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bimboficationblues · 5 months ago

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so the thing about "read theory" as a mantra: in the social media sphere there is a consistent downplaying of what that kind of commitment actually entails, plus a consistent obfuscation of what exactly the commitment is necessary for.

let's say that you're interested in learning more about specifically "Marxist theory." This, I think, also raises a bunch of questions about what we mean by theory - works of political philosophy, texts on revolutionary and military strategy, political speeches, journalistic or sociological analysis, historiography - these varying things with very different discursive norms and standards of evidence or logic often get rolled into one singular object called "theory." but let's set that aside for now.

you want to learn this for maybe an assortment of reasons, here's a few (non-exhaustive) good ones:

Marxism has been a substantial historical force that has probably had a notable impact on the world around you in some way.

Learning about Marx/ism might offer some level of insight into your current social world that other things are unable to offer.

Many texts - Capital, The Wretched of the Earth, The Second Sex, The State and Revolution - are also world-historical forms of political literature, which is interesting.

Follow-up to 2 - maybe having some level of familiarity with these things will give you the ability to better articulate yourself and participate in social and political movements around you.

generally speaking the Social Media Marxist approach is to tell you to go read off a list of texts of whatever writers the author personally agrees with or whatever works she happens to have read. so you decide to start with the big guy Marx, who is at the top of the list. totally reasonable decision.

however, there are a few contextual questions that might reasonably come up when doing so.

first, it will be clear that Marx did not pop out of an intellectual vacuum; Lenin has a rather popular identification of the "three sources of Marxism" - post-Hegelian German philosophy, French socialism, and English political economy. from my perspective, these are more like three of his main objects of ire (and so in some sense are both influences and also breakages - but not strictly speaking a synthesis), but I digress. so, frequently, in order to grasp what Marx is talking about or responding to, you are going to need some level of familiarity with a lot of additional people: Smith, Ricardo, Malthus, Hegel, Bauer, Feuerbach, Hobbes, Spinoza, Rousseau, Mill, Sismondi. suddenly you are not just learning about the works of one guy, but his attitude towards all the people he relies on for support or aims his criticisms at. and each of those different intellectual relationships is going to be different. sometimes at different times!

second, and relatedly, Marx is not always the most charitable to the people he's criticizing, who were often rival socialists (so there were pretty notable political and personal stakes at work in proving them wrong or diminishing their influence over the movement). the introductory materials to the new translation of Capital also observe that Marx's approach to scholarship is, shall we say, haphazard; often he makes quotes or citations that are not actually representative of what he's citing. finally, many of the people he's criticizing have sort of been rendered obsolete historically *in no small part* due to the success of Marxism as a political orientation in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. so to determine whether Marx is being fair to the people he is basing his critique on, we will have to do some level of intellectual work to check. so now we're not just evaluating Marx's relationship to different thinkers but also the substantial content of each of those thinkers themselves.

third, Marx did not pop out of a social vacuum. all of these different writers didn't just crop up from nowhere but wrote within particular sociohistorical contexts, some of which were rather divorced from the European revolutionary wave, first worldwide financial crisis, and the shifting character of the United States in the wake of the Civil War and the formal abolition of slavery - some of the historical events that Marx was more explicitly engaging with. and the radical liberals, republicans, and socialists Marx criticized all also had their own intellectual and social histories. so now we're getting a little far afield from the initial notion, which was just to read some guy, and getting into the realm of social history, and trying to understand the relationship between world history and the ideas produced within it.

fourth, you are a subject in the world, which is to say YOU did not pop out of a social or intellectual vacuum. you likely bring predispositions, assumptions, biases, and cognitive distortions to what you read; we all do. working through those and trying to note where they're happening - where they might be fine and where they might be problematic - will require a certain willingness to reflect, to write, to take notes, to analyze and self-scrutinize, and to be critical of both yourself as a reader and of the text you are reading. (a nested problem is that we have a truly staggering amount of material from Marx and Engels, and you might have to make certain determinations as to which material is important or worthwhile or more useful, and identify the standards by which you think that - all of which requires a certain reflection on your status as a political thinker).

okay, so consider all that. we started with "I wanna read this one guy," we end with "to really grasp the work of this one guy it's also important to know both preceding and contemporaneous world history, his intellectual influences, and the gaps or silences or errors in his work.” now consider that, if you really want to be able to speak on them with some level of confidence and intellectual honesty, you have to apply approximately the same level of rigor to every other writer on the Social Media Marxist approved list - Lenin, Fanon, Che, Kollontai, Cabral, Mao, Luxemburg, whoever. not to mention their critics, both direct and indirect!

Marx developed his work through an incredibly sustained engagement with enormous volumes of different material; we have entire notebooks of him poring over Max Stirner, or Spinoza, or the political economists, or the empirical observations of English factory inspectors. I'm not saying that you have to do that, or even that one strictly *has* to go down any or all of the first three rabbitholes I identified. Marx was in the somewhat unique position of sustaining himself through the support of Engels and his journalistic work, as a product of being in perpetual exile. that's not the kind of position that most of us are typically in.

the point is not "commit yourself to being a perfect monastic scholar in order to reach perfect truth" - such a thing is probably a fantasy, even if we wish otherwise. the point is that if you think "theory" is worth taking seriously, well, you have to actually take it seriously. if you don’t think it has stakes or utility, that’s fine; different people find different things useful. I think “theory” is not a set of dead letters by canonical authors but produced through social life. but if “reading theory” is a way to clarify and assert yourself as a political subject and agent, to claim some intellectual autonomy and acquire some understanding that you can put into practice in your life, then that’s demanding. it’s not impossible, but it does take real effort and a commitment to study and a certain level of resistance to being dogmatic. otherwise you are just letting yourself be rhetorically persuaded by whatever is in front of you or whatever affirms your biases.

as Marx says in the preface to Capital, Volume I, "I am of course assuming that my readers will want to learn something new, and so are ready to think for themselves."

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communist-manifesto-daily · 1 year ago

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The Communist Manifesto - Part 15

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B. Petty-Bourgeois Socialism

The feudal aristocracy was not the only class that was ruined by the bourgeoisie, not the only class whose conditions of existence pined and perished in the atmosphere of modern bourgeois society. The medieval burgesses and the small peasant proprietors were the precursors of the modern bourgeoisie. In those countries which are but little developed, industrially and commercially, these two classes still vegetate side by side with the rising bourgeoisie.

In countries where modern civilisation has become fully developed, a new class of petty bourgeois has been formed, fluctuating between proletariat and bourgeoisie, and ever renewing itself as a supplementary part of bourgeois society. The individual members of this class, however, are being constantly hurled down into the proletariat by the action of competition, and, as modern industry develops, they even see the moment approaching when they will completely disappear as an independent section of modern society, to be replaced in manufactures, agriculture and commerce, by overlookers, bailiffs and shopmen.

In countries like France, where the peasants constitute far more than half of the population, it was natural that writers who sided with the proletariat against the bourgeoisie should use, in their criticism of the bourgeois régime, the standard of the peasant and petty bourgeois, and from the standpoint of these intermediate classes, should take up the cudgels for the working class. Thus arose petty-bourgeois Socialism. Sismondi was the head of this school, not only in France but also in England.

This school of Socialism dissected with great acuteness the contradictions in the conditions of modern production. It laid bare the hypocritical apologies of economists. It proved, incontrovertibly, the disastrous effects of machinery and division of labour; the concentration of capital and land in a few hands; overproduction and crises; it pointed out the inevitable ruin of the petty bourgeois and peasant, the misery of the proletariat, the anarchy in production, the crying inequalities in the distribution of wealth, the industrial war of extermination between nations, the dissolution of old moral bonds, of the old family relations, of the old nationalities.

In its positive aims, however, this form of Socialism aspires either to restoring the old means of production and of exchange, and with them the old property relations, and the old society, or to cramping the modern means of production and of exchange within the framework of the old property relations that have been, and were bound to be, exploded by those means. In either case, it is both reactionary and Utopian.

Its last words are: corporate guilds for manufacture; patriarchal relations in agriculture.

Ultimately, when stubborn historical facts had dispersed all intoxicating effects of self-deception, this form of Socialism ended in a miserable fit of the blues.

C. German or “True” Socialism

The Socialist and Communist literature of France, a literature that originated under the pressure of a bourgeoisie in power, and that was the expressions of the struggle against this power, was introduced into Germany at a time when the bourgeoisie, in that country, had just begun its contest with feudal absolutism.

German philosophers, would-be philosophers, and beaux esprits (men of letters), eagerly seized on this literature, only forgetting, that when these writings immigrated from France into Germany, French social conditions had not immigrated along with them. In contact with German social conditions, this French literature lost all its immediate practical significance and assumed a purely literary aspect. Thus, to the German philosophers of the Eighteenth Century, the demands of the first French Revolution were nothing more than the demands of “Practical Reason” in general, and the utterance of the will of the revolutionary French bourgeoisie signified, in their eyes, the laws of pure Will, of Will as it was bound to be, of true human Will generally.

The work of the German literati consisted solely in bringing the new French ideas into harmony with their ancient philosophical conscience, or rather, in annexing the French ideas without deserting their own philosophic point of view.

This annexation took place in the same way in which a foreign language is appropriated, namely, by translation.

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#the communist manifesto #communist manifesto daily

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dailyanarchistposts · 5 months ago

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Footnotes

[1] I here gladly acknowledge my obligations to Victor Drury, {15} whose classification I adopt and follow.

{1} Actually Say may have gone farther.

{2} From Royal Commentaries of the Incas (1609) by El Inca Garcilaso de la Vega (c. 1539-1616; not to be confused with the earlier Spanish writer of the same name); Lum quotes from the 1871 translation by Clements Markham.

{3} Principles of Sociology I.ii.10

{4} Probably American historian John Lothrop Motley (1814-1877).

{5} Swiss historian and economist Jean Charles Léonard de Sismondi (1773-1842).

{6} Jack Cade, leader of 1450 peasant rebellion; John Wycliffe, 14th-century Catholic dissident; Jacob van Artevelde and Philip van Artevelde, father and son, 14th-century Flemish nationalist leaders; Étienne Marcel, bourgeois leader involved in the 1358 French peasant rebellion known as the Jacquerie; rising of the Swiss cantons: a 14th-century confederacy that threw off Habsburg rule; Cola di Rienzi, 14th-century Italian revolutionary leader; Hanseatic League, Renaissance mercantile alliance of northern Europe.

{7} A reference to Auguste Comte’s (1798-1857) division of history into theological, metaphysical, and positive/industrial phases, though in his description of the details Lum seems closer to Spencer than to Comte.

{8} Barebone’s Parliament, form taken by the British Parliament in 1653, between the dissolution of the Rump Parliament and the rise of Cromwell’s Protectorate, taking its name from the involvement of religious dissenting leader Praise-God Barebones or Barebone or Barbon (c. 1598-1679); Emmanuel Joseph Sieyès (1748-1836), French revolutionary leader who served in the national legislature known as the Convention.

{9} “Progress and Order” (or equally “Order and Progress”) was a popular slogan among followers of Comte; see the Brazilian flag.

{10} Pen name of American humorist Benjamin Drew (1812-1903).

{11} Bonds payable only upon the death of a third party, though here used metaphorically to mean payable only in the afterlife.

{12} “The voice of the people [is] the voice of God.”

{13} Scottish writer Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881), whose description of economics as “the dismal science” has often been thought (as probably here by Lum) to refer to its conservative aspects (e.g., Malthus’s alleged proof that improvements in the lot of the working class were unattainable), though in fact Carlyle meant to be condemning its liberal aspects (specifically its opposition to slavery).

{14} plural sic.

{15} Victor Drury (1825-1918), French-born American anarchist active in the Knights of Labor.

{16} William Godwin (1756-1836), English anarchist philosopher who advocated voluntary equality of property.

{17} American economist Henry George (1839-1897), who though generally a free-market advocate regarded society as the legitimate owner of all land, and consequently favoured replacing all taxation with a single tax on land; American state-socialist writer Edward Bellamy (1850-1898); Lum’s line “looking backward to Sparta and Peru” is a sarcastic reference to Bellamy’s utopian 1888 novel Looking Backward.

{18} A reference to an example in Henry George’s 1881 book The Land Question.

{19} German economist Wilhelm Roscher (1817-1894), an important influence (perhaps surprisingly) on both the German Historical School and the French Liberal School. The passage quoted is from Joseph Lalor’s 1878 translation of Roscher’s 1854 Principles of Political Economy.

{20} A frequent misquotation from Shakespeare’s Tempest IV.1.151-57, eliding “the baseless fabric of this vision” with “we are such stuff as dreams are made on” a few lines later.

{21} English economist David Ricardo (1772-1823) had argued in his 1817 Principles of Political Economy and Taxation that there was a natural tendency for wages to approach the cost of production of labour, which he held to be the bare cost of keeping the labourer alive and able and willing to work; however, he also held a) that wages may be kept above this natural rate indefinitely in an improving economy, and that b) willingness to work depends in any case on cultural factors (including prevailing standards of comfort and decency). Dropping these qualifications, Ferdinand Lassalle (1825-1864) and other socialist thinkers developed Ricardo’s theory into an Iron Law of Wages according to which wages are doomed to stand forever at bare physical subsistence so long as the wage system survives.

{22} Classical liberal English statesman John Bright (1811-1889), free-trade and anti-imperialist activist; the quotation is from Bright’s Glasgow University installation speech in March 1883.

{23} Whatever source Lum is quoting (presumably by Henry George) is evidently to be found reprinted in the 1901 Sunset Club.

{24} In Greek mythology Cerberus was the three-headed dog who guarded the entrance to the underworld.

{25} A standard Spencerian concern, taking the line of progress to run toward greater differentiation. By “to greater differentiation” Lum presumably means “in preference to greater differentiation.”

{26} The quotation is from Spencer’s 1876 Principles of Sociology V.18 §570.

{27} This phrase often means “piecework,” but in the present context seems to mean labour done on one’s own without cooperation.

{28} The English phrase “to go without saying” derives from the French aller sans dire, although aller de soi, “to go of itself,” may be the more common French idiom.

{29} Lum had had an acrimonious falling-out with the Greenback Party ten years earlier.

{30} Change of antecedent sic.

{31} Presumably there should also be a hyphen between “from” and the first “day.”

{32} An agrarian association friendly to the urban labour movement, formed in Michigan in 1889; a similar movement of the same name was formed in Ontario the following year.

{33} The passage that follows is drawn from the article “‘Greatest Happiness’ Principle” (Westminster Review XI, no 21 (July 1829), which is apparently but not explicitly by Bentham; see Macaulay’s discussion.

{34} The quotation which follows is from Herbert’s “A Politican in Sight of Haven.”

{35} Principles of Sociology V.xviii.563.

{36} Probably a reference to the title of Henry George’s 1879 Progress and Poverty.

{37} Either American economist Amasa Walker (1799-1875) or his son Francis Amasa Walker (1840-1897).

{38} American anarchist and currency reformer William Batchelder Greene (1819-1878).

{39} Hebrews 11:1.

{40} This makes no sense, and is an error for “will not go bankrupt at the same tine” in the original.

{41} Should be “since it is subscribed.”

{42} From Proudhon’s Organisation of Credit and Circulation (1848).

{43} Science of Wealth (1866), ch. 5.

{44} Another quotation from Roscher.

{45} “The great thinker is the secretary of his age”: from English philosopher George Henry Lewes (1817-1878), Problems of Life and Mind (1874).

{46} The Land Question (1881), ch. 16.

{47} Bavarian-American anarcho-communist Johann Most (1846-1906).

{48} French novelist Edmond François Valentin About (1828-1885).

{49} First quotation from Rights of Man (1792), II.1; next three from First Principles of Government (1795).

{50} Reference to a quotation from Malthus.

{51} Science of Wealth, XI.6.

{52} American abolitionist, businessman, liberal economist, and antiwar activist Edward Atkinson (1827-1905).

{53} German-American anarchist August Spies (1855-1877), one of the Haymarket martyrs.

{54} Isaiah 58:1.

{55} American abolitionist poet John Greenleaf Whittier (1807-1892), in “Stanzas for the Times.”

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steven8534 · 3 months ago

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Luciana Sismondi

#celebrities in pantyhose #celebrities in nylon #celebrities in tights #blacknylons #blackpantyhose #celebrity legs #nylon pantyhose

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fashionbooksmilano · 1 year ago

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Sguardi di intesa

a cura di Angela Madesani e con un testo critico di Daria Jorioz

Fotografie di Veronique Mazzoli, Gabriella Mercadini, Lee Miller, Tina Modotti, Brigitte Niedermair, Ilaria Orsini, Elsa Robiola, Lori Sammartino, Viviane Sassen, Livia Sismondi, Alice Springs, Ellen von Unwerth

Nomos Edizioni, Busto Arsizio 2024, 128 pagine, 24x28cm, ISBN 9791259581709

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email if you want to buy booksinprogressmilano@yahoo.it

Catalogo della mostra fotografica presso il centro Saint Benin di Aosta. Una ricognizione sulle donne fotografe di moda, dall’inizio del XX secolo a oggi, proposta in un progetto espositivo inedito. Il ruolo della donna sta mutando radicalmente all’interno della società e diventa quanto mai interessante osservare come, da soggetto privilegiato della fotografia di moda, le donne siano diventate autrici tra le più intelligenti e raffinate.

19/04/24

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wagahai-da · 1 year ago

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Its last words are: corporate guilds for manufacture; patriarchal relations in agriculture.

Ultimately, when stubborn historical facts had dispersed all intoxicating effects of self-deception, this form of Socialism ended in a miserable fit of the blues.

Karl Marx – The Communist Manifesto

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lulacarson · 7 months ago

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At fifteen, this is [Margaret Fuller's] daily routine:

"I rise a little before five, walk an hour, and then practise on the piano till seven, when we breakfast. Next, I read french - Sismondi's Literature of the South of Europe - till eight; then two or three lectures in Brown's Philosophy. About half past nine I go to Mr Perkin's school, and study Greek till twelve, when, the school being dismissed, I recite, go home, and practise again till dinner, at two. Then, when I can, I read two hours in Italian."

Maria Popova, Figuring

#Margaret Fuller #Figuring #Maria Popova #Discipline #Routines

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howieabel · 2 years ago

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“If his capacity for labour remains unsold, the labourer derives no benefit from it, but rather he will feel it to be a cruel nature-imposed necessity that this capacity has cost for its production a definite amount of the means of subsistence and that it will continue to do so for its reproduction. He will then agree with Sismondi: “that capacity for labour ... is nothing unless it is sold.” ― Karl Marx, Das Kapital - Capital

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daltony · 2 years ago

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Posted by Lu Sismondi on IG stories.

#Tony Dalton #Diego #Dime Lo Que Quieres #premiere #IG stories #2023

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quadtheory43 · 9 months ago

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Four sismondi

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edwad · 3 months ago

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what parts of the manifesto did marx later go back on?

explicitly? not all that much. lenin famously makes a fuss about how the "only correction" marx made to the manifesto was on the basis of the experience of the paris commune re: the seizure of state power. this point gets repeated ad nauseam, but it's not really true. marx also peddles a malthusian understanding of wage dynamics which he later explicitly distances himself from (especially in the lassallean form of the "iron law"), without any specific reference to the manifesto or how this was in some sense a self-criticism of his earlier views.

he also begins the text with an appeal to class struggle out of a dialogue with bourgeois historians, so that there's nothing all that meaningfully communist in his approach (despite how the text is historically read and the way he is taught as somehow being the principle theorist of class struggle). he admits this at several points in the 50s in order to clarify what his actual innovation is (that this history develops toward the emergence of the dictatorship of the proletariat), effectively downplaying much of the class struggle element in the manifesto. he doesn't "go back on" this so much as i think he critically interrogates it in a way which no longer takes any of it for granted. i think it's significant that where the manifesto (which marx wrote in his 20s!) begins with an immediate reference to class struggle as such, taken wholesale from bourgeois histories, his later work on capital would actually *end* with a theory of class as the last-to-develop category in the analysis of book 3. so although he is still talking about "class struggle", the actual meaning of what this entails has essentially transformed. the polar contest for power in the manifesto is now an open-ended terrain of struggles across multiple classes and semi-classes without clear directionality (the inevitability of socialism, explicitly declared in the manifesto, is now implicitly called into question even as it defines the political inertia of his life's work)

there are other instances like this where the text of capital runs up against the manifesto as a kind of limit. another important one is how in the manifesto marx talks about how "man is at last compelled to face with sober senses his real conditions of life, and his relations with his kind." a big part of marx's theoretical approach at this point in his life is how capitalism basically simplifies and demystifies society by slowly eliminating the old vestiges of feudal society. the result is a kind of crude empiricism where workers can simply look around at the world around them and see how clear the circumstances of their exploitation are, without any of the hazy distractions of religion etc.

what's significant about this approach in 1848 (and here i think he has to be read as distancing himself from his earlier thinking in the 1844 paris manuscripts) is that it is directly opposed to the problem as stated in capital, where the fetish-character of the commodity-form means that we are dominated via impersonal mechanisms that operate behind our backs. if anything, part of the project of capital (and, related to the last point, the attempt to theoretically develop the categories of class) comes out of an attempt to get at the revolutionary subjectivity of the proletariat and, crucially, the form-determined limits of that agency. the manifesto has none of this and basically assumes a straightforward victory as the result of the mere passage of time.

these are just a couple instances of this sort of thing, but a close reading of the manifesto will reveal many more. in the past i've pointed out how sismondi is the only economist mentioned by name in the manifesto, and while i don't think this is insignificant (hence why i point it out), i think it has to be paired with the reminder that he wouldn't really begin his deep dive into the historical literature of political economy for another couple years so he's working with partial information based on his (frankly pretty bad) half-readings of a handful of economists when he was in paris.

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cult-of-the-girl-offensive · 9 months ago

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"The feudal aristocracy was not the only class that was ruined by the bourgeoisie, not the only class whose conditions of existence pined and perished in the atmosphere of modern bourgeois society. The medieval burgesses and the small peasant proprietors were the precursors of the modern bourgeoisie. In those countries which are but little developed, industrially and commercially, these two classes still vegetate side by side with the rising bourgeoisie.

Its last words are: corporate guilds for manufacture; patriarchal relations in agriculture.

Ultimately, when stubborn historical facts had dispersed all intoxicating effects of self-deception, this form of Socialism ended in a miserable fit of the blues."

Karl Marx, The Communist Manifesto (1848)

small business focused "anti-capitalism" does feel a bit like the "the only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun" approach to gun control.

"the only way to stop a big capitalist with a business is by supporting a small capitalist with a business" instead of ever questioning the need to have capitalists and businesses in the first place

#marxism #karl marx #socialism #communism #anti capitalism

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livincrans · 1 year ago

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Crans-Montana. Mars 2024, témoignage

#livincrans #luxuryrealestate #realestate #ilovemyjob #testimonials #cransmontana

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dailyanarchistposts · 11 months ago

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Footnotes, 201 - 250

[201] W. Gramich, Verfassungs- und Verwaltungsgeschichte der Stadt Würzburg im 13. bis zum 15. Jahrhundert, Würzburg, 1882, p. 34.

[202] When a boat brought a cargo of coal to Würzburg, coal could only be sold in retail during the first eight days, each family being entitled to no more than fifty basketfuls. The remaining cargo could be sold wholesale, but the retailer was allowed to raise a zittlicher profit only, the unzittlicher, or dishonest profit, being strictly forbidden (Gramich, l.c.). Same in London (Liber albus, quoted by Ochenkowski, p. 161), and, in fact, everywhere.

[203] See Fagniez, Études sur l’industrie et la classe industrielle à Paris au XIIIme et XIVme siècle, Paris, 1877, pp. 155 seq. It hardly need be added that the tax on bread, and on beer as well, was settled after careful experiments as to the quantity of bread and beer which could be obtained from a given amount of corn. The Amiens archives contain the minutes of such experiences (A. de Calonne, l.c. pp. 77, 93). Also those of London (Ochenkowski, England’s wirthschaftliche Entwickelung, etc., Jena, 1879, p. 165).

[204] Ch. Gross, The Guild Merchant, Oxford, 1890, i. 135. His documents prove that this practice existed in Liverpool (ii. 148–150), Waterford in Ireland, Neath in Wales, and Linlithgow and Thurso in Scotland. Mr. Gross’s texts also show that the purchases were made for distribution, not only among the merchant burgesses, but “upon all citsains and commynalte” (p. 136, note), or, as the Thurso ordinance of the seventeenth century runs, to “make offer to the merchants, craftsmen, and inhabitants of the said burgh, that they may have their proportion of the same, according to their necessitys and ability.”

[205] The Early History of the Guild of Merchant Taylors, by Charles M. Clode, London, 1888, i. 361, appendix 10; also the following appendix which shows that the same purchases were made in 1546.

[206] Cibrario, Les conditions économiques de l’Italie au temps de Dante, Paris, 1865, p. 44.

[207] A. de Calonne, La vie municipale au XVme siècle dans le Nord de la France, Paris, 1880, pp. 12–16. In 1485 the city permitted the export to Antwerp of a certain quantity of corn, “the inhabitants of Antwerp being always ready to be agreeable to the merchants and burgesses of Amiens” (ibid., pp. 75–77 and texts).

[208] A. Babeau, La ville sous l’ancien régime, Paris, 1880.

[209] Ennen, Geschichte der Stadt Köln, i. 491, 492, also texts.

[210] The literature of the subject is immense; but there is no work yet which treats of the mediæval city as of a whole. For the French Communes, Augustin Thierry’s Lettres and Considérations sur l’histoire de France still remain classical, and Luchaire’s Communes françaises is an excellent addition on the same lines. For the cities of Italy, the great work of Sismondi (Histoire des républiques italiennes du moyen âge, Paris, 1826, 16 vols.), Leo and Botta’s History of Italy, Ferrari’s Révolutions d’Italie, and Hegel’s Geschichte der Städteverfassung in Italien, are the chief sources of general information. For Germany we have Maurer’s Städteverfassung, Barthold’s Geschichte der deutschen Städte, and, of recent works, Hegel’s Städte und Gilden der germanischen Völker (2 vols. Leipzig, 1891), and Dr. Otto Kallsen’s Die deutschen Städte im Mittelalter (2 vols. Halle, 1891), as also Janssen’s Geschichte des deutschen Volkes (5 vols. 1886), which, let us hope, will soon be translated into English (French translation in 1892). For Belgium, A. Wauters, Les Libertés communales (Bruxelles, 1869–78, 3 vols.). For Russia, Byelaeff’s, Kostomaroff’s and Sergievich’s works. And finally, for England, we posses one of the best works on cities of a wider region in Mrs. J.R. Green’s Town Life in the Fifteenth Century (2 vols. London, 1894). We have, moreover, a wealth of well-known local histories, and several excellent works of general or economical history which I have so often mentioned in this and the preceding chapter. The richness of literature consists, however, chiefly in separate, sometimes admirable, researches into the history of separate cities, especially Italian and German; the guilds; the land question; the economical principles of the time; the economical importance of guilds and crafts; the leagues between, cities (the Hansa); and communal art. An incredible wealth of information is contained in works of this second category, of which only some of the more important are named in these pages.

[211] Kulischer, in an excellent essay on primitive trade (Zeitschrift für Völkerpsychologie, Bd. x. 380), also points out that, according to Herodotus, the Argippaeans were considered inviolable, because the trade between the Scythians and the northern tribes took place on their territory. A fugitive was sacred on their territory, and they were often asked to act as arbiters for their neighbors. See Appendix XI.

[212] Some discussion has lately taken place upon the Weichbild and the Weichbild-law, which still remain obscure (see Zöpfl, Alterthümer des deutschen Reichs und Rechts, iii. 29; Kallsen, i. 316). The above explanation seems to be the more probable, but, of course, it must be tested by further research. It is also evident that, to use a Scotch expression, the “mercet cross” could be considered as an emblem of Church jurisdiction, but we find it both in bishop cities and in those in which the folkmote was sovereign.

[213] For all concerning the merchant guild see Mr. Gross’s exhaustive work, The Guild Merchant (Oxford, 1890, 2 vols.); also Mrs. Green’s remarks in Town Life in the Fifteenth Century, vol. ii. chaps. v. viii. x; and A. Doren’s review of the subject in Schmoller’s Forschungen, vol. xii. If the considerations indicated in the previous chapter (according to which trade was communal at its beginnings) prove to be correct, it will be permissible to suggest as a probable hypothesis that the guild merchant was a body entrusted with commerce in the interest of the whole city, and only gradually became a guild of merchants trading for themselves; while the merchant adventurers of this country, the Novgorod povolniki (free colonizers and merchants) and the mercati personati, would be those to whom it was left to open new markets and new branches of commerce for themselves. Altogether, it must be remarked that the origin of the medieval city can be ascribed to no separate agency. It was a result of many agencies in different degrees.

[214] Janssen’s Geschichte des deutschen Volkes, i. 315; Gramich’s Würzburg; and, in fact, any collection of ordinances.

[215] Falke, Geschichtliche Statistik, i. 373–393, and ii. 66; quoted in Janssen’s Geschichte, i. 339; J.D. Blavignac, in Comptes et dépenses de la construction du clocher de Saint-Nicolas à Friborg en Suisse, comes to a similar conclusion. For Amiens, De Calonne’s Vie Municipale, p. 99 and Appendix. For a thorough appreciation and graphical representation of the mediæval wages in England and their value in bread and meat, see G. Steffen’s excellent article and curves in The Nineteenth Century for 1891, and Studier öfver lönsystemets historia i England, Stockholm, 1895.

[216] To quote but one example out of many which may be found in Schönberg’s and Falke’s works, the sixteen shoemaker workers (Schusterknechte) of the town Xanten, on the Rhine, gave, for erecting a screen and an altar in the church, 75 guldens of subscriptions, and 12 guldens out of their box, which money was worth, according to the best valuations, ten times its present value.

[217] Quoted by Janssen, l.c. i. 343.

[218] The Economical Interpretation of History, London, 1891, p. 303.

[219] Janssen, l.c. See also Dr. Alwin Schultz, Deutsches Leben im XIV und XV Jahrhundert, grosse Ausgabe, Wien, 1892, pp. 67 seq. At Paris, the day of labor varied from seven to eight hours in the winter to fourteen hours in summer in certain trades, while in others it was from eight to nine hours in winter, to from ten to twelve in Summer. All work was stopped on Saturdays and on about twenty-five other days (jors de commun de vile foire) at four o’clock, while on Sundays and thirty other holidays there was no work at all. The general conclusion is, that the mediæval worker worked less hours, all taken, than the present-day worker (Dr. E. Martin Saint-Léon, Histoire des corporations, p. 121).

[220] W. Stieda, “Hansische Vereinbarungen über städtisches Gewerbe im XIV und XV Jahrhundert,” in Hansische Geschichtsblätter, Jahrgang 1886, p. 121. Schönberg’s Wirthschaftliche Bedeutung der Zünfte; also, partly, Roscher.

[221] See Toulmin Smith’s deeply-felt remarks about the royal spoliation of the guilds, in Miss Smith’s Introduction to English Guilds. In France the same royal spoliation and abolition of the guilds’ jurisdiction was begun from 1306, and the final blow was struck in 1382 (Fagniez, l.c. pp. 52–54).

[222] Adam Smith and his contemporaries knew well what they were condemning when they wrote against the State interference in trade and the trade monopolies of State creation. Unhappily, their followers, with their hopeless superficiality, flung mediæval guilds and State interference into the same sack, making no distinction between a Versailles edict and a guild ordinance. It hardly need be said that the economists who have seriously studied the subject, like Schönberg (the editor of the well-known course of Political Economy), never fell into such an error. But, till lately, diffuse discussions of the above type went on for economical “science.”

[223] In Florence the seven minor arts made their revolution in 1270–82, and its results are fully described by Perrens (Histoire de Florence, Paris, 1877, 3 vols.), and especially by Gino Capponi (Storia della repubblica di Firenze, 2da edizione, 1876, i. 58–80; translated into German). In Lyons, on the contrary, where the movement of the minor crafts took place in 1402, the latter were defeated and lost the right of themselves nominating their own judges. The two parties came apparently to a compromise. In Rostock the same movement took place in 1313; in Zürich in 1336; in Bern in 1363; in Braunschweig in 1374, and next year in Hamburg; in Lübeck in 1376–84; and so on. See Schmoller’s Strassburg zur Zeit der Zunftkämpfe and Strassburg’s Blüthe; Brentano’s Arbeitergilden der Gegenwart, 2 vols., Leipzig, 1871–72; Eb. Bain’s Merchant and Craft Guilds, Aberdeen, 1887, pp. 26–47, 75, etc. As to Mr. Gross’s opinion relative to the same struggles in England, see Mrs. Green’s remarks in her Town Life in the Fifteenth Century, ii. 190–217; also the chapter on the Labor Question, and, in fact, the whole of this extremely interesting volume. Brentano’s views on the crafts’ struggles, expressed especially in iii. and iv. of his essay “On the History and Development of Guilds,” in Toulmin Smith’s English Guilds remain classical for the subject, and may be said to have been again and again confirmed by subsequent research.

[224] To give but one example — Cambrai made its first revolution in 907, and, after three or four more revolts, it obtained its charter in 1076. This charter was repealed twice (1107 and 1138), and twice obtained again (in 1127 and 1180). Total, 223 years of struggles before conquering the right to independence. Lyons — from 1195 to 1320.

[225] See Tuetey, “Étude sur Le droit municipal... en Franche-Comté,” in Mémoires de la Société d’émulation de Montbéliard, 2e série, ii. 129 seq.

[226] This seems to have been often the case in Italy. In Switzerland, Bern bought even the towns of Thun and Burgdorf.

[227] Such was, at least, the case in the cities of Tuscany (Florence, Lucca, Sienna, Bologna, etc.), for which the relations between city and peasants are best known. (Luchitzkiy, “Slavery and Russian Slaves in Florence,” in Kieff University Izvestia for 1885, who has perused Rumohr’s Ursprung der Besitzlosigkeit der Colonien in Toscana, 1830.) The whole matter concerning the relations between the cities and the peasants requires much more study than has hitherto been done.

[228] Ferrari’s generalizations are often too theoretical to bealways correct; but his views upon the part played by the nobles in the city wars are based upon a wide range of authenticated facts.

[229] Only such cities as stubbornly kept to the cause of the barons, like Pisa or Verona, lost through the wars. For many towns which fought on the barons’ side, the defeat was also the beginning of liberation and progress.

[230] Ferrari, ii. 18, 104 seq.; Leo and Botta, i. 432.

[231] Joh. Falke, Die Hansa als Deutsche See- und Handelsmacht, Berlin, 1863, pp. 31, 55.

[232] For Aachen and Cologne we have direct testimony that the bishops of these two cities — one of them bought by the enemy opened to him the gates.

[233] See the facts, though not always the conclusions, of Nitzsch, iii. 133 seq.; also Kallsen, i. 458, etc.

[234] On the Commune of the Laonnais, which, until Melleville’s researches (Histoire de la Commune du Laonnais, Paris, 1853), was confounded with the Commune of Laon, see Luchaire, pp. 75 seq. For the early peasants’ guilds and subsequent unions see R. Wilman’s “Die ländlichen Schutzgilden Westphaliens,” in Zeitschrift für Kulturgeschichte, neue Folge, Bd. iii., quoted in Henne-am-Rhyn’s Kulturgeschichte, iii. 249.

[235] Luchaire, p. 149.

[236] Two important cities, like Mainz and Worms, would settle a political contest by means of arbitration. After a civil war broken out in Abbeville, Amiens would act, in 1231, as arbiter (Luchaire, 149); and so on.

[237] See, for instance, W. Stieda, Hansische Vereinbarungen, l.c., p.114.

[238] Cosmo Innes’s Early Scottish History and Scotland in Middle Ages, quoted by Rev. Denton, l.c., pp. 68, 69; Lamprecht’s Deutsches wirthschaftliche Leben im Mittelalter, review by Schmoller in his Jahrbuch, Bd. xii.; Sismondi’s Tableau de l’agriculture toscane, pp. 226 seq. The dominions of Florence could be recognized at a glance through their prosperity.

[239] Mr. John J. Ennett (Six Essays, London, 1891) has excellent pages on this aspect of mediæval architecture. Mr. Willis, in his appendix to Whewell’s History of Inductive Sciences (i. 261–262), has pointed out the beauty of the mechanical relations in mediæval buildings. “A new decorative construction was matured,” he writes, “not thwarting and controlling, but assisting and harmonizing with the mechanical construction. Every member, every molding, becomes a sustainer of weight; and by the multiplicity of props assisting each other, and the consequent subdivision of weight, the eye was satisfied of the stability of the structure, notwithstanding curiously slender aspects of the separate parts.” An art which sprang out of the social life of the city could not be better characterized.

[240] Dr. L. Ennen, Der Dom zu Köln, seine Construction und Anstaltung, Köln, 1871.

[241] The three statues are among the outer decorations of Nôtre Dame de Paris.

[242] Mediæval art, like Greek art, did not know those curiosity shops which we call a National Gallery or a Museum. A picture was painted, a statue was carved, a bronze decoration was cast to stand in its proper place in a monument of communal art. It lived there, it was part of a whole, and it contributed to give unity to the impression produced by the whole.

[243] Cf. J. T. Ennett’s “Second Essay,” p. 36.

[244] Sismondi, iv. 172; xvi. 356. The great canal, Naviglio Grande, which brings the water from the Tessino, was begun in 1179, i.e. after the conquest of independence, and it was ended in the thirteenth century. On the subsequent decay, see xvi. 355.

[245] In 1336 it had 8,000 to 10,000 boys and girls in its primary schools, 1,000 to 1,200 boys in its seven middle schools, and from 550 to 600 students in its four universities. The thirty communal hospitals contained over 1,000 beds for a population of 90,000 inhabitants (Capponi, ii. 249 seq.). It has more than once been suggested by authoritative writers that education stood, as a rule, at a much higher level than is generally supposed. Certainly so in democratic Nuremberg.

[246] Cf. L. Ranke’s excellent considerations upon the essence of Roman Law in his Weltgeschichte, Bd. iv. Abth. 2, pp. 20–31. Also Sismondi’s remarks upon the part played by the légistes in the constitution of royal authority, Histoire des Français, Paris, 1826, viii. 85–99. The popular hatred against these “weize Doktoren und Beutelschneider des Volks” broke out with full force in the first years of the sixteenth century in the sermons of the early Reform movement.

[247] Brentano fully understood the fatal effects of the struggle between the “old burghers” and the new-comers. Miaskowski, in his work on the village communities of Switzerland, has indicated the same for village communities.

[248] The trade in slaves kidnapped in the East was never discontinued in the Italian republics till the fifteenth century. Feeble traces of it are found also in Germany and elsewhere. See Cibrario. Della schiavitù e del servaggio, 2 vols. Milan, 1868; Professor Luchitzkiy, “Slavery and Russian Slaves in Florence in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries,” in Izvestia of the Kieff University, 1885.

[249] J.R. Green’s History of the English People, London, 1878, i. 455.

[250] See the theories expressed by the Bologna lawyers, already at the Congress of Roncaglia in 1158.

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