Feudal mode of production

Feudal economic regime . In feudal production agriculture was of decisive importance. The determining relations of the feudal mode of production were the agrarian relations characterized by the possession of the land by the feudal lords.

Summary

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• 1 Feudalism
  • 1 Main classes
  • 2 Production relationships
• 2 Feudal agrarian relations
• 3 Agrarian relations and personal dependency
• 4 Feudal production and feudal income
  • 1 Landowner economy
  • 2 Tax economy
  • 3 Necessary and additional work
  • 4 Feudal production and extra-economic coercion
  • 5 Forms of feudal income
• 5 Fundamental economic law
• 6 Feudal reproduction
• 7 Development of the productive forces
• 8 Development of commercial relations
  • 1 Disintegration of the natural economy
  • 2 Differentiation of merchandise producers
  • 3 Emergence of capitalist mercantile production
  • 4 Role of violence in the establishment of capitalism
  • 5 Sharpening of the class struggle
• 9 Vestiges of feudalism today
• 10 Sources

Feudalism

Feudalism is the economic-social formation established as a result of the decomposition and collapse of the slave regime or the regime of the primitive community ; it has existed in almost all countries ^[1] [2] .

Main classes

The main classes of feudal society are those made up of feudal lords and peasants . The ruling and exploiting class of lords encompassed the nobility and the high clergy. Within the ruling class, there was a hierarchical division into estates, a subordination of the small feudal lords to those of greater power.

The Church was a great feudal power. The exploited peasants lacked political and legal rights. In the cities, the main mass of the population was made up of teachers, officers, apprentices, and unskilled workers.

Production relations

The basis of the dominant relations of production under Feudalism was the property of the feudal lord over the means of production, first of all over the land, and incomplete property over the worker, which was expressed in various types of personal dependence on the peasant regarding your lord.

Under feudalism, the productive forces could only develop on the basis of the work of the dependent peasants, who owned insignificant instruments of labor and were somewhat materially interested in the work.

Feudal agrarian relations

Agrarian exploitation

In the territories of the feudal lords there were not only a certain number of villages, but also a large number of cities. That is why in its radius of exploitation were both peasants and urban artisans. Feudal property comprised complete domain within the limits of a given territory. The agrarian property relations were firmly linked to the relations of personal dependency. Relations of personal dependence reigned throughout the system of social relations of feudalism.

(…) Everyone – wrote Marx – lives subjugated: servants and lords of the gleba, vassals and feudal lords, secular and ecclesiastical. Personal subjection, at this time, characterizes the social conditions of material production as well as the relationships of life founded on them.

Agrarian relations and personal dependency

The most widespread and finished form of the personal dependence of the peasants in relation to the feudal lords was the so-called servitude or right of servitude.

The subordinate relations of the peasants with respect to the feudal lords, are manifested as relations between opposing classes, which confronted the direct producers against the exploiting classes. But the character of these relationships was already different compared to the slave society. The peasant serfs were not fully owned by the feudal lords. He was able to spend part of his time on his plot and to some extent they owned his shares. As difficult as their situation was, the servants exploited by the feudal lords were no longer their property and it turned out to be a step forward with respect to slavery.

The peasants owned means of production, agricultural tools, tools of crafts and cattle for rent and labor. The city’s artisans also owned means of production. The peasants and artisans also owned houses and dependencies. Some means of production, such as wells, roads, and sometimes grasslands, were owned by the rural commune, which remained in certain territories despite the process of feudalization and, as a consequence. Of submission of the peasants and subordination of the community to the power of the feudal lords.

Feudal production and feudal income

Feudal production was developed in two main aspects: in the form of a landowning economy and a tax economy. For the two forms, the following was common: a) the direct producer depended personally on the feudal lord; b) the feudal lord on whom the direct producers personally depended, was considered the owner of all the land dedicated to agricultural production; c) the direct producer had a lot of land that constituted his estate; d) peasant labor was applied to agricultural production and their labor instruments were used in it; e) peasants invested additional labor and created additional product for the feudal lord as a result of extra-economic coercion. Since the peasants had their own means of production necessary to independently run the hacienda, the feudal lord could exploit the direct producer only through extra-economic coercion. “If he had no direct power over the person of the peasant – wrote Lenin – he could not force the man who owns the land in nadiel and who has his own estate to work for himself.” The peasant nadiel formed the basis for the very existence of the peasant and his family. Unlike slavery, in which the fundamental source of the labor force was wars, the individual estate ensured a more or less regular reproduction of the labor force. “If he had no direct power over the person of the peasant – wrote Lenin – he could not force the man who owns the land in nadiel and who has his own estate to work for himself.” The peasant nadiel was the basis for the very existence of the peasant and his family. Unlike slavery, in which the fundamental source of the labor force was wars, the individual estate ensured a more or less regular reproduction of the labor force. “If he had no direct power over the person of the peasant – wrote Lenin – he could not force the man who owns the land in nadiel and who has his own estate to work for himself.” The peasant nadiel formed the basis for the very existence of the peasant and his family. Unlike slavery, in which the fundamental source of the labor force was wars, the individual estate ensured a more or less regular reproduction of the labor force.

Landowner economy

In the landowning economy, the entire estate of the feudal lord was divided into two parts. One part, the landowning land in which with the work and instruments of the peasants agricultural products were obtained, which were entirely appropriated by the feudal lord. In this way, on the land of the land, the additional labor investment of the peasants was executed and the additional product was obtained. The other part of the land was called nadiel (lot). In this land the peasant had his farm where he reproduced the necessary product. In this land he had to obtain enough product for his food and that of his family.

Tax economy

In the tax economy all land was given to the peasant in no one. All agricultural production was accomplished on the peasant tributary estates. A part of the product created was delivered by the peasant to the landowner in the form of tribute. And the other part remained in the hands of the peasant for the reproduction of his labor force and to support his family.

Necessary and additional work

In the tax economy both work further as the necessary work were invested in the property of the farmer. In the landowning economy, the necessary work and the additional work were divorced in space and time: the necessary work was invested in the nadiel of the peasant and the additional work in the lands of the feudal lord (landowners).

In the tax economy, the necessary and additional work were not separated, since the entire field of action was the peasant’s farm. But the necessary and the additional product were separated from each other.

In the landowning economy, additional work was delivered in its natural form, such as certain numbers of working days. In the tax economy, additional work was not delivered in its natural form, but in the form of the product of labor. That is why the difference between the necessary product and the additional product was manifested in a completely tangible way: what the peasant gave to the feudal lord in the form of tribute was an additional product. The part of the product he had left was necessary product. In the landowning economy, the difference between necessary work and additional work was also physically tangible.

Additional work in the landowning economy differed little from that of slaves. The product of all the work in the landowning economy belonged to the feudal lord, so the peasant was not interested in its results. For this reason the feudal lords converted the landowning estates into tributary estates. The landowners encountered objective limitations, since it was necessary to offer the peasants the possibility of reproducing the necessary product. Otherwise the farmer would not have been in a position to continue the production process.

On the other hand, the number of days of benefits was not the same in all regions. In Russia it had been legalized in three days but later the landowners increased the number of days until leaving the peasants only on Sunday and nights. This hurt both the peasant hacienda and the landowning hacienda. The peasant lost all interest in the work of the landowning hacienda, and the productivity of labor and its quality decreased, thus affecting the additional product.

In the tax economy, the landowner guaranteed himself a certain magnitude of the additional product that the direct producers (the peasants) were obliged to deliver to them. The increase in taxes collided with the resistance of the peasants. The history of feudalism is full of a sharp struggle of the peasants against the unlimited increase in the proportions of the tribute.

The tribute was formed by certain products, which formed a set of use values ​​elaborated by the peasants. Because the economy was generally of a natural nature, the peasant had to produce on his farm the necessary product and the additional product. Subsequently, the product in kind was supplemented with the tribute in money or was entirely replaced by money. In several feudal estates a mixed system was applied. In addition to personal provision, the peasants owed for tribute.

As can be deduced from the characterization of the landowning economy and the tax economy in the system of feudal economic relations, production was based on the peasant hacienda that constituted the productive base of said mode of production.

Feudal production and extra-economic coercion

The basis of feudal exploitation was feudal ownership of land, in connection with personal dependence, which presupposed one or other forms of extra-economic coercion. Without land ownership, the feudal lord could not have exploited the peasants. In this sense, feudal land ownership was the basis of the feudal mode of production, but power over land was insufficient to exploit the peasant. The economy was organized in such a way that without the relations of personal dependency and without the possibility of the extra-economic coercion related to it, it would not have been possible to make feudal economic relations effective. In such a case, the peculiarity of the feudal mode of extra-economic coercion manifested itself as a necessary and obligatory condition of each particular hacienda. Thus, dependency relationships had a certain personal character. Each individual peasant was the servant of a certain feudal lord. The objective need for extra-economic coercion was not enough to make feudal production relations effective. Without economic coercion, these relations would not have existed in their entirety, but extra-economic coercion, by itself, was insufficient to make such economic relations effective. For this, feudal agrarian relations were necessary. In feudalism the main means of labor was land, and agrarian relations were the determining relations. Feudal property over the land presupposed as an essential characteristic of its own, that the direct process of production was carried out by the peasants, that they inevitably had land, which was the base of their tax treasury. In the landowning economy, the base of the peasant hacienda was a part of the land of the feudal lord’s domain, and in the tax economy, all land was the base of the peasant hacienda.

Forms of feudal income

Income

The agrarian relations constituted the fundamental relation of production of the feudal mode. That is why the fundamental production relations of feudalism were manifested in rent, which represented the economic form of realization of feudal land ownership.

Additional labor and additional product manifested as income under the conditions of the feudal mode of production. According to the nature and form of appropriation of additional work and additional product, the following types of income existed. In the landowning economy, additional work was obtained through coercion exerted on the dependent peasant to work on the land of the landowner. Such additional form of labor manifested itself in the form of income at work. In the tax economy, when the feudal lord established what products should be paid to him as taxes, the additional work was appropriated by the feudal lord through the product as an additional product. Such a form of feudal income was called product income. If the magnitude of the tribute was established in money, the additional work was not appropriated by the feudal lord in the form of work, nor in the form of the product of labor, but as a certain magnitude of value paid in money. The transition to income in money was the result of the increase in the division of labor, which originated the exchange and gradual diffusion in society of mercantile monetary relations.

Fundamental economic law

The purpose of feudal production lay in the creation of the additional product that feudal lords appropriated and used to satisfy their needs in the form of land rent. The original duality of the work of the dependent peasants conditioned the duality of the additional product in feudal society. The additional product, as well as the necessary product, was use value, that is, it had the capacity to satisfy the needs of those who appropriated it, that is, of the feudal lords due to their condition as owners of the land. At the same time, having been created by the forced labor of the peasant serfs, the additional product took the specific form of feudal land rent. The additional product created as a result of the forced labor of the peasants dependent on the feudal lords was appropriated by them in the form of feudal income from the land for their parasitic consumption. This is the essence of the fundamental economic law of feudalism.

Feudal reproduction

In the landowning economy and in the tax economy, the peasant had everything necessary for the sustenance of his hacienda because he was not interested in establishing any type of economic relations with the class of feudal lords, since what they were doing was parasitically consume the additional work and additional product created by them. If, as a result of historical circumstances, the landowning class (the feudal lords) had disappeared, the peasant haciendas had not been deprived of economic conditions for their reproduction. On the other hand, the peasants were freed from handing over the additional work to the feudal landowner. For this reason, in order for reproduction to be carried out on the feudal basis, extra-economic coercion was necessary.

In feudalism the volume of production grew slowly over entire generations. The needs of direct producers and their families grew very slowly. Only in various situations did the extended reproduction atypical for this type of economic relationship take place and, on the other hand, it was not an uninterrupted process. Parasitic consumption was the driving force of feudal production. The feudal lords did not use the product obtained by them to increase production. Enlarged reproduction presupposes the expansion of production, not only of the additional product, but of all the conditions of the production process: of the means of production and the necessary product. Therefore, in the event that the extended reproduction were carried out in the landowning estate,

The reproduction made in the peasant hacienda had a decisive character. The work of the peasant serfs reproduced not only the products destined to satisfy the needs of the feudal lords and of the producers themselves and their families, but also the conditions for the continuation of the production process on their hacienda. The peasants had to carry out the work that would ensure the continuity of production.

The increase in production in the peasant hacienda was necessarily limited by the fact that as production increased, the rents they had to pay increased. On the other hand, to pay the increased rent, the producer had to keep the production expanded.

The source of any increase in production is the additional product. For this reason it could only take place in the event that a part of the additional product was destined from time to time to the expansion and improvement of production, something not common due to the parasitic consumption of the feudal class. This happened sporadically, preferably on occasions that due to the existence of previously established benefits, the feudal lord could not suddenly take over the entire result of the increase in the productivity of labor on the peasant farm.

Development of the productive forces

The feudal relations of production contributed to the further development of the productive forces throughout a certain historical period. In the 15th and 16th centuries, the most significant changes occurred in the development of the productive forces due to the progress achieved in the steel industry, metal machining and energy.

In the second half of the 15th century, blast furnaces began to be used in the iron foundry, which increased labor productivity in the steel industry and increased the production of ferrous metals. Metal hammers powered by a hydraulic flywheel began to be used to forge the metal. Simple types of lathes, drills, and grinders also appeared. This created the conditions for perfecting the instruments of work in all spheres of the economy.

New mechanisms (water pumps, forklifts, etc.) began to be used for work in the mines, which allowed useful minerals to be extracted from mines located at great depths. The wind motors and the hydraulic flywheel were perfected and widely used. The mechanical watch has been known since the 12th century and the first automatic mechanism, the wind-up pocket watch, was built in the late 15th century. The printing press was discovered and spread. Major changes were made in shipbuilding and navigation technique.

Some technical progress was made in agriculture, cultivable areas increased and the volume of agricultural production increased.

Development of commercial relations

Market

Parallel to the development of technique, the social division of labor grew, especially in crafts. More artisans were emerging who specialized in the production of a few commodities. Various crafts trades to which the peasants had dedicated themselves in their homes and on the landowners’ estates (making of yarn, weaving, etc.) became independent branches. As a result of the growth of the social division of labor, production and the exchange of goods inevitably grew.

In the late fifteenth century and early sixteenth century, the form of money income became dominant in several countries, which considerably expanded the commercial and monetary relations and the influence of the market in the feudal economy. The isolation of the peasant and landowning estates gradually disappeared. The peasants gradually transformed into producers of merchandise. In the cities, the mercantile relations expanded more rapidly because in the division of labor and the specialization of production, changes took place faster than in the countryside. The further development of cities as centers of the development of mercantile production and trade, exerted an increasing influence on the disintegration of the natural economy.

The increase in mercantile production was paired with the expansion of the market. Trade relations between cities and between cities and the countryside, as well as between different countries, became increasingly extensive and necessary. The great geographical discoveries gave a strong impulse to the development of commerce.

Disintegration of the natural economy

Natural Economy

In the 15th and 16th centuries, commercial and monetary relations had penetrated sufficiently into the economy not only of the cities, but also of the countryside. The existence in these conditions of the craftsmen’s guilds and natural estates, became increasingly incompatible with the needs of the subsequent development of the economy.

The feudal organization of craft production in the guild regime form with its rigorous regulation of volume and production technology, with the monopoly of union production, limited the possibilities for considerable progress in production technique and increase of the quantity of mercantile production.

Feudal agriculture, with the division of the land of the small producers and the forced rotation of the crops within the limits of the community subordinated to the feudal lord, prevented the elevation of labor productivity and the expansion of the hacienda.

In turn, the natural economy, with its production for itself, hindered the scale of the internal market and slowed the development of the exchange of goods. Feudal relations held back the influx of labor into the city, without which the market could not expand. Artisans and peasants were kept in the system of feudal production through extra-economic coercion and even people they had hoarded. considerable wealth (merchants, usurers, and wealthy artisans) could not really organize the great production in the city or the country, for they did not have sufficient labor power. In this situation, the procedure of unifying the labor force with the means of production typical of feudalism was increasingly inadequate for the development of the productive forces.

Between the new productive forces, which demanded new forms of organization of work in the form of the cooperation of specialized producers and a new way of unifying the workforce with the means of production, on the one hand, and the outdated relations of production Based on the personal dependence of the producers on the owners of the land, on the other hand, the irreconcilable contradiction appeared and grew more and more. The social need appeared to replace the old feudal relations of production with new ones, corresponding to the growing development of the productive forces.

Differentiation of merchandise producers

As the social division of labor expanded and the sphere of commercial and monetary relations expanded, the patrimonial and social differentiation of the direct producers of merchandise increased. Since the productivity of individual labor was not the same, commodity producers invested different amounts of labor in the production of the same commodity.

Producers of merchandise that had worse conditions of production, invested much more work and could only cover part of the production costs by selling their merchandise. Inexorably a part of these producers went bankrupt. On the other hand, those who had better production conditions and achieved a more advanced intensity and productivity of work, got rich. They accumulated large sums of money and means of production in their hands. This created the conditions for a new procedure to unify producers with the means of production. The producers of ruined merchandise, lacking all kinds of means of production, were forced to contract for money, working for those who owned the means of production.

Emergence of capitalist mercantile production

Mercantile Production

The capitalist relations of production that arose in the bowels of the feudal regime, differed from the previous forms of the mercantile economy, first of all as a large production that employed the cooperation of the work of many salaried workers.

In the process of emergence and development of the capitalist mode of production, commercial capital and usurer capital played a fundamental role, which encouraged the development of mercantile monetary relations. Previously born commercial capital was often invested in industry, and the merchant thus became a manufacturing capitalist. At times the usurers became bankers. Both commercial and usury capital could not in themselves cause a radical revolution in the relations of production; they only favored creating the conditions for the emergence of capitalist forms of production.

The consolidation of the capitalist relations of production supposed the transformation of the mass of producers into proletarians free of all personal dependency but at the same time dispossessed of the class of means of production. On the other hand, the concentration of wealth in money and the means of production in the hands of a minority. In the creation of these conditions lies the essence of the so-called original accumulation of capital. In this regard, Marx wrote: “The regime of capital presupposes the divorce between workers and property over the conditions of their work … Therefore, the process that capitalism generates can only be one: the process of dissociation between the worker and ownership over the conditions of their work, a process that on one hand turns the social means of life and production into capital, while on the other hand it converts direct producers into salaried workers. The so-called original accumulation is, therefore, nothing more than the historical process of dissociation between the producer and the means of production. ”

The process of the original accumulation of capital constitutes the prehistory of capitalism and preceded the consolidation of capitalism as the dominant mode of production.

Role of violence in the establishment of capitalism

The bourgeois economists sublimely describe the history of the rise of capitalism, affirming that the accumulation of wealth comes from remote antiquity as a result of the love of work and the spirit of austerity of some and the indolence and waste of others. Indeed, capitalist relations of production emerged and then became objectively dominant relations, product of the laws of social development. But the original accumulation of capital was benefited and accelerated with the use of direct violence and without dissimulation of any kind.

It is a typical example of how the original accumulation of capital unfolded in the events of the 16th and 17th centuries in England, where capitalist production reached a greater development than in the other countries of Europe. The gentrified nobility violently evicted from the land the peasants who had freed themselves from feudal servitude. When they ran out of land, the peasants were forced to hire the capitalists. At the same time, the process of appearance of capitalist farmers was operated. “The memory of this expropriation crusade – wrote Marx – has been inscribed in the annals of history with indelible traces of blood and fire. ”The ruined and stripped peasants of their lands became an impoverished mass that filled the roads and cities in search of work and means of existence. Thus, by means of violence, the proletarianization of the broad masses was accelerated.

Violence is also an important way to accelerate the concentration of wealth in the hands of a few. Many capitalist companies were born at the expense of concentrated accumulation in the hands of merchants or usurers. But other methods of accumulating wealth also played an enormous role, such as the colonial exploitation of peoples, trade with the colonies, including the slave trade, trade wars, the system of borrowing and state taxes and tariff policy. protectionist of the state.

Thus, through the dispossession, the ruin imposed by violence, of the mass of small producers and the rigorous oppression of the colonial peoples, the creation of the conditions for the domination of the capitalist relations of production was accelerated.

Sharpening of the class struggle

The disintegration of the feudal regime developed under the objective laws of social development. This process was accelerated by employing large-scale violence as a method of original capital accumulation. The base of feudalism was weakened more and more by the effects of the class struggle that was sharpening more and more manifested by the actions of the mass of peasants against the oppressors.

In the fourteenth century there was the insurrection of the English peasants led by Wat Tyler and the uprising of the French peasants (Jacquerie). In the 15th century, peasant uprisings broke out in Bohemia led by Juan Hus. In the sixteenth century in Germany great actions of the peasants led by Tomás Munzer took place.

Juana de Arcos

Peasant insurrections were the prelude to bourgeois revolutions. Peasants and artisans constituted the fundamental driving forces of the bourgeois revolutions. But the fruits of their struggles and victories were harnessed by the bourgeoisie that seized state power. The first bourgeois revolutions occurred in the Netherlands (16th century) and in England (17th century). The French revolution , started in 1789 , had enormous significance for him for the overthrow of the dominion of the feudal lords and the triumph of the bourgeoisie in Europe. The bourgeois revolutions gave the feudal regime the coup de grace and consolidated the new mode of production: the capitalist mode of production.

Vestiges of feudalism today

Many centuries have passed since the disappearance of feudalism in many of the countries, but its vestiges remain in the developed capitalist world of our days. In Italy, which has a high capitalist development, there are still large estates of the nobility, covering more than 10% of the country’s arable land. There is a widespread system of sharecropping whereby part of the harvest is delivered to the owner of the land as rent for the land.

Remains of feudalism exist in other developed capitalist countries in Europe ; and they are very clear in the economy of certain countries in Latin America , Asia and Africa . In Brazil, for example, 177 million hectares belong to] large estates. The predominant form of land rental is semi-feudal sharecropping.

In Iran where half of the land belongs to large landowners and leasing is widely extended on the basis of the principle of sharecropping, agrarian relations are semi-feudal in nature.

In Turkey, large landowners own more than a third of arable land.

One of the most significant problems of the development of many towns consists in definitively suppressing the feudal vestiges. These can only be eliminated in colonial and underdeveloped countries with the increase in their liberating struggle.