The Christian Church & Feudalism. (1933)

From the January 1933 issue of the Socialist Standard

A Lesson in Historical Materialism. 

Christian churches are monuments built out of the miseries of slaves—chattel-slaves, bond-slaves and wage-slaves. They are monuments of plunder and despair.

In certain respects the conditions that existed at the time Christianity was established as the state religion of the Roman Empire, sixteen hundred years ago, were typical of the conditions that have favoured its existence ever since.

The early Roman Republic was of a type common at the time. It was a city state based upon small scale agricultural production with minor trading activities connecting it with similar states outside. Its inhabitants consisted in the main of freemen farmers and slaves. The freemen possessed varying quantities of wealth but all took part equally in the voting and administration of affairs. The early wars of defence grew into tribute-imposing wars and a commercial class developed which brought about internal conflict.

The foreign wars of the republic ruined a large section of the peasants and concentrated landed property in the hands of a small section which formed the. aristocracy or patrician class; fostered the growth of a class living partly on commerce and partly on usury; developed a military force giving allegiance to leaders which eventually grew into a powerful military state; and further increased the impoverishment of the poor by the huge increase in chattel slave labour.

The civil wars that broke out during many centuries, and the direction taken by imperial policy in ruining the agricultural and commercial competitors were the expression in one form or another of the conflicting interests of these classes. It was these movements that threw up names— Gracchi, Cicero, Caesar, Augustus,—that have survived when the tendencies they represented have been almost forgotten.

By the first century B.C. the old city state had grown into an empire made up of a huge collection of municipalities subject to tributes imposed by the parent city, and the privileged section of its citizens acquired enormous wealth which they spent in the building of. beautiful villas with marble columns, costly gladiatorial combats and luxurious living and lavish displays of one kind or another. A multitude of Italian, Slavic and Germanic tribes had been incorporated into the Empire. The mode of production had changed from the small production of the peasant farmer to production by slave labour on large estates in different parts of the Empire. The Roman trader had accompanied the Roman army in its pioneering work and a considerable commercial development had been reached which spread a network covering North Africa, Spain, Britain and a portion of the East, but having as its centre Rome—all roads led to Rome.

The old senatorial city-state constitution of Rome was unsuited to this expanding empire with its conflicting' classes and complicated policies. The struggle that took place and was spread over a long period of time modified the power of the Roman Senate and placed considerable power in the hands of the military leaders. The intrigues in the Roman Senate by bribed tools of Caesar as a prelude to his crossing of the Rubicon read strangely modern. The general ruin and misery caused by the civil wars eventually produced a universal desire for peace. A correct appreciation and interpretation of this desire helped Augustus into the position of the first of the Roman Emperors, though both he and succeeding Emperors wielded power under the constitutional cloak of the First Consul of the Empire.

In the early municipalities tribute was exacted through the medium of the elected freemen of the localities, but the growth of Rome as a huge tax-gathering machine brought changes in the instruments of tax-gathering to secure a greater flow of wealth to the centre. Tax-gatherers and municipal officials were appointed from the centre and a huge bureaucratic machine developed, which tightened the hold of the centre upon the Empire, and also brought bribery, corruption and the legal arts to a high pitch of perfection. Usury became a considerable source of wealth and flourished like mushrooms on a dunghill.

Under the Empire chattel slave labour entered every sphere of production, and this form was exploited to its utmost limits, until it became a barrier that limited the further achievements of Roman civilisation. Slave labour is notoriously wasteful, both of soil and of implements, as the slave has no personal interest in the work he is doing nor in the animals and tools he is using. Its cheapness kills the incentive to improvement in means of production. Hence agricultural science made little progress and no means were used to replace the nourishment drained from the earth. The result was a progressive exhaustion of the soil.

The growth of the bureaucratic machine and the increasing rapacity of its personnel, together with, a progressive reduction in the returns from slave labour, tended to make the Empire top-heavy—it was carrying too many and too rapacious drones and unproductive labourers compared with its productive capacity. The increasing burden of taxation reduced the capacity of the municipalities to put armed men in the field to defend the frontiers, and drove the small farmers more and more to sell themselves into slavery, or put themselves in dependence upon powerful landowners, in order to live or to escape military service.

By the fourth century A.D. the whole tendency under the Empire was downwards. Even the rich had misgivings and a feeling of the impending end of their affluence, and were ruthless in their exploitation of the earth and everything on it in the attempt to accumulate and squander as much as possible, with the motto, “make the most of to-day for to-morrow we die.” Hopelessness in the future was the ultimate view that pervaded all sections under the Roman Empire at the time.

The above is a rough picture of the position when Constantine became Emperor of the Roman dominions.

In the meantime, Christianity, a hotch-potch of earlier philosophical ideas, was born and spread through the decaying Empire. The soil was fruitful and it flourished and acquired property which it struggled to retain and increase for hundreds of years after.

It had a message for rich and poor, for freeman and slave. It proclaimed to all who suffered that this life was but a brief span in a vale of tears, a necessary suffering to open the gates of Paradise in a mythical world after death. Those who saw nothing but misery in their life on earth gladly clutched at the hope that this life was only a temporary evil.

The rich it consoled with the following admonitions to the poor:—

Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers. For there is no power but of God: the powers that he are ordained of God.

Whosoever therefore resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance of God: and they that resist shall receive to themselves damnation.

For rulers are not a terror to good works, but to the evil.

Wherefore ye must needs be subject, not only for wrath, but also for conscience sake.

For this cause pay ye tribute also; for they are God's ministers, attending continually upon this very thing.

Render therefore to all their dues: tribute to whom tribute is due: custom to whom custom: fear to whom fear: honour to whom honour.

(Epistle to the Romans, Chap. 13.)

Servants, be obedient to them that are your masters according to the flesh, with fear and trembling, in singleness of your heart, as unto Christ."

(Epistle to the Ephesians, Chap. 6.)

Ih the Sermon on the Mount passive obedience is preached and the followers of the Church are urged not to resist evil nor oppression but to turn the right cheek to the smiter. It is further impressed upon them by the assurance, "Blessed are the meek for they shall inherit the earth," and similar precepts.

The above teachings were an expression of the conditions of the time and were, on the one hand, the hopeless wail of the poor, and, on the other, an instrument to keep the poor submissive. With the spread of Christianity the wealth and property of the Church grew, and with it the ecclesiastical bureaucracy. The Church gathered under its wings for the administration of its affairs officials of various grades, from workers amongst the poor up to the wealthy bishops at its head.

While the Church was growing an economic revolution had been slowly spreading throughout the Empire and was eating at its chattel-slave basis. The dwindling returns from slave labour and the burdens borne by the freeman led more and more to a new form of dependence in industry and on the land. The migrations of industrial freemen were being limited by new industrial arrangements and industrial slaves were acquiring a new form of dependence. Agricultural freemen were being subjected to systems of leasing lands and customary tenancies. Agricultural slaves were granted their freedom on condition that they gave certain free service to their lords, as well as working the lands allotted to them.

Constantine was the largest private landowner in the Empire and by the time he was firmly seated as Emperor the various methods of production were intermingled on all estates, and he found them an almost inextricable tangle on his own. The method of customary tenancy, however, was rapidly growing in favour.

The change the Empire had undergone through the centuries had been fundamental. The old local city state with its ruling aristocracy had passed away and the later aristocracy of Rome were men who owned vast estates in Africa, Spain, and the large territory that at that time went under the name of Gaul. Local ideas had also given place to ideas that were the fruit of a huge agglomeration of people of different races and religions who were grouped under the same Empire. But while the development of a people may halt for a while it does not remain permanently at the same level. When the forces within have developed to their limit new forces are born which require a re-alignment of classes. A fresh surge of development commences in a new direction. Such was the position under the Roman Empire. Slave culture had reached its limit and threatened to involve all in a common ruin. But a new form had been silently superseding it. One that later became known as feudalism.

In these circumstances a church that knew no local boundaries, whose god existed everywhere, whose organisation was supported by a hierarchy of officials, and which proclaimed the divine origin of law and rulers found favour, and fitted with increasing exactitude into the needs of the Empire that was becoming feudalised.

With the growth in the feudal form of production the old governmental machinery became unsuitable and new machinery had to be devised. The passing away of municipal freedom had weakened the capacity of the central executive to appreciate the needs of the vast Empire. Rule by the Senate had not been sufficient to control adequately the huge Empire, and succeeding attempts to make the administration more efficient had degenerated into a struggle between the Senate and' the military chiefs. The effort to bring efficiency and unity into the administration was responsible for the development under one of the Emperors (Diocletian) of an advisory council, at first temporary, and finally growing under Constantine into departments covering the various divisions of treasury, war, judicial functions and so forth. The essence of the new form was its capacity to deal better with the administration of the Empire and yet remain under the personal control of a head.

A number of measures were introduced to bring uniformity into the economic relationships. The result ultimately tied the cultivator to the soil and to his lord, and made succession to these fixed tenures hereditary. But something else had still to be accomplished. A means had to be found for ascertaining the needs and wishes of the people and for sanctifying the decrees of the rulers. It was here the Church stepped in. Burrowing into every cranny of the Empire and the home, amongst the poorest as well as the richest, it possessed an administration with unequalled social knowledge, and an accumulation of property that placed it on the side off the new type of property owners. At his hand Constantine found a suitable and willing tool in burning the feudalised state, and at the Council of Nicaea in the year 325 Christianity became the state religion of the Roman Empire. From that time onwards the Church has thrown its resources on the side of the oppressor. In the course of centuries it became itself the largest feudal proprietor in the world, at one time owning a third of the land of Europe. In England in the 16th century it is computed that the Church owned one-third of the land and half the wealth of the country. In fact, it is almost a truism to say that during the Middle Ages the Church and feudalism were the same thing.

Thus feudalism commenced a career that lasted, over 1,200 years, and with it, the Christian Church spread like a blight over the most distant parts of the known world.

Such, briefly, was the material origin of the idealised Christian Church.

Gilmac.