Forward to the Past - Feudalism and Communism
The core countries of Central Europe (the Czech Republic,
Hungary and, to a lesser extent, Poland) experienced industrial
capitalism in the inter-war period. But the countries comprising
the vast expanses of the New Independent States, Russia and the
Balkan had no real acquaintance with it. To them its zealous
introduction is nothing but another ideological experiment and
not a very rewarding one at that.
It is often said that there is no precedent to the extant
fortean transition from totalitarian communism to liberal
capitalism. This might well be true. Yet, nascent capitalism is
not without historical example. The study of the birth of
capitalism in feudal Europe may yet lead to some surprising and
potentially useful insights.
The Barbarian conquest of the teetering Roman Empire (410-476
AD) heralded five centuries of existential insecurity and
mayhem. Feudalism was the countryside's reaction to this
damnation. It was a Hobson's choice and an explicit trade-off.
Local lords defended their vassals against nomad intrusions in
return for perpetual service bordering on slavery. A small
percentage of the population lived on trade behind the massive
walls of Medieval cities.
In most parts of central, eastern and southeastern Europe,
feudalism endured well into the twentieth century. It was
entrenched in the legal systems of the Ottoman Empire and of
Czarist Russia. Elements of feudalism survived in the
mellifluous and prolix prose of the Habsburg codices and
patents. Most of the denizens of these moribund swathes of
Europe were farmers - only the profligate and parasitic members
of a distinct minority inhabited the cities. The present
brobdignagian agricultural sectors in countries as diverse as
Poland and Macedonia attest to this continuity of feudal
practices.
Both manual labour and trade were derided in the Ancient World.
This derision was partially eroded during the Dark Ages. It
survived only in relation to trade and other "non-productive"
financial activities and even that not past the thirteenth
century. Max Weber, in his opus, "The City" (New York,
MacMillan, 1958) described this mental shift of paradigm thus:
"The medieval citizen was on the way towards becoming an
economic man ... the ancient citizen was a political man".
What communism did to the lands it permeated was to freeze this
early feudal frame of mind of disdain towards "non-productive",
"city-based" vocations. Agricultural and industrial occupations
were romantically extolled. The cities were berated as hubs of
moral turpitude, decadence and greed. Political awareness was
made a precondition for personal survival and advancement. The
clock was turned back. Weber's "Homo Economicus" yielded to
communism's supercilious version of the ancient Greeks' "Zoon
Politikon". John of Salisbury might as well have been writing
for a communist agitprop department when he penned this in
"Policraticus" (1159 AD): "...if (rich people, people with
private property) have been stuffed through excessive greed and
if they hold in their contents too obstinately, (they) give rise
to countless and incurable illnesses and, through their vices,
can bring about the ruin of the body as a whole". The body in
the text being the body politic.
This inimical attitude should have come as no surprise to
students of either urban realities or of communism, their
parricidal off-spring. The city liberated its citizens from the
bondage of the feudal labour contract. And it acted as the
supreme guarantor of the rights of private property. It relied
on its trading and economic prowess to obtain and secure
political autonomy. John of Paris, arguably one of the first
capitalist cities (at least according to Braudel), wrote: "(The
individual) had a right to property which was not with impunity
to be interfered with by superior authority - because it was
acquired by (his) own efforts" (in Georges Duby, "The age of the
Cathedrals: Art and Society, 980-1420, Chicago, Chicago
University Press, 1981). Despite the fact that communism was an
urban phenomenon (albeit with rustic roots) - it abnegated these
"bourgeoisie" values. Communal ownership replaced individual
property and servitude to the state replaced individualism. In
communism, feudalism was restored. Even geographical mobility
was severely curtailed, as was the case in feudalism. The
doctrine of the Communist party monopolized all modes of thought
and perception - very much as the church-condoned religious
strain did 700 years before. Communism was characterized by
tensions between party, state and the economy - exactly as the
medieval polity was plagued by conflicts between church, king
and merchants-bankers. Paradoxically, communism was a faithful
re-enactment of pre-capitalist history.
Communism should be well distinguished from Marxism. Still, it
is ironic that even Marx's "scientific materialism" has an
equivalent in the twilight times of feudalism. The eleventh and
twelfth centuries witnessed a concerted effort by medieval
scholars to apply "scientific" principles and human knowledge to
the solution of social problems. The historian R. W. Southern
called this period "scientific humanism" (in "Flesh and Stone"
by Richard Sennett, London, Faber and Faber, 1994). We mentioned
John of Salisbury's "Policraticus". It was an effort to map
political functions and interactions into their human
physiological equivalents. The king, for instance, was the brain
of the body politic. Merchants and bankers were the insatiable
stomach. But this apparently simplistic analogy masked a
schismatic debate. Should a person's position in life be
determined by his political affiliation and "natural" place in
the order of things - or should it be the result of his
capacities and their exercise (merit)? Do the ever changing
contents of the economic "stomach", its kaleidoscopic
innovativeness, its "permanent revolution" and its propensity to
assume "irrational" risks - adversely affect this natural order
which, after all, is based on tradition and routine? In short:
is there an inherent incompatibility between the order of the
world (read: the church doctrine) and meritocratic (democratic)
capitalism? Could Thomas Aquinas' "Summa Theologica" (the world
as the body of Christ) be reconciled with "Stadt Luft Macht
Frei" ("city air liberates" - the sign above the gates of the
cities of the Hanseatic League)?
This is the eternal tension between the individual and the
group. Individualism and communism are not new to history and
they have always been in conflict. To compare the communist
party to the church is a well-worn clich