Did the Absolutist State in the West mark a strengthening of Feudalism?
A Short Note.
Perry Anderson, in his work Lineages of the Absolutist State, has argued that the Absolutist state in the west was a “redeployed and recharged apparatus of feudal domination”, designed to clamp down the peasant masses back to their traditional social position. He also says that the “Absolutist state was never an arbiter between the aristocracy and the bourgeoisie and still less an instrument of the nascent bourgeoisie.”
Anderson brings a neo-Marxist perspective as he analyzes the feudal nature of the Absolutist state. He cites Engels’ position on the absolutist state which assumes that the state was a kind of mediator between the nobility and the class of the burghers and that it acquired a certain independence from both. However, he also says that both Marx and Engels provide no clear-cut theorization of the new centralized monarchies which emerged in western and Eastern Europe. Anderson’s main contention is with the view that the emergence of the absolutist state and its characteristics are assumed to be “pre-eminently capitalist” in nature and has argued that the end of serfdom does not necessarily mean an end of feudal relations in the countryside. He cites Marx’s writings in the Communist Manifesto that the transformation of labour rent into money rent caused no fundamental changes in the nature of the ground rent and that until the labour was not separated from the social conditions of its existence—that is, until it did not become labour power—the rural 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”. He discusses the institutional innovations of the absolutist state, namely law, army, bureaucracy, taxation, trade and diplomacy—to prove that the absolutist state did indeed strengthen the fundamentals of feudalism.
Before delving into these institutions, he discusses reasons for the emergence of the absolutist state and uses two key determinants for this new form. The first determinant he locates in class struggle, and states that the peasant rebellions of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries shook the foundations of the feudal setup. The generalized commutation of dues into money rent 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. Classical feudal polity combined both political and economic exploitation but the appearance of money changed this. Visible practice of power was very crucial to the system and to resolve this loss of authority, the feudal lords’ displaced political power upwards to a centralized, militarized summit—the Absolutist State.
It is also pointed out that the rise of Absolutism as a coercive force was also capable of controlling not only the peasantry but the nobility as well, and Anderson cautions that the evolution of Absolutism was never a smooth process; it was in fact marked by conflicts. The case of the French Absolutist state is one such example, marked by three major internal conflicts; the Fronde is an example of the nobles rebelling against the authority of the king. This conflict was resolved by compensatory strengthening of titles of property of the feudal lords. One also sees that as monarchy became more absolute, nobility was emancipated from the traditional restrained of the estate and the loss of political rights was compensated by the economic gains registered by this class.
The second determination of the nature of this form of absolutism is located in the mercantile bourgeois class whom he views as an antagonist which the aristocracy had to adjust with. The presence of this class prevented the nobility from adopting a regressive solution to the problem of peasant rebellions. The importance of what can be called a proto-capitalist bourgeois class also meant that a number of technological inventions and advancements occurred in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries and thus helped the feudal economy to recover from the feudal crisis.
This was arguably an epoch in which one 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. However, while society became increasingly bourgeois, the political order remained feudal. In order to understand how this is possible, one needs to look at Anderson’s analysis of the institutions of the absolutist state.
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. It also answered to the interests of the commercial and manufacturing bourgeoisie. 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; absolution as the reorganized state apparatus of noble domination was the central architect of the reception of Roman law.
With regard to the army, even though the armies of the absolutist states were pioneers to the modern bourgeois state armies with their increased size along with the introduction of the infantry drill, the platoon system, cavalry and the unitary vertical command—yet 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 argues that the mercenary troops could be relied upon to stamp out local peasant rebellions since they were foreigners. 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.
Anderson also states that the social definition of the feudal class was military since war was possibly the most rational and rapid mode of expansion or surplus extraction available to any ruling class under feudalism and this warfare became the “fate of the princes”. His argument is that 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 absolutist states were constantly engaged in conflict; in the sixteenth century only 25 years passed with large scale military operations, and in seventeenth century, it was only seven years of peace. However, Anderson’s view that the aggressive nature of the absolutist state does not correspond to a capitalist rationality is not entirely correct; the world’s two most destructive wars in history were fought by capitalist states.
The tax system and the bureaucracy of the absolutist states are also rather paradoxical in nature since bureaucratic officers were treated as saleable property to private individuals. These are not the elements of the modern bourgeois state which has always separated the two. In 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). Anderson is of the view that this system both registered and arrested the rise of mercantile capital. In addition to this indirect system of raising revenue the state also issued royal taxes levied for war which were one of the main causes for the desperate peasant rebellions. 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.
While discussing trade of western absolutist states, Anderson talks of mercantilism, which as a theory of international trade was heavily bellicose in nature, emphasizing the necessity for war. Mercantilism exactly represented the considerations of the feudal class since it favoured royal manufactures and state regulated guilds in France, chartered companies in England. While the former preset a medieval and corporatist lineage, the latter confuses both political and economic orders.
Thus one can see that trade and warfare in the absolutist state had in them inherent feudal tendencies. 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. 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 constructs of nationalism were not inherent in the feudal state. 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 importance of diplomacy was reduced to forging of matrimonial alliances which was a peaceful mirror of war. Anderson argues that matrimony was however full of risks and often led to war 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. 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. 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 and its rule was that of the feudal nobility in the epoch of the transition from feudalism to capitalism.
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Bibliography
- Perry Anderson: Lineages of the Absolutist State
- Thomas Ertman: Birth of the Leviathan
- Class Notes