Feudalism is a social system that existed in Western and Central Europe in the Middle Ages, although the characteristics of feudal society can be found in other regions of the world and in different eras. The term "feudalism" arose before the French Revolution and meant the "old order" (absolute monarchy, domination of the nobility). German Feudalismus, French feodalite are formed from the Latin feodum (feudum) - feud. In Marxism, feudalism is seen as a socio-economic formation preceding capitalism.

Fundamentals of feudalism

Feudalism is based on interpersonal relations: vassal and lord, subject and suzerain, peasant and large landowner. Feudalism is characterized by class-legal inequality, enshrined in law, and a knightly military organization. The ideological and moral basis of feudalism was Christianity, which determined the nature of medieval culture. The formation of feudalism covered the 5th-9th centuries - the period after the destruction of the Roman Empire by the barbarians. During the heyday of feudalism (12-13 centuries), cities and the urban population were economically and politically strengthened, estate-representative assemblies took shape (the English parliament, the French States General), the estate monarchy was forced to reckon with the interests not only of the nobility, but of all estates. The confrontation between the papacy and the secular monarchy created space for the assertion of personal freedom, which gradually undermined the class-hierarchical structure of feudalism. The development of the urban economy undermined the subsistence foundations of the dominance of the aristocracy, and the growth of free thought led to the outgrowth of heresies into the Reformation of the 16th century. Protestantism, with its new ethics and value system, favored the development of entrepreneurial activities of the capitalist type. The revolutions of the 16th-18th centuries marked basically the end of the era of feudalism.
Marxism considered feudalism as a class-based structure of society, characteristic of an agrarian in nature and predominantly a subsistence economy collective. In the ancient world, feudalism replaced the slave-owning system; in a number of cases, in particular in Russia, feudal relations developed directly on the basis of the primitive communal system. The feudal system of economic, social and political-legal relations is characterized by conditional ownership of land, the presence of a feudal hierarchy, legally unequal and socially closed estates. Significant civilizational and historical features distinguish the Western European model of feudalism from similar social systems not only in Asia and Africa, but also in Eastern Europe.
With all the variety of specific historical and regional varieties, stadial features, one can single out common features of the feudal system. First of all, it is feudal property, which is the monopoly of the feudal class on the main means of production - land. Ownership of land is associated with dominance over the direct producers - the peasants. For the feudal lord, land was valuable not in itself, but in combination with the worker who cultivated it. The peasant ran an independent household on a plot of land formally granted to him by the feudal lord, but this plot was actually in the hereditary use of the peasant family. Not having the right to own land, the peasant family was the owner of their tools and draft animals. From the relations of feudal property followed the right of the feudal lord to land rent, which acted in the form of corvée, natural or cash quitrent. The feudal mode of production is based on a combination of large landed property of the feudal class and individual farming of the direct producers, the peasants.

Non-economic coercion

An important feature of the feudal system was non-economic coercion of the peasants, which could take the form of class inequality and serfdom. The established economic independence of the peasant, in comparison with the position of a slave under the slave system, opened up opportunities for increasing labor productivity and developing the productive forces of society, but in general, for feudalism, as for a social system with a predominance of the agrarian economy, subsistence farming, and small-scale individual production, it was characteristic slow development of agricultural technology and crafts. The feudal mode of production determined the following features: the social structure of the feudal society (estate, hierarchy, corporatism), the political superstructure (public power as an attribute of land ownership), the ideological life of society (the dominance of the religious worldview), the socio-psychological makeup of the individual (the communal connectedness of consciousness and traditionality worldview).
The world-historical era of feudalism is traditionally associated with the Middle Ages and dates from the end of the 5th to the middle of the 17th centuries, but in most regions of the world feudal relations dominated and persisted in the subsequent era, while the content of the modern era was determined by the increasing degree of capitalist relations. For all peoples, feudalism went through the stages of genesis (formation), developed feudalism, late feudalism, and the chronological framework of these stages is different for different regions of the world. In the countries of Western Europe, the feudal system developed on the ruins of the Western Roman Empire, conquered during the Great Migration of Nations by barbarians, mainly Germans - Franks, Visigoths, Burgundians, Lombards, Angles, Saxons. The genesis of feudalism here covered the period from the end of the 5th to the 10th-11th centuries. In the question of the ways of the formation of the feudal system in Western Europe, historiography has developed three directions dating back to the 18th century. The direction of the novelists believe that feudalism comes to the socio-legal and political institutions of the late Roman Empire, the direction of the Germanists - that feudalism was established as a result of the predominance of German institutions in the social and political organization of medieval society. The third direction adheres to the theory of synthesis, which is understood as mixing in the process of feudalization of ancient and barbarian orders. In the 20th century, the concept of continuity prevailed in Western historiography - the slow, smooth evolution of the Roman and German orders, during which a feudal society took shape.

K.V. Islanders
Lecture delivered at the Higher Party School of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, 1945

1. The emergence of the feudal system

The era of the domination of feudalism in Western Europe covers a long period, approximately 13 centuries, starting from the 5th century. n. e. until the 18th century

The first stage - the emergence of feudalism - begins in the 5th century. and ends in the middle of the 11th century.

Feudalism arose on the ruins of the Roman slave empire. Some scholars explain its occurrence by the fact of the conquest of the Roman Empire by the barbarians. This point of view is fundamentally wrong.

Conquest in itself cannot create a new mode of production unless the conditions for it are ripe in material production, and above all in the area of ​​the productive forces.

Engels, criticizing the theory of violence, pointed out that the banker's fortune, contained in papers, cannot be seized at all if the invader does not submit to the conditions of production and circulation of the conquered country.

Concerning the causes of the emergence of feudalism, Marx and Engels wrote:

“Feudalism was by no means carried over ready-made from Germany; its origin is rooted in the organization of military affairs among the barbarians during the conquest itself, and this organization only after the conquest - thanks to the influence of the productive forces found in the conquered countries - developed into real feudalism.

Feudalism arose through the interaction between the new productive forces and elements of new feudal relations, which originated in the form of colonies in the Roman Empire, and the military organization of the barbarian tribes that conquered it.

Slavery has outlived itself, and the historical conditions for wage labor have not yet taken shape. Under these conditions, a further step forward in the development of the productive forces could only be made on the basis of the economy of a small dependent producer, who was to a certain extent interested in his labour.

At the end of the existence of the Roman Empire, the process of enslavement of the columns developed rapidly.

The columns were obliged to cultivate the landowner's land, pay him a significant share of the harvest they harvested, and, in addition, perform a number of duties: build and repair roads and bridges, serve both people and goods with their horses and carts, work in bakeries, etc. e. Colon was more and more attached to the earth, became, as the ancients expressed it, "the slave of the earth." It was allowed to sell and buy land only together with columns.

At the same time, the process of enslavement of artisans was also taking place.

With the cessation of the influx of slaves, an acute shortage of labor began to be experienced, first of all, by enterprises engaged in the extraction of iron ore, the production of all kinds of fabrics and luxury goods, as well as enterprises associated with the work of supplying the population of cities.

A number of decrees were issued forbidding artisans to leave factories and change their profession. Gunsmiths even had a special brand burned on their arm to make it easier to catch them in case of flight.

There were other draconian measures aimed at enslaving artisans.

This is how the process of feudalization took place in the bowels of the decaying Roman slave empire.

The collapse of the slave system was accompanied by an enormous destruction of the productive forces. “The last centuries of the declining Roman Empire and the very conquest of it by the barbarians,” wrote Marx and Engels in The German Ideology, “destroyed a mass of productive forces; agriculture fell into decay, industry, due to a lack of sales, fell into decay, trade froze or was forcibly interrupted, the rural and urban population declined.

Farming has become almost the only occupation of the population.

Thus, the Germanic tribes that conquered the Roman Empire found there the germs of feudal relations. These tribes themselves had a military organization. They were going through the stage of decomposition of the primitive communal system and the development of patriarchal slavery - that stage in the development of society when, according to Engels, war and military organization become normal functions of people's life, when war begins to be waged, "for the sake of robbery becomes a constant trade" . The strengthening and development of the military organization of the barbarian tribes was facilitated by their direct proximity to the Romans, with whom they waged constant wars. These wars, as we know, eventually led to the conquest of the Roman Empire by the barbarians.

On the ruins of the once mighty Roman Empire, many small states arose. The very fact of the conquest greatly accelerated the disintegration of the tribal system, which was still preserved among the barbarians. The tribal system was incompatible with the new relations established as a result of the conquest of the Roman Empire by the barbarians; “... it was impossible,” says Engels, “neither to accept the masses of the Romans into tribal associations, nor to dominate them through the latter ... The organs of the tribal system had therefore to turn into organs of the state, and, moreover, under the pressure of circumstances, very quickly. But the closest representative of the conquering people was the military leader. The protection of the conquered region from internal and external danger required the strengthening of his power. The moment has come for the transformation of the power of the military leader into royal power, and this transformation has taken place.

The military organization of the barbarian tribes made it easier for them to assimilate the new feudal relations that developed on the territory of the former Roman Empire.

“The existing relations and the method of conquest determined by them,” say Marx and Engels, “developed, under the influence of the military system of the Germans, feudal property.”

The Germans, Huns and other tribes who conquered the Ancient Roman Empire appropriated and divided among themselves approximately 2/3 of the entire occupied land.

Part of the conquered lands remained in the common possession of individual tribes and clans. The kings appropriated these lands to themselves and began to distribute them to their warriors, close associates, etc.

“So,” says Engels, “at the expense of the people, the basis of the new nobility was created.”

The royal power was still weak. Each large landowner had his own army, tried to be independent of the royal power and sought to capture neighboring lands. Hence the constant wars and civil strife between individual states, as well as between individual feudal lords. The free peasantry suffered particularly hard from these internecine strife. By the beginning of the 9th century, free farmers were completely ruined. The feudal lords plundered them, seized their lands. Weak royal power could not protect them. On the other hand, the peasants themselves, driven to despair by robberies and exactions, were often forced to resort to the protection of noble feudal lords and the church. But this protection came to them at an extremely high price - the price of renouncing land ownership rights and giving themselves into bondage to noble and powerful patrons.

One of the enslaving letters relating to the history of the Frankish state of the 9th century says: “Mr. brother such and such ... Everyone knows that extreme poverty and grave worries have befallen me, and I have absolutely nothing to live and dress with. Therefore, at my request, you did not refuse, in my greatest poverty, to give me so many solidi out of your money, and I have absolutely nothing to pay these solidi with. And so I asked you to complete and approve the enslavement of my free personality to you, so that from now on you will have complete freedom to do with me everything that you are authorized to do with your born slaves, namely: sell, barter, punish.

So the peasants gradually lost not only land, but also personal freedom and turned into serfs.

A huge amount of land and serfs was concentrated in the hands of the church and monasteries. The Church was an authoritative ideological and political force, which each feudal lord sought to have on his side in the struggle against other feudal lords. The authority of the church was also necessary for the feudal lords in order to keep the serfs in check. Because of this, kings and large feudal lords gave the church land and estates.

Many peasants were also forced to go into bondage to the monasteries for the same reasons that pushed them into bondage to the feudal lords, with the only difference that in this case the bondage took on a religious shell.

So, in one of the letters relating to France in the 11th century, it is said about a certain Rogers, descended from a free family, who, driven by the fear of God, having nothing more valuable to offer to the almighty God, gave himself into the personal serfdom of St. Martin.

As a result, the church in feudal society grew into a huge, not only ideological, but also economic and political force.

This is how the feudal mode of production developed in Western Europe.

The process of feudalization in Russia began in the 11th century. Prior to this, the land was at the disposal of peasant agricultural communities.

The community was a collection of several large patriarchal families. Some families numbered 50 or more people. This number of families was dictated by the low level of development of the productive forces. The system of slash and shift agriculture dominated, requiring colossal labor.

Until the XV-XVI centuries. Russia was a collection of separate independent principalities. There were constant civil strife and wars between the princes.

Under these conditions, the peasantry lived extremely hard. It was completely defenseless, subjected to numerous requisitions, suffered from endless violence and wars that took place between the princes. This forced the peasants to go under the "high hand" of any prince or monastery. As a result, the "patron" - the prince, boyar or monastery - took the peasant land and turned the peasants into dependent people, serfs, obliged to work for him.

Usury was also a means of enslaving the peasants.

As a result, the princes and boyars became the owners of huge estates, numbering thousands of acres, and the monasteries turned into huge economic enterprises with colossal land wealth and owned a huge number of serfs.

In the XVI century. in many principalities of ancient Russia, from 60 to 95% of the entire territory was in the local ownership of princes, boyars, monasteries.

Until the middle of the XV century. the peasants were not yet attached to the land. They had the right to move from one landowner to another. In 1447, Ivan III issued a law, by virtue of which a peasant could move from one landowner to another only in the fall, after the completion of field work, on the so-called St. George's Day. In the reign of Ivan IV, at the end of the 16th century, this right was also taken away from the peasants - they were completely attached to the land, turned into serfs.

2. The essence of feudal exploitation

Under the feudal system basis of industrial relations is the property of the feudal lord in the means of production and incomplete ownership of the worker in production - the serf, whom the feudal lord cannot kill, but whom he can sell, buy. Along with feudal property, there is individual property of the peasant and craftsman in the instruments of production and in his private economy, based on personal labor.

The difference between feudal exploitation and slaveholding, therefore, consisted, firstly, in the incomplete ownership of the feudal lord over the production worker - the serf, and, secondly, in the fact that the serf was the sole owner of the instruments of production and his private economy, based on personal labor.

Thus, the enserfed individual peasant economy was an organic part of the feudal mode of production, in contrast to the slave-owning mode, where it was a separate way of life.

The main means of production under feudalism was land. The land was the property of the feudal lords. It was divided into two parts: the lord's land and the peasant's. The manor of the feudal lord with all the services was located on the land of the lord. Not far from the manor's estate was the peasant land, that is, the land that the feudal lord provided for the use of the peasants.

Gibbins in the "Industrial History of England" draws the following features of an English estate of the XI-XIII centuries.

The land around the manor-house (castle) absolutely belonged to the lord and was cultivated by slaves or indebted settlers under his personal supervision or under the supervision of the headman. All other lands that were in the use of obligated villagers were called quitrent lands.

The arable land, which was in common use by the obligated villagers, was divided into many strips located: in different fields.

The peasants shared pastures.

The forest and flood meadows belonged to the lord. For the use of them, the lord took a special fee.

In addition to the strips in the common field, some peasants could use separate plots in a specially fenced field, which the manor lord always left behind and rented out in parts for a high fee.

On wastelands (uncultivated lands), peasants enjoyed the right to pasture, and could also dig peat and cut bushes.

The fortress village was organized according to the type of agricultural community. The feudal lord had a decisive influence on the affairs of the community.

“When a feudal lord, spiritual or secular,” says Engels, “acquired peasant property, he also acquired the rights associated with this property in the mark. Thus, the new landowners became members of the mark and initially enjoyed only equal rights within the mark along with the rest of the free and dependent community members, even if they were their own serfs. But soon, despite the stubborn resistance of the peasants, in many places they acquired privileges in the mark, and often they even managed to subordinate it to their master's power. And yet the old brand community continued to exist, albeit under the master's tutelage.

The feudal lord appropriated for his own benefit the surplus labor of the serf in the form feudal rent. A distinctive feature of feudal rent is that it includes all the surplus labor of the serf, and often a significant part of the necessary labor.

Feudal rent went through three stages in its development - labor rent, rent in products and cash rent. The first two forms of rent are characteristic of early feudalism; monetary rent becomes dominant at the stage of disintegration of feudalism. Let us dwell first of all on labor rent.

As labor rent, or corvee, the feudal lord directly appropriated the surplus labor of the serf.

A serf peasant, for example, worked half the time for himself on allotment land, and the other half - on lordly land for the benefit of the landowner. The land allotment in this case was, according to Lenin, a form of wages in kind. The feudal lord, giving the serf a plot of land for use, gave him the opportunity to reproduce his labor power, necessary to create a surplus product in favor of the feudal lord.

Thus, the work of the serf for the feudal lord and for himself was strictly divided in space and time.

The type of work that a serf was supposed to do was extremely diverse: plowing, harrowing and other agricultural work - transporting agricultural products, logs, firewood, hay, straw, bricks, sawing forests, clearing cattle yards, repairing buildings, harvesting ice, etc.

Since the work of a serf for a landowner was forced labor, here, as in a slave-owning society, one of the acute problems was the problem of organizing the work of a peasant.

The peasants had no internal motivation to increase the productivity of their labor in cultivating the landlords' land. Therefore, the feudal lord resorted to means based on intimidation, such as: the guard's stick, a fine, assignment to work overtime. "The feudal organization of social labor," says Lenin, "was kept on the discipline of the stick, in the extreme darkness and downtroddenness of the working people, who were robbed and mocked by a handful of landowners."

Hence, one of the central figures of the feudal estate was the clerk - the immediate superior of the yard people and peasants.

Labor rent, or corvée, corresponds to the earliest stage in the development of feudalism. With the growth of productive forces, labor rent was replaced by food rent or quitrent.

What is the essence of quitrent and its difference from corvée?

If under corvée the landowner appropriated the surplus labor of the serf, then during quitrent he directly appropriates the surplus product, i.e., the peasant is obliged to annually deliver to the landowner a certain amount of products in kind free of charge. The corvée required the most vigilant supervision of the landowner or his supervisor over the labor of the serfs and was associated with a whole system of measures based on intimidation. During quitrent, the landowner demanded that the peasant supply a certain amount of food, leaving him to distribute his working time at his own discretion. The replacement of corvée with dues was a progressive phenomenon for that time.

However, the quitrent reached such enormous proportions that it often absorbed not only the entire surplus product of the serf, but also a significant part of the necessary product. To pay dues, the peasant had to lead a half-starved existence. The landowner, by the most cruel measures, extorted dues from the serf.

Even under the corvée system, there was inequality in property between individual peasant families. It followed from the sole ownership of the serfs to the instruments of production. Those who had the best tools and had more workers in the family were in a better financial position. This inequality increased with the transition to the quitrent system.

For the more prosperous peasantry, quitrent opened certain possibilities for enriching and expanding their economy. Therefore, with the transition from corvée to dues, property stratification grows in the feudal village.

The development of commodity-money relations leads to the fact that corvée and dues are replaced cash rent. Monetary rent, as we shall see later, already marks the period of the disintegration of feudalism and the development in its depths of the capitalist mode of production.

The indicated forms of feudal rent far from exhausted the ways in which the feudal lords appropriated the surplus product of the serf.

The feudal lord, using a monopoly on certain means of production, such as mills, forges, etc., taxed the serfs with an additional tax in his favor.

He obliged the peasants dependent on him to use the services of his enterprises only, for example, to grind bread only at his mill. For grinding, he took a significant part of the bread. In case of violation of this rule, the peasant was obliged to pay a fine to the feudal lord. The feudal lord could confiscate all the ground bread and even the horse that carried this bread.

Especially difficult and humiliating for the serfs were such privileges of the feudal lord as the right of the “first night”, according to which every girl who marries had to be given first of all to the landowner; the right of the “dead hand”, which granted the landowner the right to inherit part of the property remaining after the death of the serf; the right of trial and punishment: the imposition of fines and corporal punishment.

The serf was obliged to give part of his product in favor of the church. “On the peasant,” says Engels, “the whole social pyramid fell with its weight: princes, officials, nobility, priests, patricians and burghers. Whether it belonged to a prince, an imperial baron, a bishop, a monastery or a city, it was treated everywhere like a thing or a pack animal, or even worse ... Most of his time he had to work on his master's estate; and from what he managed to work out during the few free hours for himself, he had to pay tithes, chinsh, requisitions, taxes ... local and general imperial taxes.

Feudal exploitation, like slave-owning exploitation, rested on the relationship of direct non-economic dominance and submission.

This non-economic coercion was expressed in the fact that the serf had no right to dispose of his labor force, was attached to the landowner's land and was obliged to work for the landowner. The landowner had the right to use violent methods to force the serf to work, to execute judgment and reprisals on him.

Marx pointed out that under feudalism, personal dependence characterizes the social relations of material production to the same extent as other spheres of life built on this basis.

Feudal economy in its overwhelming part, especially in the initial period of its development, was an economy natural type. It satisfied its needs mainly by its own production.

The craft was an auxiliary production in agriculture. There were serf craftsmen on the estates: potters, coopers, turners, blacksmiths, tanners, carpenters, etc.

The few jobs that could not be done by their own serfs were done by itinerant artisans who moved from one feudal estate to another.

Only a small part of the product went on sale. Trade was extremely poorly developed and was predominantly external. She has not yet penetrated deep into the feudal estate. The main objects of trade were luxury items: rare fabrics, weapons, jewelry, spices, etc., which were brought mainly from the East and bought by feudal lords. Trade was conducted only by itinerant merchants. In those days, it was often associated with enormous difficulties. The caravan had to travel with armed guards to protect it from attacks by robbers and knights.

The essentially natural economy of the feudal estate was based on low production techniques. Agricultural implements were primitive: plow, harrow, hoe, sickle, flail, etc. were the main tools of production. Shifting and two-field farming systems dominated.

Due to the low technology of agriculture, there were constant crop failures, accompanied by famine and epidemics that claimed a huge number of lives.

Lenin characterizes the feudal mode of production with the following features: “... firstly, the dominance of natural economy. The serf estate was supposed to be a self-sufficient, closed whole, located in a very weak connection with the rest of the world ... Secondly, for such an economy it is necessary that the direct producer be endowed with the means of production in general and land in particular; not only that, he should be attached to the land, because otherwise the landowner is not guaranteed working hands ... Thirdly, the condition for such a system of economy is the personal dependence of the peasant on the landowner. If the landowner did not have direct power over the personality of the peasant, then he could not force a person who was endowed with land and who ran his own household to work for him. Therefore, “non-economic coercion” is necessary ... Finally, fourthly, the condition and consequence of the described economic system was an extremely low and routine state of technology, for the management of the economy was in the hands of small peasants, crushed by need, humbled by personal dependence and mental darkness ".

The feudal mode of production was more progressive than the slave-owning mode and opened up more scope for the development of the productive forces.

Advantage of the feudal system economy before the slave system consisted in the fact that it contained a certain incentive that pushed the serf peasant onto the path of developing his production, while the slave system killed any incentive for the slave to increase the intensity and productivity of his labor.

Some interest of the serf in labor stemmed from the fact that part of the time he worked for himself and was the owner of the tools of labor and his private individual farm. That part of the time that the serf worked for himself on allotment land, he tried to use with the greatest intensity and productivity.

Radishchev in his "Journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow" cites a typical conversation with a peasant whom he met on a hot holiday in the field plowing the land with "great care" and turning the plow with surprising ease. Radishchev immediately deduced from this the conclusion that this was not the master's land, and asked the peasant if he was working for his master in this way. The peasant answered him that it would be a sin to work like this for the master, since the landowner on arable land has "a hundred hands for one mouth", and he, the peasant, has "two for seven mouths." “Yes, although stretch out at the master’s work,” he concluded, “they won’t say thank you.”

This opportunity to work part of the time on allotment land for one's own benefit was the advantage of the feudal mode of production over the slave-owning one.

Marx says: “... the productivity of the remaining days of the week, which the direct producer himself can have at his disposal, is a variable quantity that necessarily develops with the growth of his experience, just like the new needs that arise in him, just like the expansion market for his product, the increasing security of employing this part of his labor force will encourage him to intensify the labor force, and it should not be forgotten that the use of this labor force is by no means limited to agriculture, but includes rural domestic industry. Here the possibility of a certain economic development is given, of course, depending on more or less favorable circumstances ... ".

Economic interest forced the landowners to take this factor into account as well. The landlords, just like the slave owners, were guided in their economic activities by the desire to extract as much surplus product as possible from the labor of the serfs. But in order to satisfy this desire of theirs, the landowners were forced, along the sea of ​​development of feudal economy, to transfer the serf from corvée to quitrent, from quitrent to cash rent, to use his personal interest in increasing the intensity and productivity of his labor.

The landowner appropriated the results of the more intensive and productive labor of the serf peasant for his own benefit, intensifying his exploitation in every possible way.

The feudal system of economy, in addition to some interest of the serf in his work, had other advantages arising from large landed property.

Large landed property, which is the basis for the exploitation of large masses of the serfs, opened up the possibility of a significant division of labor within the feudal estates, both along the lines of agriculture and handicrafts.

This is evidenced by the instruction of the Frankish king Charles, sent by him to the administrators of the royal estates.

This instruction says:

"one. We wish that our estates, which we have appointed to serve our own needs, wholly serve us, and not other people ...

20. Let every steward see to it that products flow to the [lord's] court in abundance throughout the year ...

35. We wish that lard is made from fat sheep, also from pigs; in addition, let them keep at least two fattened bulls on each estate, [to] either use them on the spot for lard, or bring them to us ...

38. To always have enough fattened geese and fattened chickens for our needs ...

44. From Lenten ... annually send for our table, namely: vegetables, fish, cheese, butter, honey, mustard, vinegar, millet, millet, dried and fresh herbs, radishes and turnips, wax, soap and other trifles ...

45. That every manager should have good craftsmen in his charge, namely: blacksmiths, silversmiths and goldsmiths ... bird-catchers, soap makers, brewers ... bakers ... people who are well able to weave a net for hunting and nets for fishing and catching birds, as well as other employees…”

From the instructions it is clear what an extensive system of various specialties existed on the estates of Charles. This system pursued the task of satisfying the needs of the feudal lord in many ways. The possibility of division of labor within the feudal estate was the advantage of the feudal system of economy over the individual peasant economy.

Such were the possibilities for the development of the productive forces inherent in the feudal mode of production.

At the same time, feudalism, which replaced the slave-owning system, could not immediately develop its advantages over the slave-owning system and, consequently, those opportunities for the development of productive forces that were inherent in it.

This is explained by the fact that feudalism was based on non-economic coercion, on small, enslaved peasant farming with its extremely low technology.

Nevertheless, although slowly, the growth of the productive forces took place under the influence of feudal production relations. Gradually, the advantages of feudalism over slavery were discovered.

On the basis of those incentives for the development of the productive forces that were laid down in the feudal mode of production, by about the 8th and 9th centuries, in the so-called Carolingian era, a significant step forward had already been made in the development of agriculture.

If before that the dominant systems of agriculture were shifting and two-field, now it is planned in many places transition to a three-field. There are also changes in production technology. Among these changes, especially important was the appearance of a plow with iron shares and knives and a harrow with iron teeth instead of wooden ones. Wheat, all kinds of horticultural crops and viticulture are spreading. Animal husbandry is developing, and especially horse breeding, which was associated with the military service of the feudal lords. The development of animal husbandry leads to the expansion of meadow farming. At the same time, sheep breeding is developing in a number of regions due to the growth of wool production. All these are indicators of the growth of productive forces in the field of agriculture.

Marx, speaking about the possibilities of developing the productive forces inherent in the feudal mode of production, pointed out that the peasant had the opportunity to engage in domestic industry in the form of various crafts. Indeed, the growth of the productive forces of feudal society in the countryside took place not only along the line of raising the level of technology and the development of the division of labor between the various branches of agriculture, but also along the line of the development of a whole series of handicrafts.

The development of the productive forces of feudal society took place in an antagonistic form. The feudal lord, as we have seen, used some of the serf's interest in his labor to intensify his exploitation. This led to a greater and greater aggravation of the contradictions between the landowners and serfs, to numerous peasant uprisings, with which the history of feudalism was full. As feudalism developed, the contradiction between feudal property and handicrafts also became more and more aggravated. This contradiction is around the 10th and 11th centuries. develops into an antithesis between town and countryside, and all the further development of feudalism proceeds on the basis of this antithesis.

Marx pointed out that in the Middle Ages, the village is the starting point of history, the further development of which then proceeds in the form of the opposition of the city and the countryside.

3. The growth of the social division of labor, the development of trade, the formation of cities

In the XI century. basically completed the process of formation of the feudal mode of production in the most important countries of Western Europe. Feudalism entered the period of its highest flowering. This period stretches from the 11th to the 15th centuries. The development of productive forces both in agriculture and handicrafts, achieved at the previous stage, created the preconditions for the growth of the social division of labor and the formation of an internal market.

The process of separating crafts from agriculture and the formation of cities began, which played a huge role in the development and disintegration of feudalism.

For the time being, the craft could develop within the boundaries of the feudal estate. Then came the moment when it outgrew the boundaries of the feudal estate. These frames have become too narrow for him. The further development of the craft required the distribution of its products beyond the boundaries of the feudal estate, the development of the domestic market.

It began with the fact that part of the artisans, with the permission of the feudal lord, went to seasonal work. Moving from one estate to another, the artisans made felt boots on the spot, painted canvases, etc., and after a while returned to their landowner and paid him a certain amount of money. The further growth of the productive forces led to the emergence of a craft that worked for the market. Markets formed around the estates of the largest feudal lords and monasteries. Here cities began to be created. The old cities, which fell into complete decline and desolation after the collapse of the Roman Empire, also began to revive. The medieval city was a fortified place with a fortress wall, a rampart and a moat. Usually, during hostilities, the surrounding population found refuge behind the fortress walls. On the other hand, the city was a craft and trade center. Artisans and merchants flocked here. Cities willingly hosted runaway serf artisans. No wonder in the Middle Ages they said that "city air makes people free."

Engels says: “... new cities were created; always surrounded by protective walls and ditches, they were fortresses much more powerful than noble castles, since they could only be taken with the help of a significant army. Behind these walls and ditches, a medieval craft developed - however, quite saturated with a burgher-guild spirit and narrow-mindedness - the first capitals were accumulated, a need arose for trade relations between cities with each other and with the rest of the world ... ".

The population of medieval cities was dominated by artisans and merchants.

The economic basis of the medieval city was craft and trade.

However, the urban population did not finally break off ties with agriculture. Within the city there were fields and gardens, cattle were kept, etc. The internal organization of the craft bore a feudal imprint.

The industrial population of cities was organized into workshops. The guild was a union, which included all artisans of one or more related crafts living in the same city. Persons not included in the workshop could not engage in this craft. Each workshop had its own elected board and its charter.

The guild regulated handicraft production in the most detailed way: it set the number of workers in each workshop, the price and quality of goods, wages and working hours.

To illustrate, here are excerpts from the French statute of wool weavers dating back to the 13th-14th centuries:

"one. No one can be a wool weaver in Paris unless he buys the craft from the king...,

8. Each wool weaver in his house can have no more than one apprentice, but he cannot have one for less than 4 years of service and for 4 Parisian livres ...

32. All cloth must be entirely of wool and as good in the beginning as in the middle, if they are but such, the one to whom they belong is subject to 5 sous fine for each piece of cloth ...

35. No weaver, dyer, or fuller can fix prices in their workshops by any community. ..

47. ... None of the aforementioned workshop should start work before sunrise under the threat of a fine ...

51. Apprentice weavers must leave work as soon as the first strike of the bell for vespers chimes ... ".

The workshop took over the supply of raw materials to craft enterprises, organized common warehouses.

City governments gave the shops a monopoly on the production of trade in the cities.

Unusually developed regulation of production and monopoly - these are the main features of the urban craft system in the Middle Ages. In addition, the workshop was a mutual aid organization and a religious corporation.

Each workshop during the war was a separate combat unit.

The structure of the urban craft class bore the imprint of a feudal hierarchy.

Within this class, a system of apprentices and apprentices developed, creating a hierarchy in the cities similar to that of the rural population.

The members of the workshop were divided into categories: masters, apprentices, students. The guild master had his own workshop and worked mainly to order for a certain small circle of buyers or for the local market. He was the owner of the means of production: the workshop, handicraft tools, raw materials, as well as the owner of handicraft products. This followed from the nature of handicraft tools, which were designed for individual use.

“The means of labor - land, agricultural tools, workshops, handicraft tools - were the means of labor of individuals, designed only for individual use, and, therefore, but the needs remained small, dwarf, limited. But that's why they, as a rule, belonged to the manufacturer himself.

The nature of the tools of labor determined the very size of the handicraft enterprise. It included from two to five workers: family members of the master, apprentices and apprentices. Due to the small scale of production, the master was forced to participate in production by personal labor.

Thus, his ownership of handicraft products was based on personal labor. True, the master derived a certain income from the work of apprentices and apprentices.

He used to give his journeyman a table and an apartment in his house, and a little extra money. The work of apprentices and apprentices created more value than what their maintenance cost the master.

However, the highest position of the master in relation to apprentices and apprentices was based not so much on ownership of the means of production, but on his skill.

Marx notes that the relation of a master to apprentices and apprentices is not the relation of a capitalist, but the relation of a craftsman. His highest position in the corporation, and at the same time in relation to apprentices and apprentices, rests on his own skill in the craft.

This was again explained by the nature of the craft technique. Manual labor dominated. The division of labor within the workshop was extremely poorly developed due to the small scale of production. The artisan typically produced the entire product from start to finish. Hence, the personal art of the craftsman, the ability to use the instrument, and professional training were of particular importance.

The craftsman, in the words of Lafargue, "had his craft in his fingers and his brain"; "... each craft was a mystery, the secrets of which were revealed to the initiates only gradually" . The craftsman was a true master of his craft. Many works of artisans are still wonderful examples of genuine folk art.

Therefore, the craft required a long apprenticeship.

Thus, although the exploitation of apprentices and apprentices took place in the medieval craft, it played a comparatively minor role.

The goal of handicraft production, the goal of the master's economic activity was not so much the pursuit of money, enrichment, but "a decent existence for his position."

“The limitation of production within the framework of a given consumption as a whole,” says Marx, “is the law here.”

For apprentices and apprentices, working with a master was a temporary condition. After working for several years with some master, the apprentice passed the apprenticeship exam. Then, as an apprentice, he was obliged to serve for hire from the master for a certain number of years. After that, the apprentice passed the exam for the master and received the right to independently conduct business. Thus, each apprentice and journeyman expected to become a master later on.

Therefore, at the first stages of the development of the guild craft, despite the exploitation of apprentices and apprentices by masters, the conflict of their interests did not develop much. However, as commodity production grew, apprentices and apprentices became more and more workers, and the contradictions between foremen, on the one hand, and apprentices and apprentices, on the other, became more and more aggravated.

What caused the guild organization of urban crafts?

On the one hand, the guild system, corporate ownership in cities reflected the impact of the feudal structure of landed property.

Marx and Engels in "The German Ideology" write that "... the feudal structure of landownership corresponded in the cities to corporate ownership, the feudal organization of crafts."

On the other hand, the guild organization of handicrafts was caused by the development of commodity production in the depths of feudalism.

The development of a commodity economy gave rise to competition between artisans. By creating guild organizations, the artisans of the city, first of all, sought in this way to protect themselves from the competition of their fellow craftsmen, as well as from the competition of serfs who fled from their masters and sought refuge in the cities. This competition was especially strongly felt due to the limited trade relations, the narrowness of the market.

By doing this, the guilds actually sought to prevent the process of differentiation of artisans, inevitably generated by the development of commodity production, competition between artisans. In conditions of relatively weak development of the commodity economy, the narrowness of the local market, the shops managed to limit competition for the time being. But as soon as the development of commodity production stepped beyond the limits of the local market and began to work for a wider market, a wider field for competition opened up and a process of increased differentiation among artisans began, despite the restrictions of the guilds.

Thus, one can conclude that one of the reasons that gave rise to the workshops was the development of commodity production, but, on the other hand, they could exist and limit competition due to the insufficient development of commodity production.

A number of other additional reasons pushed the artisans to the path of organizing guilds, such as: the general conditions for the production and exchange of manufactured goods, the need for common warehouses, commercial buildings, jointly protecting the interests of this craft from the encroachments of other crafts.

Among the factors that contributed to the organization of workshops, a significant role was played by the continuous wars that the cities had to wage with the feudal lords.

In the future, one of the most important tasks of the workshops was the struggle of masters against apprentices and apprentices.

Marx and Engels in "The German Ideology" give the following explanation of the reasons that gave rise to the guild organization of crafts in a medieval city. “The competition of fugitive serfs constantly arriving in the city; the continuous war of the countryside against the city, and consequently the necessity of organizing an urban military force; bonds of common ownership of a certain specialty; the need for common buildings for the sale of their goods - artisans were at that time merchants at the same time - and the related exclusion of outsiders from these buildings; opposition of interests of separate crafts among themselves; the need to protect the craft learned with such difficulty; the feudal organization of the whole country - these were the reasons for the unification of the workers of each individual craft into workshops.

Under conditions of limited relations of production - the dominance of handicraft technology, an underdeveloped division of labor and a narrow market - the guilds played a progressive role.

Protecting guild crafts from the competition of fugitive serfs, organizing the supply of artisans with raw materials, taking care of the production of high-quality products, the guilds thereby contributed to the strengthening and development of urban crafts and raising its technology.

The situation changed dramatically as soon as the development of commodity production placed on the order of the day the question of the transition from handicrafts, first to manufactory, and then to the factory. The workshops then turned into a brake on the development of productive forces.

Cities were not only craft, but also trade centers. The merchant population was grouped into guilds like artisan workshops.

Thus, Engels writes about Venetian and Genoese merchants that they were organized into trading communities. They agreed among themselves on the prices of goods, on the quality of goods, which was certified by the imposition of a brand. Fines were imposed on those merchants who violated the established prices, or a boycott was announced to them, which in those conditions threatened with complete ruin.

In foreign harbors, for example, in Alexandria, Constantinople and others, the trading community had its own living quarters, consisting of living quarters, restaurants, a warehouse, an exhibition space and a store.

Merchant capital under feudalism acted as an intermediary in the exchange of the surplus product appropriated by the feudal lord for all kinds of luxury goods, exported to a large extent from eastern countries, on the other hand, it was an intermediary in the exchange of products of the feudal peasant and the guild artisan.

Trade profit was obtained by non-equivalent exchange, i.e., by buying commodities below their value or selling them at prices above their value, or both.

“Prima facie pure independent trading profit seems impossible,” says Marx, “if products are sold at their value. Buy cheap to sell dear - that is the law of trade.

Since feudalism was basically a subsistence type of economy, the sale of products at their cost was of secondary importance.

Ultimately, the source of trade profit was the labor of a small producer - an artisan and a peasant.

Merchants, usurers, wealthy homeowners and owners of urban lands, the most prosperous craftsmen made up the urban elite, the so-called patriciate. Their strength was wealth. Even the richest craftsman represented only small-scale handicraft production, where the possibilities for accumulating wealth were very limited due to the small scale of production. On the contrary, commercial capital, being an intermediary in the exchange between town and country, had the opportunity to accumulate money on a large scale by exploiting the mass of small producers, both town and country. The same applies to usurious capital.

The following data relating to the XIV-XV centuries can give an idea of ​​the accumulation of wealth from merchants and usurers in the medieval cities of Germany and Switzerland:

These data show that merchants and usurers, constituting a comparatively very small percentage of the urban population, concentrated in their hands from 50 to 75% of all urban property.

It is not surprising that this wealthy elite also had political power. In her hands was the city self-government, finances, court, military force. This gave her the opportunity to shift the entire burden of the tax burden and other duties onto the artisans.

Thus, the growth of productive forces, the growth of the social division of labor led to the fact that the feudal world split into an agricultural serf village and a handicraft and trading city.

With the formation of cities in feudal society, a new economic power arose, the power commodity production. The leading role in the development of the productive forces of the feudal mode of production passed to the cities. The relatively rapid development of cities, the growth of handicrafts and trade contrasted with the immobility and routine that prevailed in the feudal countryside.

The urban population increased relatively rapidly at the expense of the rural population. Thus, in England, the urban population increased from 75,000 in 1086 to 168,720 in 1377, and the percentage of urban population in the total population of England increased from 5 to 12 during the same period. Nevertheless, even by the end of the Middle Ages, urban residents constituted a relatively small percentage of the total population.

4. Opposition between city and countryside under feudalism

The peculiarity of the relationship between city and countryside under feudalism lies in the fact that politically the countryside dominates the city, while economically the city exploits the countryside in the person of the mass of serfs. “If in the Middle Ages,” says Marx, “the countryside exploits the city politically everywhere where feudalism was not broken by the exclusive development of cities, as in Italy, then the city everywhere and without exception exploits the countryside economically by its monopoly prices, its tax system, its guild system. , by its direct merchant's deceit and its usury.

What is the political dominance of the countryside over the city under feudalism?

First of all, cities arise on the land of the feudal lord and at first are his property. The feudal lord collects taxes from the population of the city, obliges him to bear all sorts of duties, to execute judgment and reprisals on him. Moreover, the feudal lord has the right to inherit, sell and mortgage the city that belonged to him.

For example, the city of Arles in the XII century. divided into four parts, separated by a fence and belonging to four owners: one part belonged to the local archbishop, the other part belonged to the same archbishop, together with the Count of Provence. The city market belonged to the Viscount of Marseilles, part of the city belonged to the city judges. One can imagine what complex relationships there were in this city, which in parts belonged to different owners.

Cities arise and develop in a fierce struggle with the feudal lords. The power of the feudal lords hindered the development of crafts and trade in the cities. Cities tried in every possible way to free themselves from this heavy feudal dependence. They fought to give them self-government rights- for the right to court, minting coins, for exemption from numerous taxes, customs duties, etc. In a number of feudal states (France, Italy), cities that acquired independence from feudal lords or a certain autonomy were then called communes.

“It's funny,” writes Marx in a letter to Engels, “that the word "communio" often provoked the same scolding as communism does today. So, for example, the priest Guibert Nozhaisky writes: “The Commune is a new and disgusting word.”

At times, bloody wars were fought between the city and the feudal lords. Cities often paid off the feudal lords with money and in this way gained independence. As the economic and military strength of the cities grew, they more and more threw off the burden of heavy political dependence on the feudal lords and became independent. At the same time, the struggle of the cities against the feudal lords more and more turned into a struggle against the feudal mode of production itself.

Thus, the opposition between town and countryside was primarily expressed in the antagonism between the feudal lords, who sought to maintain their political dominance over the city and use it for all sorts of extortions, and the cities, which sought to achieve independence from the feudal lords.

The disparate feudal peasantry in the market was opposed by merchants and artisans, organized into merchant guilds and craft workshops.

Thanks to the association in the workshop, artisans had the opportunity to act in the city market as a united front against a fragmented and unorganized village and raise prices for handicraft products.

At the same time, in order to strengthen their monopoly position, the guilds fought in every possible way against the development of handicrafts in the countryside, sometimes not stopping at the forcible destruction of village handicraft workshops. To an even greater extent than the guilds, representatives of commercial capital had the opportunity to whip up flails on objects of urban production. Merchant capital developed primarily on the most severe exploitation of the small producer - the feudal peasant. The merchant bought products from the peasant at low prices, and sold him handicraft products at high prices.

In this way, merchant capital appropriated a significant part of the peasant's labor, taking advantage of his economic dependence, ignorance of the market, and the impossibility of communicating directly with consumers of his products. But not only that, merchant capital supplied the feudal lords mainly with luxury items, which the feudal lords had to pay at a very high price. In this way, commercial capital appropriated a significant share of their rent, which ultimately led to increased exploitation of the serfs.

The medieval city also exploited the village through usury.

“... The characteristic forms of the existence of usurious capital in the times preceding the capitalist mode of production,” says Marx, “were two. …These two forms are as follows: firstly, usury by providing money loans to wasteful nobility, mainly landowners; Secondly, usury by granting money loans to small producers who own the conditions of their labor, to which the artisan belongs, but especially the peasant ... ".

The more the village was drawn into commodity-money relations, the more the peasant fell into the net of the usurer, who sucked all the life juices out of him.

Merchant and usury capital also exploited the rural handicrafts.

Medium and small feudal lords and knights also fell into the networks of commercial and usurious capital. However, in this case, the same serfs had to pay for their debts.

The usurious interest reached monstrous proportions.

Cities were centers of feudal power, and not only secular, but also spiritual. As the centers of concentration of the apparatus of secular and spiritual power, the cities exploited the countryside with the help of innumerable taxes, duties and all sorts of other fees paid by the peasants in favor of the secular and spiritual feudal lords.

Such were the forms of economic exploitation of the countryside by the city under the conditions of the feudal system.

The development trend was that the cities, as their economic and military power grew and strengthened, were increasingly freed from feudal dependence and subjugated the countryside.

“The struggle of the bourgeoisie against the feudal nobility,” says Engels, “is the struggle of the city against the countryside, industry against land ownership, money economy against subsistence, and the decisive weapon of the bourgeoisie in this struggle was the means at its disposal. economic strength, which continuously increased due to the development of industry, first handicraft, and then turned into manufacture, and due to the expansion of trade.

5. Further growth of trade in feudal society. Crusades and their influence on the development of the economy of feudalism

The separation of the city from the countryside, being an expression of the growth of productive forces, leads to a significant development of both domestic and foreign trade in feudal society.

Internal trade was conducted between urban artisans, on the one hand, and peasants and feudal lords, on the other. Cities were the centers of this trade. Artisans brought their industrial products there, and feudal lords and serfs - agricultural products. This internal local market covered estates and villages, lying at such a distance that if you leave them for the city in the morning, you can return back in the evening.

The further growth of the productive forces and the social division of labor also caused a revival of foreign trade. This revival of trade begins primarily on the old routes of exchange, which were laid in the era of the domination of the slave system. Italy lay on a great trade route from East to West. Therefore, cities such as Venice and Genoa became the largest centers of trade.

Until the 11th century an active role in the field of foreign trade belonged mainly to the Arabs and Byzantine merchants, who brought oriental spices and luxury goods to Western Europe, and took away raw materials, bread, and slaves from there.

In the XI century. the situation in the field of foreign trade has changed dramatically. An active role in foreign trade more and more began to pass to European merchants. In this regard, interest in the eastern countries has greatly increased. Travel to the East began.

These journeys to the East, which are based on economic and trade interests, are at the same time covered by religious motives - a pilgrimage to the "Holy Sepulcher", which, according to legend, was allegedly located in Palestine.

Thus, the growth of productive forces, the development of handicrafts and agriculture made it necessary to revive trade relations between Western Europe and the East. Meanwhile, a very serious obstacle has arisen in the way of the development of these relations.

The Turks captured the Baghdad Caliphate and a significant part of the Byzantine possessions. This seizure slowed down trade between East and West and made the pilgrimage to Jerusalem extremely difficult, which served as an external reason for the emergence of the idea of ​​the Crusades.

The crusades were primarily interested in Western European trading capital, and in particular the cities of Venice and Genoa, through which trade was conducted with the East.

In addition, large feudal lords and numerous chivalry associated their hopes for the capture of new lands with the crusades. An important role was played by the so-called majorat, i.e., such an order of inheritance in which property passes after the death of the feudal lord to the eldest son, and the remaining children are deprived of the right to inherit. Thanks to this, a layer of knights is created, deprived of land, militant, eager to seize lands, greedy for all sorts of adventures.

The Catholic Church gave this whole movement a religious shell, proclaiming its goal to fight against the infidels for the liberation of the "Holy Sepulcher".

As an ideological leader, ruler of the souls of the feudal world, the Catholic Church sought to expand its spiritual power, subordinating the Mohammedan world to its influence. As a major landowner, she hoped to expand her land holdings with the help of the Crusades, and as a major merchant, she was interested in developing trade with the East.

The growth of the domestic and foreign market in another way contributed to the popularity of the idea of ​​the crusades. The development of commodity relations, the growing possibilities of selling the surplus product on the market led to increased exploitation of the peasantry by the feudal lords. If we add to this constant hunger strikes and epidemics, which were the result of low technology and inhuman exploitation of the peasantry, then the desire of the peasants to take part in the crusades in order to escape from the unbearable grip of feudal exploitation becomes understandable.

All of these reasons, ultimately rooted in the economics of the feudal society of that era, led to the Crusades.

The crusades began in 1096 and ended in 1270. There were eight crusades in all. In 1099, the crusaders captured Jerusalem and a large territory that belonged to the Turks. On the occupied territory, they founded a number of cities and principalities. A rather lively trade began between Western Europe and the East, from which Genoa and Venice primarily benefited, allocating large funds for the Crusades.

However, happiness soon betrayed the crusaders. They began to fail. The last, eighth campaign, which took place in 1270, ended in the defeat and death of the crusaders.

The Crusades had a huge impact on the further economic development of Western Europe. Firstly, the crusaders got acquainted with the achievements of eastern technology, borrowed a lot from the eastern peoples and thereby contributed to the more rapid development of productive forces.

Secondly, acquaintance with Eastern culture contributed to the expansion of the demands and needs of the ruling classes of feudal society. And this growth of needs, in turn, gave impetus to the development of the corresponding branches of production and trade.

Thirdly, the Crusades caused a revival of trade with the countries of the East, from where spices, dyes, all kinds of incense, medicines, etc. were brought in. The centers of this trade in the Mediterranean were Venice, Genoa, Florence and other cities. Other centers of foreign trade were the cities of Hamburg, Lübeck, Bremen, Cologne, Magdeburg, Frankfurt and others. Trade in the Baltic and North Seas was concentrated in these cities. They formed the so-called Hanseatic League.

Hanseatic-Venetian companies at the end of the 14th century. and at the beginning of the fifteenth century. on the spice trade, the following percentages of profit were made on the purchase price: pepper - 70-100, ginger - 25-237, cinnamon - 87-287, cloves - 100, nutmeg - 87-237, etc. Robbery of foreign countries and huge trade profits led to the expansion of the domestic market. In particular, trade in textile and metal goods has revived.

Significant development has reached usurious capital, as well as credit. At first, merchants were engaged in credit and usury operations, later bankers emerged from their midst.

The growth of commodity-money relations caused profound changes in the feudal countryside. The transfer of in-kind duties into cash began. The exploitation of the peasantry by the landlords intensified. The process of differentiation of the peasantry, the process of the emergence of capitalist relations in the depths of feudalism, began to develop much more rapidly.

6. The political system of feudalism. The role of the church

The feudal system had hierarchical structure, which was based on the hierarchy of land ownership. Those who owned the most land stood at the top of the hierarchy. Its top was occupied by the king - the largest landowner-feudal lord.

Larger feudal lords - seniors made smaller feudal lords, who were called vassals, dependent on themselves. The foundation of this entire hierarchical ladder was the exploitation of the serfs.

The political structure of feudalism was characterized by extreme fragmentation. All of Europe was divided into many small and large estates - states. At the head of each estate was a large feudal lord - at the same time, the sovereign. Within the limits of his possessions, he had full power, maintained his own army and minted coins.

Petty feudal lords, as we have already pointed out, were usually under the patronage and protection of stronger feudal lords - overlords. For this protection, they were obliged to pay tribute and help their patrons in the war. But the overlords, who had vassals, could in turn be vassals of even larger feudal lords. The largest overlord was the king.

The feudal lords had the right to independently conclude agreements among themselves, wage wars, etc.

This political fragmentation of the feudal world was determined by the economy of feudalism, the weak development of the social division of labor, and consequently, commodity production and exchange. Under the dominance of subsistence farming, economic ties between individual feudal estates were very limited. Each feudal estate at its core was a closed subsistence economy, existing mainly with products of its own production.

In the conditions of economic and political fragmentation of feudal society, the Catholic Church played an important role. It was essentially a political organization that united the fragmented feudal world. The Catholic Church itself was built according to the same hierarchical type that underlay the feudal society. It was headed by the pope, who had unlimited sole power. Such an organization of the Catholic Church was most suitable both for fighting the feudal lords and subjugating their spiritual power, and for enslaving the serfs.

At least a third of all land was concentrated in the hands of the church. All this made her the most powerful of the feudal lords. The influence of the church was thus based not only on religious intoxication, but also on its enormous economic strength.

Huge church estates provided a large amount of food that the clergy could not consume. Under the dominance of natural economy, the surplus of production could not be fully converted into money. On this basis, the charitable activity of the church arose, which helped it to strengthen its ideological power over the working masses. In turn, ideological power was used to further increase the economic strength and wealth of the church. The Church established in its favor a kind of tax on land ownership in the form of church tithes and organized a variety of all kinds of requisitions for pious purposes.

The further growth of productive forces, the separation of the city from the countryside, and the development of trade relations lead to the strengthening of economic ties between individual regions and states. There is a need to destroy the political fragmentation of the feudal world. The formation of large nation-states in the form of absolute monarchies begins.

The centralization of state power was carried out by the royal power in the fight against the feudal lords, who did not want to give up their independence. In this struggle, royal power relied on the growing urban bourgeoisie. This was the period when, according to Engels, "... the royal power in its struggle with the nobility used the bourgeoisie to restrain one estate with the help of another ...".

7. Decomposition and death of feudalism. Simple commodity economy as a basis for the development of capitalist relations

Feudalism pushed forward the development of the productive forces. This found expression in the strengthening of the social division of labor within the feudal village, in the improvement of agricultural technology, and in the emergence of new industries both in field cultivation and in horticultural crops. Even more progress was made in the field of handicraft production.

Particularly strong progress in the field of productive forces manifested itself in the second half of the Middle Ages. A significant role, as we have already indicated, was played by the Crusades in this respect. The Crusades made it possible for Europeans to get acquainted with a number of technical improvements in the field of horticulture, horticulture, engineering, and technical chemistry.

At the end of the Middle Ages, the progress of labor productivity proceeded at an accelerated pace and manifested itself in a multitude of inventions and discoveries of great practical importance: new industries were created that had a huge impact on further economic life, blast furnaces appeared and an iron foundry appeared; the technique of navigation is being improved, especially thanks to the invention of the compass; paper, gunpowder, clocks are invented.

The growth of productive forces was accompanied by the expansion of the market.

The expanding market presented an ever-increasing demand for handicraft products, and small-scale handicraft production was less and less able to satisfy it. There was a need for a transition from small-scale handicraft production to large-scale capitalist production, to manufacturing, and then to machine production.

The production relations of feudal society, with their serf labor, guild isolation and narrow-mindedness, became a brake on the further growth of productive forces.

Feudalism entered the stage of its disintegration and the development of capitalist relations. This stage covered the period from the 16th to the 18th century.

The basis for the development of capitalist relations, of the capitalist way of life in the depths of feudalism, was a simple commodity economy in the form of guild craft in the city and peasant farming in the countryside, more and more drawn into the exchange.

A simple commodity economy produces products for the purpose of selling on the market. In this it is fundamentally different from subsistence farming.

The peasant, who lived in a subsistence economy, ate products of his own production, burned a torch in the evenings, wore clothes made of canvas woven from his own linen and hemp, in winter he wore a sheepskin coat and a sheepskin coat sewn from sheepskins from his sheep, etc. The craft was connected with agriculture. The social division of labor was not developed.

Other in the conditions of a commodity economy. The basis of the commodity economy is the social division of labor. By virtue of this, every commodity producer produces only one commodity and, selling this commodity on the market, he buys the commodities necessary for him, produced by other commodity producers.

The peasant, drawn into the exchange, is forced to buy a significant and growing part of the goods in the market: to sew clothes from chintz made at the factory, to light the hut in the evenings with a kerosene lamp bought in the store, to wear shoes made at a leather factory, etc. .

Nevertheless, even in the period of developed commodity relations, peasant economy retains its natural character to a very large extent.

The most typical representative of a simple commodity economy is the craftsman, who produces products for sale and consumes only an insignificant part of the products of his own production.

The second main feature of a commodity economy is the commodity producer's private ownership of the means of production, based on personal labor. This follows from the nature of handicraft tools.

A simple commodity economy is based on manual primitive technology. A self-spinning wheel, a hand loom, a hammer, a plow, etc. - these are the tools of labor characteristic of this economy. These tools of labor are designed for individual use, which leads to the fact that in a simple commodity economy, small handicraft workshops or small agricultural farms, scattered on miserable patches of land, predominate.

Being the owner of the means of production and personally working on his small farm, the small commodity producer is naturally the owner of the products of his labor. The appropriation of the products produced by the small commodity producer is based in this way: 1) on his personal labor and 2) on private ownership of the means of production.

A simple commodity economy is fraught with a profound internal contradiction. On the one hand, it is based on the social division of labor. Thanks to the social division of labor, small commodity producers are connected with each other and work for each other. Consequently, their labor has a social character, although the latter is not directly manifested in the production process, it remains hidden.

On the other hand, the basis of a simple commodity economy is the commodity producer's private ownership of the means of production. Thanks to private ownership of the means of production, small commodity producers find themselves fragmented, working in isolation from each other, outside of any general plan, each solely at his own peril and risk. Thanks to this, the labor of the commodity producer is directly private labour. Consequently, the labor of the commodity producer is both public and private at the same time.

This contradiction between public and private labor is main contradiction simple commodity economy. It generates anarchy commodity production and fierce competition between commodity producers.

And this, in turn, leads to the disintegration of the simple commodity economy and to the development of capitalist relations. “No,” Lenin wrote, “not a single economic phenomenon in the peasantry ... which would not express the struggle and discord of interests, would not mean a plus for some and a minus for others.” Because of this, a simple commodity economy, according to Lenin, "...gives birth to capitalism and the bourgeoisie constantly, daily, hourly, spontaneously and on a mass scale."

What internal laws underlie the development of capitalist relations on the basis of commodity production?

To answer this we must consider the relations behind the exchange of commodities.

A product produced for the purpose of sale is commodity. Every commodity has, first of all, a use-value.

Use value a commodity consists in its ability to satisfy any human need. A product that does not have a use value cannot become a commodity, since no one will buy it.

In exchange, one commodity is equated to another commodity. Let's say 1 ax is equal to 50 kg of bread.

The question arises: what underlies the equality of two goods?

This equality cannot be based on the use-value of a commodity, since the condition of exchange is difference the use-values ​​of the two exchanged commodities. No one will exchange an ax for an ax and bread for bread.

Obviously, the equality of two goods is based on their value.

Items that have the same value are exchanged. By exchanging 1 ax for 50 kg of bread, we thereby say that one ax costs the same as 50 kg of bread. Consequently, in addition to use-value, a commodity must have a value.

What determines the value of a commodity?

Cost of goods determined by the labor involved in its production.

In fact, small commodity producers - artisans and peasants - exchange the products of their labor. “What did they spend in the manufacture of these items? Labor - and only labor: they spent only their own labor power on replacing the tools of labor, on the production of raw materials, on their processing; could they, therefore, exchange these products of theirs for those of other producers, otherwise than in proportion to the labor expended? The labor time spent on these products was not only their only suitable measure for the quantitative determination of the quantities to be exchanged, but any other measure was completely unthinkable.

If in this way the exchange was carried out according to the quantity of labor expended, how was the quantity of labor itself determined?

“Obviously, only through a long process of approaching in zigzags, often in the dark, groping, and, as always, only bitter experience taught people. The need for everyone, by and large, to recover their costs contributed in each individual case to finding the right path, while the limited number of types of objects that came in exchange, along with the unchanging - often over many centuries - the nature of their production, facilitated this task.

Consequently, it is only in the process of exchange that such exchange relations between commodities spontaneously develop that generally correspond to their value, determined by the amount of labor expended on them.

The amount of labor expended is measured by time. The more labor time spent on the production of a commodity, the higher its value, and vice versa.

But the point is that, as regards the amount of time spent on the production of a commodity, there are great differences between individual commodity producers. Some work with good tools, others with bad ones, some work with good raw materials, others with bad ones, some more intensively, others less intensively, some are more skillful in their craft, others less skillful.

Consequently, the individual quantities of labor time expended by individual commodity producers on the production of commodities are extremely varied. How long will the cost of goods be determined?

The value of a commodity will be determined not by the individual time spent on the production of a commodity by an individual commodity producer, but socially necessary time spent by most producers. "The socially necessary labor time," says Marx, "is that labor time which is required for the production of some use-value, under the socially normal conditions of production at hand and at the average level of skill and labor intensity in the given society."

Commodity producers who work under better than average conditions, with the help of better tools, with greater skill and intensity, spend less individual labor time on the production of a given commodity, and in the market they sell this commodity at a price determined not by the individual, but by the socially necessary. time. Consequently, they are in more favorable conditions than other commodity producers.

On the contrary, those commodity producers who work under conditions below average, with inferior means of production, with less skill and intensity, are in less favorable conditions than others.

Thus, at the basis of the differentiation of small commodity producers and the development of capitalist relations lies the contradiction between private and social labor, between individual and socially necessary time. By virtue of this contradiction, the competition that is played out between commodity producers leads to the enrichment of some and the ruin of others, to the development of capitalist relations.

8. Decomposition of guild craft

The emergence of shop organizations in the city was the result of the development of commodity production. But at the same time, the guilds could hold on and limit competition only as long as commodity production was still insufficiently developed, as long as the handicraft worked for the local narrow market, when the artisan was at the same time the seller of his goods.

The growth of commodity relations radically changed the situation. If earlier the craftsman worked for an order or for the local market and directly dealt with the consumer, now he was forced to move on to work on a wider, unknown market.

This caused the need for an intermediary - a buyer-merchant. The buyer grows out of the artisans themselves. At first, he combines trading operations with crafts, and then devotes himself entirely to trade.

This process of allocation and growth of merchant capital proceeded intensively in the guild craft at the end of the Middle Ages.

On the other hand, the expanding market placed ever greater demands on handicraft products.

The growth of productive forces became in irreconcilable contradiction with the guild system, with its isolation, routine, hostility to all technical innovations, and required its elimination.

It is enough to refer to the fact that the workshops did not allow the use of self-spinning wheels, forbade the use of a felting mill in cloth production, etc.

The guild spirit, the desire to hide technical inventions from their competitors also could not but slow down the further growth of productive forces.

Lenin in his work "The Development of Capitalism in Russia" gives a vivid example of the classification of production by handicraftsmen.

“The founders of a new trade or persons who have introduced any improvements into the old trade,” says Lenin, “do their best to hide profitable occupations from their fellow villagers, use various tricks for this (for example, they keep old devices in the establishment to divert eyes), do not let no one to their workshops, they work on the ceiling, they don’t even inform their own children about production ... We read about the village of Bezvodny, Nizhny Novgorod province, famous for its metal craft: “It is remarkable that the inhabitants of Bezvodny still ... carefully hide their skills from neighboring peasants ... they give their daughters to suitors of neighboring villages and, as far as possible, do not take girls from there in marriage.

The petty regulation that existed in guild handicraft production, the prohibition to have apprentices and apprentices in excess of a certain number - all this contradicted the needs of economic development, the needs of the growing capitalist way of life. Therefore, despite all the slingshots that the guild system placed on the development of competition, it penetrated the limits of guild production. Differentiation began among the guild masters. More prosperous craftsmen began to stand out, who expanded production, regardless of the shop rules.

In order to avoid guild slingshots and restrictions, some more prosperous craftsmen and merchants transferred the organization of production to the village, handed out orders for the house there.

This undermined the monopoly position of the shops.

Merchant capital penetrated the guild organizations. More prosperous craftsmen became buyers and usurers. The thirst for accumulation prompted such craftsmen to circumvent and violate those rules of the charters that prevented them from expanding their own production and finally subjugating the farms of poorer craftsmen. So, in the production for export, for the craftsmen who had a direct connection with the market, those decisions of the workshops were embarrassing, which set the price of products and prevented them from buying them cheaply. Often, those articles of charters that limited the number of employees for an individual master and, therefore, did not allow the expansion of enterprises were not implemented in practice.

The process of differentiation among artisans began, the process of decomposition of the guild craft.

Along with this, the contradictions between masters, on the one hand, and apprentices and apprentices, on the other, are aggravated.

The masters, who became more and more dependent on merchant capital, in order to somehow maintain their vacillating position, intensified the exploitation of apprentices and apprentices, demanded longer and more intensive work from them, paid them less, and provided them worse.

Guild organizations increasingly turned into organizations of the struggle of masters against apprentices. The most energetic measures were taken to make it difficult for apprentices to move into the ranks of masters, because the increase in the number of masters increased competition. Longer periods of apprenticeship and service for hire as apprentices were established. When an apprentice passed the exam for a master, especially strict requirements were imposed. They demanded the presentation of "exemplary works" in which the apprentice had to discover his art, for example, to make a horseshoe without any measurement, by eye, for a horse galloping past, etc. High deposits were set when entering the workshop.

Thus, in France, persons applying for the title of guild master had to pay in the first half of the 14th century. 20 solidi, in the second half of the XIV century. - 40-50 solidi, in the XV century. - 200 solids.

In addition, an apprentice who wanted to become a master had to make gifts to the foremen of the workshop. According to the charter of the Lübeck goldsmiths, dating back to 1492: “who wants to take the position of an independent master in the workshop must (in addition to fulfilling many other requirements) make the following items: a gold ring of openwork work, an English wrist given at betrothal, engraved and blackened, and dagger hilt ring. He must present these jewels to the foremen and the oldest members of the guild.

Changes in the guild structure occurred with considerable speed starting from the 14th century.

The new rules of the workshops were carried out with extreme predilection. For the sons of masters, all sorts of exceptions were made, thanks to which all trials and difficulties often turned into an empty formality, while for people of a different origin, joining the workshop became almost impossible. Guild privileges acquired a narrow class character, they were no longer associated so much with art and knowledge as with origin.

All these innovations were vigorously opposed by the apprentices, who began to create their own organizations - at first simply religious corporations or mutual material aid unions, which then turned into associations for the struggle for common interests against the masters.

Apprentices often managed to force the masters to various concessions. Masters tried in every possible way to destroy the unions of apprentices and often sought laws prohibiting these unions. But this only achieved that the unions of apprentices turned into secret ones, but did not cease to exist. The main weapons in the struggle of apprentices against masters were strikes and the boycott of entrepreneurs.

Thus, under the influence of the growth of commodity-capitalist relations, the process of decomposition of the guild handicraft took place.

9. Decomposition of the feudal village. Revolts of serfs.The death of feudalism

The same process of the disintegration of feudal relations and the development of capitalist relations took place in the countryside as well.

When the economy of the feudal lord began to turn from natural to barter, the nature of his relations with the serf began to change rapidly. Formerly, under subsistence farming, the extent of corvée and dues found their limit in the extent of the needs of the feudal lord; now that border has disappeared. If under the conditions of a natural economy it made no sense to accumulate too large stocks of grain, then under a money economy their value could be stored in the form of money. The consequence of this was the transition from corvée and dues to cash rent. Needing money, the feudal lord demanded that his peasants pay dues in cash. Numerous in-kind duties were converted into cash. Now the serf peasant had to not only create a surplus product with his labor, but also sell it on the market in order to then pay a cash rent to the feudal lord.

The serf village was thus drawn more and more into the exchange. A rapid process of stratification within the serf peasantry began. On the one hand, the kulak grew, which gradually paid off serfdom and, along with the feudal lord, became the exploiter of the peasantry.

Among the serfs of Count Sheremetev (village Ivanovo, Vladimir province):

a) there were merchants, manufacturers, owners of huge capitals, whose daughters, when they married not count peasants, paid a ransom of 10 thousand rubles. and more;

b) before the reform of 1861, 50 Ivanovo peasants were redeemed. The average buyout price was 20 thousand rubles.

On the other hand, the exploitation of the peasantry by the feudal lords intensified and the ruin of the bulk of the peasantry proceeded at a rapid pace.

Under the influence of the growth of market relations, the feudal lord tried in every possible way to increase the size of the monetary rent levied from the peasantry. Thus, cash payments from peasants in France, according to one estate in Brittany, increased from 200 livres in 1778 to 400 livres in 1786. The feudal lord also tried to expand the size of his own economy and for this purpose usually appropriated the lands that were in his common use with peasants. The enterprises that constituted the monopoly of the feudal lord, such as mills, bakeries, bridges, now became a means for increased exactions and extortion.

As economic oppression intensified, legal forms of dependence also became more severe. “The robbery of the peasants by the nobility,” says Engels, “became more and more sophisticated every year. The last drop of blood was sucked out of the serfs, dependent people were subjected to new requisitions and duties under all kinds of pretexts and names. Corvee, chinshi, requisitions, duties upon change of ownership, posthumous requisitions, security money, etc., were arbitrarily increased, despite all the old treaties.

Under the influence of the same growth of commodity production and exchange, the exploitation of the peasants by the clergy intensifies. It is not satisfied with church tithes and seeks new sources of income, arranges trade in indulgences (“absolution of sins”), organizes new armies of mendicant monks. With their own serfs, the clergy do no better than other feudal lords.

The unbearable living conditions of the serfs caused peasant revolts and riots. At first, while the social division of labor was poorly developed, while exchange ties remained comparatively narrow and each region lived its own separate life, the peasant uprisings had a local character and were comparatively easily suppressed. The development of commodity relations created the ground for wider peasant uprisings, engulfing entire countries. On the other hand, the sharp increase in the exploitation of the serf peasantry by the feudal lords gave these uprisings a particularly deep and stubborn character. In Italy in the 13th century, in England and France at the end of the 14th century, in Bohemia in the 15th century, in Germany at the beginning of the 16th century. there were real peasant wars, for the suppression of which it took a huge effort on the part of state bodies.

So, in 1358, an uprising of French peasants, known as the Jacquerie, broke out. This uprising was the result of an extraordinary increase in the exploitation of the peasantry ruined by wars and numerous exactions. The uprising was crushed with unprecedented cruelty. Over 20 thousand rebel serfs were physically destroyed. Entire villages were destroyed and demolished and much land and property confiscated.

In England, in 1381, an uprising of English peasants broke out, led by Wat Tyler. It was preceded by an epidemic of plague, from which a large number of people died. As a result, the landowners experienced a particularly acute need for labor and intensified the exploitation of the surviving serfs. The peasantry responded with an uprising. Apprentices and students joined the rebels. The rebels argued that the nobility is a temporary phenomenon and it should disappear. Therefore, sermons on the topic: “When Adam plowed and Eve spun, who was a nobleman then” were especially popular among the peasants?

The peasants demanded liberation from all kinds of personal dependence and slavery. The rebellious peasants and artisans headed for London, burning the estates of the landowners along the way, destroying the castles of the highest nobility. The frightened king agreed to satisfy the demands of the rebels. The peasants, reassured by his promise, went home. Then the king's 40,000-strong army easily destroyed the remnants of the rebel armed forces. Nevertheless, as a result of the uprising, the emancipation of the peasantry intensified, and in the 15th century. In England, serfdom was abolished.

In Spain, after a series of uprisings of serfs, which were also joined by the most exploited elements of the urban population, serfdom was swept away in 1486.

In 1525, an uprising of serfs broke out in Germany, which turned into a real war of peasants against feudal lords.

The history of pre-revolutionary Russia also provides us with vivid examples of grandiose peasant uprisings that shook the foundations of the tsarist empire and made the ruling classes tremble. The most famous of them are the uprisings of Stepan Razin and Emelyan Pugachev.

The enormous revolutionary significance of these uprisings lay in the fact that they shook the foundations of feudalism and were the decisive force that ultimately led to the abolition of serfdom and the death of the feudal system of exploitation.

The disintegration of feudalism and the development of capitalist relations was accompanied, on the one hand, by the growth of the bourgeoisie, and, on the other hand, by the formation of a proletariat from among the ruined small producers - peasants and artisans. Here it is appropriate to compare the historical fate of the feudal mode of production with the slave-owning one. Both here and there, the process of ruin of small producers took place. However, under the conditions of the slave system, the ruined small producer could not find a productive occupation for himself. The slave-owning system could not enter the path of technological development, since slavery, as it spread, more and more turned labor into a shameful deed, unworthy of a free man. Therefore, the ruined small producers under the conditions of the slave-owning system expected the fate of the lumpen proletarians.

On the contrary, feudalism, which was based on the small-scale production of serfs and urban artisans, as it developed, created the conditions for the growth of productive forces, the rise of technology based on the development of the capitalist system that originated in its depths. Under these conditions, the ruined artisans and peasants constituted the cadre of proletarians who were needed by the developing large-scale capitalist industry.

The capitalist mode of production originated in the form of a way of life in the depths of feudal society. But his birth cost the mother's life. The development of the capitalist structure in the depths of feudal society took place with such speed and intensity that a complete discrepancy was soon revealed, on the one hand, between the new productive forces and, on the other, the economic and political system of feudalism.

Marx and Engels wrote in The Communist Manifesto that the conditions “... in which the production and exchange of feudal society, the feudal organization of agriculture and industry, in a word, feudal property relations, took place, no longer corresponded to the developed productive forces. They slowed down production instead of developing it. They have become his shackles. They had to be broken, and they were broken.

Their place was taken by free competition, with the social and political system corresponding to it ... "

This coup was carried out by the bourgeoisie through a revolution in which the peasants were given the role of ordinary fighters against feudalism. The bourgeoisie took advantage of the fruits of the revolutionary struggle of the peasantry. The working class was still weak and unorganized. He could not yet lead the peasantry. As a result, one system of exploitation was replaced by another. Feudal exploitation was replaced by capitalist.

While in England and other European countries the development of capitalism led to the rapid liquidation of feudal relations, in Germany, Rumania and Russia they still existed. For a number of reasons, and above all because of the economic backwardness of these countries, they experienced a "relapse" of feudal exploitation in its most cruel form. The opened world market for agricultural products pushed the landowners to expand their own production of these products, which was still based on feudal exploitation, on serf labor. Under these conditions, the expansion of landowner agriculture meant the expansion of the use of serf labor and the intensification of the exploitation of the serfs. The landowners, who were in need of labor, began to switch to corvée and quitrent in kind and finally enslave the peasants in order to squeeze out as much surplus product as possible to sell it on the market. The exploitation of the serfs assumed monstrous proportions, bordering on slavery.

Marx says: “... as soon as the peoples, whose production is still carried out in relatively low forms of slave labor, corvee labor, etc., are drawn into the world market, which is dominated by the capitalist mode of production and which makes the sale of the products of this production abroad the predominant interest , so the civilized horror of excessive labor joins the barbaric horrors of slavery, serfdom, etc. ” .

Serfdom is not some special mode of exploitation, fundamentally different from feudalism. The essence of exploitation is the same here. Serfdom- this is a stage in the development of feudalism, associated with the aggravation and intensification of the exploitation of the peasants by the landlords in the backward countries, drawn into the world market.

Thus, for example, after the peasant uprising, Germany had to go through, in the words of Engels, the "second edition" of serfdom in its most cruel form. Only the revolution of 1848 destroyed serfdom in Germany. However, vestiges of it remained even after that.

They left a huge imprint on the subsequent development of Germany, which Lenin described as the Prussian path of development of capitalism. The remnants of serf relations took place in Germany in the period of developed capitalism. The coming of the Nazis to power led to a sharp increase in reactionary, feudal-serf tendencies in Germany. The fascists, trying to turn back the wheel of history, intensively planted slave-serf orders throughout the territory they temporarily seized, and huge masses of the population were forcibly driven to Germany and turned into slaves and serfs.

In Russia in the XVII, XVIII and partly XIX centuries. serfdom assumed the crudest forms of violence and personal dependence. No wonder Lenin called it "serf slavery."

The landlords, like slave owners, sold serfs, exchanged them for dogs, women were often forced to breastfeed puppies, lost serfs at cards, etc.

In the newspapers of that time, one could often find advertisements for the sale, along with diamonds, racing droshky, cows and dogs of yard girls, tailors, watchmakers, etc.

The best advanced Russian people - Radishchev, the Decembrists, Herzen and Chernyshevsky waged an uncompromising struggle against serfdom.

The Russian people, represented primarily by the many millions of peasants, fought for their liberation with the help of revolutionary uprisings. This revolutionary struggle was the decisive factor that led to the abolition of serfdom in 1861. However, remnants of serfdom existed even after the abolition of serfdom and were finally swept away by the Great October Socialist Revolution, which destroyed landownership with one blow with all its enslaving feudal-serf methods of exploitation .

10. Economic views of the era of feudalism

The enormous power and strength of the Church, both in the field of economics and politics, and in ideology, was expressed in the fact that the literature of that time, disputes, discussions, and argumentation were of a theological nature. The most convincing argument was that of the divine scripture.

The only thing that the Middle Ages “... borrowed from the lost ancient world was Christianity... As a result, as happens at all early stages of development, the monopoly on intellectual education went to the priests, and education itself thus assumed a predominantly theological character... And this is the supreme dominance of theology in all areas of mental activity was at the same time a necessary consequence of the position that the church occupied as the most general synthesis and the most general sanction of the existing feudal system.

Therefore, the economic views of that time were reflected mainly in religious and philosophical works. Among these works, the works of Thomas Aquinas, dating back to the 13th century, deserve to be noted. They are of interest to us insofar as they reflect the economy of feudal society, just as the statements about labor of philosophers, historians and writers of the ancient world reflected the position of labor in a slave society.

The basis of the slave system was the exploitation of slave labor. Hence the view of labor as a shameful occupation, unworthy of a free man. The feudal system was based on the small-scale production of serfs in the countryside and small-scale handicraft production in the city, based on private property and the personal labor of the producer. Moreover, the ruling class - the feudal lords, in an effort to extract the maximum surplus product, were forced, in order to stimulate the labor of the serf peasant, to switch to such forms of rent that gave the latter greater economic independence, developed his initiative, kindled in him the interest of a private owner. Hence the different view of labor in feudal society in comparison with the view of slave owners.

Thomas Aquinas considers labor to be the only legitimate source of wealth and income. Only labor, in his opinion, gives value to other objects.

However, the views of Thomas Aquinas differ to a certain extent from the views of the early Christians. If Augustine considered every work worthy of respect, then Thomas Aquinas approaches this issue differently. He distinguishes between physical labor and spiritual labor. He considers physical labor as simple labor, black labor, mental labor as noble labor.

In this division of labor, Thomas Aquinas sees the basis for the class division of society, which is a characteristic feature of the feudal system.

Just as bees build wax cells and collect honey, and their queens are exempt from this work, so in human society some must engage in physical labor, others in spiritual.

Thomas Aquinas treats wealth differently compared to the ancient Christians. The early Christians condemned private property and wealth.

Thomas Aquinas treats private property and wealth differently. He considers private property to be as necessary an institution of human life as clothing.

Thomas Aquinas' views on wealth are dominated by the same feudal-estate approach. Each person must dispose of wealth in accordance with the position that he occupies on the feudal hierarchical ladder.

Of great interest is the teaching of Thomas Aquinas on the "just price".

"Fair price" should reflect two factors: 1) the amount of labor spent on the production of goods, and 2) the class position of the producer - it must provide the producer with "a decent existence for his position."

Thomas Aquinas and other medieval writers, condemning the income from trade, nevertheless allowed the receipt of trade profit, since it rewards the labor of transportation and provides the merchant with a decent existence for his position.

With even greater condemnation medieval Christian writers treated usury. This attitude towards trade and usury reflects the fact that the ideologists of feudalism viewed wealth from a consumer point of view.

However, with the development of commodity production and exchange, the attitude towards trade and usury became more and more tolerant.

The revolutionary struggle of the serfs against feudal exploitation, as well as the struggle between cities and feudal lords, runs like a red thread through the entire history of feudalism. This revolutionary struggle against feudalism was also reflected in the realm of ideology, taking on a religious form. Revolutionary economic and political doctrines appeared in the form of theological heresies.

“Revolutionary opposition to feudalism runs through the entire Middle Ages. It appears, according to the conditions of the time, now in the form of mysticism, now in the form of open heresy, now in the form of an armed uprising.

Insofar as various class groupings were hidden behind the struggle against the rule of the feudal lords, it was waged under various slogans. The programs put forward in this struggle reflected the interests of these groups.

The movement of peasants and plebeians represented the most radical, most revolutionary wing of the feudal opposition.

The peasant-plebeian movement against feudalism also took the form of church heresy. Peasants and plebeians, as well as the burghers and the lower nobility, demanded a return to the early Christian church system. This is not the end of their programs.

They wanted the kind of equality that existed in the early Christian communities. They justified this requirement by the equality of all people as sons of God. Based on this, they demanded the abolition of serfdom, taxes and privileges, and the equalization of the nobles with the peasants.

Thus, during the period of Wat Tyler's uprising in 1381 in England, among the peasants, the speeches of the famous preacher John Ball on the topic "When Adam plowed, Eve spun, who then was a nobleman" enjoyed tremendous success. John Ball sought to emphasize the original natural equality of people who did not know the division into estates.

The leader of the rebellious peasants in Russia, Pugachev, put forward the idea of ​​abolishing the rule of the nobles, the abolition of serfdom, and demanded that all peasants be given land, as well as the release of peasants from taxes, taxes, and bribe-taking judges.

Along with the equalization of the nobles with the peasants, the peasant-plebeian movement put forward the demand for the equalization of the privileged townspeople with the plebeians.

In the peasant-plebeian movement, in its slogans and programs, the tendency to eliminate property inequality, to establish consumer communism of the first Christian communities, was quite clearly pronounced.

During the uprising of 1419, the most radical part of the peasantry in the Czech Republic, represented by the Taborites, demanded a return to original Christianity: the elimination of private property, the introduction of community property and the equality of all before the law. The Taborites tried to put their ideals into practice. So, following the example of the first Christians, they organized communities that had a common cash desk, where the surplus from earnings was paid.

The leader of the revolutionary uprising of peasants and plebeians in Germany, Thomas Müntzer, propagated the idea of ​​a thousand-year kingdom of Christ, in which there will be neither rich nor poor, universal equality and blessed life will reign, and property will belong to the whole society. Here we see how the movement of the most oppressed strata of feudal society strove to go beyond the limits of the struggle against feudalism and the privileged townspeople, beyond the limits of the bourgeois society that was emerging at that time in the depths of feudalism.

However, under feudalism there was no real basis for the realization of such dreams, because the economic need for the transition from feudal to capitalist society was only maturing.

Therefore, “... the desire to go beyond the limits of not only the present, but also the future,” says Engels, “could only be fantastic, only violence against reality, and the very first attempt to put it into practice had to throw the movement back, into those narrow limits that only allowed by the conditions of the time. The attacks on private property, the demand for the community of property, inevitably had to degenerate into a primitive organization of charity; indefinite Christian equality could, at the most, result in bourgeois "equality before the law"; the abolition of all authorities eventually turned into the establishment of republican governments elected by the people. The anticipation of communism in fantasy became in reality the anticipation of contemporary bourgeois relations.

The revolutionary, progressive role of the peasant uprisings consisted in the demands for the elimination of serfdom, which had become a brake on social development, in real revolutionary actions aimed at its destruction. The revolution of the serfs, being the decisive factor in the overthrow of feudalism, thus cleared the way for a more advanced, capitalist mode of production.

11. Fascist falsification of the history of the feudal system

The fascists explain the fall of the slave system by the decline of the Aryan race, which began to interbreed with the "lower races". As a result of this loss of the purity of the northern race, the Roman Empire perished.

The world was saved, according to the fascist falsifiers, by the Germans, who preserved the purity of the Aryan blood intact and who conquered the Roman Empire.

The Nazis claim that the ancient Germans sacredly observed the purity of their Nordic race, as evidenced by the custom of killing weak children.

Thanks to the purity of the race, the Germans allegedly created a truly Nordic medieval culture.

Thus, the fascists explain the emergence of medieval culture, as well as ancient culture, by the same constant all-saving factor - the factor of Aryan life-giving blood.

It is not clear why in some cases the same unchanging Aryan blood leads to a slave system, and in other cases to a feudal one. The fascist obscurantists are powerless to give any intelligible answer to this question.

The Germanic tribes, who at that time were passing through the highest stage of barbarism, undoubtedly played a certain role in the replacement of the slave-owning system by the feudal one. But this role has nothing to do with their Aryan blood.

Feudalism arose as a result of the fact that slavery had outlived itself, and the historical conditions for wage labor had not yet taken shape. Under these conditions, a further step forward in the development of the productive forces could only be made on the basis of the economy of a small dependent producer, who was to a certain extent interested in his labour.

Contrary to the assurances of the Nazis, the ancient Germans were barbarians who stood at a lower level of cultural development.

The collapse of the Roman Empire was accompanied by a huge destruction of the productive forces. In this destruction of the productive forces, a significant role belongs to the Germans, who conquered the Roman Empire.

It took a long time for feudalism to prove its superiority over slavery and move forward the development of the productive forces. But this happened not due to some miraculous properties of Aryan blood, but due to the greater interest of the serf in his work compared to the slave.

Finally, among the Germans themselves - this, according to the Nazis, the race of masters - in the process of feudalization, gentlemen-feudal lords and subordinate serfs arise. Thus, the majority of carriers of Aryan blood become serfs, which, according to the Nazis, is the lot of the "lower races."

Consequently, the conquerors themselves are subject to the same economic laws of development as the “lower races” allegedly conquered by them. All this suggests that there is not a grain of science in the racial theory of the Nazis.

Fascists glorify the class organization of feudal society. The closed nature of the estates contributes, according to the Nazis, to the preservation of the purity of the Aryan race.

The domination of the Aryan race in Europe by the Nazis dates back to the 5th-6th centuries, and in Germany - to the 10th-11th centuries. And then comes the decline. This decline, according to the Fascists, is again due to the loss of the purity of the Aryan race. Brave and enterprising Germans seem to perish in the crusades, the isolation of the upper classes decreases. Chivalry is mixed with people of "lower races". In fact, the loss of the purity of Aryan blood had nothing to do with the death of feudalism, just as its preservation had nothing to do with the rise of feudalism.

The productive forces of feudal society have outgrown the framework of feudal production relations. As a result, feudalism entered a stage of its disintegration, which was at the same time a stage in the development of capitalist relations.

The decisive role in the elimination of serfdom belongs to the revolution of the serfs.

Fascist falsifiers, in the interests of their insane policy of conquering the world and enslaving the working people, falsify the history of pre-capitalist formations. They dream of returning the world to the worst times of slavery and serfdom. But slavery and serfdom, which in their time were necessary steps in social development, have gone forever into the past.

A policy built on a return to long-past stages of historical development is in blatant contradiction with economic laws and the needs of the development of society and is doomed to inevitable failure, as the brilliant victories of the Red Army testify very clearly and convincingly.

K. Marx and F. Engels. Works, vol. 25, part II, p. 143.

feudalism and feudal society) - a type of agrarian society in which land ownership is conditioned by military or other service, in which there is a hierarchy of political power based on contractual rights and obligations, usually with a monarch at the head, and unfree peasants cultivate the land as serfs. This term is widely debated, and its definition could be challenged by many participants in the debate. The main areas of debate are: (a) whether feudalism developed only in Europe and Japan or was it more widespread. According to most, much of Western Europe from the period 1000-1400. (that is, the Middle Ages) can be described as feudal, characteristic of later Eastern Europe. Japan during the Tokugawa dynasty (1603-1868) had key similarities with Europe and the term was widely used; (b) whether feudalism is valued as a form of society, or whether it is a collection of institutions that can be found in a range of societies. When evaluating feudalism in the latter sense, political or economic aspects are taken into account. The political ones include the dominance of a paramilitary group of landowners and the hierarchy of vassalage, that is, subordinates are required to be loyal and be in the military service of a superior, who in exchange provides protection and promotion to the vassal. In Europe, a chain of similar relationships has developed from the monarch down. In economic terms, this is a concentration around land ownership that produces products (in Europe - flax), and the peasants are not free serfs and, through various forms of rent, give the surplus product to the landowner. As a rule, production was not carried out for the market, although markets developed. If an institutional approach is adopted, then feudal land ownership can be identified in societies where feudal political relations did not exist (in particular, in the haciendas of colonial Spanish America). However, modern sociology (e.g. Mann, 1986; Anderson, 1974) prefers to define feudalism as a type of society that includes specific political, economic, social, and, more problematically, ideological or cultural elements, although differences are recognized (e.g., Anderson) between Southern, Western and Eastern Europe. It is this social approach that leads to the identification of the few examples of feudalism in the world. Some Marxists, like Anderson, maintain a limited use of the term, while others, influenced by Maoist writings, identify feudalism with a range of agrarian societies. See also Feudal mode of production.

The feudal system existed, with certain features, in almost all countries.

The era of feudalism covers a long period. In China, the feudal system existed for over two thousand years. In the countries of Western Europe, feudalism covers a number of centuries - from the time of the fall of the Roman Empire (V century) to the bourgeois revolutions in England (XVII century) and France (XVIII century), in Russia - from the 9th century to the peasant reform of 1861, in Transcaucasia - from the 4th century to the 70s of the 19th century, among the peoples of Central Asia - from the 7th - 8th centuries until the victory of the proletarian revolution in Russia.

AT Western Europe feudalism arose on the basis of the collapse of the Roman slave-owning society, on the one hand, and the decomposition of the tribal system among the conquering tribes, on the other; it was formed as a result of the interaction of these two processes.

Elements of feudalism, as already mentioned, originated in the depths of the slave-owning society in the form of a colony. The columns were obliged to cultivate the land of their master - a large landowner, pay him a certain amount of money or give a significant share of the crop, and perform various kinds of duties. Nevertheless, the columns were more interested in labor than the slaves, since they had their own economy.

In this way, new relations of production were born, which were fully developed in the feudal era.

The Roman Empire was defeated by the tribes of the Germans, Gauls, Slavs and other peoples who lived in various parts of Europe. The power of slave owners was overthrown, slavery fell away. Large latifundia and craft workshops based on slave labor were divided into small ones. The population of the collapsed Roman Empire consisted of large landowners (former slave owners who switched to the colonat system), freed slaves, columns, small peasants and artisans.

At the time of the conquest of Rome, the conquering tribes had a communal system, which was in the process of decomposition. played an important role in the social life of these tribes. rural community, which the Germans called the brand. The land, with the exception of large land holdings of the tribal nobility, was in communal ownership. Forests, wastelands, pastures, ponds were used together. Fields and meadows after a few years were redistributed among the members of the community. But gradually, household land, and then arable land, began to pass into the hereditary use of individual families. The distribution of land, the consideration of cases relating to the community, and the settlement of disputes between its members were carried out by the community meeting, elders and judges chosen by it. At the head of the conquering tribes were military leaders who, together with their squads, owned large lands.

The tribes that conquered the Roman Empire took over most of its state lands and some of the lands of large private landowners. Forests, meadows and pastures remained in common use, and arable land was divided among individual farms. The divided lands later became the private property of the peasants. Thus, an extensive stratum of independent small peasantry was formed.

But the peasants could not maintain their independence for a long time. On the basis of private ownership of land and other means of production, property inequality between individual members of the rural community inevitably increased. Wealthy and poor families appeared among the peasants. The wealthy members of the community, with the growth of property inequality, began to acquire power over the community. The land was concentrated in the hands of wealthy families and became the subject of capture by the tribal nobility and military leaders. Peasants became personally dependent on large landowners.

In order to maintain and strengthen power over the dependent peasants, the big landowners had to strengthen the organs of state power. Military leaders, relying on the tribal nobility and warriors, began to concentrate power in their hands, turned into kings - monarchs.

On the ruins of the Roman Empire, a number of new states were formed, headed by kings. The kings generously distributed the land they seized for life, and then for hereditary possession, to their close associates, who had to carry out military service for this. The church, which served as an important pillar of royal power, received a lot of land. The land was cultivated by the peasants, who now had to perform a number of duties in favor of the new masters. Huge land holdings passed into the hands of royal warriors and servants, church authorities and monasteries. :

Lands distributed under such conditions were called fiefs. Hence the name of the new social system - feudalism.

The gradual transformation of peasant land into the property of the feudal lords and the enslavement of the peasant masses (the process of feudalization) took place in Europe over a number of centuries (from the 5th-6th to the 9th-10th centuries). The free peasantry was ruined by continuous military service, robberies and extortions. Turning for help to a large landowner, the peasants turned into people dependent on him. Often the peasants were forced to surrender themselves under the "protection" of the feudal lord: otherwise it would be impossible for a defenseless person to exist in the conditions of continuous wars and robber raids. In such cases, the ownership of a land plot passed to the feudal lord, and the peasant could cultivate this plot only if he performed various duties in favor of the feudal lord. In other cases, royal governors and officials, through deceit and violence, seized the lands of free peasants, forcing them to recognize their power.

In different countries, the process of feudalization proceeded differently, but the essence of the matter was the same everywhere: previously free peasants fell into personal dependence on the feudal lords who seized their land. This dependence was sometimes weaker, sometimes tougher. Over time, the differences in the position of former slaves, columns and free peasants were erased, and they all turned into a single mass. serf peasantry. Gradually, a situation developed that was characterized by a medieval saying: “There is no land without a seigneur” (that is, without a feudal lord). The kings were the supreme landowners.

Feudalism was a necessary step in the historical development of society. Slavery has outlived itself. Under these conditions, the further development of productive forces was possible only on the basis of the labor of a mass of dependent peasants who own their own farms, their own tools of production and have some interest in labor, necessary in order to cultivate the land and pay tribute in kind from their crops to the feudal lord.

AT Russia in the conditions of the decomposition of the communal system, patriarchal slavery arose. But the development of society went here basically not along the path of slavery, but along the path of feudalization. The Slavic tribes, even under the dominance of their tribal system, starting from the 3rd century AD, attacked the Roman slave-owning empire, fought for the liberation of the cities of the Northern Black Sea region under its rule, and played a large role in the collapse of the slave-owning system. The transition from the primitive communal system to feudalism in Russia took place at a time when the slave-owning system had long since fallen and feudal relations in European countries had become stronger.

As the history of mankind testifies, it is not obligatory that each people pass through all stages of social development. For many peoples, conditions arise under which they are able to pass through one or another stage of development and go directly to a higher level.

The rural community among the Eastern Slavs was called "verv", "world". The community had meadows, forests, reservoirs in common use, and arable land began to pass into the possession of individual families. The head of the community was an elder. The development of private land ownership led to the gradual disintegration of the community. The land was seized by elders and tribal princes. Peasants - smerds - were at first free members of the community, and then became dependent on large landowners - boyars.

The church became the largest feudal owner. Grants from princes, contributions and spiritual testaments made her the owner of vast lands and the richest farms at that time.

During the formation of the centralized Russian state (XV - XVI centuries), the great princes and tsars began, as they said then, to “place” their close and service people on the land, that is, to give them land and peasants under the condition of military service. Hence the names - estate, landowners.

At that time, the peasants were not yet completely attached to the landowner and the land: they had the right to move from one landowner to another. At the end of the 16th century, the landowners, in order to increase the production of grain for sale, intensified the exploitation of the peasants. In this regard, in 1581 the state took away from the peasants the right to transfer from one landowner to another. The peasants were completely attached to the land that belonged to the landlords, and thus turned into serfs.

In the era of feudalism, agriculture played a predominant role, and of its branches - agriculture. Gradually, over the course of a number of centuries, the methods of arable farming were improved, horticulture, horticulture, winemaking, and buttermaking developed.

In the early period of feudalism, the dominant shifting, and in forest areas undercut farming system. A piece of land was sown for several years in a row with one crop until the soil was exhausted. Then they moved on to another area. Subsequently, there was a transition to three-field a system in which arable land is divided into three fields, with one field alternately used for winter crops, the other for spring crops, and the third is left fallow. The three-field system began to spread in Western Europe and Russia from the 11th-12th centuries. It remained dominant for many centuries, surviving until the 19th century, and in many countries to the present day.

Agricultural implements in the early period of feudalism were scarce. The tools of labor were a plow with an iron plowshare, a sickle, a scythe, a shovel. Later, an iron plow and a harrow began to be used. Grinding of grain for a long time was done by hand, until windmills and watermills became widespread.

Production relations of feudal society. Exploitation of peasants by feudal lords.

The basis of the production relations of feudal society was the feudal lord's ownership of the land and incomplete ownership of the serf. The serf was not a slave. He had his own business. The feudal lord could no longer kill him, but he could sell him. Along with the property of the feudal lords, there was the sole property of the peasants and artisans for the instruments of production and for their private economy, based on personal labor.

Large feudal landed property was the basis for the exploitation of the peasants by the landlords. The feudal lord's own household occupied part of his land. The feudal lord gave the other part of the land on enslaving terms for the use of the peasants. The peasant was forced to work for the feudal lord due to the fact that the most important means of production - land was the property of the feudal lord. The feudal lord "endowed" the peasants with land, hence the name "put on". The peasant land allotment was a condition for providing the landowner with labor. Using his allotment hereditarily, the peasant was obliged to work for the landowner, cultivate the landowner's land with the help of his tools and draft animals, or give the landowner his surplus product in kind or in cash.

Such a system of economy inevitably assumed the personal dependence of the peasant on the landowner - non-economic coercion. “If the landowner did not have direct power over the personality of the peasant, then he could not force a person who was endowed with land and who ran his own household to work for him.”

The working time of a serf was divided into necessary and surplus time. During the necessary time, the peasant created the product necessary for his own existence and the existence of his family. During the surplus time, he created a surplus product, which was appropriated by the feudal lord. The surplus labor of the peasants working on the feudal farm, or the surplus product created by the peasant on his own farm and appropriated by the feudal lord, form the feudal economy. land rent.

Feudal rent often absorbed not only the surplus labor of the peasant, but also part of his necessary labor. The basis of this rent was feudal ownership of land, associated with the direct domination of the feudal landowner over the peasants dependent on him.

Under feudalism, there were three forms of land rent: labor rent, product rent and cash rent. With all these forms of rent, the exploitation of the peasants by the landowners appeared in an undisguised form.

Labor rent prevailed in the early stages of the development of feudalism. She acted as corvee. Under corvée, a peasant worked for a certain part of the week - three days or more - with the help of his own tools of production (plow, working cattle, etc.) on the master's estate, and on the remaining days of the week he worked on his farm. Thus, under corvée, the necessary labor and the surplus labor of the peasant were clearly delineated in time and space. The circle of corvée works was very extensive. The peasant plowed, sowed and harvested, grazed cattle, carpenter, cut wood for the landowner, transported agricultural products and building materials on his horse.

Under corvée, the serf was interested in increasing labor productivity only while working on his farm. While working on the landowner's land, the peasant did not have such an interest. The feudal lords kept overseers who forced the peasants to work.

In the course of further development, labor rent is replaced by rent by products. The rent in products took the form natural quitrent. The peasant was obliged to regularly deliver to the landowner a certain amount of bread, livestock, poultry and other agricultural products. The quitrent was most often combined with certain remnants of corvee duties, that is, with the work of a peasant on a landowner's estate.

With the rent in products, the peasant spent all his labor - both necessary and surplus - at his own discretion. Necessary labor and surplus labor were no longer as tangibly separated as under labor-rent. The peasant became relatively more independent here. This created some incentives for a further increase in labor productivity.

At a later stage of feudalism, when exchange was relatively widely developed, money rent arose. She acted as cash rent. Monetary rent is characteristic of the period of the disintegration of feudalism and the emergence of capitalist relations. Various forms of feudal rent often existed simultaneously. “In all these forms of ground rent: labour-rent, rent in products, money rent (as simply a converted form of rent in products), the payer of the rent is always assumed to be the actual tiller and owner of the land, whose unpaid surplus-labour goes directly to the owner of the land.”

In an effort to increase their income, the feudal lords imposed all sorts of taxes on the peasants. In many cases, they had mills, forges and other enterprises in their monopoly. The peasant was forced to use them for an exorbitantly high payment in kind or in money. In addition to the quitrent in kind or money paid to the feudal lord, the peasant had to pay all kinds of taxes to the state, local fees, and in some countries - a tithe, that is, a tenth of the harvest, in favor of the church.

Thus, the basis of the existence of feudal society was the labor of serfs. Peasants produced not only agricultural products. They worked on the estates of feudal lords as artisans, erected castles and monasteries, laid roads. Cities were built by the hands of serfs.

The economy of the feudal lord, especially at the early stages of its development, was at its core natural farming. Each feudal estate, which consisted of a lord's estate and villages belonging to the feudal lord, lived an isolated economic life, rarely resorting to exchange with the outside world. The needs of the feudal lord and his family, the needs of numerous servants, at first were satisfied with those products that were produced in the lord's household and delivered by quitrent peasants. More or less large estates had a sufficient number of artisans, mostly from among the household serfs. These artisans were engaged in the manufacture of clothing and footwear, the production and repair of weapons, hunting equipment and agricultural implements, and the construction of buildings.

Peasant farming was also subsistence. The peasants were engaged not only in agricultural labor, but also in domestic handicraft work, mainly processing of raw materials produced on their farm: spinning, weaving, making shoes, and household equipment.

For a long time, feudalism was characterized by combination of farming as the main branch of the economy home business, having secondary significance. Those few imported products that could not be dispensed with, such as salt, iron products, were delivered at first by wandering merchants. Later, in connection with the growth of cities and handicraft production, the division of labor and the development of exchange between town and country took a big step forward.

The exploitation of dependent peasants by feudal lords was the main feature of feudalism among all peoples. However, in some countries the feudal system had its own characteristics. In the countries of the East, feudal relations were combined for a long time with relations of slavery. This was the case in China, India, Japan and a number of other countries. Feudal state ownership of land was of great importance in the East. For example, during the period of the Baghdad Caliphate under the rule of the Arabs (especially in the 8th-9th centuries AD), most of the communal peasants lived on the land of the Caliph and paid feudal rent directly to the state. Feudalism in the East is also characterized by the vitality of patriarchal-tribal relations, which were used by the feudal lords in order to intensify the exploitation of the peasants.

In the agricultural countries of the East, where irrigated agriculture is of decisive importance, the peasants found themselves in bondage to the feudal lords, because not only land, but also water resources and irrigation facilities were the property of the feudal state or individual feudal lords. The nomadic peoples used the land as a pasture. The size of feudal landownership was determined by the number of livestock. Large feudal cattle owners were in fact large owners of pastures. They kept the peasantry in bondage and exploited it.

Medieval city. Workshops of artisans. merchant guilds.

Cities arose during the slave system. Cities such as Rome, Florence, Venice, Genoa are in Italy; Paris, Lyon, Marseille - in France; London - in England; Samarkand is in Central Asia, and many others were inherited from the era of slavery in the Middle Ages. The slave system fell, but the cities remained. Large slave-owning workshops disintegrated; no craft continued to exist.

During the early Middle Ages, cities and crafts developed poorly. The urban artisans made products for sale, but they got most of the commodities they needed from their households. Many of them had small crops, orchards, and productive livestock. Women were engaged in yarn of flax, wool for making clothes. This indicated the limitations of markets and exchange.

In the countryside, the processing of agricultural raw materials was at first an auxiliary occupation of farmers. Then, artisans began to stand out from among the peasants, serving their village. The productivity of artisans increased. It became possible to produce more products than was necessary for the feudal lord or the peasants of one village. Craftsmen began to settle around feudal castles, near the walls of monasteries, in large villages and other trading centers. So gradually, usually on waterways, new cities grew up (in Russia, for example, Kyiv, Pskov, Novgorod, Vladimir). The isolation of the city from the village, which arose even during slavery, intensified.

Over time, crafts became more and more profitable business. The art of craftsmen improved. The feudal landowner switched to buying handicrafts from the townspeople, he was no longer satisfied with the products of his own serfs. The more developed handicraft finally separated itself from agriculture.

Cities, having arisen on the lands of secular and spiritual feudal lords, submitted to their authority. The townspeople carried a number of duties in favor of the feudal lord, paid him a quitrent in kind or money, and submitted to his administration and court. The urban population early began the struggle for liberation from feudal dependence. Partly by force, partly by ransoming the cities, they obtained for themselves the right to self-government, courts, minting coins, and collecting taxes.

The urban population consisted mainly of artisans and merchants. In many cities, serfs who fled from the landlords found shelter. The city acted as the carrier of commodity production, in contrast to the countryside, where subsistence farming dominated. The growth of competition from the fugitive serfs who flocked to the cities, the struggle against exploitation and oppression by the feudal lords forced the artisans to unite in workshops. The guild system existed in the era of feudalism in almost all countries.

Workshops arose in Byzantium in the 9th century, in Italy - in the 10th century, and later - throughout Western Europe and Russia. In the countries of the East (Egypt, China), in the cities of the Arab Caliphate, workshops arose even earlier than in European countries. Workshops united urban artisans of one specific craft or several close ones. Only craftsmen-masters were full members of the workshops. The craftsman-master had a small number of apprentices and apprentices. The guilds carefully protected the exclusive right of their members to engage in this craft and regulated the production process: they set the length of the working day, the number of apprentices and apprentices for each master, determined the quality of raw materials and the finished product, as well as its prices, they often bought raw materials together. The methods of work, fixed by a long tradition, were obligatory for all. Strict regulation was intended to ensure that no master did not rise above the rest. In addition, the workshops served as mutual aid organizations.

The guilds were a feudal form of craft organization. At the beginning of their existence, they played a certain positive role, contributing to the strengthening and development of urban crafts. However, with the growth of commodity production and the expansion of the market, the workshops more and more turned into a brake on the development of productive forces.

The excessive regulation of handicraft production by the guilds fettered the initiative of the artisans and hindered the development of technology. In order to limit competition, the workshops began to put up all sorts of obstacles to those wishing to obtain the rights of a master. Before the students and apprentices, whose number has grown greatly, the opportunity to become independent masters was practically closed. They were forced to remain in the position of hired workers all their lives. Under these conditions, the relationship between the master and his subordinates lost their former, more or less patriarchal, character. Masters intensified the exploitation of their subordinates, forcing them to work 14 to 16 hours a day for negligible wages. Apprentices began to unite in secret unions - brotherhoods - to protect their interests. Guilds and city authorities in every possible way persecuted the brotherhoods of apprentices.

The richest part of the urban population were merchants. Trading activity unfolded both in cities inherited from the era of slavery, and in cities that arose under feudalism. Guild organization in the craft corresponded to the organization of guilds in trade. merchant guilds in the era of feudalism existed almost everywhere. In the East, they have been known since the 9th century, in Western Europe - from the 9th - 10th centuries, in Russia - from the 12th century. The main task of the guilds was to fight the competition of outside merchants, streamline measures and weights, and protect merchant rights from the encroachment of feudal lords.

In the 9th-10th centuries, there was already significant trade between the countries of the East and Western Europe. Kievan Rus took an active part in this trade. Crusades (XI-XIII centuries) played an important role in the expansion of trade, which opened Middle Eastern markets for Western European merchants. A flood of gold and silver poured into Europe from the East. Money began to appear in places where they had not been used before. The Italian cities, especially Genoa and Venice, took a direct part in the conquest of the eastern markets, transporting the crusaders to the East on their merchant ships and supplying them with provisions.

For a long time, the Mediterranean ports were the main centers of trade, linking Western Europe with the East. But at the same time, trade developed widely in the North German and Dutch cities located along the trade routes of the North and Baltic Seas. In the XIV century, a trade union of cities arose here - the German Hansa, which united about 80 cities in various European countries in the next two centuries. The Hanseatic League traded with England, Scandinavia, Poland and Russia. In exchange for products of Western European craft - Flanders and English cloth, linen, German metal products, French wines - furs, leather, lard, honey, bread, wood, resin, linen fabrics and some handicrafts were exported from the northeastern regions of Europe. From the countries of the East, merchants brought spices - pepper, cloves, nutmeg, incense, dyes, paper and silk fabrics, carpets and other goods.

In the 13th-14th centuries, the Russian cities of Novgorod, Pskov and Moscow carried on extensive trade with Asia and Western Europe. Novgorod merchants traded, on the one hand, with the peoples of the North (the coast of the Arctic Ocean and the Trans-Urals), and on the other hand, they traded regularly with Scandinavia and Germany.

The growth of cities and the development of trade had a strong influence on the feudal countryside. The economy of the feudal lords was drawn into the market. The feudal lords needed money to buy luxury items and urban handicrafts. In this regard, it was beneficial for the feudal lords to transfer peasants from corvée and quitrent in kind to cash quitrent. Feudal exploitation intensified even more with the transition to cash rent.

Classes and estates of feudal society. feudal hierarchy.

Feudal society was divided into two main classes - feudal lords and peasants. “The feudal society represented such a division of classes, when the vast majority - the serfs - were completely dependent on an insignificant minority - the landlords, who owned the land.”

The feudal class was not a homogeneous whole. Small feudal lords paid tribute to large feudal lords, helped them in the war, but enjoyed their patronage. The patron was called senior, patronized - vassal. The seigneurs, in turn, were vassals of other, more powerful feudal lords.

As the ruling class, the feudal landlords stood at the head of the state. They were one class - nobility. The nobles occupied the honorary position of the first estate, enjoying broad political and economic privileges.

Clergy(church and monastery) was also the largest land owner. It owned vast lands with a numerous dependent and serf population and, along with the nobles, was the ruling class.

The broad base of the "feudal ladder" was peasantry. The peasants were subordinate to the landowner and were under the supreme authority of the largest feudal lord - the king. The peasantry was a politically disenfranchised class. Landowners could sell their serfs and widely used this right. The serf-owners subjected the peasants to corporal punishment. Lenin called serfdom "serfdom". The exploitation of serfs was almost as cruel as the exploitation of slaves in the ancient world. But still, a serf could work part of the time on his plot, could to a certain extent belong to himself.

The main class contradiction of feudal society was the contradiction between feudal lords and serfs. The struggle of the exploited peasantry against the feudal landlords was waged throughout the entire epoch of feudalism and acquired particular acuteness at the last stage of its development, when feudal exploitation intensified to the extreme.

In cities freed from feudal dependence, power was in the hands of wealthy citizens - merchants, usurers, owners of urban lands and large homeowners. The guild artisans, who made up the bulk of the urban population, often opposed the urban nobility, seeking their participation in the management of cities along with the urban aristocracy. Small artisans and apprentices fought against the guild masters and merchants who exploited them.

By the end of the feudal era, the urban population was already highly stratified. On one side are rich merchants and guild masters, on the other are vast layers of artisan apprentices and apprentices, the urban poor. The urban lower classes entered the struggle against the combined forces of the urban nobility and feudal lords. This struggle was combined in one stream with the struggle of the serfs against feudal exploitation.

Kings were considered to be the bearers of supreme power (in Russia, grand dukes, and then tsars). But outside the realms of the kings, the importance of royalty in the period of early feudalism was negligible. Often this power remained nominal. All of Europe was divided into many large and small states. Large feudal lords were complete masters in their possessions. They issued laws, monitored their execution, performed court and reprisals, maintained their own army, raided neighbors, and did not hesitate to rob on high roads. Many of them minted their own coins. The smaller feudal lords also enjoyed very wide rights in relation to the people subject to them; they tried to equal the big seigneurs.

Over time, feudal relations formed an extremely tangled tangle of rights and obligations. Between the feudal lords there were endless disputes and strife. They were usually resolved by force of arms, through internecine wars.

The development of the productive forces of feudal society.

In the era of feudalism, a higher level of productive forces was achieved in comparison with the era of slavery.

In the field of agriculture, the technique of production improved, the iron plow and other iron tools of labor appeared and became widespread. New branches of field cultivation have emerged, viticulture, winemaking, and horticulture have received significant development. Animal husbandry grew, and especially horse breeding, which was associated with the military service of the feudal lords, butter-making developed. Sheep breeding has become widespread in a number of regions. Meadows and pastures were expanded and improved.

Gradually, the tools of labor of artisans and methods of processing raw materials were improved. Former crafts began to specialize. So, for example, before the blacksmith made all products from metal. In the course of time, weapons, nailing, knife-making, metalworking separated from blacksmithing, shoemaking and saddlery separated from leatherworking. In the 16th-17th centuries, the self-spinning wheel became widespread in Europe. In 1600, the ribbon loom was invented.

Improvement in the smelting and processing of iron was of decisive importance for the improvement of tools. In the beginning, iron was produced in a very primitive way. In the 14th century, waterwheels were used to power bellows for blowing and heavy hammers for crushing ore. With increased traction in furnaces, instead of forging mass, a fusible mass began to be obtained - cast iron. With the use of gunpowder in military affairs and the advent of firearms (in the 14th century), a lot of metal was required for the cannonballs; from the beginning of the 15th century they began to be cast from cast iron. More and more metal was needed for the manufacture of agricultural and other implements. The first blast furnaces appeared in the first half of the 15th century. The invention of the compass contributed to the further development of shipping and navigation. The invention and spread of printing was of great importance.

In China, the productive forces and culture achieved significant development already in the 6th-11th centuries, surpassing Europe of that time in many respects. The Chinese were the first to invent the compass, gunpowder, writing paper, and, in its simplest form, printing.

The development of the productive forces of feudal society more and more came up against the narrow limits of feudal production relations. The peasantry, being under the yoke of feudal exploitation, was not in a position to further increase the production of agricultural products. The productivity of forced peasant labor was extremely low. In the city, the growth of labor productivity of the craftsman ran into obstacles created by shop charters and rules. The feudal system was characterized by a slow pace of development of production, routine, and the power of tradition.

The productive forces that had grown up within the framework of feudal society demanded new production relations.

The origin of capitalist production in the bowels of the feudal system. The role of trading capital.

In the era of feudalism, commodity production gradually developed, urban handicrafts expanded, and peasant economy was more and more involved in the exchange.

The production of small artisans and peasants, based on private property and personal labor, which creates products for exchange, is called simple commodity production.

As already mentioned, a product produced for exchange is a commodity. Individual commodity producers spend unequal amounts of labor on the production of identical commodities. This depends on the different conditions under which they have to work: commodity producers who have more perfect tools spend less labor on the production of the same commodity than other commodity producers. Along with differences in the instruments of labor, differences in the strength, dexterity, skill of the worker, etc., are also important. But the market does not care about the conditions under which and with what tools this or that commodity is produced. The same amount of money is paid for the same goods on the market, regardless of the individual conditions of labor in which they are produced.

Therefore, commodity producers whose individual labor costs are higher than average as a result of the worst conditions of production, cover only a part of these costs in the sale of their goods and go bankrupt. On the other hand, commodity producers whose individual labor inputs are below average, thanks to better conditions of production, find themselves in an advantageous position in the sale of their commodities and grow richer. This intensifies competition. A stratification of small commodity producers is taking place: the majority of them are becoming increasingly poor, while an insignificant part are getting richer.

State fragmentation under feudalism served as a major obstacle to the development of commodity production. The feudal lords arbitrarily set duties on imported goods, levied tribute for passage through their possessions, and thus created serious obstacles to the development of trade. The needs of trade and the general economic development of society necessitated the destruction of feudal fragmentation. The growth of handicraft and agricultural production, the development of the social division of labor between town and country led to the strengthening of economic ties between different regions within the country, to the formation national market. The formation of a national market created the economic preconditions for the centralization of state power. The emerging urban bourgeoisie was interested in the elimination of feudal partitions and stood for the creation of a centralized state.

Relying on a broader stratum of ignoble landowning nobles, on the "vassals of their vassals", as well as on the rising cities, the kings dealt decisive blows to the feudal nobility and strengthened their position. They became not only nominal, but also actual rulers in the state. Large nation-states emerged in the form of absolutist monarchies. The overcoming of feudal fragmentation and the creation of centralized state power contributed to the emergence and development of capitalist relations.

Education was also of great importance for the emergence of the capitalist system. world market.

In the second half of the 15th century, the Turks captured Constantinople and the entire eastern Mediterranean. The most important artery along which the trade routes between Western Europe and the East passed was cut. In search of a sea route to India, Columbus discovered America in 1492, and in 1498 Vasco da Gama, having traveled around Africa, discovered a sea route to India.

As a result of these discoveries, the center of gravity of European trade moved from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic Ocean, the main role in trade passed to the Netherlands, England, and France. Russia played a prominent role in European trade.

With the emergence of world trade and the world market, handicraft was unable to meet the increased demand for goods. This accelerated the transition from small-scale handicraft production to large-scale capitalist production, based on the exploitation of hired workers.

The transition from the feudal mode of production to the capitalist one took place in two ways: on the one hand, the stratification of small commodity producers gave rise to capitalist entrepreneurs, on the other hand, commercial capital represented by merchants directly subordinated production to itself.

The guilds could limit competition and the stratification of artisans as long as commodity production was underdeveloped. With the development of exchange, competition became stronger. Craftsmen who worked for a wider market partly sought the abolition of shop restrictions, partly simply circumvented them. They lengthened the working day of apprentices and apprentices, increased their number, and applied more productive labor methods. The richest masters gradually turned into capitalists, and the poor masters, apprentices and apprentices into hired workers.

Merchant capital, by decomposing the natural economy, contributed to the emergence of capitalist production. Merchant capital initially acted as an intermediary in the exchange of goods of small producers - artisans and peasants - and in the sale by the feudal lords of a part of the surplus product appropriated by them. In the future, the merchant began to regularly buy goods made by them from small manufacturers and then resold them on a wider market. The merchant thereby became a buyer. With the growth of competition and the appearance of a buyer, the position of the mass of artisans changed significantly. Impoverished craftsmen were forced to seek help from a merchant-buyer, who lent them money, raw materials and materials, provided that finished products were sold to him at a predetermined, low price. So small producers fell into economic dependence on merchant capital.

Gradually, many impoverished craftsmen found themselves in such dependence on a rich buyer. The buyer gave them raw materials, such as yarn, for processing it into fabric for a certain fee, and thus turned into distributor.

The ruin of the craftsman led to the fact that the buyer supplied him not only with raw materials, but also with tools. Thus, the artisan was deprived of the last semblance of independent existence and finally turned into a hired worker, and the buyer became an industrial capitalist.

Yesterday's artisans, assembled in the capitalist's workshop, did the same work. Soon, however, it was discovered that some of them are better at certain operations, others at other operations. Because of this, it was more profitable to entrust to each exactly that part of the work in which he was most skillful. Thus, in workshops with a more or less significant number of workers, division of labor.

Capitalist enterprises employing wage laborers working by hand on the basis of the division of labor are called manufactories .

The first manufactories appeared in the XIV-XV centuries in Florence and some medieval cities-republics of Italy. Then, in the 16th-18th centuries, manufactories of various industries - cloth, linen, silk, watch, weapons, glass - spread to all European countries.

Manufactories began to appear in Russia in the 17th century. At the beginning of the 18th century, under Peter I, they began to develop at a faster pace. Among them were weapons, cloth, silk and other manufactories. In the Urals, ironworks, mines, salt works were created.

Unlike Western European manufactories, which were based on hired labor, at Russian enterprises in the 17th and 18th centuries, although freelance labor was used, the labor of serfs and attached workers prevailed. From the end of the 18th century, manufactories based on freelance labor began to spread widely. This process especially intensified in the last decades before the abolition of serfdom.

The process of disintegration of feudal relations was also taking place in the countryside. With the development of commodity production, the power of money increased. Feudal feudal serfs transferred dues and other duties from natural form to money. The peasants had to sell the products of their labor, and the proceeds were paid to the feudal lords. The peasants had a constant need for money. This was used by buyers and usurers to enslave the peasants. Feudal oppression intensified, the position of the serfs worsened.

The development of monetary relations gave a strong impetus differentiation of the peasantry, that is, its stratification into various social groups. The vast majority of the peasantry fell into poverty, suffocated from overwork and went bankrupt. Along with this, world-eaters kulaks began to appear in the countryside, exploiting their fellow villagers by means of enslaving loans, buying agricultural products, livestock, and implements from them for next to nothing.

Thus, in the depths of the feudal system, capitalist production was born.

initial accumulation of capital. Forced dispossession of peasants. Accumulation of wealth.

Capitalist production presupposes two main conditions: 1) the presence of a mass of poor people, personally free and at the same time deprived of the means of production and means of subsistence and, therefore, forced to be hired to work for the capitalists, and 2) the accumulation of monetary wealth necessary for the creation of large capitalist enterprises .

We have seen that capitalism was nourished by petty commodity production based on private property, with its competition bringing enrichment to the few and ruin to the majority of small producers. But the slowness of this process did not meet the needs of the new world market created by the great discoveries of the late 15th century. The emergence of the capitalist mode of production was accelerated by the use of the most brutal methods of violence on the part of the big landowners, the bourgeoisie and the state power, which was in the hands of the exploiting classes. Violence, in the words of Marx, played the role of a midwife who hastened the birth of a new, capitalist mode of production.

Bourgeois scholars idyllically depict the history of the rise of the capitalist class and the working class. In ancient times, they argue, there was a handful of diligent and frugal people who accumulated wealth through their work. On the other hand, there was a mass of lazy people, loafers, who squandered all their wealth and turned into propertyless proletarians.

These fables of the defenders of capitalism have nothing to do with reality. In fact, the formation of a mass of poor people - the proletarians - and the accumulation of wealth in the hands of a few took place through the forcible deprivation of the small producers of the means of production. The process of separating producers from the means of production (from the land, from the instruments of production, etc.) was accompanied by an endless series of robberies and cruelties. This process is called initial accumulation of capital, since it preceded the creation of large-scale capitalist production.

Capitalist production achieved significant development first of all in England. In this country, from the end of the 15th century, a painful process of forcible dispossession of peasants took place. The immediate impetus for this was the increased demand for wool from the large cloth manufactories that arose first in Flanders, and then in England itself. The landowners began to breed large herds of sheep. Pastures were needed for sheep breeding. The feudal lords drove the peasants from their homes in masses, seized the lands that were in their constant use, and turned arable land into pastures.

The expulsion of the peasants from the land was carried out in various ways, primarily through the open seizure of communal lands. The landlords fenced these lands, destroyed peasant houses, and the peasants were forcibly evicted. If the peasants tried to regain the land illegally seized from them, the armed forces of the state came to the aid of the feudal lord. In the 18th century, the state authorities began to issue laws on "enclosing the land", consecrating the robbery of the peasants.

Ruined and robbed peasants made up countless crowds of poor poor people who filled the cities, villages and roads of England. Having no means of subsistence, they were begging. The state power issued bloody laws against the expropriated. These laws were exceptionally cruel. So, in the reign of the English king Henry VIII (XVI century), 72 thousand people were executed for "vagrancy". In the 18th century, "tramps" and the homeless, instead of the death penalty, were imprisoned in "workhouses", which earned the fame of "houses of horror." So the bourgeoisie tried to accustom the rural population, deprived of land and turned into vagabonds, to the discipline of hired labor.

In the royal Russia, entered the path of capitalist development later than other European countries, the separation of the producer from the means of production was carried out in the same ways as in other countries. In 1861, under the influence of peasant uprisings, the tsarist government was forced to abolish serfdom.

This reform was a grand robbery of the peasants. The landowners seized two-thirds of the land, leaving only one-third in the use of the peasants. The most convenient lands, and also, in a number of cases, pastures, watering holes, roads to the fields, etc., which were in the use of the peasants, were cut off by the landowners. In the hands of the landlords, the "cut-offs" became a means of enslaving the peasants, who were forced to rent these lands from the landowners on the most difficult terms. The law, declaring the personal freedom of the peasants, temporarily preserved corvée and dues. For the truncated plot of land received, the peasant was obliged to bear these duties in favor of the landowner until the land was redeemed. The size of the redemption payments was calculated at inflated prices for land and amounted to about two billion rubles.

Describing the peasant reform of 1861, Lenin wrote: “This is the first mass violence against the peasantry in the interests of emerging capitalism in agriculture. This is the landowner's "cleansing of the land" for capitalism.

By dispossessing the peasants, a double result was achieved. On the one hand, the land fell into the private ownership of a relatively small handful of landowners. Class feudal land ownership was transformed into bourgeois property. On the other hand, an abundant influx of free workers into industry, ready to be hired by the capitalists, was ensured.

For the emergence of capitalist production, it was necessary, in addition to the availability of cheap labor, the accumulation in a few hands of large wealth in the form of sums of money that could be turned into any means of production and used to hire workers.

In the Middle Ages, great monetary wealth was accumulated by merchants and usurers. These riches subsequently served as the basis for the organization of many capitalist enterprises.

The conquest of America, accompanied by massive robbery and extermination of the native population, brought the conquerors untold wealth, which began to grow even faster as a result of the exploitation of the richest mines of precious metals. The mines needed workers. The native population - the Indians - died in masses, unable to withstand hard labor conditions. European merchants organized a hunt for blacks in Africa, which was carried out according to all the rules of hunting for wild animals. The trade in blacks, taken out of Africa and turned into slaves, was extremely profitable. The profits of the slave traders reached fabulous proportions. Negro slave labor began to be widely used on the cotton plantations of America.

One of the most important sources of formation of large fortunes was also colonial trade. For trade with India, Dutch, English and French merchants organized East India companies. These companies enjoyed the support of their governments. They were granted a monopoly on the trade in colonial goods and the right to unlimited exploitation of the colonies with the use of any measures of violence. The profits of the East India companies amounted to hundreds of percent a year. In Russia, large profits were delivered to merchants by predatory trade with the population of Siberia and the predatory system of wine farming, which consisted in the fact that the state granted private entrepreneurs the right to produce and sell alcoholic beverages for a certain fee.

As a result, huge monetary wealth was concentrated in the hands of commercial and usurious capital.

Thus, at the cost of plundering and ruining a mass of small producers, the monetary wealth necessary for the creation of large capitalist enterprises was accumulated.

Describing this process, Marx wrote: "Newborn capital exudes blood and dirt from all its pores, from head to toe."

Revolts of serfs. bourgeois revolutions. The death of the feudal system.

The struggle of the peasantry against the feudal landowners took place throughout the entire epoch of feudalism, but it reached a particular acuteness towards the end of this epoch.

France in the XIV century it was engulfed in a peasant war, which went down in history under the name "Jacquerie". The emerging bourgeoisie of the cities at first supported this movement, but at the decisive moment moved away from it.

AT England At the end of the 14th century, a peasant uprising broke out that engulfed most of the country. Armed peasants, led by Wat Tyler, marched across the country, destroying the estates and monasteries of the landowners, and captured London. The feudal lords resorted to violence and deceit to put down the rebellion. Tyler was treacherously murdered. Believing the promises of the king and the feudal lords, the rebels dispersed to their homes. After that, punitive expeditions passed through the villages, inflicting cruel reprisals against the peasants.

Germany at the beginning of the 16th century, it was embraced by a peasant war, supported by the city's lower classes. The rebels were led by Thomas Müntzer. The peasants demanded the abolition of noble arbitrariness and violence.

AT Russia especially large were the peasant wars led by Stepan Razin in the 17th century and Emelyan Pugachev in the 18th century. The insurgent peasants sought the abolition of serfdom, the transfer of landlord and state lands to them, and the elimination of the rule of landlords. The aggravation of the crisis of the feudal-serf system of economy in the 50s of the XIX century was expressed in a wide wave of peasant uprisings on the eve of the reform of 1861.

Huge in scale, peasant wars and uprisings took place over hundreds of years in China. The uprising of the Taipings in the era of the Qing Dynasty (mid-19th century) engulfed the masses of the peasantry. The rebels occupied the ancient capital of China - Nanjing. The agrarian law of the Taipings proclaimed equality in the use of land and other property. The state organization of the Taipings uniquely combined monarchy with peasant democracy, which is characteristic of peasant movements in other countries as well.

The revolutionary significance of the peasant uprisings lay in the fact that they shook the foundations of feudalism and ultimately led to the abolition of serfdom.

The transition from feudalism to capitalism in the countries of Western Europe took place through bourgeois revolutions. The struggle of the peasants against the landowners was used by the rising bourgeoisie in order to hasten the destruction of the feudal system, to replace feudal exploitation with capitalist exploitation, and to seize power into their own hands. In the bourgeois revolutions, the peasants constituted the bulk of the fighters against feudalism. So it was in the first bourgeois revolution in the Netherlands (Holland and Belgium) in the 16th century. So it was in the English revolution of the seventeenth century. So it was in the bourgeois revolution in France at the end of the 18th century.

The bourgeoisie took advantage of the fruits of the revolutionary struggle of the peasantry, making its way to power on its shoulders. The peasants were strong in their hatred of the oppressors. But the peasant uprisings were spontaneous. The peasantry, as a class of small private proprietors, was fragmented and could not create a clear program and a strong, cohesive organization for the struggle. Peasant uprisings can only be successful if they are combined with a workers' movement and if the workers lead the peasant uprisings. But during the period of the bourgeois revolutions of the 17th and 18th centuries, the working class was still weak, small in number and unorganized.

In the depths of feudal society, more or less ready-made forms of the capitalist way of life matured, a new exploiting class, the capitalist class, grew up, and along with this, masses of people deprived of the means of production, the proletarians, appeared.

In the epoch of bourgeois revolutions, the bourgeoisie used against feudalism the economic law of the obligatory correspondence of production relations to the nature of the productive forces, overthrew feudal production relations, created new, bourgeois production relations, and brought production relations into line with the nature of the productive forces that had matured in the womb of feudalism.

Bourgeois revolutions put an end to the feudal system and established the dominance of capitalism.

Economic views of the era of feudalism

The economic views of the feudal era reflected the prevailing system of social relations at that time. In feudal society, all mental life was under the control of the clergy and proceeded in religious-scholastic form. Therefore, discussions about the economic life of that time constituted special sections in theological treatises.

The economic and other views of the era of feudalism in China for many centuries were influenced by the teachings of Confucius. Confucianism as a religious ideology arose as early as the 5th century BC. The socio-economic views of Confucianism boil down to the consecration of a single feudal state under the rule of a monarch, they require the strict preservation of the feudal estate hierarchy both in the state system and in family life. According to Confucius, “dark people should obey the aristocrats and sages. The disobedience of the commoner to the higher is the beginning of disorder. Confucius and his followers, defending the interests of the feudal exploiters, idealized the most backward, conservative forms of economy. They praised the "golden age" of patriarchal antiquity. Confucianism in its development became the official ideology of the feudal nobility.

One of the ideologists of feudalism in medieval Europe - Thomas Aquinas(XIII century) - tried to justify the need for a feudal society by divine law. Proclaiming feudal property necessary and reasonable and declaring serfs slaves, Thomas Aquinas, in contrast to the ancient slave owners, argued that “in his spirit, the slave is free” and therefore the master does not have the right to kill the slave. Labor was no longer considered unworthy of a free man. Thomas Aquinas considered physical labor as black labor, and mental labor as noble labor. In such a division, he saw the basis for the class division of society. In his views on wealth, the same feudal-estate approach was manifested. Each person must dispose of wealth in accordance with the position that he occupies on the feudal hierarchical ladder. From this point of view, the teaching of medieval theologians about the so-called "fair" price is characteristic. A "fair" price should reflect the amount of labor expended on the production of the commodity and the class position of the producer.

Medieval advocates of a "fair" price had no objection to the merchant's profit. They only sought to introduce profit into such a framework in which it would not threaten the economic existence of other classes. They condemned usury as a base and immoral occupation. However, with the development of commodity production and exchange, the clergy themselves began to take part in usurious operations; at the same time, the attitude of the church towards usury became more and more tolerant.

The class struggle of the oppressed and exploited masses against the ruling classes of feudal society unfolded for a number of centuries in a religious form. The demands of the exploited peasants and apprentices were often justified by quotations from the bible. All sorts of sects were widespread. The Catholic Church and the Inquisition brutally persecuted "heretics" and burned them at the stake.

With the development of the class struggle, the religious form of the movement of the oppressed masses receded into the background, and the revolutionary character of this movement became more and more distinct. The peasants demanded the abolition of serfdom, the abolition of feudal privileges, the establishment of equal rights, the abolition of estates, etc.

During the peasant wars in England, the Czech Republic, and Germany, the slogans of the rebels took on an increasingly radical character. The desire of the exploited masses of the countryside and the city for equality was expressed in the demand community of property. It was a desire for equality in consumption. Although the demand for common property was unrealizable, it had a revolutionary significance in that historical epoch, as it aroused the masses to fight against feudal oppression.

By the end of the feudal era, two outstanding early utopian socialists came forward - an Englishman Thomas More, who wrote the book "Utopia" (XVI century), and the Italian Tomaso Campanella, whose book is called "The City of the Sun" (XVII century). Seeing the growing inequality and contradictions of their contemporary society, these thinkers in a peculiar form outlined their views on the causes of social disasters: they gave a description of the ideal, in their opinion, social order in which these disasters would be eliminated.

The books of these utopians describe a social system free from private property and all the vices that go with it. Everyone in this society is engaged in both handicraft and agricultural labor. All the inhabitants work six or even four hours a day, and the fruits of their labor are sufficient to meet all needs. Products are distributed according to need. The upbringing of children is a public affair.

The works of More and Campanella played a progressive role in the development of social thought. They contained ideas that were far ahead of the development of society at that time. But More and Campanella did not know the laws of social development, their ideas were unrealizable, utopian. At that time it was impossible to abolish social inequality: the level of productive forces required a transition from feudal to capitalist exploitation.

The emergence of capitalism dates back to the 16th century. The first attempts to comprehend and explain a number of phenomena of capitalism belong to the same century. Thus, in the 16th-18th centuries, the direction of economic thought and policy, known as mercantilism.

Mercantilism originated in England, then it appeared in France, Italy and other countries. Mercantilists raised the question of the wealth of the country, the forms of wealth and the ways of its growth.

It was a time when capital - in the form of merchant and usurious capital - dominated trade and credit. In the field of production, he took only the first steps, founding manufactories. After the discovery and conquest of America, a flood of precious metals poured into Europe. Gold and silver were then continuously redistributed between individual European states, both through wars and through foreign trade.

In their understanding of the nature of wealth, the mercantilists proceeded from the superficial phenomena of circulation. They focused not on production, but on trade and money circulation, especially on the movement of gold and silver.

In the eyes of the mercantilists, the only true wealth was not social production and its products, but money - gold and silver. The mercantilists demanded that the state actively intervene in economic life, so that as much money as possible would flow into the country and as little as possible would go beyond its borders. The early mercantilists sought to achieve this through purely administrative measures to prohibit the export of money from the country. Later mercantilists considered it necessary to expand foreign trade for this purpose. Thus, the English representative of mercantilism Thomas Man(1571 - 1641) - a major merchant and director of the East India Company - wrote: “The usual means to increase our wealth and our treasures is foreign trade, in which we must always adhere to the rule that we annually sell our goods to foreigners for a large amount, than we consume their goods.

The mercantilists expressed the interests of the bourgeoisie emerging in the depths of feudalism, striving to accumulate wealth in the form of gold and silver through the development of foreign trade, colonial robberies and trade wars, and the enslavement of backward peoples. In connection with the development of capitalism, they began to demand that the state authorities patronize the development of industrial enterprises - manufactories. Were installed export premiums, which were paid to merchants selling goods on the foreign market. They soon gained even more importance. import duties. With the development of manufactories, and then factories, the imposition of duties on imported goods became the most common measure for protecting domestic industry from foreign competition.

This patronizing policy is called protectionism. In many countries it persisted long after the notions of mercantilism had been overcome.

AT England protective duties were of great importance in the 16th and 17th centuries, when they were threatened by competition from the more advanced manufactures of the Netherlands. Since the 18th century, England has been firmly gaining industrial superiority. Other, less developed countries could not compete with it. In this regard, the ideas of free trade are beginning to make their way in England.

A different situation arose in the countries that embarked on the capitalist path later than England. Yes, in France in the 17th century, the minister of Louis XIV Colbert, who actually ruled the country, created a widely branched system of state patronage of manufactories. His system included high import duties, a ban on the export of raw materials, the planting of a number of new industries, the creation of companies for foreign trade, etc.

Mercantilism played a progressive role for its time. The protectionist policy, inspired by the ideas of mercantilism, contributed a lot to the spread of manufactories. But the views of the mercantilists on wealth reflected the then underdevelopment of capitalist production. The further development of capitalism more and more clearly revealed the inconsistency of the ideas of the mercantile system.

AT Russia in the XVII-XVIII centuries the feudal-serf system of economy dominated. The economy was basically natural. At the same time, trade and handicrafts developed significantly, a national market was formed, and manufactories began to appear. These economic changes in the country contributed to the strengthening of absolutism in Russia.

Reflecting the historical and economic features of the country, representatives of Russian economic thought developed some ideas of mercantilism. However, unlike many Western European mercantilists, they attached great importance not only to trade, but also to the development of industry and agriculture.

The economic views of that time found their expression in the works and activities of the statesman of Russia of the 17th century A. L. Ordyn-Nashchokin, in the economic policy of Peter I, in the works of the largest Russian economist of the early 18th century I. T. Pososhkov.

In his work "The Book of Poverty and Wealth" (1724) I. T. Pososhkov outlined an extensive program for the economic development of Russia and gave a detailed justification for this program. Pososhkov argued the need for a number of economic measures in Russia, pursuing the task of patronizing the development of domestic industry, trade, agriculture, and improving the country's financial system.

In the last third of the 18th century in Russia, there was a tendency towards the disintegration of feudal-serf relations, which sharply intensified in the first quarter of the 19th century, and later grew into a direct crisis of serfdom.

The founder of the revolutionary-democratic trend in the social thought of Russia A. N. R. adishchev(1749 - 1802) was an outstanding economist of his time. Resolutely speaking out against serfdom and in defense of the oppressed peasantry, Radishchev gave a devastating critique of the serf system, exposed the exploitative nature of the wealth of serf landlords, owners of manufactories and merchants, and justified the right of ownership of the land to those who cultivate it with their labor. Radishchev was firmly convinced that autocracy and serfdom could only be abolished by revolutionary means. He developed a progressive system of economic measures for his time, the implementation of which would ensure Russia's transition to a bourgeois-democratic system.

Decembrists, who spoke in the first half of the 19th century were revolutionary figures of that historical period in Russia, when the need to replace feudalism with capitalism was brewing. They directed the spearhead of their criticism against serfdom. Acting as ardent champions of the development of the productive forces of Russia, they considered the abolition of serfdom and the emancipation of the peasants to be the most important condition for this development. The Decembrists not only put forward the slogan of fighting serfdom and autocracy, but also organized an armed uprising against the absolutist monarchy. P. I. Pestel(1793 - 1826) developed an original project for solving the agrarian issue in Russia. A kind of draft constitution drawn up by Pestel, which he called Russkaya Pravda, provided for the immediate and complete liberation of the peasants from serfdom, as well as economic measures aimed at protecting the interests of the peasants in the future. For these purposes, Pestel considered it necessary to create a special public land fund, from which each peasant could receive free of charge for his use the land necessary for his existence. This fund must be formed at the expense of part of the land of the landlords and the treasury, and part of their land must be alienated from the largest landowners free of charge. The Decembrists, as revolutionaries who emerged from the midst of the nobility, were far from the people, but their ideas of struggle against serfdom contributed to the growth of the revolutionary movement in Russia.

Under the conditions of the disintegration of feudalism and the emergence of the capitalist way of life, the ideology of the bourgeoisie took shape, rising to its dominance. This ideology was directed against the feudal system and against religion as the ideological instrument of the feudal lords. Because of this, the worldview of the bourgeoisie fighting for power in a number of countries was of a progressive character. Its most prominent representatives - economists and philosophers - subjected to resolute criticism all the foundations of feudal society: economic, political, religious, philosophical and moral. They played a major role in the ideological preparation of the bourgeois revolution, exerting a progressive influence on the development of science and art.

SUMMARY

1. Feudalism arose on the basis of the collapse of the slave-owning society and the decomposition of the rural community of the tribes that conquered the slave-owning states. In those countries where there was no slave system, feudalism arose on the basis of the disintegration of the primitive communal system. The clan nobility and the warlords of the tribes seized a large amount of land in their hands and distributed it to their close associates. There was a gradual enslavement of the peasants.

2. The basis of the production relations of the feudal society was the feudal lord's ownership of the land and incomplete ownership of the production worker – serf peasant. Along with feudal property, there was the sole property of the peasant and artisan, based on personal labor. The labor of serfs was the basis for the existence of feudal society. Serf exploitation was expressed in the fact that the peasants were forced to serve in favor of the feudal lord corvée or pay him natural and cash dues. Serfdom in its severity for the peasant often differed little from slavery. However, the serf system opened up some opportunities for the development of productive forces, since the peasant could work on his own farm for a certain part of the time and had some interest in labor.

4. Feudal society, especially in the early Middle Ages, was fragmented into small principalities and states. The ruling classes of feudal society were the nobility and the clergy. The peasant class had no political rights. Throughout the history of feudal society, there was a class struggle between peasants and feudal lords. The feudal state, expressing the interests of the nobility and clergy, was an active force that helped them to strengthen their right to feudal ownership of land and intensify the exploitation of the powerless and oppressed peasants.

5. In the era of feudalism, agriculture played a predominant role, and the economy was mainly subsistence. With the development of the social division of labor and exchange, the old cities that had survived after the fall of the slave system were revived, and new cities arose. Cities were centers of crafts and trade. The craft was organized into guilds that sought to prevent competition. Merchants united in merchant guilds.

6. The development of commodity production, decomposing natural economy, led to the differentiation of peasants and artisans. Merchant capital accelerated the decomposition of the craft and contributed to the emergence of capitalist enterprises. – manufactories. Feudal restrictions and fragmentation hindered the growth of commodity production. In the course of further development, a national market was formed. A centralized feudal state arose in the form of absolutist monarchies.

7. The primitive accumulation of capital prepared the conditions for the rise of capitalism. Huge masses of small producers – peasants and artisans – lost the means of production. Large monetary wealth, concentrated in the hands of large landowners, merchants, usurers, was created through the forcible dispossession of the peasantry, colonial trade, taxes, and slave trade. This accelerated the formation of the main classes of capitalist society: wage workers and capitalists. In the depths of feudal society, more or less ready-made forms of the capitalist way of life grew and matured.

8. Production relations of feudalism, low productivity of forced labor of serfs, shop limits.nia hindered the further development of the productive forces. The uprisings of the serfs shook the feudal system and led to the abolition of serfdom. The bourgeoisie stood at the head of the struggle to overthrow feudalism. She used the revolutionary struggle of the peasants against the feudal lords in order to seize power in their own hands. Bourgeois revolutions put an end to the feudal system and established the dominance of capitalism, opening up space for the development of productive forces.

The feudal society was considered a practically universal form of government for Eurasia. Most of the peoples who inhabited it went through this system. Next, let's take a closer look at what a feudal society was.

Characteristic

Despite certain changes in the relationship between the consumer and the producer, the latter remained in absolute dependence on the former. The feudal was based on a certain way of doing business. The direct producer had his own farm. However, he remained dependent as a slave. Coercion was expressed in rent. It could be presented in the form of corvee (working wages), dues (products) or expressed in money. The amount of the annuity was firmly established. This gave the direct producer a certain freedom in the conduct of his business activities. These features of feudal society were especially pronounced during the transition to monetary compulsory payments. In this case, the freedom of the farmer was expressed in the ability to sell his own products.

Signs of a feudal society

We can distinguish the characteristic features of such a society:

• the predominance of subsistence farming;
• a combination of small peasant land tenure and large-scale feudal land tenure;
• personal dependence of the direct producer. Non-economic forced labor and product distribution;
• routine and outdated state of technology;
• the presence of rental relations (compulsory payments were made for the use of land).

However, specific features of feudal society were also noticeable:

• the dominance of a religious worldview (in this historical period, the church played a special role);
• feudal society was distinguished by the wide development of corporate organizations;
• hierarchical structure;
• there were classes of feudal society.

classic model

The most striking feudal society was developed in France. However, this system extended more to the state, rather than the economic structure of the country. Nevertheless, it was in France that the estates of feudal society were very clearly formed. They were presented in the form of a vassal staircase. Its economic meaning was concluded in the redistribution of compulsory payments between the layers of the ruling class. By order of the overlord, the vassals gathered the militia at their own expense. It guarded the borders and represented, in fact, an apparatus for non-economic coercion of the peasants. Such a system, according to which feudal society existed, often failed. As a result, France became a platform for national and internecine wars. The country experienced the consequences of the war with England in the 14-15th centuries especially hard. However, it was this war that contributed to the acceleration of the liberation of the peasants from dependence. This was due to the fact that the king needed soldiers. Free peasants could become a resource for a mass mercenary army with artillery. Despite the introduction of redemption, the economic situation of dependent people did not actually improve, since taxes and redemption payments replaced feudal rent.

Agricultural specialization

It should be noted that already by the 14th century, France was conditionally divided into several zones. For example, its central and northern parts were considered the main granary, the southern - the base of winemaking. At the same time, the superiority of one of the areas in economic terms began to appear. In particular, the three-field system began to take hold in Northern France.

Features of the development of the economy of England

The feudal society of this country had several differences from the French system. In England, the centralization of government was more pronounced. This was due to the conquest of the country by feudal lords in 1066. A general census was carried out. She showed that the structure of a feudal society with estates had been built by that time. However, unlike the French, the English owners were vassals directly to the king. The next feature that English feudal society possessed concerns the technological basis of the estate itself. Favorable seaside ecology contributed to the active development of sheep breeding and the production of raw wool. The latter was the subject of great demand throughout the entire area. The sale of wool, which was carried out not only by feudal lords, but also by peasants, contributed to the replacement of serf labor by hired work, and natural quitrent by rent in monetary terms (commutation).

Crucial moment

In 1381 there was a popular uprising led by Wat Tyler. As a result, there was an almost complete commutation, and after that, the peasants also bought out their own feudal duties. Virtually all became personally free by the 15th century. They are divided into two categories: copyholders and freeholders. The former paid rent for allotments, while the latter were considered absolutely free land holders. Thus, a gentry was formed - a new nobility - which conducted economic activities only on hired labor.

Development of the system in Germany

In this country, the structure of feudal society was formed later than in France and England. The fact is that individual regions of Germany were cut off from each other, in connection with this, a single state did not develop. Equally important were the seizures of Slavic lands by German feudal lords. This contributed to a significant increase in the sown area. Over time, the internal territorial colonization of the regions east of the Elbe by peasants began to develop. They were granted favorable conditions and minimal dependence on the feudal lords. However, in the 15th century, the owners of the estates of the eastern part of Germany, took advantage of the export of grain to England and Holland through the Baltic ports and carried out the absolute enslavement of privileged peasants. The owners created extensive plowlands and transferred them to corvee. The term "land beyond the Elbe" came to symbolize the development of late feudalism.

Features of the development of the system in Japan

The economy of this country had many differences from the European one. First of all, in Japan there was no master's plowing. Consequently, there was neither corvée nor serfdom. Secondly, the national economy of Japan operated within the framework of the feudal fragmentation that had developed over many centuries. The country was dominated by small peasant farms based on hereditary land ownership. She, in turn, belonged to the feudal lords. Rice in kind was used as rent. Due to feudal fragmentation, quite a lot of principalities were formed. They were attended by service troops, which consisted of samurai knights. As a reward for their service, the soldiers received a rice ration from the princes. The samurai did not have their own estates. As for the Japanese cities, a feudal system took place in them, as well as in Europe. Artisans were united in workshops, merchants - in guilds. Trade was rather poorly developed. The absence of a single market was explained by feudal fragmentation. Japan was closed to foreigners. Manufactories in the country were in their infancy.

Features of the system device in Russia

The classes of feudal society took shape rather late in comparison with other countries. In the 15th century, a service army appeared. It was made up of landowners (nobles). They were the owners of the estates and at their own expense every summer went to forced service. By autumn they were sent home. The transfer of estates was carried out from father to son by inheritance. In accordance with the 1649 year, the peasants were indefinitely attached to the possessions on whose territory they lived, becoming serfs. In Europe, by this time, many of the representatives of this class were becoming free. Rent was a duty. In the 17th century corvee could go up to 4 days a week. By the second half of the 16th century, the formation of large regional markets began, and by the 17th century, trade relations had acquired a national scale. Novgorod became the center in the northwestern part of the state. It was an aristocratic republic dominated by the wealthy classes of feudal society. Their representatives, in particular, included merchants and landowners (boyars). The bulk of the Novgorod population consisted of "black people" - artisans. Among the most important livestock markets of that time, Kazan should be singled out. Moscow was the main center of trade for the entire state. Here they sold furs, silk, woolen products, metal products, bread, lard and other foreign and domestic goods.

Credit Development

Subsistence farming was the main form of business. This is what distinguished early feudal society. Capitalist production began to emerge on the basis of simple cooperation, and then on the basis of manufactory. Money began to participate in servicing simple commodity circulation. These funds participated in the movement of usurious and merchant capital. Banks began to emerge. Initially, they were a storehouse of money. Change business developed. Since the 18th century, settlements on merchant transactions began to spread. In connection with the increase in the needs of states, a budget began to be formed.

Market relations

The development of foreign and domestic trade was significantly influenced by the growth of cities in Western Europe. They formed, first of all, the local market. There was an exchange of products of urban and rural artisans. In the 14th and 15th centuries, single markets began to form. They became in some way the economic centers of the feudal states. London and Paris are among the largest. At the same time, internal trade was rather poorly developed. This was due to the natural nature of the economy. In addition, the development of internal trade was slowed down by fragmentation, due to which duties were collected in each seigneury. Merchants who traded a certain type of product united in guilds. These closed associations regulated the rules and composition of the market turnover.