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    Communism, Feudalism, Capitalism

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    The core countries of Central Europe—the Czech Republic, Hungary and, to a lesser extent, Poland—employed industrial-capitalist systems during the inter-war period. But the countries comprising the vast expanses of the Newly Independent States, Russia and the Balkans had no real experience with such a system. To them, its zealous introduction was nothing but another ideological experiment, and not a very rewarding one at that.

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    Communism, Feudalism, Capitalism

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    The core countries of Central Europe—the Czech Republic, Hungary and, to a lesser extent, Poland—employed industrial-capitalist systems during the inter-war period. But the countries comprising the vast expanses of the Newly Independent States, Russia and the Balkans had no real experience with such a system. To them, its zealous introduction was nothing but another ideological experiment, and not a very rewarding one at that.

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    The core countries of Central Europe—the Czech Republic, Hungary and, to a lesser extent, Poland—employed industrial-capitalist systems during the inter-war period. But the countries comprising the vast expanses of the Newly Independent States, Russia and the Balkans had no real experience with such a system. To them, its zealous introduction was nothing but another ideological experiment, and not a very rewarding one at that.

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    © All Rights Reserved
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    237 views4 pages

    Communism, Feudalism, Capitalism

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    zadanliran
    The core countries of Central Europe—the Czech Republic, Hungary and, to a lesser extent, Poland—employed industrial-capitalist systems during the inter-war period. But the countries comprising the vast expanses of the Newly Independent States, Russia and the Balkans had no real experience with such a system. To them, its zealous introduction was nothing but another ideological experiment, and not a very rewarding one at that.

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    Vol 2, No 29

    4 September
    2000

    CER INFO
    front page Forward to
    overview
    sponsor us the Past
    advertising Capitalism in post-Communist Europe
    classifieds Sam Vaknin
    submissions
    jobs at CER
    internships The core countries of Central Europe—the Czech Republic,
    CER Direct Hungary and, to a lesser extent, Poland—employed industrial-
    e-mail us capitalist systems during the inter-war period. But the countries
    comprising the vast expanses of the Newly Independent States,
    Russia and the Balkans had no real experience with such a
    ARCHIVES system. To them, its zealous introduction was nothing but another
    year 2000 ideological experiment, and not a very rewarding one at that.
    year 1999
    by subject It is often said that there was no precedent for the extant transition
    by author from totalitarian Communism to liberal capitalism. This might well
    kinoeye be true, yet nascent capitalism is not without historical examples.
    books Thus, a discussion of the birth of capitalism in feudal Europe may
    news lead to some surprising and potentially useful insights.
    search
    Insecurity and mayhem
    MORE
    ebookstore The Barbarian conquest of the teetering Roman Empire (410 to
    pbookshop 476 AD) heralded five centuries of existential insecurity and
    music shop mayhem. Feudalism was the countryside's reaction to this
    video store damnation. It was a Hobson's choice and an explicit trade-off.
    conferences Local lords defended their vassals against nomad intrusions in
    diacritics return for perpetual service, which bordered on slavery. A small
    FreeMail percentage of the population subsisted on trade behind the
    papers massive walls of medieval cities.
    links
    In most parts of Central, Eastern and Southeastern Europe,
    feudalism endured well into the twentieth century. It was
    entrenched in the legal systems of both the Ottoman Empire and
    czarist Russia. Elements of feudalism survived in the mellifluous
    and prolix prose of the Habsburg codices and patents. Most of the
    denizens of these moribund swathes of Europe were farmers—
    only the profligate and parasitic members of a distinct minority
    inhabited the cities. The present agricultural sectors in countries as
    diverse as Poland and Macedonia attest to this continuity of feudal
    practices.

    Toward an economic man


    Both manual labour and trade were derided in the Ancient World.
    This derision was partially eroded during the Dark Ages, and it
    survived only in relation to trade and other "non-productive"
    financial activities, but not past the thirteenth century. Max Weber,
    in his opus The City (New York, MacMillan, 1958), described this
    mental shift of paradigms thus: "The medieval citizen was on the
    way towards becoming an economic man [...] the ancient citizen
    was a political man."

    What Communism did to the lands it permeated was to freeze this


    early feudal frame of mind of disdain towards "non-productive,"
    "city-based" vocations. Agricultural and industrial occupations were
    romantically extolled. The cities were berated as hubs of moral
    turpitude, decadence and greed. Political awareness was made a
    precondition for personal survival and advancement. The clock
    was turned back.

    Weber's Homo economicus yielded to Communism's supercilious


    version of the ancient Greeks' zoon politikon. John of Salisbury
    might as well have been writing for a Communist agitprop
    department when he penned this in Policraticus, in 1159 AD: "...if
    [rich people, people with private property] have been stuffed
    through excessive greed and if they hold in their contents too
    obstinately, [they] give rise to countless and incurable illnesses
    and, through their vices, can bring about the ruin of the body as a
    whole." The body in the text being the body politic.

    This inimical attitude should have come as no surprise to students


    of either urban realities or of Communism, their parricidal off-
    spring. The city liberated its citizens from the bondage of the feudal
    labour contract, and it acted as the supreme guarantor of the rights
    of private property. It relied on its trading and economic prowess to
    obtain and secure political autonomy. John of Paris, arguably one
    of the first capitalist cities (at least according to Braudel), wrote that
    the individual "had a right to property which was not with impunity
    to be interfered with by superior authority—because it was
    acquired by [his] own efforts" (in Georges Duby, The Age of the
    Cathedrals: Art and Society, 980-1420, Chicago, Chicago
    University Press, 1981).

    Despite the fact that Communism was an urban phenomenon


    (albeit with rustic roots)—it abnegated these "bourgeois" values.
    Communal ownership replaced individual property, and servitude
    to the state replaced individualism. Under Communism, feudalism
    was restored. Even geographical mobility was severely curtailed,
    as was the case in feudal times. The doctrine of the Communist
    party monopolized all modes of thought and perception—very
    much the same as the Church-condoned religious strain did 700
    years earlier. Communism was characterized by tensions between
    party, state and the economy; exactly as the medieval polity was
    plagued by conflicts between Church, king and merchant-bankers.
    Paradoxically, Communism was a faithful re-enactment of pre-
    capitalist history.

    A distinction

    Communism should be well-distinguished from Marxism, however.


    Still, it is ironic that even Marx's "scientific materialism" has an
    equivalent in the twilight times of feudalism. The eleventh and
    twelfth centuries witnessed a concerted effort by medieval scholars
    to apply "scientific" principles and human knowledge to the solution
    of social problems. The historian R W Southern called this period
    "scientific humanism" (in Flesh and Stone by Richard Sennett,
    London, Faber and Faber, 1994).

    John of Salisbury's Policraticus was an effort to map political


    functions and interactions into their human physiological
    equivalents. The king, for instance, was the brain of the body
    politic. Merchants and bankers were the insatiable stomach. But
    this apparently simplistic analogy masked a schismatic debate.

    Should a person's position in life be determined by his political


    affiliation and "natural" place in the order of things, or should it be
    the result of his capacities and their exercise (merit)? Do the ever-
    changing contents of the

    economic "stomach," its kaleidoscopic


    innovativeness, its "permanent revolution" and its
    propensity to assume "irrational" risks adversely
    affect this natural order, which, after all, is based
    on tradition and routine? In short: is there an
    inherent incompatibility between the order of the
    world (read: the Church doctrine) and meritocratic (democratic)
    capitalism? Could Thomas Aquinas' Summa Theologica (the world
    as the body of Christ) be reconciled with Stadt Luft Macht Frei
    ("city air liberates" - the sign above the gates of the cities of the
    Hanseatic League)?

    Communism and Church

    This is the eternal tension between the individual and the group.
    Individualism and Communism are not new to history, and they
    have always been in conflict. To compare the Communist Party to
    the Church is a well-worn cliché. Both religions—the secular and
    the divine— were threatened by the spirit of freedom and initiative
    embodied in urban culture, commerce and finance. The order they
    sought to establish, propagate and perpetuate conflicted with basic
    human drives and desires.

    Communism was a throwback to the days before the ascent of the


    urbane, capitalistic, sophisticated, incredulous, individualistic and
    risqué West. It sought to substitute one kind of "scientific"
    determinism (the body politic of Christ) by another (the body politic
    of "the Proletariat"). It failed, and when it unravelled, it revealed a
    landscape of toxic devastation, frozen in time, an ossified natural
    order bereft of content and adherents. The post-Communist
    countries have to pick up where it left them, centuries ago. It is not
    so much a problem of lacking infrastructure as it is an issue of
    pathologized minds, not so much a matter of the body as a
    dysfunction of the psyche.

    Historian Walter Ullman says that John of Salisbury thought (850


    years ago) that "the individual's standing within society... [should
    be] based upon his office or his official function ... [the greater this
    function was] the more scope it had, the weightier it was, the more
    rights the individual had." (Walter Ullman, The Individual and
    Society in the Middle Ages, Baltimore, Johns Hopkins University
    Press, 1966). I cannot conceive of a member of the Communist
    nomenklatura who would not have adopted this formula
    wholeheartedly. If modern capitalism can be described as "back to
    the future," Communism was surely a "forward to the past."

    Sam Vaknin, 4 September 2000

    The author is General Manager of Capital Markets Institute Ltd, a


    consultancy firm with operations in Macedonia and Russia. He is
    an Economic Advisor to the Government of Macedonia.

    DISCLAIMER: The views presented in this article represent only


    the personal opinions and judgements of the author.

    Moving on:

     Archive of Sam Vaknin's articles in CER


     Buy Sam Vaknin's After the Rain as an electronic book
     Browse through the CER eBookstore for electronic
    books
     Buy English-language books on History through CER
     Return to CER front page

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