Weber, Sociology of Ancient Civilisations
His first masterpiece. In the 1890s Max Weber was far ahead of his time.
The Source:
Max Weber, The Agrarian Sociology of Ancient Civilisations, translated by R. I. Frank 1976
First published as ‘Die sozialen Gründe des Untergangs der antiken Kultur’, in Die Wahrheit, May 1896
Chapter 1
Economic Theory and Ancient Society
… Roman communities had agrarian systems which were fundamentally closer to those of mediaeval Europe. Antiquity took a different course, however, from the time when the masses, having been attached to the land for its intensive development, were no longer available for military service, so that a division of labour arose with a professional military class which then sought to exploit the defenceless masses for its own benefit. The development of military technique into a profession, presupposing permanent training and practice, sometimes accompanied this development and sometimes caused it.
In the early Middle Ages of Europe this process, as we know, led to the establishment of ‘feudalism’. Only the beginnings of a system similar to mediaeval feudalism can be found in Antiquity; there are no real analogies to the combination of vassalage and benefice or to the development of Roman-Germanic feudal law.
Still it appears unnecessary and unwise to limit the use of the concept ‘feudalism’ to its mediaeval form. Both East Asian and Amerindian civilizations had institutions which, because of their functions, we regard as essentially feudal in character.
There is no reason why the concept of feudalism should not be used to characterize all those social institutions whose basis is a ruling class which is dedicated to war or royal service and is supported by privileged land holdings, rents or the labour services of a dependent, unarmed population.
Thus one should call feudal the administrative benefices granted in Egypt and Babylon as well as the constitution of Sparta.
The differences between various forms of feudalism arise from variations in the manner in which the warrior class was organized and economically supported.
One of various possibilities is the distribution of the ruling class as landlords all over the country, as in that ‘individualistic’ pattern of feudalism which we find clearly delineated in mediaeval Europe, with origins going back to Late Antiquity.
Another form, however, developed in Mediterranean and in particular Greek Antiquity, where there appeared very early ‘feudal cities’, fortified centres settled by professional warriors. Not that this ‘city feudalism’ was the only form of feudalism in Antiquity, but it directly influenced the later centres of ‘classical’ political civilization in the beginnings of their political development. It was therefore in its way more significant for those centres than was the forcible settlement of the landed nobility in many cities during the Italian Middle Ages.
The import of a foreign and superior military technology took place in Antiquity in South Europe via the sea, and at the same time through the incorporation of conquered coastal areas into a commercial system which was, at least geographically, of considerable extent.
The feudal ruling class was at first always that class which derived profit from this trade. Therefore the feudal development characteristic of Antiquity led to the formation of feudal city states.
Central Europe, on the other hand, was transformed in the early Middle Ages by a similar development of military technique which came to it via land routes. When Central Europe was ripe for feudalism, it lacked the developed commerce such as had existed in Antiquity, and so feudalism there was based much more on the land; hence arose the manorial system.
The tie which held together the dominant military class was therefore essentially that of personal allegiance, whereas in Antiquity it was the much stronger tie of municipal citizenship.
The relation between ancient city feudalism and a trade economy recalls mediaeval developments: the rise of free industry in the cities, the downfall of patrician rule, the latent struggle between ‘city economy’ and ‘manorial economy’, and the disintegration of the feudal state due to the money economy of the later Middle Ages and modern epoch.
However, such comparisons with mediaeval and modern phenomena, although seemingly quite plausible, are highly unreliable for the most part, indeed are often an obstacle to clarity and understanding. For the similarities are all too easily deceptive. Ancient civilization had specific characteristics which sharply differentiate it from mediaeval and modern civilizations. Its economic focus, until the beginning of the Roman Empire, was the coast in the Occident and the rivers in Egypt and the Near East.
Although ancient trade, both interlocal and international, was geographically extensive and highly profitable, it nevertheless, apart from a few important interludes, lagged behind that of the later Middle Ages in the relative volume of goods traded. It is true that ancient trade was varied and included base as well as precious metals, and more numerous raw materials than one would expect. Nevertheless ancient land trade was comparable with that of the later Middle Ages only in particular points and only in particular periods. Even in sea trade most commodities of mass consumption played a really significant role only in few periods of political or economic expansion, above all in cases where monopoly ports (‘staples’) were established, as at Athens and later at Rhodes, Egypt and Rome. …
… In each country political developments and conditions shaped the relative growth of free and unfree labour, and also the degree and manner in which unfree labour was subjected to capitalist exploitation. [The] importance of military burdens imposed on free populations … has shown that it furthered use of slave labour most of all where levies recruited from the farmers and small-owners had to equip themselves and fight a series of major wars. Well-known examples of this occurred during the flowering of Greek democracy and in the Roman Republic.
Conditions were just the opposite when the army, or at least part of it, was a feudal levy, or was an autocrat’s professional or mercenary or serf army; these types existed in Egypt, many Hellenistic states, the late Greek polis, and the Later Roman Empire. From the variety of economic systems in the last group of states it is apparent that military organization by itself determined neither the degree to which slavery developed, nor consequently the degree or direction in which capitalism developed.
On the other hand economic life was always much affected by the political systems of Antiquity, in particular by the type of administration which arose from the constitution in question. Most important of all in this respect was the financial administration.
For the organizations of public finance were the oldest large-scale enterprises of Antiquity, and they remained the largest. They developed gradually out of the oikoi of the city princes, and were at first hoards of precious metals. In part these enterprises functioned as substitutes for private capital accumulation, in part they were pace-makers for it and in part they throttled it.
Let us examine each aspect.
[MG: Oikos were non-market non-profit authoritarian households resourced by compulsory contributions of goods/labour, eventually eliminated by the ‘free market’.]
1.
Finance authorities were substitutes for private capital most clearly in the bureaucratically directed compulsory labour systems of pharaonic Egypt, which originally did not have private entrepreneurs. But even the financing of the large public projects of the Greek cities, which were let to private contractors (as the inscriptions show) was really made possible by advance of working capital from the state treasury, and this indicates that there were no private accumulations of capital sufficient to finance such large projects. In short, moneys raised as tribute by political or sacred authority had to fill the gap. In such cases the entrepreneur was essentially hired for a fee to organize the necessary clerical and labour force, as the cities – unlike the pharaonic administration – did not have the bureaucracy necessary to oversee building and had no pool of compulsory labour supply, since citizens had been freed from corvée and the city slaves were employed in government offices, registries, the treasury, the mint, and sometimes in building roads.
As for tax farming, it should be remembered that in many cases precisely that feature was absent which we are accustomed to think of as characteristic of the role of private capital: payment in advance. Often the tax farmers deposited their guaranteed payments only after they had collected all or – more often – an agreed part of the taxes. When the state possessed an executive officialdom, such as appears in the Revenue Laws of Ptolemaic Egypt, then tax farmers did not even collect taxes; the state did so, and the tax farmers either made up any deficit that appeared after converting taxes in kind into money, or else profited if there was a surplus. Here the purpose of farming the taxes was evidently no more than to obtain a secure cash basis for the state budget by insuring a minimum income in currency.
Now of course this was an aspect of the development of tax farming in Hellenistic times, and tax farmers did in fact often have the obligation of making at least partial advance payments. Nevertheless the sums paid, though often high, do not allow us to infer the existence of correspondingly large capital accumulations. On the other hand the system of state contracts, especially in the area of tax farming, was clearly an important factor in capital formation, and indeed in Greece one of the most important.
2.
Public finance set the pace for private capital formation in city states which could do without a bureaucratic apparatus and, instead, used state contractors to administer domains as well as territories and tributes of enormous conquered areas. In Antiquity this was the case in Republican Rome, in which there developed a powerful class of private capitalists, undoubtedly based from the first on the state contract system. In the era of the Second Punic War – the time is significant – they supported the state with money in the manner of modern banks, and in return were able to determine the state’s policies even during the war. Their thirst for profit was such that a reformer like Gracchus had to give them control of provinces and courts in order to win them over, and their struggle with the senatorial aristocracy (whom they economically controlled as money-lenders) dominated the last century of the Republic. Ancient capitalism reached its high point in this period, as a consequence of the constellation and of the unique political structure of the Roman state.
3.
On the other hand the public finance of the ancient states could also retard private capitalism in various ways. Above all the general political basis of ancient states typically reinforced the great instability of capital structure and formation inherent in the ancient economies. There were many pressures working in the same direction. Among them were the liturgies imposed on propertied classes and the unrestrained and sovereign power of the Greek city states – especially the democracies – over the private property of their citizens; in late Hellenistic times loans were still sometimes secured by mortgaging all private real estate in a city, a practice unknown in the Middle Ages. Furthermore there was the danger of confiscations, which occurred at every political upset and change of parties in ancient communities; and the not uncommon and wholly arbitrary expropriations of monarchies, such as the seizure of ‘half Africa’ by Nero.
However, much more important than these catastrophes which affected only particular interests or communities, was the general limitation imposed by public administrations on the profits of private capital, and thereby on capital formation. This limitation varied significantly. It was much more pronounced in the ancient monarchies than in the republics. The ancient monarch and members of his court were always great agrarian lords, whose position was secured partly in private law, partly in arbitrary domination exercised over conquered populations forced to pay tribute and denied any legal title to their land. The ancient polis could also control such possessions, and indeed the Roman Republic did so on a colossal scale.
Where a polis had such possessions they were primarily objects of purely economic exploitation by the changing cliques surrounding prominent political leaders, above all their financiers. Consequently city states, especially Rome, subjected their possessions to brutal exploitation by private capital through usurious tax farming, high mortgage rights, and slave trading. A monarch, however, had to act otherwise. In the first place he regarded the inhabitants of his domains essentially in more political terms – that is, as adherents of his dynasty. Furthermore a monarch naturally tended, in his own interests, to value security of revenues much more highly than would a republican government directed by officials elected for short terms; for the latter and their followers, immediate profit was much more important. Hence a monarch’s financial policy would be oriented more towards political and state-economic objectives, and hence would aim at a prudent and durable rate of exploitation based on the actual resources and capacity of his subjects. City-states, on the contrary, looted subject populations for the benefit of capitalist interests. Thus royal domains were generally let to small tenants, whereas the use of large contractors and slave plantations was very much the exception. It is true that the Roman emperors preferred large tenants on their family estates for pecuniary reasons, but on state domains they followed the normal rule.
But the crux was tax farming, the most important form of capital investment in Antiquity. In republican communities it was so central that it always tended to make the state an enterprise based on tax loans and tax contracts, like mediaeval Genoa. In monarchical states, on the contrary, tax farming was always under control, often entirely or nearly entirely nationalized, and always restricted in its profits. This of course reduced its role in capital formation. In these states it was usually limited by a combination of bureaucratic regulation and (relatively) modestly financed monopoly administration. This process of control, monopoly, and bureaucratic regulation – often leading to the complete exclusion of private capital – developed inexorably in all the great monarchies of Antiquity. Gradually it transformed the administration of taxes and domains, and also the supervision of the mines and of politically important activities such as the grain supply and the delivery of provisions for the court, army and public works. Furthermore it led to the emergence of state and municipal banks enjoying monopoly status, for example governing all money-changing activities in the Hellenistic monarchies and municipalities.
Thus there was a sharp distinction between the city states and monarchies of Antiquity. In the city states there always remained the possibility of accumulating and investing capital. This was true even though the constitutional character of city states greatly heightened the unstable composition of capital, less because of repeated efforts to attain economic equality within the citizenry – efforts which were nearly always unsuccessful – than because ancient party conflict and ancient warfare constantly led to political and economic catastrophes of every sort.
In the monarchies, on the other hand, capitalism was gradually checked by bureaucratic regulation. Large private accumulation in particular fared badly, for its major sources of profit were blocked, and so it was slowly starved out. This eventually caused stagnation in closed monarchical areas; exploitation of rural areas by cities, as essential in Antiquity as in the Middle Ages, came to a halt, and expansion through conquest of new land and population stopped. This meant that there ceased to be a plentiful supply of cheap slaves and exploitable land, both essential for growth in a capitalist slave labour economy.
Stagnation and decline in capital formation were regularly accompanied by measures designed to ensure fulfilment of the needs of the state. This process, well described recently by Rostovtzeff, meant a steady increase and differentiation of the number of those made liable with their persons or property for the performance of tasks assigned by the authorities. Such persons were tied to their land and social function by administrative law, until eventually society was universally dominated by a system of obligatory services, which abolished all that men of the ‘classical’ periods called freedom, in a mutation typical of the so-called ‘decline’ of ancient states.
Thus monarchical regulation, though beneficial to the great mass of subjects, spelt in fact the end of capitalist development and everything dependent on it. Slavery as a basis of capitalist enterprise regressed and new capital formation expired, for the profit margin allowed had sunk below the indispensable minimum needed by ancient capital. Instead the economy became dominated by labour which was formally ‘free’, but was in fact subject to administrative law and direction. Wherever, in addition, the monarchy assumed a theocratic character, there we always find that religion and law sanction ‘protection of the weak’ as in the Near East, and this set rather precise limits to capitalist exploitation of men.
For agrarian history the results of this development were always the same. The relative importance of slave plantations declined while small tenant farming – especially share cropping – became the main form of land use. Estates exploited for rents by princes, and landowners holding their land from princes on a semi-private basis, became the predominant category of property in the countryside.
To sum up, the most important hindrance to the development of capitalism in Antiquity arose from the political and economic characteristics of ancient society. The latter, to recapitulate, included: (1) the limits on market production imposed by the narrow bounds within which land transport of goods was economically feasible; (2) the inherently unstable structure and formation of capital; (3) the technical limits to the exploitation of slave labour in large enterprises and (4) the limited degree to which cost accounting was possible, caused primarily by the impossibility of strict calculation in the use of slave labour.
It should be noted in passing that private accounting was by no means undeveloped in Antiquity. It was used in banking and also by country estates and extended households to keep inventory. Only the first kind was commercial in character. All other forms of private accounting were – as far as we know – still quite undifferentiated as compared with those of later mediaeval times, judging by the capitalist standard of how accurately profit margins were reckoned.
Large enterprises based on slave labour were not created in Antiquity for economic reasons – that is, in order to assure a form of production based on division and coordination of labour: rather, they arose from purely personal circumstances – the fortuitous accumulation of a large number of slaves in the possession of a single individual. This, then, is the correct interpretation of the oikos-theory. It explains why all large enterprises had a peculiarly unstable, evanescent character. Publicans, artisans, shop-keepers – these were the mainstay of the money economy in the Near East and in the Hellenistic States, and when political and economic stability arrived in the West, there too there was a decline in capital formation, and these groups became predominant.
Again and again we find that it is precisely in the periods of ‘justice and order’ – equivalent of course to periods of economic stability – that there occurred a swift decline of capitalism. Capitalist entrepreneurs, not to be confused with gentlemen rentiers, generally enjoyed only a rather precarious social position in Antiquity. Conditions differed somewhat at certain periods of Babylonian, Hellenistic, late republican and early imperial Roman history, but certainly in the classical periods proper most entrepreneurs were metics and freedmen. Another indication of low status is that men engaged in trade were often ineligible for office, even – or rather, especially – in democracies.
In fact, ancient political theory was based on the ideal of the ‘independent citizen’, which meant in practice a rentier able to live on his income and also – this was especially important in the ‘free’ communities – ready to serve in the army whenever needed.
Ancient political theory was hostile to the profit motive, but not in the main for reasons similar to those of the mediaeval church, which condemned impersonal commercial relations because they could not be subjected to ethical norms.
Political, rather than ethical, considerations determined ancient ideas on the subject. Reasons of state, equality of citizens and autarky of the polis were at the centre of these ideas, and there was also the contempt for trade and tradesmen cultivated by the leisured upper classes.
Businessmen, on the other hand, were not sustained by any positive justification of the profit motive. Only among followers of Cynicism and in the lower middle classes of the Hellenistic Near East do we find the beginnings of such an attitude. In early modern times the rationalization and economization of life were furthered by the essentially religious idea of ‘vocation’ and the ethic derived from it, but nothing similar arose in Antiquity. The ancient businessman remained no more than a ‘common tradesman’ in his own eyes and in the eyes of his contemporaries.
There were of course exceptions, most notably in the area of marine commerce. From the first the ownership of ships and their use to transport goods for sale by employees was ‘respectable’; kings, temples, and aristocrats of coastal areas engaged in this in early Antiquity. Then there developed genuine mercantile operations (Emporia), involving the use of hired ships to transport purchased or consigned goods to centres of commerce, first as a joint venture and then for the profit of a single organizer. This too was considered respectable, although always with reserve, but only because it involved the irregular use of one’s property and did not have the character of an ‘established business’, and so it does not really weaken our argument.
Another factor which checked the development of capitalism in Antiquity was the great variety of distinctions which divided the population into hereditary classes, especially in the ‘free’ city-states. Political considerations also caused differentiation in the law of property, especially as it concerned land and inheritance. All of these distinctions could and did become sources of income, equivalent to rents. Especially in the democracies the interest of the lower middle classes in safeguarding their incomes and food supply became the dominant factor in city politics; a good example is Athenian citizenship policy. Even in the monarchies this attitude was influential as long as it did not conflict with the state’s omnipotent fiscal interests.
It should be noted here that the course of agrarian history in Antiquity was so closely connected with the fortunes of the cities that the two subjects cannot be treated separately. Although rural areas outside the municipal structure formed of course the greater part of the ancient world, little clear evidence about conditions there has come down to us. Even more scanty is our knowledge of conditions in the territorial possession of cities before they were conquered, and indeed virtually nothing of the sort has been preserved from the subjected peoples themselves. The most ancient tradition of the Hebrews must have its origins in a period before the municipal organization of the nation, but it arose in a milieu shaped by centuries of urbanism and alien domination of advanced nations, and it is also impossible to determine to what extent the oldest elements of the tradition were later revised.
As for the Occident, although we come upon peoples there living in stages of development much more primitive than those of Babylon or Egypt, nevertheless the problem is the same. For example, we cannot be sure what was the original character of the canton or village – that is, before military differentiation (to be discussed) affected them – because the little evidence we have about conditions and institutions in historical times may well be shaped by the influence of bordering urbanized areas. This applies even to areas without municipal institutions, such as Arcadia, Samnium, and Persis (modern Fars).
Nor can we arrive at conclusive answers to such questions as when did such institutions as the phratry, phyle, curia, tribe and clan appear. Before that is possible we must know whether the Greek phratry – generally regarded as especially ancient – is essentially similar in character to other such institutions known to us from ethnography, or is different. If different, then despite all contrary arguments it was probably the result of a secondary development conditioned by military factors.
Nevertheless one long-accepted theory about the early social history of Antiquity may now be regarded as disproven – the theory that the occidental peoples originally led a nomadic life, and that their economy was entirely pastoral. This theory was based on such facts as that cattle played an important role among all occidental peoples as the chief element of movable property, and was therefore the main type of wealth used for exchange and tribute; that cattle ownership was used as the basis for class distinctions and cattle formed a major part of royal wealth (along with metal jewellery and sumptuous weapons); and, finally, that cattle rearing was regarded as a specifically masculine occupation and was therefore not demeaning to a nobleman. Despite all this the theory is untenable, although perhaps exception should be made for some eastern groups living near deserts.
Another plausible theory which must be rejected is that noble clans arose out of the conquest of sedentary agricultural groups by pastoral tribes. Although individual examples may be proven, the general theory is nevertheless untenable, for it was on the coasts that the ancient aristocratic states especially arose and developed in very early times. Furthermore other sources of power supported the dominant position of kings and nobles.
However, we do not have any reliable evidence concerning the social organization of agricultural societies in their earliest period, although agriculture was practised by all the peoples with whom we are concerned from the earliest prehistoric times of which we have knowledge. But one thing is clear: there are certain stages of organization, and these were recapitulated by all the peoples in Antiquity from the Seine to the Euphrates among whom urban centres developed. These stages were:
(1)
First walls existed to provide defence against attack, and it was within these walls that cities later arose, but at this stage household and village continued to be the centres of economic life. Clan, cult, and military associations still provided for security and shaped religious and political institutions. Little more than this can be said, for we have no reliable information concerning the structure and interaction of these associations in the period before Antiquity.
We do know that all free members of the community had a share in ownership of the land, and where slaves were not numerous they also did part of the field work. Chiefs were probably similar in (transient) function and status to those of the early Germans, for they were never present except where the threat of war existed, and as judges their decisions were backed – as among most primitive peoples – only by moral authority. Furthermore they always had to respect the tradition which entitled the elders of the tribe to give counsel. It was of course the particular political situation which determined whether general problems arose.
Originally the sense of community arose out of joint efforts to produce food. Later ties based upon blood developed, and they gained strength first among princely clans, since the memory of their military exploits or meritorious judgments conferred upon them an aura of divine legitimacy. Their economic position was enhanced by voluntary gifts, by preference in the division of spoil, and later by special allotments of land.
(2)
Next there appeared a form of settlement with more urban characteristics – the fortress. At its head was a ‘king’, elevated above his subjects by possession of land, slaves, herds and treasure, and surrounded by a personal retinue, the members of which dined at the royal table, enjoyed the ownership or use of royal land, slaves, herds and treasure, and served under the king in wars or on plundering expeditions. Relations between king and subject varied. If royal policy aimed at peace, then the monarch simply relied on occasional gifts; but if the monarch’s wish was to conquer an ‘empire’, then the population was forced to pay tribute, perform labour services, and provide recruits for supply on infantry duty at command.
We have no evidence as to the status of the land (and inhabitants) outside the fortress at this stage. But we know that two factors were generally necessary for establishment of a fortress kingdom: (a) fruitful land, able to support rent payments; (b) profit from commerce. Furthermore we know that the members of a royal retinue always formed a new and foreign element in the primitive community of peasants; everywhere we find that royal law and feudal law were separate from tribal law.
Indeed, members of the royal retinue were often regarded as foreigners, even when in fact they were not. For example, the followers of David (Krethi and Plethi) and of Romulus were supposed to have been bandits; similar traditions are found among many primitive peoples. It is possible that traces of such an idea explain the position of royal vassals in Mesopotamia (see below).
Once a king emerged as a conqueror, however, the foreign status of his military followers often came, quite naturally, to correspond with the actual situation. Above all the royal bodyguard became, for various reasons, a mercenary body. Hence the formation of larger realms became possible, with the differentiations in wealth of the fortress-kings; the king with the largest ‘treasure’ could make other kings his vassals. This was the original of nearly all ancient ‘states’.
(3)
The next stage, closer to the ‘classical’ traditions of the Mediterranean peoples in Antiquity, is represented by the aristocratic city-state. In this the dominant class possessed lands and serfs (or debt slaves) which enabled its members to train themselves for war, provide themselves with the costly weapons necessary, and live the life of knights. Aristocratic clans controlled a citadel and from there dominated the surrounding area. This stage too was reached only where two factors were present: (a) rich land, to sustain rental payments; (b) proximity to a coast, to allow profits from commerce.
It was at this time that the feudal nobility of the old fortress kingdom emancipated itself from royal authority and constituted itself as an autonomous, urban community, in which rank was determined by military criteria and rule was exercised either by a king who was no more than first among equals or else – and this usually developed with time – by elected magistrates. In any case, however, these cities were not administered by bureaucracies, a fact of decisive importance.
It should be noted in passing that the urban character of these communities distinguished the development of Antiquity from the analogous development of feudalism and manorialism on the European continent in the early Middle Ages; although in Italy early mediaeval institutions were somewhat similar.
The aristocratic city was in fact a league of great ‘clans’. Only those men were admitted who could live the life of a knight and take part in the city’s military institutions. It was at this time that great value came to be placed on ‘blood’ and high birth.
In this form of society the typical – though not the only – form of labour-power was the debt slave, for the aristocracy was at first a class of money-lenders and then became a class of landowners living on rents. Most peasants fell into debt, then slipped into a form of debt slavery. Thus the open land outside the city came to be divided, part of it being farmed by independent peasants outside the aristocratic families, the rest being worked by a large class of debt slaves. Sometimes the latter were legally distinguished from free men as a separate order, but generally the same effect was achieved by the debt and trial law of early times, combined with aristocratic domination of the courts and the associated institution of clientage.
(4)
Sometimes the fortress kingdom developed in a direction quite different from that just sketched. If the king gained sufficient economic resources to become master of his retinue and army to the extent that he could bind them to his own person, then he was able to take a step of fundamental importance: create a bureaucracy entirely subordinate to himself and organized on hierarchical principles. With the aid of such a bureaucracy the king could govern his subjects directly, and the city then became no more than the royal capital where he and his court resided.
Sometimes the capital had no autonomy whatever, as in Egypt, which supposedly ‘had no cities’. Elsewhere, as in Assur, autonomy was conceded in religious affairs. In still other cases the capital enjoyed a degree of unpolitical local autonomy under royal control and had certain privileges; Babylon is an example for which we have documentary evidence.
What of the land outside the city gates? We have little evidence on conditions during the early stages of the authoritarian city kingdom. Sometimes heavy taxes and labour services were imposed on subjects to such a degree as to lead to a form of complete ‘state socialism’, as in Egypt. In other cases a rather large sector of private economy continued to exist. The decisive factor here was the manner in which the needs of the royal household were met – that is, whether through forced labour services or through ‘taxes’. One can therefore say that the system would tend towards one or another of two types: a regime based on forced labour or one based on tribute. Generally the former developed out of the latter, and it in turn was transformed by a process of ‘rationalization’ into the tax-and-liturgy state.
Commerce played a crucial role in the development of types 2 and 3 (there were of course many variations of these ‘pure’ types). Always type 2 appeared only when the chief monopolized foreign trade or at least was able to tax it – more or less like the ‘kings’ in the Camerun before the German occupation and to some extent since. Such control was vital because it enabled rulers to accumulate a ‘hoard’, as essential to the primitive ‘kings’ of the Nibelungen as to those of Mycenae, Persia, and India. Hence too the significance of the provisions in Deuteronomy by which the theocracy prevented the Hebrew kings from accumulating a hoard.
Accumulation of hoards went hand in hand with the economic subjection of the peasantry. A typical example is preserved in the legend of Joseph in Genesis 47,15–26: first the peasants borrow grain in time of need to have food and seed; then in order to repay this they must hand over their cattle, land, and their own persons into debt slavery; finally, they receive them back and henceforth work their land as share croppers.
Whether further development tended towards types 3 (aristocratic polis) or 4 (bureaucratic city kingdom) [above] evidently depended upon the interaction of a complex of factors, some of them geographic, others purely historical. In either case, however, the economic burdens laid upon the populace to satisfy the needs of the government were in inverse proportion to the development of private domestic trade. This was true whether these burdens were imposed in ‘domanial’ or ‘public’ form, and whether the proceeds went to a group of ruling families or to the royal oikos.
[Dict. domanial: relating to the control or ownership of an area of territory by a ruler or government: this domanial regime suited large-scale landlords. ORIGIN early 19th century: from French, from medieval Latin domanialis, from domanium ‘lordship’.]
However, as soon as either regime (type 3 or 4) could depend mainly on taxes it then took a natural attitude towards transfers of land. There continued to be, however, laws protecting the rights of heirs, and there were also limitations connected with estate tenure (in the aristocratic polis) or military obligations (in the monarchical city). Then under bureaucratic monarchy (type 4) the matter came to be of little concern to the ruler once he could rely upon ‘his own’ army as well as a bureaucratic fiscal system, and so full freedom of trade in land was allowed. The aristocratic families desired this so far as peasant property was concerned, for their position depended in part on the practice of usury, but they did not wish this freedom to extend to their own lands. Hence the formation of extended aristocratic clans (gentes) led to entailment in law or in practice.
[Dict. entail Law: limit inheritance of (property) over a number of generations so that ownership remains within a particular family or group: limitation of the inheritance of property to certain heirs over a number of generations: the damage being done in England by entails | [mass noun] : landed property was governed by primogeniture and entail. A property bequeathed under an entail: the spinning mills were not part of the entail. DERIVATIVES entailment | noun. ORIGIN late Middle English (referring to settlement of property; formerly also as intail): + Old French taille ‘notch, tax’.]
On the other hand despotic rulers had good reason to oppose the development of autonomous patrimonial lordships, except those they themselves sanctioned; Napoleon’s attitude is a recent example. That is why ‘tyrants’ often checked the tendency to accumulation of land, where it threatened, as in Greece, or promoted division of lands, where it had occurred, as in the Near East.
To sum up: type 4 was the bureaucratic city kingdom or bureaucratic river kingdom; in it the army and bureaucracy ‘belonged’ to the ruler, while his ‘subjects’ owed him labour services and tribute. As the state’s needs were met in increasingly rationalized manner a new form of state appeared, namely
(5)
The authoritarian liturgical state, in which the state’s necessities were met by a carefully contrived system of duties imposed on the state’s subjects, now treated as purely fiscal units.
[According to Weber’s translators “liturgical” in such contexts refers to obligatory payments made ostensibly as gifts by officials or officeholders as in ancient Greece.]
Using their [liturgical] form as a basis for analysis, we can divide these duties into the following three categories:
(a) labour services rendered directly to the court and state;
(b) monopolies based upon labour services and upon coercive laws of various types;
(c) taxes, often paid mainly in money or by delivery of goods of money value, but accompanied by a punitive system based on compulsory surety for punctual payment which betrays the functional tendency so often typical of oriental despots.
This type of state did not put limits on commerce, unless its fiscal interests were threatened. Quite the contrary; it fostered commerce by direct action whenever this meant increased revenue.
‘Enlightened despotism’ of this sort generally developed in the ancient Near East directly out of the more primitive forms of the bureaucratic city kingdom, and indeed differed from the latter type only in its more rationalized organization. On the other hand the third type (aristocratic polis) led to a great variety. of transitional forms, among them
(6)
The hoplite polis of Mediterranean lands, in which the domination of the clans over the city and of the city over rural areas was legally abolished. Participation in the city’s military institutions was relatively democratized by the predominance of a hoplite army, while military service – and with it full citizenship – now became entirely dependent on ownership of land. A self-equipped citizen army emerged. From this developed
(7)
The democratic citizen polis, in which army service and with it citizenship rights were no longer dependent on ownership of land. There also existed a tendency in the coastal cities to allow anyone able to serve in the fleet to hold office; since naval service involved virtually no expense this meant in practice that all citizens could become eligible for office without regard to property qualification. But this tendency never wholly triumphed, not even in the most radical period of the Athenian democracy.
In the hoplite polis (type 6) the core of the army was recruited from the free citizen yeomanry. Hence trade in this form of state was not unrestricted, especially trade in land. The legislative programmes by which, typically, hoplite poleis were founded had as their aim the establishment of a lasting, generally accessible system of law as well as the stabilization of the social order by the amelioration of class conflict between creditors (aristocrats) and debtors (peasants).
Hence land ownership was closely regulated, partly to sustain clan rights and partly to ensure that a maximum number of able bodied hoplites would be available. In short, the polis pursued policies designed to preserve its yeomanry. Expansion of estate holding was blocked by both direct and indirect means; e.g. limits were set on the quantity of land or number of slaves a citizen might possess, and old debt laws were repealed. Along with this went other efforts to reduce distinctions within the citizen body and to promote a ‘civil economy’.
Nevertheless the interests of the wealthy and of the urban classes prevailed. By the time of the transition to type 7, if not sooner, all land had become entirely or almost entirely transferable and free from any entail. It is this basic development which shapes agrarian conditions in the periods for which we have written sources. What existed before is revealed to us by a great variety of survivals, ranging from extreme cases like Sparta to the limited areas in the late Roman Republic still subject to liturgies [see above] such as responsibility for road building.
To sum up: the ‘classical’ polis consciously did away with the institutions of earlier times. It cannot be a coincidence that neither in the Near East nor in the West did the private land law of historical times include any provision for entail or acknowledge any labour service or tribute obligations on the land to individuals.
Indeed no obligations went with land ownership except those connected with (a) mortgages and (b) the absolutely necessary provisions for water and road maintenance.
Furthermore the classical polis did away with all communal forms of ownership and with all forms of feudal tenure, and ceased to regulate the subdivision of land by testament or other means, while keeping the right to impose labour services or inheritance taxes itself. What remained in effect was the right to rent land for money or part of the crop, an arrangement made solely for profit and subject to cancellation by either owner or renter.
Once these conditions had been established the flowering of capitalism followed. Slaves ceased to be recruited from debtors, and were instead purchased. The subsequent development of land ownership and land use under the impact of the new slave system and of the city-state’s political fortunes is the basic theme of the agrarian history of the ‘classical’ periods. That history is shaped by the decline of the free yeomanry which had prospered under the hoplite polis, and its replacement by slaves or sharecroppers. Parallel with this went the formation of mercenary armies or, as in Rome, armies of the proletariat.
Thus the free tenant and the slave mark the end of the ‘classical’ periods; the former was more common in the Near East, the latter in the West. Nevertheless neither group ever became exclusively dominant, for everywhere free yeomen remained present and often they were settled in compact groups and formed the majority.
Then came periods in which the city-state was completely displaced by universal military monarchy, and it was in such epochs that an entirely new institution appeared: the manor. Certain basic characteristics defined it: peasants were bound to the land to the profit of the lord (but also to his cost) with more or less traditional rights and obligations; judicial power was in the hands of the lord; public burdens, especially taxes and army recruitment, were met by the manors; and the manors enjoyed immunities of various kinds. These are phenomena which the citizen polis (types 6 and 7) naturally did not know, and indeed consciously excluded. The emergence of the manor therefore appears as an entirely new development.
In fact, however, the manor had never ceased to exist. Its sphere of influence and relative importance was much reduced after the time of the fortress kingdom, but in the large, unurbanized, inland areas there were certainly always present manors of more or less evident character. When the Near Eastern city kingdoms and liturgy [see above] monarchies developed into ‘world empires’, these manors maintained their character as domains or as fiefs. Such empires were therefore really conglomerates of urban and manorial areas. This was true first of Assyria and later of Persia.
Similarly in the Hellenistic monarchies the royal domains kept their manorial character, for there the monarch united in his person proprietary and public authority. Probably other areas also continued to retain manorial features, even though the Hellenistic monarchs – except in Egypt – strongly promoted and propagated cities as agents of control.
In the Roman Empire, the final phase of Antiquity, the centres of culture and population (the latter being of military significance) shifted inland in the West away from the coasts. This meant fundamental changes in the entire social basis and administrative problems of the state.
These changes, their economic effects, and their influence on imperial policies, combined to foster new social institutions which mark the transition to mediaeval society. Therefore the major aspects of the agrarian history of this period and of manorialism in late Antiquity in general will be examined in a separate article under the heading ‘colonate’.
The analysis just presented depends upon the use of various ‘types’: peasant community, aristocratic polis, bureaucratic city kingdom, hoplite polis, citizen polis, liturgy monarchy.
Needless to say, these types seldom existed in complete isolation. They are ‘pure types’, concepts to be used in classifying individual states. They simply allow us to ask whether a particular state at a particular time more or less approximated to one or another of these pure types. More than an ‘approximation’ cannot be expected, for actual state structures in the most important phases of history are too complex to be comprehended by so simple a classification as the one used here.
Indeed, one historically important type has not even been mentioned: the military peasant community constituted as a hoplite band. Examples of this in Antiquity are numerous, but in my opinion are always secondary; that is, they appear in connection with the partial adoption of urban institutions, as among the ancient Hebrews, the Aetolians, and the Samnites.
Nevertheless, besides providing a useful terminology the classification presented here has the value of indicating how very different were the stages which each of the nations of Antiquity had reached when, as chance would have it, their history starts to be revealed to us by our sources. Mesopotamia had passed through several thousand years of urban development and Egypt had a similarly long history of semi-urban development when they first emerge in our sources; they are, in fact, already liturgy monarchies [in the sense of ‘liturgy’ defined earlier].
When we first learn anything secure about the Romans they have already passed the stage of the citizen polis. For the Greeks, on the other hand, we have much fairly secure information going back to the aristocratic polis or even to the fortress kingdom stage. Our information concerning the Celts – which is unreliable; hence they have not been considered in our analysis – relates to all three earliest stages. Finally, our sources for the history of Sparta, of the Athenian democracy in its imperial period, and of Rome furnish in each case unique examples of development. Because of this basic aspect of our knowledge of Antiquity, we must be prepared to combine individual characteristics from various conceptual ‘types’ in order to describe the history of a single nation in concrete terms.
Finally there is one historical factor which raises particular obstacles to the application of our classification. That is the manifest or latent struggle between theocratic and secular-political forces, for often this conflict introduced military institutions from more than one of our ‘types’.
Originally there must have been a union of political and religious authority everywhere, but with the development of theology and an educated priesthood functional specialization became inevitable.
Great power remained in the hands of the priests, partly because of their wealth from temple lands and income, partly because the masses looked to them for salvation from punishment for sacrilege, and partly because they were originally the only men of learning.
From this followed two important results: (1) in general, since priests enjoyed a monopoly of legal knowledge, and since the priesthoods were held by members of the aristocratic families, these families enjoyed a position of unassailable dominance as long as the law remained uncodified; (2) all education, especially in the bureaucratic monarchies, where training was necessary for employment in the administration, was almost entirely in the hands of priests.
Throughout the Near East the priesthood strove to gain control of education; we see this tendency clearly in the Egyptian New Empire, where the priests displaced secular officials and secular education.
Hence certain conflicts are characteristic of early Antiquity: temple priesthood versus military nobility and royal authority in bureaucratic monarchies, commoners versus the monopoly of legal knowledge enjoyed by noble priests in aristocratic states. All sorts of alliances occurred. These conflicts influenced social and economic developments, especially in periods of general secularization or restoration; the latter were usually due to usurpers striving for legitimacy. There were important differences in this respect between Near Eastern and Western societies, and these will be discussed below.
In the second part of this essay a sketch will be given of what is known about the agrarian history of those states which are historically most significant. Complete coverage of all known systems would be impossible, for the primary sources published during the last decade are so extensive and complex as to defy interpretation, by any other than specialized scholars trained in philology and archaeology.
Tell your friends and colleagues about Social Science Files
Social Science Files displays multidisciplinary writings on a great variety of topics relating to evolutions of social order from the earliest humans to the present day and future machine age