshipper of the State, he conceived the State as civitas coelestis. Society, which he understood to mean only the dominant bourgeoisie Society, he viewed through the eyes of his Socialist friends and teachers, and conceived it as civitas terrena.

What in Plato’s sense is the “pure idea,” the “ordre naturel” of the early physiocrats and termed by Frenchmen and Englishmen “Society,” was to Stein, the “State.” What had been contaminated and made impure by the admixture of coarse matter, they termed the “State,” while the German called it “Society.” In reality, however, there is little difference between the two. Stein realized with pain, that Hegel’s pure concept of a State based on right and freedom, was bound to remain an “idea” only. Eternally fettered, as he assumed it must be, by the forces of property and the culture proceeding from them, it could never be a fact. This is his conclusion regarding “Society,” so that its effective development is obstructed by the beneficent association of human beings, as Stein conceived that association.

Thus was attained the very pinnacle of confused thinking. All German sociologists, with the single exception of Carl Dietzel, soon realized that the Hegelian concept of the State was impotent, existing only in the “Idea.” In no point did it touch the reality of historical growth, and in no sense could it be made to stand for what had always been considered as the State. Long ago both Marx and Bakunin—respectively the founders of scientific collectivism and practical anarchism—and especially Ludwig Gumplowicz, abandoned the Hegelian terminology and accepted that of Western Europe and this has been generally accepted everywhere.

In this little book I have followed the Western European terminology. By the “State,” I do not mean the human aggregation which may perchance come about to be, or, as it properly should be. I mean by it that summation of privileges and dominating positions which are brought into being by extra-economic power. And in contrast to this, I mean by Society, the totality of concepts of all purely natural relations and institutions between man and man, which will not be fully realized until the last remnant of the creations of the barbaric “ages of conquest and migration,” has been eliminated from community life. Others may call any form of leadership and government or some other ideal, the “State.” That is a matter of personal choice. It is useless to quarrel about definitions. But it might be well if those other thinkers were to understand that they have not controverted the sociologic idea of the “State,” if a concept of the “State” grounded on a different basis, does not correspond to that which they have evolved. And they must guard themselves particularly against the danger of applying any definition other than that used in this book to those actual historical products which have hitherto been called “States,” the essence, development, course and future of which must be explained by any true teaching or philosophy of the State.