The State: Its History and Development Viewed Sociologically

by Franz Oppenheimer

[W] See [foot-note] on page 84.

The following is so well known that it can be stated briefly. The system of exchange by means of money matures into capitalism, and brings into being new classes in juxtaposition to the landowners; the capitalist demands equal rights with the formerly privileged orders, and finally obtains them by revolutionizing the lower plebs. In this attack on the sacredly established order of things, the capitalists unite with the lower classes, naturally under the banner of “natural law.” But as soon as the victory has been achieved, the class based on movable wealth, the so-called middle class, turns its arms on the lower classes, makes peace with its former opponents, and invokes in its reactionary fight on the proletarians, its late allies, the theory of legitimacy, or makes use of an evil mixture of arguments based partly on legitimacy and partly on pseudo-liberalism.

In this manner the state has gradually matured from the primitive robber state, through the stages of the developed feudal state, through absolutism, to the modern constitutional state.

(d) THE MODERN CONSTITUTIONAL STATE

Let us give the mechanics and kinetics of the modern state a moment’s time.

In principle, it is the same entity as the primitive robber state or the developed feudal state. There has been added, however, one new element—officialdom, which at least will have this object, that in the contest of the various classes, it will represent the common interests of the state as a whole. In how far this purpose is subserved we shall investigate in another place. Let us at this time study the state in respect to those characteristics which it has brought over from its youthful stages.

Its form still continues to be domination, its content still remains the exploitation of the economic means. The latter continues to be limited by public law, which on the one hand protects the traditional “distribution” of the total products of the nation; while on the other it attempts to maintain at their full efficiency the taxpayers and those bound to render service. The internal policy of the state continues to revolve in the path prescribed for it by the parallelogram of the centrifugal force of class contests and the centripetal impulse of the common interests in the state; and its foreign policy continues to be determined by the interests of the master class, now comprising besides the landed also the moneyed interests.

In principle, there are now, as before, only two classes to be distinguished: one a ruling class, which acquires more of the total product of the labor of the people—the economic means—than it has contributed, and a subject class, which obtains less of the resultant wealth than it has contributed. Each of these classes, in turn, depending on the degree of economic development, is divided into more or fewer sub-classes or strata, which grade of according to the fortune or misfortune of their economic standards.

Among highly developed states there is found introduced between the two principal classes a transitional class, which also may be subdivided into various strata. Its members are bound to render service to the upper class, while they are entitled to receive service from the classes below them. To illustrate with an example, we find in the ruling class in modern Germany at least three strata. First come the great landed magnates, who at the same time are the principal shareholders in the larger industrial undertakings and mining companies: next stand the captains of industry and the “bankocrats,” who also in many cases have become owners of great estates. In consequence of this they quickly amalgamate with the first layer. Such, for example, are the Princes Fugger, who were formerly bankers of Augsburg, and the Counts of Donnersmarck, owners of extensive mines in Silesia. And finally there are the petty country nobles, whom we shall hereafter term junker or “squires.” The subject class, at all events, consists of petty peasants, agricultural laborers, factory and mine hands, with small artisans and subordinate officials. The “middle classes” are the classes of the transition: composed of the owners of large and medium-sized farms, the small manufacturers, and the best paid mechanics, besides those rich “bourgeois,” such as Jews, who have not become rich enough to overcome certain traditional difficulties which oppose their arrival at the stage of intermarriage with the upper class. All these render unrequited service to the upper class, and receive unrequited service from the lower classes. This determines the result which occurs either to the stratum as a whole or to the individuals in it; that is to say, either a complete acceptance into the upper class, or an absolute sinking into the lower class. Of the (German) transitional classes, the large farmers and the manufacturers of average wealth have risen, while the majority of artisans have descended to the lower classes. We have thus arrived at the kinetics of classes.