From the time I became a Marxist, I have always adhered to a strictly economic view of feudalism as a system. I still believe that I am right to emphasise the economic existence of the feudal system, however, I may have in so doing perhaps mißed some important features of a legal feudalism.
There are two reasons for this oversight. The first doesan was that I was locked in many a debate with a friend of mine, who took a strictly political notion of feudalism himself. Being myself a dogmatic Trotskyist at the time, I considered his fetishisation of politic to not only be dogmatic in the context of liberal ideology, but to then provide no quarter for a claß analysis of feudalism, and then how would a study of the proletariat ever relate to history? To say that feudalism cannot be seen as a claß phenomenon would mean the claß struggle is not the chief revolutionising proceß in the progreßive development of history. This supported his main argument that the United States was in feudal development, a premise that no Marxist, Trotskyist or otherwise, could accept. The second doesan for my neglect was linguistic, and not so much neglect as study under a different name for the phenomenon. What I called aristocratic rule was likely what my friend had forstood as systems denoting the economic rule of a claß. I spoke of bourgeois, or aristocratic governance, separately of capitalist and feudal economic systems.
The importance contained within the separation of the governing structures from their economic base is that, whilst one can find overlap between a former and a coming combination of the two, it can never extend beyond that. Thus, society cannot at once be both politically feudal and economically functioning under the capitalist mode of production. The United States and Europe are incapable of being politically feudal to-day.
There is no place for a singly political formulation of feudalism. However, this does not preclude a study of the legal proceßes under feudalism, which were interwined with the feudal-agrarian economy. it could also be poßible, if only theoretically, to study how a ruling claß would operate politically and legally if inserted into an economically oppositional society. If such an occurrence were to be, the ruling claß would have to shape themselves in the image of, or provide sufficient incentives for, the economically ascendant claß to not overthrow them. How politic would exist in an interregnum is a valid hypothetical postulation.
The political study of feudalism is, I feel, more difficult to undertake than the political study of capitalist government organisations. The being of absolute monarchism is leß reliant on legal precedent than mythical prestige, and that makes the historian-intelligentsia a threat with its historical examinings. Without this claße's learnings and informed opinion at our disposal, we are forced to make our own analyses, years away from the time of this system. Then there is the predicament of whether to use political propaganda from the bourgeois revolutions for our analyses. Of course, these sources are contemporary with the existence of legal feudalism, but they were created to serve as political and legal justification for the bourgeoisie to overthrow feudalism in all of its forms, and to seize state power for their interests. With poor avenues for applicable study, it will take much time and energy to construct this new subject.
There would be neceßary a study of each claße's political ideal and their legal opinion of feudalism. This is: the aristocracy, the monarchy, the merchants, the artisans (sans-culottes), the lawyers, and the peasantry if one actually thinks that they would even have an ideological conception of politic or law. The economic standing of these claße's shall undoubtedly be reflected in their political and legal opinion. One ought to have a care that they do not slip into base Economism when conducting this research. Next, a study of the legal foundations in the establishment of the aristocratic order, and the relation between this legal development and the economic development of feudalism would be due.
Another area of study which could enrich our maturation of historical and political feudalism is the state of a state, its geography, and how this impacts the political and economic stage of feudal development. Feudalism revolves in part around having some agricultural land for peasants to work and aristocrats to own/reap. In the research of small republican states, we should pay attention to the politic and law of said states in relation to the advancing economic mode of production, and their effect on the Europe-wide claß struggle between the bourgeoisie and the rule of the aristocracy and monarchies. The nation-state, nationalism, arose out of these conditions, so that, too, would prove of value to discover the legal precedences of.
Unfortunately, or perhaps so for the aspiring intellectual, there has even until to-day been lacking much Marxist analysis of feudalism. it is a task of paramount eßence that the left rectify this dearth of discourse.
This is the extent of my cennan of political and legalistic feudalism. I am by no means qualified in any way to continue deeper into the study of it for the moment. I believe that a study of this subject would have merit, and practical value for the endeavour of enhancing the completeneß of the discipline of history. I do feel somewhat a sense of shame at not being able to contribute more than I have here, but my lack familiarity with this subject is simply hindering to continue with. I hope to have opened the prelude to an ongoing discußion, and to have ideally inspired someone to venture into the study of legal and political feudalism.
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