On Thu, Mar 04, 2010 at 10:33:50AM -0500, waistli...@aol.com wrote: > New Description of feudalism > Current definition under construction. > > II. Feudalism: pre-industrial agrarian society where the primary form of > wealth is land property. The two basic classes defining this system are the > serfs form of working class, and the aristocracy or landlord class. There > are other groupings of small producers commodity producers in society but > they do not determine that chief characteristics of the system. The form of > the working class - (servitude of the serf), and his relationship in this > system of landed property defines this mode of production. The productive > forces of feudal society are based on deploying the technology of handicraft > and manufacture. Localized manual labor provided the economic base for > feudalism. > > The serfs are obligated to work the land and hand over a part of the > produce to their “lords“ and “masters” or land owner. Since the amount of the > > produce given to the lords were laid down by custom, the serf knew in > advance that raising their level of productivity would directly improve the > lives > of their family. The serf form of servitude provides self motivation of > this class for the growth of this manual labor system and an impulse to > raise > the productivity of labor. The class struggle of the two basic classes of > the feudal system drives the system through its various stages of > development. This essence of this class struggle is over shares of the > social > product and for a "more understanding and noble lord and master." . > > Several development caused the break up and finally the overthrow of the > feudal system. The gradual transition in the primary form of wealth from > land to gold begins the break up of feudalism. With the growth of commerce, > manufacture, free laborers, capital and the scientific revolution, new > classes > grow up around the new productive forces and enter into antagonism with > the feudal system. These new classes voice new demands for individual > freedom > and rights unattainable within the old feudal system of privilege, social > rating and ritual heritage. An epoch of social revolution opened.
I'm kinda here clearing out some old messages. I've already commented on feudalism, and I hestitate to say much more because it is a concept I'll be working on before too long and I hesitate to put my foot in the doo-doo at this point. One concern is a unilineal notion of stages which _might_ suggest (in most peoples' minds it clearly does suggest, but not my own) that a feudal state must follow upon some kind of ancient stage (such as slavery or AMP) and is a precondition to capitalism. Earlier today I brought up ceteris paribus, and this is a case where it seems very relevant. For example, if we have an ancient mode of production (however we define it other than as being feudal), and if, say, under the impact of globalization or imperialism, it jumps to capitalism without clearly going through a feudal stage, we can argue around that problem by appealing to the intervening contingency. So I don't see this as a big concern. Another issue is if we define it as a constant conjuncture of certain empirically-defined entities, such as the traditional Eurocentric definition, we immediate get into trouble, and I think I've already touched on this a bit. But a structuralist view that underplays empirical specifics gets into trouble as well (such as Althusser's falling into disfavor). It seems obvious to me that somehow we have to bring concrete particulars and structure as aspects of one thing, and this gets me back my obsession with process. I think you hinted before something like this by alluding to different kinds of relations of production, and this seems positive as long as those relations are tied intimately with empirical specifics, such as the development of productive forces. I don't think this quite solves the problem, but seems the right direction. All these are preliminary comments, and so let me turn to your definition. I don't know about "pre-industrial". This word industry is ambiguous, for pre-capitalist societies had industries. I think some qualification is needed such as pre-capitalist industrial societies. I'm also not comfortable with the "agrarian" part. There's at least a lot of talk about nomadic-pastoral feudalism, and so one has to decide either that they really are not feudal, or the particular type of production is irrelevant to the feudal definition. The US was an agrarian society before, say, 1870, and yet was not feudal. Now "serfs" is a troublesome word. In some parts of Europe, free peasants were the majority; in others, servile status really had no particular significance. That is, a serf could well have effective control over "his" means of production, even though his ancestors centuries before had "borrowed" them from a lord. Another complication was that in might be called the "early middle ages" in Europe, a very significant increase in agricultural productivity reduced the relative value of the dues owed to one's lord, so that the dues in some cases were virtually symbolic (no exploitation), or in others the lord cooked up other means to extract a surplus, which being unsanctioned in custom, aroused the peasants to resist, even militarily. One reason for the crusades was that the lords weren't getting out of the peasantry what they would like and met stiff resistance. I mention this not to challenge your specific generalizations, but illustrate how complicated things can get if we rely on empirical generalization. Also, the notion of "serf" is embedded in conditions specific to Europe, where there had been slavery in the past (the word serf in origin means "slave"), but it is possible that feudal societies emerged from other roots. Without getting into specifics, the notion of "slave society" has probably been limited to just a few places like the ancient Mediterranean and India, and arguably are just one type of an "ancient mode of production". Complicated. Besides "serfs" possibly being peculiar to just portions of Europe, I have a problem calling them a part of the "working class". They were closer to petit bourgeosie (and acted like it), for they possessed the means of production and relied on their private manipulation of those means to develop. While one can find a few wage-earning workers in any society, they seem exceptional rather than typical in feudal society. In the Benedictine Rule, which contributed greatly to the ideology of Europe's medieval period, it said the monk was like a workman, whose virtues were his tools and salvation his wages. It choose an insignificant social group to identify the situation of a monk because a workman did not own means of production and so could not develop on his own; the monk could not look to his personal resources to achieve salvation. I don't understand your apparent reduction of productive forces to handicraft technology. Surely the agriculural forces of production were far more important. Also, while labor was localized for sure, the word "manual" makes me uncomfortable. Are we inclined to speak of the peasant working the soil as "manual labor"? I'm not sure. In the second paragraph, why the quotes around lord and master? The word "lord" was a generic term that refered to the person to whom you had a hereditary obligation, and was primarily economic at the lower level of society and political at the upper (although there's plenty of exceptions to this). But things are complicated. In places, an aristocrat could be more powerful than a peasant, and in others, a non-free serf could be a very powerful person indeed. While feudal society in Europe was clearly a hierarchical society, it was probably hierarchical in a different sense that we would mean today. Social cleavages corresponding to the hierarchy came on late in feudal Europe. The French king for quite a few centuries had to worry about his chickens, and in Montaillou we have a story about the long term affair going on between a peasant (actually pastoralist) and the local count's wife. The hiearchy seems more a traditional set of mutual provite obligations, perhaps much as we say today that a father has obligations to his children, that any precise ranking of power or status. Again, I don't intend to nitpick your generalization, but only illustrate that we look at realities rather than the ideal type of feudalism prevailing in Europe until, say, WWII, we get a quite different picture. Your point that class struggle drove the feudal system through its phases of development worries me. What "phases" are we talking about? I think probably what you are getting at is that class struggle deepened the feudal contradictions. For exaple, although this is a very rough generalization, one could say that the secure possession of petty property by the peasantry drove the aristocrat to develop by political means. The aristocrat usually has is own farm (his reserve) to ensure his social reproduction, but to develop, he had to crack some heads. For example, dragging along an hieress on the crusade so wait until she reached marriage age and by forcing marriage upon her you'd inherit her wealth. A good example is Eleanor of Aquitaine who gave up on the French king on the crusade, besides some screwing around, ended dumping him as useless. But then she had to skuttle about to avoid being grabbed by some greedy aristocratic bachelor to wanted her property, and so to get peace she married herself off to a petty king, Henry of England, so she could enjoy her enormous wealth back on the continent. This of course ended by the English king getting a big chunk of the continent, which was difficult to defend, and we end up to Jeanne d'Arc. And so the story goes. If you ran into her on the street (entirely possible in feudal society where there were no "gated communities" she would look act and talk more or less like everyone else. I imagine, though, she took care to hire a body guard, who seeing that you were not an aristocrat would take little notice of you as no threat. Oh well. Back to my point, there may have been "phases", but they are not obvious. Historians sense there's a difference between early middle ages, high middle ages, and late feudalism, which is called "Renaissance". I think this periodization does have some basis, but there's no consensus just what it is. Henry Adams, of US aristocratic fame, wrote a book called St. Michael and Chartres, in which he tried to capture the profound shift from one phase to another in the 11th century, as manifested in architectural stylistic change. But unless and until we can explain these periodic changes in terms of deepening contradictions, I think the subject is best avoided. Also, of course, we are talking about just certain areas in Europe, not a universal state of feudalism the world over. I can't resist a little hint here: the forces of agriculural production seems to have jumped dramatically at the end of the ancient Mediterranean world, and this would imply the peasant producer would be able to socially reproduce on his own terms and develop to a degree, which drove the aristoracy into what amounts to bank robbing in order to develop. The jousts, which are the subject of a lot of romantic literature and some Hollywood epics, were at bottem a way to make money or get title to land. And there was no honor involved. You would bribe one of your peasanmts to drop out of a tree onto your enemy when he was unexpecting, and stick a shive into his ribs. Oh well, I wander again. See why I hesitated to deal with feudalism? The more you get familiar with things, the more it becomes overwhelmingly complicated ;-) Your point about "more understanding" looses me. I have no serious problems with your last paragraph. One problem is that I know what you mean by talking about a shift to gold, that word might not be literally accurate. Making "transition in form of wealth" a historicalk agent to break up a mode of production worries me. I doubt the so called "scientific revolution" had any signficant effect. It is usually dated 16-17th century which I'm inclined to see as late feudal. There were technical developments (guns, printing, etc. which were important, but mostly we are looking at changes in technology rather than science. Science until the late in the 19th century was mostly a hobby of the elite and had little socio-economic impact (Second Industrial Revolution). Note incidentally, we have been talking about European history, but for the feudal mode of production, I don't know that we should be doing that. Haines _______________________________________________ Marxist-Leninist-List mailing list Marxist-Leninist-List@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxist-leninist-list
