Feudalism (French féodalité, from late Latin feodum, feudum - possession, estate, feud) - class antagonistic socio-economic formation, representing the middle link of a holistic dialectical process of changing socio-economic formations: the era of feudalism lies between the slave-owning system and capitalism. In the history of many peoples, feudalism was the first antagonistic class formation (that is, it directly followed the primitive communal system).

The economic structure of feudalism, with all the variety of its forms in different countries and in different time characterized by the fact that the main means of production - the land is in the monopoly property of the ruling class of feudal lords (sometimes almost completely merging with the state), and the economy is carried out by the forces and technical means of small producers - peasants, who are somehow dependent on the owners of the land. Thus, the feudal mode of production is based on a combination of large landed property of the feudal class and small individual farming of the direct producers, the peasants, who are exploited with the help of non-economic coercion (the latter is as characteristic of feudalism as economic coercion is of capitalism).

Thus, important relationships feudal mode of production are land relations. Land relations form the basic production relation of the feudal mode of production. Feudal land relations were characterized by the monopoly of large landowners - feudal lords on land.

Most of the land owned by the feudal lords consisted of many land plots that were in the use of the peasants, which gave them the opportunity to conduct their own individual farming on this land. The allotment nature of peasant land tenure is an important feature of land relations under the dominance of the feudal mode of production. Since the land was the property of the feudal lords, the peasant could be driven off the land at any time. However, feudalism had a tendency to attach the peasant to the land. Allotment land tenure of the peasants was in most cases hereditary. Thus, in a feudal society, the direct producer was not the owner of the land, but only its holder, he only used it, cultivated it.

On the lands of the feudal lords there were not only numerous villages and villages, but also a significant number of cities. Therefore, not only peasants, but also urban artisans fell into the sphere of exploitation of the feudal lords. Feudal property meant the complete domination of the feudal lord within a certain territory, including power over the people inhabiting this territory. Feudal land relations were inextricably linked with relations of personal dependence.

Relations of personal dependence permeate the entire socio-economic structure of feudalism. “... We find people here,” K. Marx pointed out, “who are all dependent - serfs and feudal lords, vassals and overlords, laymen and priests. Personal dependence here characterizes both the social relations of material production and the spheres of life based on it.

The relationship of personal dependence of the peasants on the feudal lords (landlords) acted as interclass, antagonistic relations, opposing the direct producers to the exploiting feudal lords.

Under feudalism, the nature of dependence relations was already different than under slavery. The dependent peasant was not wholly owned by the landowner; he could work part of the time on his plot of land, working for himself and his family. The peasant had in his property the means of production, agricultural and handicraft implements, working and productive livestock. The means of production were in their sole ownership and urban artisans. Both peasants and artisans had their own housing and outbuildings. Some means of production, such as wells, roads, and sometimes pastures for livestock, were in a number of cases in the use of the surviving rural community.

The method of connecting the direct producer with the means of production under feudalism is characterized by a certain duality. The direct producer - the peasant, on the one hand, having his own small farm, was interested in working in this economy, and, on the other hand, his work for the feudal lord was in the form of forced labor exploited for the exploiter. Non-economic coercion of the direct producer to work for the feudal lord had as its economic basis and condition the monopoly of the feudal lords on land and was a means of realizing feudal property in the production process.

Thanks to a different way than under slavery, the method of connecting the direct producer with the means of production under feudalism changed his attitude to work, a certain incentive to work appeared. Here the antagonism between the direct producer and the tools of labor, which took place under slavery, is overcome. Since the tools of labor belong under feudalism to the direct producer, he, despite his dependent oppressed position, took care of their preservation and improvement.

Non-economic coercion (which could vary from serfdom to simple estate lack of rights) was a necessary condition for the appropriation of land rent by the feudal lord, and independent peasant farming was a necessary condition for its production.

The well-known economic independence of the peasant, which was established in the era of feudalism, opened up some scope for raising the productivity of peasant labor and developing the productive forces of society, created more favorable conditions for personal development. This, ultimately, determined the historical progressiveness of feudalism in comparison with the slave-owning and primitive communal system.

2.3. Forms of feudal production and feudal land rent. Feudal exploitation

Feudal production was carried out in two main forms: in the form corvée economy and in the form quitrent farm. For both forms of economy, the common thing was that: a) the direct producer was personally dependent on the feudal lord (landlord); b) the feudal lord was considered the owner of all the land on which agricultural production was carried out; c) the direct producer - the peasant - had a land plot in use, on which he ran his individual farm; d) all agricultural production was carried out by the labor and tools of labor (living and dead implements) of the peasants; e) the peasants expended surplus labor and created a surplus product for the landowner by way of non-economic coercion.

Corvee economy

Under the corvée economy, the entire land of the feudal estate was divided into two parts. One part is the lordly land, on which the production of agricultural products was carried out with the labor and inventory of the peasants, which were fully appropriated by the feudal landowner. On the lord's land, thus, the cost surplus labor peasants, production surplus product.

The other part of the land is peasant land, called allotment. On this land, the peasants farmed for themselves, created required product, i.e., a product necessary for the existence of the peasants themselves and their families, as well as for the restoration of the worn-out part of agricultural living and dead equipment.

When corvée surplus labor was given to the landowner in its natural form as a certain number of corvée days. The necessary and surplus labor of the producer exploited by the feudal lord were here separated from each other in space and time: necessary labor was spent on the peasant allotment field, surplus labor on the lord's field. Some days of the week the peasant worked in his field, and the other - in the master's field. Therefore, under corvée, the distinction between necessary and surplus labor was physically palpable.

Surplus labor was appropriated under corvée in the form labor rent.

Surplus labor under corvée differed little from slave labor. The product of all the labor expended on corvee was appropriated by the feudal landowner, the direct producer - the peasant - was not at all interested in the results of this labor, his coercion required large expenditures of labor for supervision. Therefore, the feudal landowners transferred their peasants to quitrent.

quitrent farm

In quitrent farming, almost all the land was transferred to the peasants as an allotment. All agricultural production was carried out in the farms of peasants who were on dues. One part of the product created in the economy in the form of quitrent was transferred by the peasant to the feudal landowner, and the other part remained with the peasant as a fund for the reproduction of his labor force and the maintenance of the existence of his family members, as well as a fund for the reproduction of peasant inventory, living and dead.

In many feudal estates, a mixed system was used: along with corvée, peasants had to deliver dues. It happened that corvée prevailed in some estates, while quitrent prevailed in others.

Under the quitrent system of economy, all the labor of the peasant - necessary and surplus - was spent on the farm of the peasant. Surplus labor was given not in its natural form, but in the form of a product. Therefore, here the difference between the necessary and the surplus was physically tangible. product: what the peasant gives in the form of quitrent to the feudal landowner is the surplus product. That part of the product that remains on his farm constitutes the necessary product.

Under the quitrent system, surplus labor is appropriated by the feudal lord in the form of a surplus product. This form of feudal rent is called product rent. “Food rent,” wrote K. Marx, “suggests more high culture production from the direct producer, hence a higher stage of development of his labor and society in general; and it differs from the previous form in that surplus labor must no longer be carried out in its natural form, and therefore no longer under the direct supervision and compulsion of the landowner or his representative; on the contrary, the direct producer must carry it out under his own responsibility, driven by the force of relations instead of direct coercion and by the decree of the law instead of the whip.

Over time, dues in kind began to be combined with dues in cash, or were completely replaced by money. And the peasant had to not only produce a surplus product, but also turn it into money.

If quitrent is established in money, then the surplus labor is appropriated by the feudal lord no longer in the form of labor and not in the form of a product, but in the form of money. Transition to cash rent occurred as a result of the further growth of the division of labor, which caused the development of exchange and the gradual spread of commodity-money relations in society.

Features of rent relations in the countries of the East

A certain peculiarity in the development of forms of feudal land rent and forms of dependence of direct producers on feudal lords existed in many countries of the East.

Since the feudal state acted as the main owner of land and irrigation facilities in the East, a large-scale master economy did not develop here for a long time.

The predominant form of feudal land rent in most countries of the East was not corvee, but rent in products, partly cash rent, which was collected from the peasants by state officials. Usually, the state allocated a significant part of the collected funds (in kind or in cash) to the feudal lords in the form of a kind of salary.

Natural form of feudal production

The feudal estates, within which the production process was carried out, were characterized by the isolation and isolation of economic life. The personal consumption of the feudal lords and peasants, as well as production consumption, were provided mainly due to what was created on each estate by the labor of direct producers.

Feudalism was characterized by a combination Agriculture as the main industry with home crafts that played a secondary role. In that era, household crafts provided the lordly and peasant households with most of the necessary products of handicraft labor. Only individual products that could not be obtained locally for various reasons, for example, some metal products, jewelry, salt, etc., were usually delivered by visiting merchants. The consequence of this was that the economy of the feudal estate was characterized by a closed, self-contained character.

The products created by the labor of direct producers in the process of feudal production were mostly consumed within the feudal estate itself by feudal landowners and serfs in kind.

The surplus product took on a commodity form only with monetary rent, which already corresponded to the period of the disintegration of feudalism.

The necessary product, even under conditions of money rent, and even more so under conditions of labor rent and rent in products, in most cases remained in kind, did not become a commodity. And this was of great importance, since the necessary product was a very significant part of the product produced.

Various duties performed by serfs at all stages of the development of feudal society were also of a natural nature. Thus, the characteristic feature of feudal production was that it had a natural form.

2.4. Basic economic law of feudalism

The purpose of feudal production was to create a surplus product that was used for the direct consumption of the feudal lords, acting in a specific socio-economic form of feudal rent.

The essence of the basic economic law of feudalism was that the surplus product produced as a result of the forced labor of peasants personally dependent on the feudal lords was appropriated by the feudal lords in the form of feudal land rent to satisfy their needs.

2.5. The contradictions of feudalism

All stages of the development of feudal society, which passed through successive forms of feudal production and feudal exploitation, are characterized by the presence of numerous contradictions. The large property of the feudal lords is opposed to the small individual property of the direct producers personally dependent on the feudal lords, on which their petty dependent production was based; large-scale feudal economy - small peasant land tenure; non-economic coercion to work for the feudal lord of direct producers - the possibility of their own economy on the basis of personal labor; the class of landowners and carriers of non-economic coercion - the feudal lords - to the class of peasants personally dependent on them.

The contradictions of feudalism were generated by duality, by the internally contradictory way of connecting the direct producer with the means of production.

2.6. Feudal reproduction

The determining factor was the reproduction that took place in the peasant economy. Peasant labor reproduced not only products used to satisfy the personal needs of the feudal lords (surplus product) and the producers themselves (essential product), but also the conditions for the subsequent continuation of the production process in the peasant economy.

The peasant had to perform household work that ensured the continuity of production: repairing tools, replacing worn-out tools with new ones, and creating stocks of seed grain. “... The product of a serf,” wrote K. Marx, “should be enough here to, in addition to his means of subsistence, compensate for the conditions of his work ...” .

The source of any increase in production is the surplus product.

Therefore, expanded reproduction could be carried out only if some part of the surplus product was directed from time to time to the expansion and improvement of production. This happened sporadically and mainly in those cases when, due to the presence of previously fixed duties, which were usually established for quite a long time, the feudal lord did not have time to appropriate all the results of the growth in labor productivity in the peasant economy.

2.7. feudal city

Feudal relations covered not only the village, but also the city. The cities were inhabited mainly by artisans and merchants. Artisans, who made up the majority of the urban population, were recruited mainly from among the former serfs who fled to the city from their landowner or were transferred to the city by the landowner himself.

Having freed themselves from serfdom in the countryside, the former serfs, who became urban artisans, again fell into the conditions of feudal oppression here. Using the right of the owners of the land on which the cities stood, the feudal lords established a system of personal dependence in the cities, forcing the townspeople to perform various kinds of duties.

Workshop system

In the cities, a specific feudal form of organization of crafts took shape in the form of so-called workshops. Workshops were associations of artisans of a certain branch of handicraft production living in a given city.

The full members of the workshops were the workshop masters - the owners of their own workshops. In the workshop of the guild master, besides himself, several apprentices and apprentices worked. A characteristic feature of medieval workshops is the strict regulation of the conditions of production and marketing (determining the quality of raw materials and finished products, the volume of production, the time and procedure for working in the workshop, etc.). This ensured the monopoly of the workshop in the production of a particular product and prevented competition between artisans.

Under the conditions of the guild system, apprentices and apprentices were exploited by guild foremen. Since the master himself worked in the workshop, his higher position in relation to apprentices and apprentices was based not only on private ownership of the means of production, but also on his professional skill. When teaching a student who came to him, the master did not pay him any remuneration, although the student brought a certain income with his work. Apprentices, who were already in essence skilled artisans, received from the master a certain payment for their work.

merchant guilds

The cities were the center of concentration of the merchant class, which carried out both domestic and international trade. Merchant capital played a very significant role under feudalism. Small commodity producers were by no means always able to sell their goods due to the fragmentation of production and the remoteness of sales markets. Merchants took on the role of an intermediary in the sale of their products. They appropriated a significant part of the product of direct manufacturers. Merchants sold luxury items, weapons, wines, spices, etc., to the feudal lords, which were purchased partly within the country, partly in foreign markets. The profit they received from the resale of goods at higher prices contained part of the feudal land rent.

The weakness of the central government of the feudal state, its inability to provide personal and property protection to wandering merchants, prompted the latter to unite for self-defense in the guild. The guilds fought the competition of outside merchants, streamlined measures and weights, and determined the level of selling prices.

As monetary wealth accumulated, the role of merchant capital changed. If at first the merchants were only occasional intermediaries in the exchange, then gradually the circle of producers selling their goods to this or that merchant became permanent. Merchants often combined trading operations with usurious ones, issuing loans to artisans and peasants and thereby subordinating them even more.

The accumulation of significant sums of money in the hands of the merchants turned them into a major economic force, which became the basis for the dominance of the merchants in the city government. At the same time, the merchants gradually became a force capable of resisting the feudal lords and striving to free themselves from feudal dependence.

Opposite between city and countryside

Under feudalism, the village politically dominated the city, because the cities were owned by the feudal lords. The townspeople were obliged to bear certain duties in favor of the feudal lord, the feudal lord was the supreme judge for the townspeople, he even had the right to sell the city, transfer it by inheritance, and mortgage it. However, the economic development of the city was far ahead of the economic development of the countryside.

The growth of handicraft production, the accumulation of great wealth in the hands of usurers and merchants created the prerequisites for the economic domination of the city over the countryside. “If in the Middle Ages,” K. Marx noted, “the countryside exploits the city politically everywhere where feudalism was not broken by the exceptional development of cities, as in Italy, then the city everywhere and without exception exploits the countryside economically with its monopoly prices, its tax system, its by the guild system, by its direct merchant deceit and its usury.

The power of the feudal lords hindered the development of crafts and trade. Therefore, the cities waged a fierce and constant struggle with the feudal lords for their liberation. They sought political independence, self-government, the right to mint coins, and exemption from duties. Due to the fact that significant amounts of money were concentrated in the hands of merchants, usurers and rich craftsmen, cities often managed to buy off the feudal lords, buying their independence for money. At the same time, cities often achieved their independence by force of arms.

2.8. Commodity-money relations under the feudal mode of production

As a result of the growth of the productive forces and the deepening of the social division of labor under feudalism, commodity production and commodity circulation gained a certain development. Commodity production in the era of the development of feudalism was subordinate to subsistence farming in nature and represented only a separate mode of the feudal economy. It served feudal production and played, especially in the early feudal period, an auxiliary role.

As a result of the expansion of trade between peasants and feudal lords, on the one hand, and urban artisans, on the other, internal markets are taking shape. With the help of trade, an economic link between agricultural and handicraft production is established and strengthened.

Merchant capital under feudalism was primarily an intermediary in the exchange of the surplus product appropriated by the feudal lords for luxury goods imported from other countries. Merchant capital also acted as an intermediary in the exchange of products between peasants and urban artisans. The commercial profit received by the merchants was formed as a result of non-equivalent exchange, i.e., the purchase of goods at prices below their value and their sale above their value. The source of commercial profit was ultimately the surplus product created by the direct producers (peasants and artisans), and in some cases also part of their necessary product.

The process of development of commodity production and circulation is intensified by the expansion of foreign trade. International trade was relatively developed already in the slave era. During the transition from slavery to feudalism, international trade died out somewhat. With the growth of production and the spread of commodity-money relations, it revives again.

The growth of domestic and foreign trade led to the development of money circulation, an increase in the amount of money in circulation, and the improvement of coinage. However, medieval trade, despite its significant development, was still limited. It existed under conditions of dominance of natural production, feudal fragmentation, lack of roads, imperfect means of circulation, the absence of uniform measures of weight and length, a single monetary system, and frequent robbery attacks by feudal lords on merchants.

With the growth of commodity-money relations in feudal society, usury capital develops. Money loans were issued by usurers to feudal lords, as well as to artisans and peasants. The source of usurious interest, as well as the source of commercial profit, was the surplus product created by the peasants and artisans, as well as part of their necessary product.

With the growth of commodity-money relations, the feudal estate was more and more involved in the market turnover. Buying luxury goods and urban handicrafts, the feudal lords are increasingly in need of money. It becomes profitable for them to transfer peasants from corvée and quitrent in kind to quitrent in cash. In this regard, the peasant economy was drawn into the market turnover.

3. Decomposition of feudalism

3.1. Growth of commodity relations and decomposition of subsistence economy

The feudal organization of handicraft production in the form of a guild system, with its strict regulation of the volume and technology of production, with a guild monopoly, limited the possibilities for significant and consistent progress in production technology and an increase in the volume of marketable products. Feudal agriculture, with the fragmentation of allotment land use by small producers, and forced crop rotation within the framework of a community subordinate to the feudal lord, prevented an increase in labor productivity and the enlargement of the size of the economy. At the same time, a self-sufficient subsistence economy limited the capacity and possibilities of the domestic market and hindered the development of commodity exchange. Feudal relations of personal dependence prevented the influx of labor into the cities, without which commodity production could not expand further. Craftsmen and peasants were kept in the system of feudal production by the force of non-economic coercion. Even individuals who had accumulated significant monetary wealth (merchants, usurers, wealthy artisans) could not, in essence, organize large-scale production in a city or village, since there was not a sufficient amount of free labor. In this situation, the method of connecting the worker in production, the direct producer, with the means of production, inherent in feudalism, began to increasingly hinder the further development of the productive forces of society.

The development of production inevitably led to an aggravation of the contradictions inherent in feudalism: between the economy of the feudal lord and the individual economy of peasants and artisans, between physical and mental labor, between town and country, between the naturalness of production inherent in feudalism and its growing marketability.

An irreconcilable contradiction arose and became more and more aggravated between the new productive forces, which require enlarged forms of organization of labor and production in the form of cooperation of specialized producers and a new way of connecting labor force with the means of production, on the one hand, and the old production relations based on the personal dependence of producers. from landowners, feudal lords, on the other.

A conflict is brewing between the productive forces and production relations, and objective prerequisites are being created for a profound socio-economic revolution, for the replacement of feudal production relations by new production relations, for the transition to a new, more progressive mode of production. Thus, a social need arose for the elimination of feudal production relations, for their replacement by new relations that would correspond to the level and nature of the growing productive forces.

These new relationships were capitalist production relations, which assumed the replacement of non-economic coercion of direct producers to work on the basis of their personal dependence by economic coercion through the system of using producers in the production of hired labor.

3.2. Property and social stratification of commodity producers

With the deepening of the social division of labor and the expansion of the sphere of commodity-money relations, the property stratification of commodity producers and the social stratification of commodity producers are intensifying. Growth market relations a fierce competitive struggle unfolded between commodity producers, which led to an ever greater deepening and stratification of their property into poor and rich, both in the city and in the countryside.

The process of stratification of the peasantry in the countryside was significantly accelerated by the transition to cash rent. Thus, new conditions and factors for the development of social production lead to overcoming the limitations of the feudal era, to the disintegration of the guild system in the city, to the social differentiation of producers - peasants and artisans - both in the countryside and in the city.

Thus, conditions are objectively emerging for the emergence of a new method of connecting direct producers with the means of production. The increasingly significant use of wage labor in the production meant that new way connection of producers with the means of production. Simple commodity production, based on the producers' own means of production and the producers' own labor, creates the conditions for the emergence of a new, capitalist form of commodity production, and grows more and more into this new form.

3.3. The emergence in the depths of feudalism of the capitalist form of commodity production. initial accumulation of capital

Capitalist commodity production, which arose in the depths of feudalism, differed from the former forms of commodity economy in the form of commodity production as large-scale production using the cooperation of wage labor of many producers.

The development of commercial (merchant) and usurious capital was one of the necessary historical conditions for the emergence and development of capitalism. Commercial capital in many cases rushed into industry, and the merchant then turned into a capitalist industrialist. Usurers, using the money they had accumulated, sometimes also became capitalist industrialists, or turned into capitalist bankers. But neither commercial nor usurious capital could in itself bring about a fundamental revolution in production relations. They only contributed to the creation of conditions for the emergence of capitalist forms of production.

Workshops based on the simple co-operation of hired labor and merchant manufactories were the first embryos of large-scale capitalist production. They arose in Europe in the XIV-XV centuries, first of all in the city-republics of Italy, and then in the Netherlands, England, France and other countries.

The establishment of the capitalist mode of production presupposes, firstly, the transformation of the mass of producers into proletarians, personally free and at the same time deprived of any means of production, and secondly, the concentration of money wealth and means of production in the hands of a minority. In the creation of these conditions lies the essence of the so-called primitive capital formation, which represented the prehistory and the immediate starting point for the formation of the capitalist mode of production.

Describing the essence of the initial accumulation of capital, K. Marx wrote: “The capitalist relation presupposes that the ownership of the conditions for the implementation of labor is separated from the workers ... Thus, the process that creates the capitalist relation cannot be anything other than the process of separating the worker from the ownership of the conditions labor, a process which transforms, on the one hand, the social means of production and means of subsistence into capital, and, on the other hand, the direct producers into wage-workers. Consequently, the so-called primitive accumulation is nothing but the historical process of the separation of the producer from the means of production.

3.4. The role of violence in the rise of capitalism

Bourgeois historians and economists portray the history of the rise of capitalism idyllically. They argue that the accumulation of wealth occurred in ancient times as a result of the "industriousness and frugality" of some, the "negligence and extravagance" of others. In fact, the production relations of capitalism arose and then became dominant due to the objective laws of social development. But the primitive accumulation of capital was facilitated and accelerated by the use of direct, undisguised violence.

A classic example of this was those dramatic events that took place in the XVI-XVII centuries. in England, where capitalist production reached a significant development earlier than in other countries. Here, the bourgeois nobility forcibly drove the peasants, who by that time had been freed from serfdom, from the lands. Deprived of land, the peasants, having lost the opportunity to run their own economy, were forced to hire themselves to the capitalists. In parallel with this, the process of formation of capitalist farmers - agricultural capitalists - was going on in the countryside. Landlessness of agricultural producers, their expropriation is the basis of the entire process of primitive accumulation of capital. “... The history of this expropriation of them,” wrote K. Marx, “is inscribed in the annals of mankind with a flaming tongue of blood and fire.”

So, new class- the nascent bourgeoisie used on a large scale violent methods of forcing the proletarians to work in capitalist enterprises, violent methods of creating a new labor discipline for subordinating producers to capitalist wage slavery. State power with the help of legal legislation against the "homeless" and "tramps" forced disadvantaged people to go to work for capitalist enterprises.

Violence was also an important means of accelerating the process of concentration of wealth (money, means of production) in the hands of a few. A significant number of capitalist enterprises were created at the expense of accumulations, which were concentrated in the hands of merchants and usurers. But, as already noted, other methods of accumulating wealth with the use of violence also played a major role, as well as the system of colonial robbery of peoples, colonial trade, including the slave trade, trade wars, the system of state loans and taxes, and the patronizing customs policy of the state.

In Russia, which began the transition from feudalism to capitalism later than many other European countries, the process of forcible separation of direct producers from the means of production developed intensively only in connection with the abolition of serfdom. The reform of 1861 was a grand robbery of the peasants. As a result of its implementation, the landowners seized two-thirds of the land, in their hands were the most convenient land for use. Defining character peasant reform 1861, V. I. Lenin pointed out: “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.

Through robbery, the forcible ruin of the masses of small producers, and the cruelest enslavement of the colonial peoples, the creation of conditions for the domination of the capitalist mode of production was accelerated.

3.5. Class struggle in feudal society and bourgeois revolutions

The disintegration of feudalism was an inevitable process that unfolded due to the operation of the objective laws of economic development. This process was accelerated by the widespread use of violence as a means of primitive accumulation of capital.

The foundations of feudalism were increasingly shaken under the blows of the intensifying class struggle in feudal society, under the influence of mass actions by the peasants against their oppressors. In the XIV century. an uprising of English peasants under the leadership of Wat Tyler and an uprising of French peasants (Jacquerie) broke out. In the XV century. peasant wars broke out in the Czech Republic under the leadership of Jan Hus. 16th century was marked by a broad peasant movement in Germany under the leadership of Thomas Müntzer.

The feudal system of Russia was the cause of major peasant uprisings led by Bolotnikov (XV century), Stepan Razin (XVII century), Emelyan Pugachev (XVIII century), and others.

Peasant uprisings were harbingers of bourgeois revolutions. Peasants, as well as artisans, made up the bulk of the fighters during the bourgeois revolutions. But the bourgeoisie took advantage of the fruits of their struggle and victories, seizing state power in their hands. The first bourgeois revolutions took place in the Netherlands (sixteenth century) and England (seventeenth century). The French Revolution, which began in 1789, was of great importance for overthrowing the rule of the feudal lords and establishing the power of the bourgeoisie in Europe. Later, bourgeois revolutions took place in other countries as well.

Bourgeois revolutions completed the collapse of the feudal social system and accelerated the development of bourgeois relations.

3.6. "Second edition of serfdom"

A long feudal reaction, which took the legal form of the "second edition of serfdom", triumphed during the period of late feudalism in the countries of Central and Eastern Europe. The political expression of feudal reaction was the developed system of an undivided noble dictatorship (the political dominance of the magnate and gentry in the Commonwealth, the tsarist autocracy in Russia). In the countries of the "second edition of serfdom" feudalism assumed a stagnant character, only gradually giving way to the embryonic forms of capitalist relations. Their development under the cover of feudalism proceeded along the path of a painful restructuring of the landlord economy for the peasantry on the basis of enslaved, semi-serf forms of wage labor, which personified the so-called Prussian path of development of capitalism in agriculture; In industry, the use of hired labor has long been combined with the use of forced labor. The stage of late feudalism continued in this region until the middle and even the second half of the 19th century, after which significant feudal vestiges remained (especially in agrarian relations, in the political superstructure).

4. Remnants of feudalism in capitalist and developing countries

Several centuries have passed since the fall of feudalism in many countries. However, its remnants and survivals persist in the modern capitalist world. Thus, in Italy, with a high level of capitalist development, large landed estates of the nobility still continue to exist. The system of share-cropping is widespread here, under which a part of the harvest is paid to the owner of the land in the form of ground rent. In essence, this is nothing but a remnant of feudal relations.

There are remnants and survivals of feudalism in a number of other European capitalist countries, for example, in Spain, Portugal and Greece.

There are remnants of feudalism in a number of developing countries. Significant remnants of feudalism in the form of large landownership and remnants of pre-capitalist forms of rent have survived in countries such as India, Pakistan, Turkey, Iran, some Arab countries, and other countries of Asia, Africa and Latin America.

backward economic structure a number of developing countries use the monopolies of the imperialist states for their own enrichment. The remnants and vestiges of feudal economic forms impede the progress of the peoples of the developing countries, hinder their struggle for genuine freedom, for national rebirth and economic independence.

The attempt to prove the eternity of capitalist relations leads bourgeois economists to the other extreme. They seek to identify capitalism with those forms of production that existed before it, to attribute capitalist essence to feudalism, to deprive it of its own socio-economic content. A number of bourgeois economists and historians confine themselves to a political and legal definition of feudalism, without revealing its socio-economic content, thereby turning one or another “secondary” feature of the feudal system (derived from the economic basis) into a defining one. Proceeding from the eternity of capitalism, they depict feudalism as a time of immaturity and underdevelopment of capitalist forms of economy, as a kind of "rudimentary capitalism".

Being on an idealistic position, bourgeois ideologists deny the class struggle in the period of feudalism, ignore the role of the masses as a decisive force in social progress, overestimate the importance of individual historical figures, and characterize the feudal state as an organ standing above society and supposedly ensuring "social peace". Propositions of this kind have nothing in common with a real analysis of the process of the rise, development, and death of the feudal mode of production.

In the Middle Ages, it was believed that society is divided into "those who pray" - the clergy, "those who fight" - knights and "those who work" - peasants. All these classes, as it were, were parts of one body. In fact, the hierarchical structure of society that arose in the Middle Ages was much more complex and interesting.
And you will also learn how a real knight should look and behave.

Subject:Feudal system of Western Europe

Lesson:feudal society

In the Middle Ages, it was believed that society is divided into "those who pray" - the clergy, "those who fight" - knights and "those who work" - peasants. All these classes, as it were, were parts of one body. In fact, the hierarchical structure of society that arose in the Middle Ages was much more complex and interesting. And you will also learn how a real knight should look and behave.

By the middle of the XI century. in Europe, a social system was established, which modern historians call feudal. Power in society belonged to the landowners-feudal lords, secular and ecclesiastical. The vast majority of the population were dependent peasants. The privileges and duties of masters and peasants took shape in certain customs, written laws and regulations.

Each large feudal lord distributed part of the land with peasants to small feudal lords as a reward for their service, they also gave him an oath of allegiance. He was considered in relation to these feudal lords senior(senior), and the feudal lords, who, as it were, “kept” lands from him, became his vassals(subordinates). The vassal was obliged, by order of the lord, to go on a campaign and bring a detachment of soldiers with him, to participate in the lord's court, to help him with advice, to redeem the lord from captivity. The lord defended his vassals from attacks by other feudal lords and rebellious peasants, rewarded them for their service, and was obliged to take care of their orphaned children. It happened that the vassals opposed their lords, did not follow their orders, or went over to another lord. And then only by force could they be forced into submission, especially if the lord forced the vassals to participate in the war for too long or poorly rewarded for their service.

The king was considered the head of all feudal lords and the first lord of the country: he was the supreme judge in disputes between them and led the army during the war. The king was a senior for the highest nobility (aristocracy) - dukes and counts. Below were the barons and viscounts, the vassals of the dukes and earls. The barons were the lords of the knights, who no longer had their own vassals. Vassals were to obey only their lords. If they were not vassals of the king, then they might not follow his orders. This order was fixed by the rule: "The vassal of my vassal is not my vassal." Relations between the feudal lords resembled a ladder, on the upper steps of which stood the largest feudal lords, on the lower steps - the middle ones, and even lower - the small ones. Historians call this organization of feudal lords feudal staircase.

Rice. 1. Feudal stairs ()

Feudal law also regulated relations between masters and their dependent peasants. For example, a peasant community had the right to disobey a lord if he demanded a higher tax than was provided for by the custom of this community or by an agreement between the peasants and the lord of the land. When a war broke out with another state, the king called for the campaign of dukes and counts, and they turned to the barons, who brought detachments of knights with them. This is how the feudal army, which is usually called knightly, was created.

Starting from the 8th century to protect against the attacks of the Normans and Hungarians in Europe, many castles were built. Gradually, each gentleman tried to build himself a castle, depending on the possibilities - huge or modest. The castle is the dwelling of the feudal lord and his fortress. At first, castles were built of wood, later - of stone. Powerful walls with crenellated towers served reliable protection. The castle was often erected on a hill or a high rock, surrounded by a wide moat with water. Sometimes it was built on an island in the middle of a river or lake. A drawbridge was thrown over a moat or channel, and at night and during an enemy attack, it was raised on chains. From the tower above the gate, she constantly surveyed the surroundings of the guard and, noticing the enemy in the distance, blew the alarm. Then the soldiers hurried to take their places on the walls and in the towers. To get into the castle, it was necessary to overcome many obstacles. The enemies had to fill up the ditch, overcome the hill in the open space, approach the walls, climb them along the attached assault ladders, or smash the oak, iron-bound gates with a battering ram. On the heads of the enemies, the defenders of the castle threw stones and logs, poured boiling water and hot pitch, threw spears, showered them with arrows. Often the attackers had to storm a second, even higher wall.

Rice. 2. Medieval castle in Spain ()

Above all the buildings towered the main tower - donjon. In it, the feudal lord with his warriors and servants could withstand a long siege if other fortifications were already captured. Inside the tower, one above the other, there were halls. In the basement, they made a well and stored food supplies. Nearby, prisoners languished in a damp and dark dungeon. From the basement, they usually dug a secret underground passage that led to a river or forest.

Warfare became the occupation almost exclusively of the feudal lords, and this was the case for many centuries. The feudal lord often fought all his life. The knight was armed with a great sword and a long spear; often he also used a battle ax and a club - a heavy club with a thickened metal end. With a large shield, the knight could cover himself from head to toe. The body of the knight was protected by chain mail - a shirt woven from iron rings (sometimes in 2-3 layers) and reaching to the knees. Later, chain mail was replaced by armor - armor made of steel plates. The knight put on a helmet on his head, and in a moment of danger he lowered a visor over his face - a metal plate with slits for the eyes. The knights fought on strong, hardy horses, which were also protected by armor. The knight was accompanied by a squire and several armed warriors, horse and foot, - a whole "combat unit". The feudal lords prepared for military service from childhood. They constantly practiced fencing, horseback riding, wrestling, swimming and throwing spears, learned the techniques and tactics of combat.

Rice. 3. Knight and squire ()

Noble knights considered themselves “noble” people, were proud of the antiquity of their families and the number of famous ancestors. The knight had his own coat of arms - a distinctive sign of the family and the motto - a short saying, usually explaining the meaning of the coat of arms to the neck. The knights did not hesitate to rob the vanquished, their own peasants and even those passing on the high roads. At the same time, the knight was supposed to despise prudence, frugality, but show generosity. The incomes received from the peasants and military booty were most often spent on gifts, feasts and treats for friends, hunting, expensive clothes, and on the maintenance of servants and soldiers. Another important quality of a knight was considered loyalty to the king and lord. This was his main duty. And treason imposed a stigma of shame on the whole family of a traitor. “Whoever cheats on his lord, he must rightfully suffer punishment,” says one of the poems. In legends about knights, courage, prowess, contempt for death, nobility were sung. This developed code (laws) of knightly honor also included other special rules: a knight must seek feats, fight enemies Christian faith, to defend the honor of ladies, as well as the weak and offended, especially widows and orphans, to be fair and gallant. But these rules of knightly honor were applied mainly in relations between feudal lords. All those who were considered "ignoble", the knights despised, behaved with them arrogantly and cruelly.

Bibliography

1. Agibalova E. V., Donskoy G. M. History of the Middle Ages. - M., 2012.

2. Atlas of the Middle Ages: History. Traditions. - M., 2000.

3. Illustrated world history: from ancient times to the 17th century. - M., 1999.

4. History of the Middle Ages: Book. for reading / Ed. V. P. Budanova. - M., 1999.

5. Kalashnikov V. Riddles of History: Middle Ages / V. Kalashnikov. - M., 2002.

6. Stories on the history of the Middle Ages / Ed. A. A. Svanidze. - M., 1996.

Homework

1. Name the three estates of medieval society

2. Why did the peasants not enter the feudal ladder?

3. What rights and obligations bound seigneurs and vassals?

4. Describe a medieval castle

5. What weapons did the knights use?

6. What are the main provisions of the code of knightly honor.

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 primarily 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 work to supply 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 the 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 it 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 ancient Russia from 60 to 95% of the entire territory was in the local possession 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 enslaved individual peasant economy constituted an organic part of the feudal mode of production, in contrast to the slave-owning mode, where it was a special 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 manager 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 work time. 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, it 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 compelled, 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 important countries 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. Further development handicrafts required the distribution of its products outside the feudal estates, 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 ... ".

As part of the population medieval cities dominated by craftsmen 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 the 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 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 superior 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 economic activity of the master 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 masters, 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 the craft 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. Under the conditions of a 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 the craft in the 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 at the same time merchants - 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.

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

Protecting guild crafts from the competition of runaway 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 the improvement of 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 handicraft, 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 they were declared a boycott, which in those conditions threatened with complete ruin.

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

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 goods 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 master 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, trading capital, being an intermediary in the exchange between town and country, had the opportunity to accumulate on a large scale. cash through the exploitation of a mass of small producers, both in the city and in the countryside. The same applies to usurious capital.

The following data relating to the 14th-15th 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 the urban population to 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 belonged in parts 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 of court, coinage, for exemption from numerous taxes, customs duties etc. In a number of feudal states (France, Italy), cities that acquired independence from the 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 antithesis 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 the produce from the peasant 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 goods, 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: First of all, 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 countryside 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, which lay 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 ways 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.

AT crusades was 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 rest of the 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. Venice, Genoa, Florence and other cities were the centers of this trade in the Mediterranean. 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 in products 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 catholic church was most adapted both for the fight against the feudal lords and the subordination of their spiritual power, and for the enslavement of 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 has 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 a guild craft in the city and more and more peasant farming in the countryside, which was more and more involved in 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 your own 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,” wrote Lenin, “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 in regard to 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 not be determined by the individual time spent on the production of the 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.

To avoid guild slingshots and restrictions, some more prosperous craftsmen and merchants transferred the organization of production to the village, handing 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: “Whoever 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 provoked a vigorous rebuff from 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 he had in 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, which killed big number of people. 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 down the landed estates along the way, destroying castles high 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-owning 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 teachings 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 back 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.

In the Middle Ages, people were divided into classes of praying, fighting and working. These estates differed in their rights and obligations, which were established by laws and customs.

The estate of the belligerents (feudal lords) included the descendants of noble people of barbarian tribes and noble inhabitants of the Western Roman Empire they conquered.

The situation of the belligerents was different. The richest owned entire regions, and some simple knights were sometimes very poor. However, only feudal lords had the right to own land and rule over other people.

Both the descendants of impoverished free people from among the barbarians and Roman citizens, as well as the descendants of slaves and columns, went to the working class. The vast majority of those who worked are peasants. They fell into two categories. Some peasants remained free people, but lived on the lands of feudal lords. The feud was divided into master's land and peasant allotments. It was believed that these allotments were provided to the peasants by the feudal lord. For this, the peasants worked on the master's land (corvée) and paid taxes to the feudal lord (tire). The feudal lord promised the population of his fief, levied fines for breaking the laws. Another category of peasants was called serfs. They were considered "attached" to their allotments and could not leave them. The duties of the serfs (corvee, dues) were more difficult than those of the free. They were personally dependent on the feudal lords, they were sold and bought together with the land. The property of the serfs was considered the property of the lord. Servants-serfs were in fact the position of slaves.

In addition to those who fought and worked, there was an estate of worshipers. He was considered the main and was called the first. It was believed that the feudal lord or peasant was not able to fully comprehend the full depth of the teachings of Christ and independently communicate with God. In addition, people are constantly tempted by the devil. Only the Christian church and its ministers - the clergy - could explain the divine laws to everyone, connect a person with God, protect him from the wiles of the devil and atone for his sins before God. The main duty of the class of worshipers was worship. The priests also baptized children, married the newlyweds, received confession from the penitents and remitted their sins, communed the dying.

Unlike those at war and working, the clergy were an open estate. People from two other classes could become priests. For the maintenance of the first estate, the workers were charged a tax in the amount of a tenth of the income (church tithe). Considerable land was in the direct possession of the church.

More on the topic Three estates of feudal society.:

1. TOPIC 12 The rise of the feudal system The city in the system of feudal society
2. The classes of feudal society. Dependent and serfs.
3. TOPIC 8 Formation of feudal structures (IX-X) Regional features of the process of formation of feudal structures Formation of the foundations of the culture of feudal times
4. Features of the social structure of Indian feudal society in the early Middle Ages. Caste system.
5. Forms of feudal ownership of land and feudal rent.
6. TOPIC 13 Church of the feudal period Processes of integration and disintegration in the socio-political life of Europe. Culture of the feudal era

Feudal society was divided into two main classes - feudal lords and peasants. "The serf 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"1.

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 seigneur, patronized - vassal. The seiers, in turn, were vassals of other, more powerful feudal lords.

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

The clergy (church and monastery) were also the largest landowners. 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 the 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 estate. 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 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.

1 V.P. Lenin, On the State, Works, vol. 29, p. 445.

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 land and large householders. 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.

carriers supreme power kings were considered (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 feogs also enjoyed very wide rights in relation to 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.

More on the topic Classes and estates of feudal society. Feudal hierarchy.:

1. State power and class division of the feudal class in the Balkans in the XIII-XV centuries. (On the history of feudal social terminology and hierarchy) E. P. NAUMOV