The State: Its History and Development Viewed Sociologically

by Franz Oppenheimer

Our times have lost the glad optimism of the classical and of the humanist writers; sociologic pessimism rules the spirit of these latter days. The prognosis here stated can not as yet claim to have many adherents. Not only do the persons obtaining the profits of dominion, thanks to their obsession by their class spirit, regard it as an incredible concept; those belonging to the subjugated class as well regard it with the utmost skepticism. It is true that the proletarian theory, as a matter of principle, predicts identically the same result. But the adherents of that theory do not believe it possible by the path of evolution but only through revolution. It is then thought of as a picture of a “society” varying in all respects from that evolved by the progress of history; in other words, as an organization of the economic means, as a system of economics without competition and market, as collectivism. The anarchistic theory makes form and content of the “state” as inseparable as heads and tails of the coin; no “government” without exploitation! It would therefore smash both the form and the content of the state, and thus bring on a condition of anarchy, even if thereby all the economic advantages of a division of labor should have to be sacrificed. Even so great a thinker as the late Ludwig Gumplowicz, who first laid the foundation on which the present theory of the state has been developed, is a sociological pessimist; and from the same reasons as are the anarchists, whom he combated so violently. He too regards as eternally inseparable form and content, government and class-exploitation; since he however, and I think correctly, does not consider it possible that many people may live together without some coercive force vested in some government, he declares the class-state to be an “immanent” and not only an historical category.

Only a small fraction of social liberals, or of liberal socialists, believe in the evolution of a society without class dominion and class exploitation which shall guarantee to the individual, besides political, also economic liberty of movement, within of course the limitations of the economic means. That was the credo of the old social liberalism, of pre-Manchester days, enunciated by Quesnay and especially by Adam Smith, and again taken up in modern times by Henry George and Theodore Hertzka.

This prognosis may be substantiated in two ways, one through history and philosophy, the other by political economy, as a tendency of the development of the state, and as a tendency of the evolution of economics, both clearly tending toward one point.

The tendency of the development of the state was shown in the preceding as a steady and victorious combat of economic means against political means. We saw that, in the beginning, the right to the economic means, the right to equality and to peace, was restricted to the tiny circle of the horde bound together by ties of blood, an endowment from pre-human conditions of society;[142] while without the limits of this isle of peace raged the typhoon of the political means. But we saw expanding more and more the circles from which the laws of peace crowded out their adversary, and everywhere we saw their advance connected with the advance of the economic means, of the barter of groups for equivalents, amongst one another. The first exchange may have been the exchange of fire, then the barter of women, and finally the exchange of goods, the domain of peace constantly extending its borders. It protected the market places, then the streets leading to them, and finally it protected the merchants traveling on these streets.

In the course of this discussion it was shown how the “state” absorbed and developed these organizations making for peace, and how in consequence these drive back ever further right based on mere might. Merchants’ law becomes city law; the industrial city, the developed economic means, undermines the feudal state, the developed political means; and finally the civic population, in open fight, annihilates the political remnants of the feudal state, and re-conquers for the entire population of the state freedom and right to equality, urban law becomes public law and finally international law.

Furthermore, on no horizon can be seen any force now capable of resisting effectively this heretofore efficient tendency. On the contrary, the interference of the past, which temporarily blocked the process, is obviously becoming weaker and weaker. The international relations of commerce and trade acquired among the nations a preponderating importance over the diminishing warlike and political relations; and in the intra-national sphere, by reason of the same process of economic development, movable capital, the creation of the right to peace, preponderates in ever increasing measure over landed property rights, the creation of the right of war. At the same time superstition more and more loses its influence. And therefore one is justified in concluding that the tendency so marked will work out to its logical end, excluding the political means and all its works, until the complete victory of the economic means is attained.

But it may be objected that in the modern constitutional state all the more prominent remnants of the antique law of war have already been chiseled out.

On the contrary, there survives a considerable remnant of these institutions, masked it is true in economic garb, and apparently no longer a legal privilege but only economic right, the ownership of large estates—the first creation and the last stronghold of the political means. Its mask has preserved it from undergoing the fate of all other feudal creations. And yet this last remnant of the right of war is doubtless the last unique obstacle in the pathway of humanity; and doubtless the development of economics is on its way to destroy it.

To substantiate these remarks I must refer the reader to other books, wherein I have given the detailed evidence of the above and can not in the space allotted here repeat it at large.[143] I can only re-state the principal points made in these books.