- Discuss the dominant feature of the absolutist state in Europe (2008).
Perry Anderson in lineages of the absolutist state calls the rise of the absolutist state in Western Europe in the sixteenth century the final outcome of political convulsions that marred the period. The centralized monarchies that emerged marked a break from the feudal, pyramidal and parcelised sovereignty.
The nature of these monarchies has been a question of debate ever since Engels called the state a kind of mediator between the feudal nobility and the emerging bourgeoisie class and it acquires a certain independence from both. According to Marx and Engels assumptions, the absolutist state seems to be a bourgeois instrument, reflected mainly from the administrative structures. Anderson questions the assumption that the characteristics of the absolutist state appear ‘pre-eminently capitalist’, as the emergence of these features coincides with the end of serfdom, a core symbol of the feudal mode of production.
Anderson disagrees with this viewpoint and argues that the Absolutist state in the west was ‘redeployed and recharged apparatus of feudal domination’ designed to clamp down the peasants back to their traditional social position. It was neither an arbiter nor an instrument of the emerging bureaucracy against the nobility. It was a new political shield for the threatened nobility. He says that even when the rural surplus began to be extracted in money rent rather than labour rent, as long as the aristocracy blocked a free market in land and there was no mobility of labour, production relations remained feudal.
Anderson has analyzed the absolutist state and its characteristics in Europe to reveal that the whole structure of the absolutist monarchies had a surface modernity which betrayed a “subterranean archaism”.
Anderson states two reasons that motivated the rise of absolutism. The first is identified as the class struggle between the nobility and the peasantry. The generalized commutation of dues into money rent would ultimately lead to ‘free labour’ and ‘wage contract’. This meant that the cellular unity of the political and economic oppression of the peasants was threatened; the feudal lords knew that their class power was at stake with end of serfdom. Classical feudal polity combined both political and economic exploitation but the appearance of money changed this. As a result, the feudal lords displaced political power to upwards to a centralized, militarized summit- the absolutist state. At the same time, there was an economic consolidation of the units of feudal nobility beneath this political apex. There was a strengthening of the titles of property of the lords, landowning became less conditional for the lords as the central sovereign correspondingly became more absolute. The traditional restraints on the estates weakened as the power of the monarch increased, and although the nobility lost some of its political powers, they registered economic gains in land ownership.
The second factor that he talks of is the rise of another antagonist, the mercantilist bourgeoisie. The presence of this class prevented the nobility from adopting a harsh solution to the problem of peasant rebellions. Towns developed independent of the feudal structure as the feudal power was focused on the rural estates, which gave them ‘space’ to grow without domination by a rural ruling class. Urban technological advances of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries were developing into pre-industrial manufacturing on a considerable scale. This period also witnessed a concurrent revival of political authority and unity in country after country. The reigns of Louis XI of France, Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain, Henry II in England, and Maximilian in Germany, are some examples.
Engels described these processes as the political order remaining feudal while the society became more bourgeois. Anderson undertakes an analysis of he institutions of the absolutist state in order to understand the nature of these processes. He examines the institutions of the absolutist state like law, army, bureaucracy, taxation, trade and diplomacy to show how the absolutist state retained the essence of feudalism and did indeed strengthen it.
The first institution he discusses is of law and argues that the period witnessed a revival of Roman law which was crucial to both determinants of absolutism. He states that the introduction of classical civil law was favourable to the growth of free capital in town and country, since the distinguishing feature of Roman law was its conception of absolute and unconditional private property. The distinguishing feature of feudal property had been scalar or conditional property since it was complemented by parcellized sovereignty. Roman law also answered to the interests of the commercial and manufacturing bourgeoisie as its superiority lay no only in notions of private property but also traditions of equity, rational canons of evidence and emphasis on professional judiciary. The political impact of the revival of Roman law is significant since it was based on the theoretical principles of Imperium or a growth of centralized royal authority. Thus the enhancement of private property from below was matched by the increase of public authority from above. The transformation of law reflected the distribution of power between the propertied classes of the epoch: absolutism as the reorganized state apparatus of noble domination was the central architect of the reception of Roman law. Roman law was the most powerful intellectual weapon for the typical programme of territorial integration and administrative centralism.
It has often been assumed that the Absolutist state pioneered the professional army of the modern bourgeois state- their increased size along with the introduction of the infantry drill, the platoon system, cavalry and the unitary vertical command. But the functions and form remained primarily feudal. The army was not a nationally conscript force but a mixed mass in which foreign mercenaries played a constant and central role. Anderson says that the obvious social reason for this would be the refusal of the nobility to arm the peasantry as it will be difficult to keep them obedient. He also argues that the mercenary troops could be relied upon to stamp out local peasant rebellions since they were foreigners alien to the local language and customs. An example of an instance when foreign mercenaries quelled peasant rebellions is that of the Swiss Guards who were used by the state to repress the Boulonnais and Camisard guerrillas of 1662 and 1792 respectively in France. War was the most rapid single mode of growth of surplus extraction through territorial expansion. The social profession of the nobility according to Anderson was warfare to maximize wealth. In continuity to this feudal tradition, the absolutist states were machines built overwhelmingly for the battlefield. These states were constantly engaged in conflicts as seen in the sixteenth century when there were only 25 years without large military operations and only 7 such years in the seventeenth century. This is where the absolutist state reflected this archaic rationality in their innermost structures. For example, the first regular national tax to be imposed in France, the taille royale, was levied to finance the first regular military units of Europe—the companies d’ ordonnance—which was composed of Scot soldiers of fortune.
The tax system and the bureaucracy of the absolutist states are also rather paradoxical in nature. It appeared to represent Weber’s rational legal administration of modern times but the bureaucratic offices were treated as saleable property to private individuals. Through acquisition of offices, the feudal nobility was integrated into the absolutist state. One could privately purchase a position in the public apparatus of the state and could then recoup himself by licensed privileges and corruption (for example through the fee system). They sought to make a profit of 300-400 percent on what they had spent to buy the office. The growth of sale of offices was a result of increased monetization of early modern economies and the ascent of the mercantile bourgeoisie. The bourgeoisie could also buy offices which integrated them into the state apparatus, but their social position remained subordinate to the feudal aristocracy.
In addition to this indirect system of raising revenue for the state from the sale of offices, the state also taxed the poor- for example the Talille and Gabelle in France and Servicios in Spain. It issued royal taxes levied for war which were one of the main causes for desperate peasant rebellions. The tax collectors of the state and the lords both extracted taxes from the poor, while the nobility was exempt from direct taxes. This system of double exactions caused an epidemic of rebellions, often encouraged by the nobles so that they can extract more from the peasants for themselves. Porshnev has dubbed these new taxes as ‘centralized feudal rent’ as opposed to the seigneurial dues which formed the ‘local rent’. Thus we see that the aims of the new tax system were still the same—the economic exploitation of the peasants.
According to Anderson, mercantilism demanded the removal of barriers in trade within the state and strove to build a unified domestic market. To increase the states power compared to other states, it encouraged the export of goods and banned exports of bullion of coins as there was a belief that there was a fixed amount of commerce and wealth in the world. He sees mercantilism as an instrument favouring the feudal class as it pre-supposes state intervention in the economy through guilds and royal manufacture and charter companies. It was anything but the laissez-faire economy associated with modern states where the political and economic realm is separate to some extant. Such an economy is also seen as pacifist as most benefits in trade can be achieved through international peace, but the mercantilist economy was ‘bellicist’- heavily emphasizing the profitability of war.
Another aspect of the absolutist state that reveals feudal tendencies is diplomacy. Anderson argues that the political map of medieval Europe was inextricably superimposed and tangled- it had never been composed of a clearly demarcated set of homogenous political units. The formation of a formalized state system in Western Europe led to the establishment of a new system of inter-state pressure, embassies abroad, and chancelleries for foreign relations.
However, while all these appear to be instruments of a modern nation state the truth was far from this. The modern ideology of nationalism was not inherent in the feudal state and even the absolutist state. Only Latin Christendom seemed to be the universal unifying matrix in the feudal epoch as the political units were heterogeneous. For the nobility, any feeling of ‘proto-nationalism’ was confined to the dynasty and territory.
The state was seen as the patrimony of the monarch and the title deeds to it could be obtained through a union of persons. Thus the supreme device of diplomacy was matrimonial alliances and not the embassies. It was also a way of territorial expansion based on succession after marriage, although not with immediate results as warfare. Anderson argues that matrimony was however full of risks, as it involved waiting for long periods during which there are no guarantees. This often led to war which was a shorter route and that the history of absolutism is littered with wars of succession such the wars of Austrian, Spanish and Bavarian succession. The feudal element is once against dominant even in diplomacy.
Having thus analyzed all aspects of the absolutist state we find that the rise of the absolutist state in the west was never antithetical to the western lords but rather facilitated them in many ways. The absolutist state was never an instrument of the bourgeoisie which rose in this period. What we see is the functioning of a new economy in the framework of an older system. Yet as Anderson says, we do see the budding of the new political and economic order of a modern capitalist state. The paradox of Western Absolutism is that it was an apparatus for the protection of the rights of the aristocracy, but at the same time it protected the interests of the nascent mercantile bourgeoisie. The state’s centralized power developed uniform legal systems. For example, Richelieu’s campaigns against the Huguenots did away with a large number of trade barriers. There was mobilization of rural property was seizing of ecclesiastical lands in England with the dissolution of monasteries. These states also undertook a campaign of overseas expansion and colonization. He says that the absolutist state and the mercantile class were compatible as it was in the state’s interest to promote trade to build resources against its rivals. The Navy, commerce, colonies and the army were all interdependent according to Duc de Choiseul. Thus the absolutist state in many ways facilitated the ‘primitive accumulation’ necessary for capitalist mode of production.
The end of serfdom did not mean the end of domination of the feudal lords or an end to the economic exploitation of the peasants at the hands of the feudal lords. The absolutist state, it seems, preserved a lot of feudal elements in its structures even though it betrayed a kind of modernity in its state structures. The absolute state was founded on the social supremacy of the aristocracy and confined the imperatives of landed property. While it did not mark the strengthening of serfdom it certainly preserved the feudal relations. Its rule was that of the feudal nobility in the epoch of the transition from feudalism to capitalism. Its end would signal the crisis of power of the feudal class with the advent of bourgeois revolutions and emergence of capitalist states.
Bibliography
- Perry Anderson: Lineages of the Absolutist State