Sociology Of Community

I: ECONOMY AND COMMUNITY

I.i: ECONOMIC COMMUNITY

I.i.1: Definition of Economic Action

Most social actions have some relationship with economy. Unlike common usage, however, we shall not consider every end-rational action as economic. Thus, praying for a spiritual "good" is not an economic act, even though it may have a definite end according to some religious doctrine. Likewise, not every action and creation follow the principle of economy. Not only thought economized consciously for the construction of concept, but also the artistic performance for the "economy of means" have little to do with economy; these are, from the viewpoint of profitability, highly uneconomical product of ever-renewed labor for simplified creation. And also the pursuit of the technical maxim of the "optimum" --the relatively greatest result with the least expenditure of means-- is not an economic action but an end-rational technique. We shall speak of economic action only if relatively scarce resources of goods and services resulted in specific calculated action according to the actor's evaluation. Decisive for economic action is, of course, the fact that this scarcity is subjectively presupposed and that action is oriented to it.

I.i.2: Standpoints of Economic Action

We will not deal here with any detailed casuistry and terminology. However, we will distinguish two standpoints of economic action. The first is the satisfaction of one's own wants, which may be of any conceivable kind, ranging from food to religious edification, if there is a scarcity of goods and services in relation to demand. It is conventional to think particularly of everyday needs --the so-called material needs-- when the term economic action is used. However, prayers and rituals too may become objects of economy if the qualified persons are in short supply and can only be secured for a price, just like the daily bread. Bushmen drawings, to which a high artistic value is often attributed, are not objects of economic action, not even products of labor in the economic sense, yet artistic products that are rated much lower become objects of economic action if they are relatively scarce. The second standpoint of economic action concerns profit-making by controlling and disposing of scarce goods.

I.i.3: Category of Economic Community

Social action may be related to the economy in diverse ways. It may be oriented in the actor's subjective meaning, to purely economic results: want satisfaction or profit-making. In this case an "economic community" comes into being. However, a community may use economic operations as a means for achieving non-economic goals. In this case we have an "economically conditioned community." A community may also combine economic and non-economic goals, or none of these cases may occur. The distinction between economic and non-economic goals is fluid. Strictly speaking, the first category shall be called economic community that strive for profit by taking advantage of scarcity conditions, and also profit-making enterprises. Thus all social action that oriented simply toward want satisfaction become related to economic action only so far as the relation of supply and demand makes it necessary. In this regard, there is no difference between the economic actions of a family, a charitable endowment, a military administration, or a joint forest clearing or hunting. To be sure, there seems to be a difference between the one social action that comes into being essentially for the sake of satisfying economic demands, as in the case of forest clearing, and the other social action (such as military training) that necessitates economic actions merely because of scarcity conditions. But in reality this distinction is very fluid and can be clearly drawn only to the extent that social action would remain the same in the absence of any scarcity.

Social action that constitutes neither economic community nor economically conditioned community may in various respects be influenced by economic factors and to that extent be economically determined. Conversely, such community may also determine the nature and course of economy; it shall be called economically relevant community. Most of the time both types of community are at work. A community unrelated to either of the two communities is not unusual. There is a special case of community which does not determine the continuous process of economy through immediate participation or concrete instructions, or prohibitions, but its orders regulate economic relationships of the participants; it shall be called "economically regulated community." They include all kinds of political and many religious community, and numerous others, which are specifically related to economic regulation (such as cooperatives of fishermen or peasants).

As we have said, communities that are not economically determined are extremely rare. However, the extent of this influence varies widely. Above all, there is no economic determinism of community --contrary to the assumption of so-called historical materialism. Phenomena that must be treated as "constants" in economic analysis are very often compatible with significant structural variations --from a sociological viewpoint-- among the communities that comprise them or coexist with them, including economic community and economically conditioned communities. Even the assertion that social structures and the economy are "functionally" related is a biased view, since they cannot be grounded to historical generalization in a clear causal relationship. Social action follows its own laws, as we shall see time and again, and even apart from this fact, they may in a given case always be co-determined by other than economic causes. However, at some point economic conditions tend to become causally important, and often decisive, for almost all social actions, at least those which have major "cultural significance"; conversely, economy is usually also influenced by the autonomous structure of social action within which it exists. No significant generalization can be made as to when and how this will occur. However, we can generalize about the degree of elective affinity between concrete forms of social action and concrete structures of economy; that means, we can state in general terms whether they further or impede or exclude one another--whether they are "adequate" or "inadequate" in relation to one another. We will have to deal frequently with such relations of adequacy. Moreover, at least some generalization can be advanced about the manner in which economic interests tend to result in social action.

I.i.4: Competition and Closed Community

One frequent economic determinant for all form of community is the competition for economic opportunity--offices, clients and other occasional occupations and jobs. When the number of competitors increases in relation to the profit span, the participants become interested in restricting competition. Usually one community of competitors takes some externally identifiable characteristic of another community of (actual or potential) competitors--race, language, religion, local or social origin, ancestry, residence, and the like as a form for attempting their exclusion. It does not matter which characteristic is chosen in the individual case: whatever suggests itself most easily is seized upon. Such communal action may provoke a corresponding reaction on the part of those against whom it is directed.

In spite of their continued competition against one another, the jointly acting competitors now form a "social relationship of interest" toward outsiders; there is a growing tendency to set up some kind of "society" with rational orders; if the monopolistic interests persist, the time comes when the competitors, or another community whom they can influence (for example, a political community), establish an order that limits competition through formal monopolies; from then on, certain persons are available as "organs" to carry out the monopolistic practices, if needed, with force. In such a case, the social relationship of interest has developed into a "privileged community" and the participants have become "privileged members." Such closure, as we want to call it, is an ever-recurring process; it is the source of property in land as well as of all guild and other group monopolies.

The tendency toward the monopolization of specific, usually economic opportunities is always the driving force in such cases as: "membership organization," which always means closed monopolistic grouping, for example, of fishermen taking their name from a certain fishing area; the establishment of an association of engineering graduates, which seeks to secure a legal, or at least factual, monopoly over certain positions; the exclusion of outsiders from sharing in the fields and commons of a village; "patriotic" associations of shop clerks; the ministeriales, knights, university graduates and craftsmen of a given region or locality, ex-soldiers entitled to civil service positions --all these groups first engage in some social action and later eventually become a "society." This monopolization is directed against competitors through some positive or negative marks; its purpose is always the closure of social and economic opportunities to outsiders. Its extent may vary widely, especially so far as the individual member shares in the monopolistic opportunities. These may remain "open" to all members within the circle of monopoly privileged, so that the member competes with one another; witness the holders of occupational patents (graduates entitled to certain positions or master-craftsmen privileged with regard to customers and employment).

I.i.5: Stages of Appropriation

Or, such opportunities may also be "closed" to insiders. This can be done in various ways: (1) Positions may be rotated the short-run appointment of some holders of office benefices had this purpose; (2) Grants may be recallable according to the individual ability such as the allots of fields in a strictly organized local community, for example, the Russian mir; (3) Grants may be for life, as is the rule for all prebends, offices, monopolies of master-craftsmen, rights in using the commons, and originally also for the apportionment of fields in most village communities; (4) The member and his heirs may get definite grants with the agreement that they cannot be given to others or only to community members: witness the warrior prebend of Antiquity (klhrov), the service fiefs of the ministeriales, and monopolies on hereditary offices and crafts; (e) Finally, only the number of shares may be limited, but the holder may freely dispose of his own without the knowledge or permission of the other community members, as in a stock-holding company. These different stages of internal closure will be called stages in the appropriation of the social and economic opportunities that have been monopolized by the community.

If the appropriated monopolistic opportunities are released for exchange outside the community, thus becoming completely "free" property, the old monopolistic association is doomed. Its remnants are the appropriated powers of disposition which appear on the market as "acquired rights" of individuals. For all "property" in natural resources developed historically out of the gradual appropriation of the monopolistic shares of community members. In contrast to the present, not only concrete goods but also social and economic opportunities of all kinds were the object of appropriation. Of course, manner, degree, and condition of the appropriation vary widely with the technical nature of the object and of the opportunities, which may lend themselves to appropriation in very different degrees. For example, a person subsisting by, or gaining an income from, the cultivation of a given field is bound to a concrete and clearly limited material object, but this is not the case with "customers." Appropriation is not motivated by the fact that the object produces a yield only through cultivation, hence that to some extent it is the product of the "user's labor," for this is even more true of an acquired "customers,"although in a different manner; rather, customers cannot be "registered" as easily as real estate. It is quite natural that the extent of an appropriation depends upon such differences among objects. Here, however, we want to emphasize that the process is in principle the same in both cases, even though the pace of appropriation may vary: monopolized social and economic opportunities are "closed" even to insiders. Hence, social relationships differ in varying degrees with regard to external or internal "openness" or "closure."

I.i.6: Community and Economic Interests

This monopolistic tendency takes on specific forms when communities are formed by persons with acquired qualities through upbringing, learning and training. These acquisitions may be economic qualifications of some kind, the holding of the same or similar offices, a knightly or ascetic conduct of life, etc. If such social action results from rational social relationship, it tends to form the guild. Full members monopolize the disposition of spiritual, social and economic goods, duties and positions as "vocation." Only those are admitted to the full qualification of the vocation who (1) have completed a novitiate in order to acquire the qualified training, (2) have proven their qualification, and (3) sometimes have passed through further waiting periods and met additional requirements. This development follows a typical pattern in societies ranging from the student fraternities, through knightly associations and craft-guilds, to the qualifications required of the modern officials and employees. It is true that the interest in guaranteeing vocational performance may everywhere have some importance; the participants may desire their possibly continuing competition with one another for ideal or material interests: local craftspersons may desire it for the interest of their business reputation, ministeriales and knights of a given association for the interest of their professional reputation and also their own military security, and ascetic communities for the interest that the gods and demons may turn their wrath against all members because of faulty manipulations. (For example, in almost all "primitive folks," persons who sang falsely during a ritual dance were originally slain in expiation of such an offense.) But normally this interest for vocational performance recedes behind the interest in restricting the supply of candidates for the benefices and honors of a given occupation. The novitiates, waiting periods, masterpieces and other demands, particularly the expensive entertainment for community members, are more often economic than professional tests of qualification.

Such monopolistic tendencies and similar economic considerations have often played a significant role in hindering the expansion of a community. For example, Attic democracy increasingly sought to restrict the number of those who could take in the advantages of citizenship, and thus limited its own political expansion. The Quaker propaganda was brought to a standstill by an ultimately similar consideration of economic interests. The Islamic missionary enthusiasm, originally a religious duty, found its limits in the conquering warriors' desire to have a non-Islamic, and hence underprivileged, population that could provide for the maintenance of the privileged believers--the type case for many similar phenomena.

I.i.7: From Community To Enterprise

Another typical occurrence that individuals live "by" representing community interests or, in some other manner, by maintaining a community ideologically or economically. Hence a community may be propagated, perpetuated and transformed into an enterprise in cases in which this might not have happened otherwise. This kind of interest may have the most diverse ideological roots: In the 19th century the Romantic ideologists and their imitators awakened numerous declining language communities who are "interested" in the purposive cultivation of their language. German secondary and university teachers helped save small Slavic language communities, about whom they felt the ideological need to write books.

However, such purely ideological "life" of a community is not so effective lever than economic interest. If a community pays somebody to act as a continuous and deliberate "organ" of their common interests, or if such interest representation "pays" in other respects, an enterprise comes into being that provides a strong guarantee for continuance of the social action under all circumstances. Henceforth, some persons are "professionally" interested in the retention of the existing, and the recruitment of new, members. It does not matter here whether they are paid to represent (hidden or naked) sexual interests or other "non-material" or, finally, economic interests (trade unions, labor associations and similar organizations), whether they are public speakers paid by the piece or salaried "secretaries." Thus a planed rational "enterprise" replaces the intermittent and irrational occasional action of a community, and continues to function long after the original enthusiasm of the participants for their ideals has vanished.

In various ways "capitalist" interests proper may have a stake in the propagation of certain social actions. For example, in Imperial Germany the owners of German "Gothic" type fonts want to preserve this "patriotic" kind of lettering; similarly, innkeepers who permit Social Democratic meetings even though their premises are boycotted by military personnel have a stake in the party's membership. Everybody can think of many examples of this type for every kind of social action.

All these instances of economic interest have one same consequence: The interest in the "contents" of the common ideals necessarily recedes behind the interest in the maintenance or propaganda of the community, irrespective of the type of its activities. A most impressive example is the complete disappearance of ideological contents in the American parties, but the greatest example, of course, is the age-old connection between capitalist interests and the expansion of political communities. On the one hand, these communities can exert an extraordinary influence on the economy, on the other they can extract tremendous revenues, so that the capitalist interests can profit most from them: directly by rendering paid services or making advances on expected revenues, and indirectly through the exploitation of position which they occupy politically. In Antiquity and at the beginning of modern history the focus of capitalist acquisition centered on "imperialist" profits by the connection with purely political power, and today (1920) again capitalism moves increasingly in this direction. Every expansion of a nation's power sphere increases the profit potential of the respective capitalist interests.

I.i.8: From Rational To Communal Relationship

These economic interests in the expansion of a community may not only be counteracted by the monopolistic tendencies discussed above, but also by other interests in community's closure and exclusiveness. We have already stated in general terms that initially rational relationships that are based on voluntary participation and end-rational action tend to create communal relationships among the participants and, under circumstances, found for communal action that may have quite different goals. As a rule, rational relationship "overarches" itself to communal relationship. Of course, this is not always true; it occurs only in cases in which rational relationship presupposes not merely business, but also some "personal," contacts. For example, a person can acquire stocks and become a "stockholder" irrespective of his personal qualities, merely by an economic transaction, and generally without the knowledge and consent of the other stockholders. A similar orientation prevails in all rational relationships that make membership based upon a purely formal condition or achievement but not upon the individual personality. This occurs very often in certain purely economic relationships and also in many political associations; in general, this orientation is everywhere the more likely, the more rational and specialized the goal of an association is. However, there are many rational relationships in which admission presupposes, expressly or silently, personal qualifications and in which those overarching communal relationships arise. This, of course, happens particularly when the members make admission based upon an examination and approval of the candidate's personal qualities. At least as a rule, the candidate is examined not only one's usefulness with regard to the function and goal of the association but also one's "being" with regard to total personality esteemed by the members.

Here is not the place to classify the various kinds of rational relationship according to the degree of exclusiveness. It suffices to say that rational social relationship exists in the most diverse kinds. Not only a religious sect, but also a social club, for instance, a veterans' association or even a bowling club, as a rule admit nobody whose total personality is objectionable to the members. This very fact "legitimizes" the closure to the outsiders disregarding one's qualities that are important to the band's purpose. Membership provides him with advantageous "connections," again far beyond the specific goals of the band. Hence, it is very common that persons belong to a religious, student, political or other band, although they are interested not in its purpose, but in those economically valuable "legitimations" and "connections" that the membership brings. While these motives may contain an incentive interest for joining and hence enlarging the community, but the opposite effect by the members' interest in monopolizing those advantages and in increasing their economic value through restriction to the smallest possible circle. The smaller and the more exclusive such a circle is, the higher will be both the economic value and the social prestige of membership.

I.i.9: Economy and Social Action

Finally, we must briefly deal with another frequent relationship between the economy and social action: the conscious offer of economic advantages in the interest of preserving and expanding a primarily non-economic community. This happens particularly when several similar communities compete for membership: witness political parties and religious communities. American sects, for instance, arrange artistic, athletic and other entertainment and lower the conditions for divorced persons remarrying; the unlimited lowering of marriage regulations was only recently curbed by regular cartelization. In addition to arranging excursions and similar activities, religious and political communities establish "youth parties" and "women's group" and participate eagerly in purely communal or other basically non-political activities, which enable them to compete economic favors to local interests. To a very large extent, the invasion of political and religious groups to communal, rational and other societies is directly motivated by economic interest: it helps them to maintain their functionaries through office benefices and social prestige and to turn their operating costs to these other communities. Suitable objects for this purpose are post in local, producers' and consumers' associations, health insurance funds, trade unions and similar organizations; and on a vast scale, of course, political offices and benefices or other advantageous opportunities and positions --professorships included-- that can be secured from the political authorities. If a community is sufficiently large in a system of "parliamentary" government, it can get the means of living for its leaders and members, just like the political parties, for which this is essential.

In the present context we want to emphasize only the general fact that non-economic communities also establish economic organizations, especially for propaganda purposes. Many charitable enterprise of religious communities have such a purpose, and this is even more true of the Christian, Liberal, Socialist and Patriotic trade unions and mutual benefit funds, of savings and insurance institutes and, on a massive scale, of the consumers' and producers' co-operatives. Some Italian co operatives, for instance, demanded the certification of confession before hiring a worker. In Germany before 1918 the Poles developed the organization of credit lending, mortgage payments and farm acquisition in a ground scale; during the Revolution of 1905/6 the various Russian parties immediately pursued similarly modern policies. Sometimes commercial enterprises are established: banks, hotels (like the socialist Hotels of the People in Belgium) and even factories (also in Belgium). If this happens, the power-holders in a political community, particularly the civil service, resort to similar methods to maintain their power-position, and organize everything from economically advantageous "patriotic" associations and activities to state-controlled loan associations (such as the Preussenkasse). The technical details of such means of propaganda do not concern us here.

In this section we merely wanted to state in general terms, and to illustrate with some typical examples, the coexistence and opposition of expansionist and monopolist economic interests within diverse communities. We must forego any further details since this would require a special study of the various kinds of society. Instead, we must deal briefly with the most frequent relationship between community and economy: the fact that an extraordinarily large number of communities is "economically" conditioned communities. Normally, these communities must have developed some kind of rational association; exceptions are those that develop out of the house community.

I.i.10: Types of Want Satisfaction

Social action of "rational relationship" will have an established rule for want satisfaction if it requires goods and services for its operations. In principle, there are five "pure" types of want satisfaction. The examples will be taken from political communities, since they have the most highly developed system of want satisfaction:

(1) The "oikos," namely, levy in kind in pure collective and natural economy. The community members must render fixed personal services, which may be equal for all or specialized (for instance, "universal" conscription of all able-bodied men or specialized military duties as "craftsperson"; moreover, they must meet the material needs by fixed payments in kind (for the royal table or the military administration). Thus, these goods and services are not produced for the market but for the community's collective consumption (for instance, a self-sufficient manorial or royal household --the pure type of the "oikos"-- or a military administration that is completely dependent upon services and payments in kind as in ancient Egypt).

(2) Market-oriented taxes that make it possible for a community to meet its consumptions by buying equipment and employing workers, officials and mercenaries; these taxes may be compulsory taxes, regular dues, or fees at certain occasions; they may also be tributes from persons who are not otherwise community members, but who (a) benefit from certain advantages and opportunities in the social structure (such as a registry office for land or some other "agency") or physical facilities (such as roads)--the principle is that a compensation for services is rendered as fees in the technical sense; tributes may also be levied on persons who (b) simply happen to be within the community's power sphere (contributions from persons who are merely residents, duties from persons and goods passing through the community's territory).

(3) Profit-making enterprise which is a part of the community sells its products and services to the market and contributes its profits to the community's purpose. The enterprise may not have a formal monopoly (witness the Prussian overseas traders ), or it may be of the monopolist type that has been frequent in the past and the present (such as the post office). Obviously, every kind of combination is possible between these three, logically most consistent, types. Money may be substituted for payments in kind, natural products may be sold on the market, capital goods may be secured directly by payments in kind or bought with the help of assessments. As a rule, the components of these types are combined with one another.

(4) The sponsorships, namely, voluntary contributions are made by persons who can afford them and who have material or ideal interests in the community, whether or not they are members in other respects. (In the case of religious and political communities, the typical forms here are religious endowments and political funds by big contributors, but also the voluntary "gifts" to the mendicants and monasteries by princes in early historical times.) There are no fixed rules and obligations and no necessary connections between contributions and other forms of participation: the sponsor may remain completely outside the community.

(5) Contributions and services may be linked to positive or negative privileged status. (A) The positive variant occurs primarily when a certain economic or social monopoly is guaranteed or, conversely, when certain privileged status communities or monopolized communities are completely or partly exempt from contributions and services. Hence contributions and services are not required according to general rules from the various property and income strata or, at least in principle, the freely disposable property and occupation; rather, they are required according to the specific economic and political powers and monopolies that have been granted to an individual or a community by the larger community. (Examples are tax exemptions for manorial estates, or special levies for guilds or certain privileged status communities.) The point is that these demands are raised as a "correlate" of, or "compensation" for, the guarantee or appropriation of privileges. Thus, the method of want satisfaction creates or stabilizes a monopolistic differentiation of the community by the "closure" of the social and economic opportunities granted to its various strata. An important special case are the many diverse forms of "feudal" or "patrimonial" consumption of goods and services, with their connection to appropriated power positions that enable them to perform the social action. (In the status states the prince must meet the costs of administration from his patrimonial possessions, just like the feudal participants in political or patrimonial power and status, the vassals, ministeriales etc., must use their own means.) Most of the time, this type of want satisfaction involves contributions in kind. However, under capitalism analogous phenomena may occur for example, in one way or another, the political authorities may guarantee a monopoly to a community of entrepreneurs and in return impose contributions directly or through taxation. This method, which was widespread during the mercantilist era, is presently quite important again--witness the liquor tax in Germany.

(B) Want satisfaction through negative privileges is called liturgy: We speak of class liturgy, if economically costly obligations are tied to a certain size or amount of property that is not privileged of monopoly, and eventually rotated. Examples are the commander of fleet (trierarchos) and the theatre (choragus) in Athens and the compulsory tax-farmers in the Hellenistic states. We speak of status liturgy, if the obligations are linked to monopolistic communities in such a manner that the members cannot withdraw unilaterally and hence remain collectively liable for satisfying the demands of the political band. Examples are the compulsory guilds of ancient Egypt and late Antiquity; the hereditary attachment of the Russian peasants to the village, which is collectively liable for taxes; the more or less strict immobility of Roman citizenship and peasants throughout history, with their collective liability for paying taxes and, possibly, for providing recruits; and the Roman head (decuriones), who were collectively responsible for the taxes which they had to levy.

As a rule, the last type (5) of want satisfaction is normally limited to compulsory institution, especially the political community.

I.i.11: Want Satisfaction and Capitalism

The various types of want satisfaction, always the outcome of interest-struggles, often exert a far-reaching influence beyond their direct purpose. This may result in a considerable degree of economically regulated orders witness in particular the liturgical types of want satisfaction. Even when this is not directly the case, these types may strongly affect the development and the direction of the economy. For example, status liturgy greatly resulted in the "closure" of social and economic opportunities, to the stabilization of status communities, and thus to the elimination of private capital formation. Moreover, if a political community satisfies its wants by public enterprises or by production for the market, private capitalism also tends to be eliminated. Monopolistic want satisfaction, too, affects private capitalism, but it may stimulate as well as impede private capitalist enterprise. This depends upon the particular nature of the state-sponsored monopolies.

Ancient capitalism was repressed because the Roman empire resorted increasingly to status-liturgy and partly also to public want satisfaction. Today, capitalist enterprises run by municipalities or the state in part redirect and in part displace private capitalism the fact that the German exchanges have not quoted rail stocks since the railroads were nationalized is not only important for their position but also for the nature of property formation. Private capitalism is blocked (for example, the growth of private distilleries), if monopolies are protected by the state and stabilized with state subsidies (as in the case of the German liquor tax). Conversely, during the Middle Ages and in early modern times, the trade and colonial monopolies at first facilitated the rise of capitalism, since under the given conditions only monopolies provided a sufficient profit span for capitalist enterprises. But later --in England during the 17th century-- these monopolies impeded capitalist profit interests and provoked so much bitter opposition that they collapsed. Thus, the effect of tax-based monopolies is not simple. However, clearly favorable to capitalist development is want satisfaction through taxation and the market; in the extreme case, the open market is used as much as possible for administrative needs, including the recruitment and training of troops by private entrepreneurs, and all means are secured through tax monies. This presupposes, of course, a fully developed money economy and also a strictly rational and efficient administration, a "bureaucracy."

I.i.12: Taxation of Mobile Property

This precondition is particularly important with regard to the taxation of "mobile property," a difficult undertaking everywhere, especially in a "democracy." We must deal briefly with these difficulties, since they have greatly carried the rise of modern capitalism in the Western civilization. Even where the propertyless strata are dominant, the taxation of mobile property meets certain limits as long as the propertied can freely leave the community. The degree of mobility depends not only on the relative importance of membership in this particular community for the propertied, but also on the nature of the property. Within compulsory community, particularly political kind, all utilization of property that is largely dependent on land estate is stationary, in contrast to mobile property which is either monetary or easily exchangeable. If propertied families leave a community, those staying behind must pay more taxes; in a community dependent on a market economy, and particularly a labor market, the propertyless may find their economic opportunities so much reduced that they will abandon any reckless attempt at taxing the propertied or will even deliberately favor them. Whether this will indeed happen, depends upon the economic structure of the community. In democratic Athens such considerations were outweighed by the incentives for taxing the propertied, since the Athenian state lived largely from the tributes of subjects and had an economy in which the labor market (in the modern sense of the term) did not yet determine the class situation of the masses.

Under modern conditions the reverse is usually true. Today communities in which the propertyless have seized power are often very cautious toward the propertied. Municipalities under socialist control, such as the city of Catania, have attracted factories with substantial tax benefits, because the socialist rank and file were more interested in better job opportunities and in directly improving their class situation, than in "equal" distribution and taxation of property. Likewise, in spite of conflicting interests in a given case, landlords, speculators in building land, retailers and craftsmen tend to think first of their immediate class-determined interests; therefore, all kinds of "mercantilism" have been a frequent, though highly varied, phenomenon in all types of communities. This is all the more so since those concerned with the relative power position of a community also have an interest in preserving the "tax base" and great fortunes capable of granting them loans; hence, they are forced to treat "mobile" property cautiously. Thus, even where the propertyless are in control, "mobile" property may either expect mercantilist privileges or at least exemption from liturgies and taxes, provided a plurality of communities competes with one another among which the property owners can choose their domicile. One example is the United States, in which the separatism of the individual states led to the failure of all serious attempts at unifying consumer interests; more limited, but still pertinent is the case of the municipalities of a country, and finally there are the independent countries themselves.

For the rest, the method of taxation depends, of course, very much on the relative power position of the various communities in a larger community, and on the nature of the economic order. Every increase of want satisfaction in natural economy favors the liturgical method. Thus, in Egypt the liturgical system originated in the Pharaonic period, and the course of the late Roman liturgical state, which was modeled after the Egyptian example, was determined by the largely natural economy of the conquered inland areas and the relative decline of the capitalist strata; in turn, these strata lost their former importance because the political and administrative transformation of the Empire eliminated the tax-farmer and the exploitation of the subjects through usury.

If "mobile" property is dominant, the propertied everywhere unburden themselves of liturgical obligation and shift the tax burden to the masses. In Rome military service used to be liturgically classified according to property and to involve the self-equipment of the propertied citizens; then, however, the aristocratic strata were freed from military service and replaced by the state-equipped propertyless army, elsewhere the mercenary army, the costs of which were met by mass taxation. Instead of satisfying extraordinary public wants through the property tax or compulsory loans without interest, that is, through the liturgical liability of the propertied, the Middle Ages everywhere resorted to interest-bearing loans, land mortgages, customs and other assessments; thus, the propertied used pressing public needs as a source for profit and rent. Sometimes these practices would almost reduce a city's administration and tax system to an instrument of state creditors, as it happened for a time in Genoa.

I.i.13: Mercantilism

Finally, at the beginning of modern history, the various countries engaged in the struggle of power because they needed ever more capital for political reasons in the expanding money economy. This resulted in that memorable alliance between the rising states and the sought-after and privileged capitalist powers that was a major factor in creating modern capitalism and fully justifies the designation "mercantilist" for the policies of that epoch. This usage is justified even though, in Antiquity and modern times, "mercantilism," as the protection of personal "mobile" property, existed wherever several political communities competed with one another by enlarging their tax base and by promoting capital formation for the obtaining private loans. The fact that "mercantilism" at the beginning of modern history had a specific character and specific effects had two reasons: (1) the political structure of the competing states and of their economy --this will be treated later-- and (2) the new structure of emerging modern capitalism, especially industrial capitalism, which was unknown to Antiquity and in the long run profited greatly from state protection. At any rate, from that time dates that European competitive struggle between large, approximately equal and purely political structures which has had such a global impact. It is well known that this political competition has remained one of the most important motives of the capitalist protectionism that emerged then and today continues in different forms. The trade and the monetary policies of the modern states --those policies most closely linked to the central interests of the present economic system-- can be understood only by this peculiar political competition and "balance" among the European states during the last five hundred years.

I.i.14: Relationship of Economy to Community

An examination of the specific, often highly complex effects of the ways in which communities satisfy their economic wants does not belong into this general review, and concrete individual instances will be considered merely as examples. While abandoning any attempt systematically to classify the various kinds of communities according to the structure, content and means of social action --a task which belongs to general sociology--, we turn to a brief discussion of those types of communities which are of the greatest importance for our study. Only the relationship of economy to "community" --in our case, the general structures and types of human communities-- will be discussed here and not the relationship between economy and specific contents of culture such as literature, art, science, etc. Contents and directions of social action are discussed only insofar as they give rise to specific kinds of structure that are also economically relevant. The resulting boundary is of course quite fluid. At any rate, we shall be concerned only with certain universal types of communities. What follows is only a general characterization. Concrete historical forms of these communities will be discussed in greater detail in connection with "rulership."

I.ii: HOUSE COMMUNITY

I.ii.1: Family Relationship

The relationships between father, mother and children, established by an enduring sexual relationships, appear to us today as particularly "natural" relationships. However, separated from the "household" as an unit of economic needs, the sexually based relationship between husband and wife, and the biologically determined relationship between father and children are wholly unstable and problematic. The father cannot exist without a stable economic community; even where there is such a community the father may not always be of greater authority. Of all the relationships arising from sexual intercourse, only the mother-child relationship is "natural," because it is a biologically given provisional relationship that lasts until the child is able to search for means of living on one's own.

Next comes the sibling community, which the Greeks called homogalaktes, literally "persons suckled with the same milk." Here, too, the decisive point is not the fact of the common mother but that of common living. All kinds of social relationships emerge, in addition to sexual and biological relationships, as soon as the "family" emerges as a specific social structure. Historically, the concept of the family had several meanings, and it is useful only if its particular meaning is always defined clearly. More will be said later on about this.

I.ii.2: Maternal grouping and Men's Band

Although the relationship between mother and children is regarded as (in the present sense) the most primitive sort of "family-like" structure, it does not mean --indeed, it is unimaginable-- that there ever were societies with maternal grouping only. As far as it is known, wherever the maternal grouping prevails as a "family form," economic and military communities exist among men as well, and so do those of men with women (both sexual and economic). The pure maternal grouping is obviously secondary form and often found precisely where men's everyday life is confined to the stable community of a "men's band," at first for military purposes, later on for other reasons. Men's bands can be found in various countries as a specific form and a secondary resultant of military development.

I.ii.3: Marriage

One cannot think of "marriage" as a mere combination of sexual union and rearing community of father, mother, and children. The concept of marriage can be defined only with reference to other social relationships. Marriage becomes a social institution everywhere only as an opposition to other sexual relationships which are not regarded as marriage. The existence of marriage means that other sexual relationships emerged against the will of the wife's or the husband's clan. In olden times the clan of the husband or of the wife or both did not tolerate other sexual relationships and even avenged it by their band. In addition, marriage means especially that only children born of enduring sexual relationships within a more inclusive economic, political, religious, or other community to which one or both parents belong will be treated, by their ancestry, as equal members of a community (house, village, clan, political, status, and religious community) while children of other sexual relationships will not be treated in such a manner. This is, however, not the distinction between birth in "wedlock" and "out of wedlock." Where the eligibility of marriage is prerequisite such that persons of the same clan are not allowed to enter into enduring sexual relationships, the permission of clan or other connections required for their validity, the customs must be observed; all these matters are regulated by the "sacred" traditions and the orders of these communities. Thus, it is such orders other than mere sexual and sibling communities of experience which endow the marriage with its specific quality. We do not intend to discuss here the anthropologically significant development of these orders, since what concerns us most is only their economic relationship.

I.ii.4: A Economic Community

sexual relationships of parents and sibling relationships of children can carry out social action only by becoming the normal, though not the only, bases of a specific economic community: the house community.

The house community is by no means a primitive community. Its prerequisite is not a "house" in the present-day sense of the word but rather a certain degree of planed cultivation of soil. The house community does not seem to have existed in a primitive economy of hunters and nomads. However, even under the conditions of a technically well-advanced agriculture, the house community is often secondary with respect to the more powerful communities of clan and neighborhood on the one hand, and to the individual's orientation of more freedom from the community of the parents, children, grandchildren, and siblings on the other hand. The almost complete separation of the husband's and wife's income and belongings, which was very frequent especially where social differentiation was low, seems to point in this direction, as does the occasional custom according to which man and wife were seated back to back during their meals or even took their meals separately, and the fact that within the political band there existed independent organizations of women with female chieftains alongside the men's organizations. However, one should not infer from such facts the existence of an individualistic "original condition." Rather, conditions that are due to a certain type of military organization, such as the man's absence from the house for his military service, lead to a "manless" house community managed by the wives and mothers. Such conditions were residually preserved in the family structure of the Spartans, which was based on the man's absence from the home and the separation of belongings.

The house community is not universal in the same degree. But it is the most widespread "economic community" and involves continuous and intensive social action. It is the fundamental basis of piety and authority, which in turn is the basis of many other communities. This "authority" is of two kinds: (1) the authority derived from superior strength; and (2) the authority derived from experience. It is, thus, the authority of men as against women and children; of the stronger military and working ability as against the lesser ability; of the adult as against the child; of the old as against the young. "Piety" is the subjection toward the holders of authority and toward one another. As piety for ancestors, it goes into religious relationship; as piety of the patrimonial official, retainer, or vassal, it preserves an original house character.

I.ii.5: House Communism

The house community has its significance for "pure" economic and personal relationships, though not necessarily primitive: solidarity to the outside and communism of property and consumption of everyday goods (house communism) through the unbroken unity of the house community on the basis of strong personal relationship of piety. The principle of solidarity to the outside, in its pure form, was still found in the house community of contractually regulated entrepreneurial units in the medieval cities of northern and central Italy, especially those most advanced in capitalist economy. All members of the house community, including at times even the clerks and apprentices who were members by contract, were jointly responsible to the creditors (under circumstances even for criminal responsibility). This is the historic source of the joint liability of the owners of a private company for the debts incurred by the firm. This concept of joint liability was of great importance in the subsequent development of the legal forms of modern capitalism.

There was nothing corresponding to our law of "inheritance" in the old house communism. In its place there was, rather, the simple notion that the house community is "immortal." If one of its members dies, or is expelled (after committing an inexpiable ill deed), or is permitted to join another house community (by adoptions, or is dismissed (emancipatio), or leaves out of one's own accord (where this is permitted), the one cannot possibly lay claim to one's "share." By leaving the house community the one has relinquished one's share. If a member of the house community dies, the survivor's economy of communism simply goes on. The Swiss house community (Gemeinderschaften) operate in such a way to the present day.

The principle of house communism is not "proportion to" but accorded with what each member can contribute and what each needs (as far as the supply of goods suffices), constitutes even today the essential feature of German "family," but is limited mainly to household consumption.

I.ii.6: Separation of House Community

Common residence is an essential attribute of the pure type of house community. Increase in size brings about a division and creation of a separate house community. In order to keep the property of means and the labor force together, a compromise based on local decentralization without partition can be adopted. Granting some special privileges to the individual house community is an inevitable consequence of such a solution. Such a partition can be carried to a complete legal separation and independence in the control of the business, yet at the same time a surprisingly large measure of house communism can still be preserved. It happens in Europe, particularly in the Alpine countries (for example, Swiss hotel-keepers' families), and also in the large family firms of international trade that, while the house community and authority have outwardly disappeared completely, a communism of risk and profit, i.e., sharing of profit and loss of otherwise altogether independent business managements, continues to exist.

I have been told about conditions in international houses with earnings amounting to millions, whose capital belongs for the most part, but not exclusively, to relatives of varying degree and whose management is predominantly, but not solely, in the hands of the members of the family. The individual enterprises operate in very diverse lines of business, possess highly variable amounts of capital and labor force, and achieve widely variable profits. In spite of this, after the deduction of the usual interest on capital, the annual returns of all the branches are simply thrown into one hopper, divided into equal portions, and allotted according to an amazingly simple formula (often by the number of heads). The house communism on this level is being preserved for the sake of mutual economic support, which guarantees a balancing of capital requirements and capital surplus between the business establishments and spares them from having to solicit credit from outsiders. The "calculability" thus does not extend to the distribution of balance-sheet results, but it dominates all the more within the "enterprise": even a close relative without capital and working as an employee will not be paid more than any other employee, because calculated costs of operation cannot be arbitrarily altered in favor of one individual without creating dissatisfaction in others. Beyond the balance sheet, those lucky enough to participate enter the realm of "equality and brotherhood."

I.ii.7: Regulation of Sexual Relationships

The house community is the most "natural" type and externally "closed" social relationship. Typical development of the old house communism is just reverse to the international-household in the above example of the maintenance of contractual community,which shares profits and losses in spite of the separation of the house communities; normally house communism is weakened internally by the process of inner "break-up" of the community in spite of external unity of the household.

The earliest substantial weakening of unbroken communist house authority proceed not directly from economic motives but apparently from the development of exclusive sexual demand of the house males over women subjected to their authority. This may result in a highly casuistic but strictly enforced regulation of sexual relationships, especially if social action is not much rationalized in other respects. Sexual power-politics sometimes result in "communist" relationship (polyandry), but in all known instances such polyandric relationship constitute only a relative communism: a limited number of men (brothers or the members of a men's band) are exclusive co-owners as a consequence of the common acquisition of a woman.

Nowhere do we find unregulated, formless sexual promiscuity within the house, even if sexual relationships between siblings are recognized; at least nowhere on a normative basis. On the contrary, any kind of communist sexual freedom is most thoroughly banished from a house of communist property ownership. The weakening of sexual attraction among the members of a household can be habituated through having grown up together. This habituation as conscious "norm" by obviously in the interest of safeguarding solidarity and domestic peace in the face of jealousies. Where the members of the house belong to different clans because of "clan exogamy" and hence would be free to engage in sexual relationships, they nevertheless had to avoid one another because house exogamy is older than clan exogamy and persists next to it. The beginnings of regulated exogamy can perhaps be found in exchange cartels of house and clan communities, which resulted from their division. At any rate, sexual relationships among close relatives are disapproved conventionally even among whom this would be permissible according to the clan code (for example, among very close paternal relatives under rules of matrilineal exogamy). As an institution, the marriage between siblings and relatives is commonly limited to socially prominent families, especially royal houses; its purpose is the preservation of economic means of power, probably also the avoidance of struggles among candidates, and finally the purity of the blood--hence it is a secondary outcome.

As a rule, then, a man acquires exclusive sexual rights over a woman when he takes her into his house or enters her house if his means are insufficient. Of course, this exclusiveness, too, has often enough been dubious against the autocratic head of the house. Infamous are the liberties, for example, which the father-in-law of an extended Russian family could take up until modem times. Normally, however, the house community establishes itself into permanent sexual relationship and their children. In our times, the house community consists of the parents and their children, together with the personal servants and at most a spinster relative. However, the house community of earlier periods was not always very large; often it was small if provisional sustenance required dispersion. However, history has known many house communities ("extended families") based on parent and child relationships but comprising grandchildren, brothers, cousins and outsiders, to a degree which has become very rare in advanced countries. The extended family prevails where a large number of hands are required, hence where agriculture is intensive, and also where property is intended to remain concentrated in the interest of social and economic power-holders, hence in aristocratic and plutocratic strata.

Apart from the very early closure of sexual relationships within the house community, the sexual sphere was further narrowed, especially at otherwise low levels of cultural differentiation, by structures that overlapped with patriarchal rulership. In fact, one can say that the first decisive motive is the limitation of patriarchal rulership. As "blood bands" gain importance over house communities, the concept of "incest" is extended to other relatives and becomes subject to casuistic regulation by the clan.

I.iii: NEIGHBORHOOD COMMUNITY

The house band is a community that meets the everyday needs for regular goods and labor. In a self-sufficient agrarian economy a substantial part of the extraordinary needs at special occasions, during severe calamities and emergencies are met by social action that goes beyond the individual house community: the help of the "neighborhood." For us, the neighborhood is not only the "natural" one of the rural settlement but every general one of interest-situation that is shared by special nearness and an periodical temporal commonality based on permanent or past residency or living; of course, if not specified further, we refer most of the time to the neighborhood of house communities settled close to one another.

The "neighborhood community" may take on different forms depending on the type of settlement: scattered farms, a village, a city street or a slum; neighborly social action may have different degrees of intensity and, especially in the modern city, it may be almost non-existent. To be sure, the extent of mutual help and sacrifices that even today occurs frequently in the slums of the poor may be astonishing to one who discovers it for the first time. However, not only the temporal commonality in streetcar, railroad or hotel, but also the enduring slum-commonality is by and large oriented toward maintaining the greatest possible distance in spite (or because) of the physical nearness, and social action is likely performed only in cases of common danger. We cannot discuss here why this attitude has become so apparent under modern conditions as a result of the specific "sense of individual dignity" created by them. Suffice it to note that the same double directions have always occurred in the stable rural neighborhood: the individual peasant does not like any interference with his affairs, no matter how well-meant it may be. "Neighborhood social action" is an exception, although it recurs regularly. It is always less intensive and more discontinuous than the social action of the house community, and the circle of participants is far more unstable. For in general, the neighborhood community is merely based on the simple fact that people happen to reside close to one another. In the self-sufficient rural economy of early history the typical neighborhood is the "village," a community of house bands bordering upon each other. However, the neighborhood may also be effective beyond the fixed boundaries of other, in particular political, structures. In practice, neighborhood means mutual dependence in case of distress, especially when the transportation technology is undeveloped. The neighbor is the typical helper-in-need, and hence neighborhood is "brotherhood," albeit in an unsympathetic, primarily economic ethic. If the house community is short of means, mutual help may be requested: the loans of implements and goods free of charge, and "free labor for the asking" in case of urgent need. This mutual help is guided by the primeval folk ethics which is as unsympathetic as it is universal: "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." For everybody may face a situation in which the one needs the help of others. If a compensation is provided, it consists in feasting the helpers, as in the typical case of neighborly help for house construction (still practiced in the German East). If an exchange takes place, the maxim applies: "Brothers do not bargain with one another." This eliminates the rational "market principle" of price determination.

Neighborhood is not restricted to social equals. Free labor, which has great practical importance, is not only given to the needy but also to the economic power house, especially at harvest time, when the big landowner needs it most. In return, the helpers expect that he protect their common interests against other powers, and also that he grant surplus land free of charge or for the usual labor assistance (precarium). The helpers trust that he will give them food during a famine and show charity in other occasion, which he indeed does since he too is time and again dependent on them. In time this purely customary labor may become the basis of manorial services and thus give rise to patrimonial rulership if the lord's power and the indispensability of his protection increase, and if he succeeds in turning the "custom" into a "right."

Even though the neighborhood community is the typical place of brotherhood, neighbors do not necessarily maintain "brotherly" relations. On the contrary: Wherever prescribed behavior of a folk ethic is broken up by personal enmity and conflicting interests, hostility tends to be extreme and lasting exactly because the opponents are aware of their demand of folk ethics and seek to justify themselves, and also because the personal relations had been particularly close and frequent.

The neighborhood community may approach to a formless social action, with fluctuating participation, hence be "open" and intermittent. Firm bound of a neighborhood community tends to arise only when a "closed" association emerges, and this occurs as a rule when the neighborhood community becomes an economic community or an economically regulated community. This may happen for economic reasons, in the typical manner familiar to us; for example, when pastures and forests become scarce, their use may be restricted to the "fellows," that means a monopolization. However, the neighborhood community is not necessarily an economic, or an economically regulated, community, and where it is, it is so in greatly varying degrees. The neighborhood community may regulate the behavior of its members either through an order of its own: witness the Flurzwang, the compulsory regulation of tilling and crop rotation under the open-field system; or an order may be imposed by outsiders (individuals or communities), by whom the neighbors are regulated economically or politically (for example, the landlords of tenement houses). But all of this is not essential for neighborly social action. Even in the self-sufficient house community economy of early times, there is no necessary belonging among neighborhood, the forest regulations of political communities, especially the village, the territorial economic band (for example, the Mark community) and the political band; they may be related in very diverse ways. The size of the territorial economic bands may vary according to the objects they comprise. Fields, pastures, forests and hunting grounds are often controlled by different communities, which overlap with one another and with the political band. Wherever the primary means of making a living is peaceful activities, the house community is the carrier of communal work, and wherever it depends upon seizure of land by force, the political band is the carrier, and more so for extensively used land, such as hunting grounds and forests, than for pastures and fields.

But such generalizations are less applicable to the individual types of possessions which may scarce at different stages of development and hence subject to the regulation of a community; forests may still be free objects when pastures and fields are already "economic" ones and their use has been regulated and appropriated. Hence, diverse territorial bands may appropriate different kinds of land.

The neighborhood is the natural basis of the commune (Gemeinde) --a band which arises only, as we shall see later, by political action comprising a multitude of neighborhoods. Moreover, the neighborhood may itself become the basis of political action, if it controls a "territory" such as a "village"; and in the course of social organization, it may engage in activities of all kinds (from public schools and religious functions to the systematic settling of necessary crafts), or the political community may impose them as an obligation. But the point of neighborhood social action is merely a specific consequence of cool economic brotherhood in case of distress.

II: RULERSHIP AND COMMUNITY

II.i: CLAN

II.i.1: Clan Community

The "clan" is not as "natural" community as the house community or the neighborhood. As a rule, its social action is discontinuous and lacks band action; in fact, the clan proves that a community is possible to exist even if the participants do not know one another and action is merely passive (refraining from sexual relationships, for example). The "clan" presupposes the existence of other clans within a larger community. It is the original carrier of all "trust." Friendship is originally an artificial blood brotherhood. The vassal as well as the modern officer are not only subordinates but also the lord's brothers, "comrades" (that means, originally house members). Substantively, the clan competes with the house community in the sphere of sexual relationships and in-group solidarity; it is a protective community, which substitutes for our police force and vice squad; and it is also a community of expectant heirs made up of those former house community members who left when it was divided or when they married, and of their descendants. Hence with the clan begins "inheritance" outside the house community. Since members are obliged to blood revenge, the in-group solidarity of the clan may become more important than loyalty toward house authority.

We should keep in mind that the clan is not an extended or decentralized house community or a super-ordinate structure uniting several house communities: that may be the case, but as a rule it is not. Whether a particular clan cuts across the house communities or comprises all members depends upon its structure, which may designate father and children to different communities, as we shall see later.

II.i.2: Effect of Clan

The effect of the clan community may be limited on the prohibition of in-group marriage (exogamy); for this purpose, the members may have common marks of identification and may believe in common ancestry from a natural object, mostly an animal, which the members are usually not allowed to eat (totemism).

Furthermore, the clan members are forbidden to engage in combat with one another; they are obliged to blood revenge, at least in the case of close relatives. Blood revenge in turn requires the communal declaration of a feud in case of a homicide and establishes the right and the duty of the clan members to receive and to pay a compensation. The clan is also open to divine revenge in case of perjury, since it provides oath-bound witnesses at a trial. In this manner the clan guarantees the security and legal protection of the individual.

Finally, the neighborhood established by a settlement (a village, a local community) may coincide with the clan; then the house community is indeed a unit of the clan. Even if this is not the case, the clan members often retain very palpable rights in relation to house authority: a veto against the sale of property, the right of participating in the selling of daughters into marriage and of receiving part of the bridal price, the rights of providing a legal guardian, etc.

II.i.3: Political Community and Clan

Mutual help is for the clan the most original form of reacting to infringements upon its interests. The oldest "procedures" similar to a trial are conflict within the house or the clan community, either by the house head or the clan "elder" who best knows the customs, and mutually agreed arbitration between several house and clan communities. The clan competes with political communities as an independent, overlapping band deriving from common ancestry, which may be actual, fictitious or artificially created through blood brotherhood; it is a complex of obligations and loyalties between persons who may belong not only to different house communities but also to different political and even language communities. The clan may be completely unorganized, a kind of passive counter-unit against the authoritarian house head. For its normal functioning it does not require a leader with powers of control; indeed, as a rule, the clan is merely an amorphous circle of persons who may be identified positively by forming a religious community and negatively by their refraining from the violation of taboo or the consumption of a sacred object; we shall deal later with the field of religion for such behavior. It seems scarcely possible to assume that clan communities with some kind of continuous government are the older form ; rather, the reverse is the rule: clan communities become "bands" only when it seems desirable to "enclose" economic or social monopolies against outsiders. If the clan has a head and functions as a political community, it may be developed not from the inner condition of a clan band, but from the result of outsider's original use of the clan band for political, military or economic purposes; in this case it becomes part of a heteronomous social structure--witness the gens as a subdivision of the curia in the Roman or the "Sippe" as military units in the German.

Especially in periods in which social action is otherwise scarcely developed, house, clan, neighborhood and political communities typically overlap in such a manner that the members of a house community and a village may belong to different clan communities, and the clan members to different political and even language communities. Hence it is possible that neighbors or members of the same political community and even of the same house community are supposed to practice blood revenge against one another. These drastically "conflicting obligations" were removed only when the political community gradually monopolized the use of physical force. However, if political action occurs only intermittently, when there is an external threat or booty seeker's band, the clan's importance and the rationalization of its structure and obligations may be developed as much as the object of scholastic casuistry (as for example in Australia).

II.i.4: House Rulership and Clan

The order of clan relationships, especially the regulations of sexual relationships, is important as its effect on the development of the economic structure and the house relationships. House authority over a child is derived from the clan of mother (matrilineal) or of father (patrilineal), and this in turn defines the other house communities in which the child has a property share, in particular access to economic opportunities which these house communities appropriated within economic, status, or political communities. Hence those other communities are interested in the order in which house community membership is regulated; in any given case the prevailing order is a resultant of the economic and also the political interests of all communities involved. It should be clearly understood from the beginning that as soon as a house community becomes part of other communities that control economic and other opportunities, it cannot freely dispose its membership, and the less so the more limited these opportunities become. Patrilineal or matrilineal structure and their consequences are determined by the most diverse interests, which cannot be analyzed here in detail. In the case of matrilineal structure the child is protected and disciplined by the mother's brothers, apart from his father, and also receives his inheritance from them (avunculate); the mother exercises house authority only in rare cases subject to special conditions. In a patrilineal structure, the child is subject to the power of his paternal relatives, apart from his father's, and he inherits from them. Today kinship and succession are as a rule cognate, that means, there is no difference between the father's and the mother's side, whereas house authority is exercised by the father or, if he is not there, often by a close relative who is appointed as a guardian and supervised by the clan authorities; however, in the past patrilineal and matrilineal principles were often mutually exclusive. This did not necessarily mean that only one applied in a given community to all house communities; one principle might apply in one house community, the other in another one. In the simplest case this competition of the two principles originated in property differentiation. Like all children, daughters are considered economic assets of the house community into which they are born. The house community decides their disposition. The head might offer them to his guests, just like his own wife, or he might permit sexual relationships temporarily or permanently in exchange for goods and services. This prostitution of female house members accounts for many cases that are subsumed under the imprecise collective name of matriarchy ("mother right"). Husband and wife each remain members of their own house community, the children belong to the mother's house community, and the father is for them an alien who merely pays "alimony" (in modern terminology) to the house head. Hence husband, wife and children do not form a house community of their own.

II.i.5: Marriage and Clan

However, if a man who can afford to pay cash for a woman takes her out of her house and clan community into his own. In this case the woman and her children are fully owned by the man's house community. A man who cannot pay for a woman whom he desires, on the other hand, must join her house community, if its head permits the union, either temporarily in order to work off her price ("service marriage") or permanently, and then the woman's house community retains control over her and the children. Thus the head of a wealthy house community buys women from poorer house communities for himself and his sons (so-called diga-marriage) or forces women to join his own house community (bina-marriage). Hence patrilineal and matrilineal structures and the house authority of the father's or the mother's house may exist side by side for different persons within the same house community. In this simple case patrilineal structure always means the control by the father's house community, and vice versa. This relationship grows more complex when the husband takes the wife into his house community and thus places her under its authority, but when matrilineal principle remains, that means, when the children belong to the mother's clan as exogamous sexual band and particularly as the community of blood revenge and inheritance. As a technical term, matriarchy should be restricted to this phenomenon. To be sure, as far as we know, matriarchy does not entirely restrict the father's house authority over the children despite they are legally aliens. However, there are various intermediate stages: The mother's house may give her to the father's house community and yet retain certain rights in her and her children. Frequently matrilineal rules of clan exogamy apply because superstitious fear of incest persists; moreover, matrilineal rules of succession are often retained in varying degrees. This is likely to give rise to many conflicts between the two clan communities, the outcome of which depends very much on the land holdings, the influence of the village neighborhood and the military bands.

II.i.6: Military Band and Clan

Unfortunately, the relationships between clan, village, local and political communities belong to the most obscure and least studied areas of ethnography and economic history. No case has been completely interpreted their relationships, neither the primitive stages of civilized peoples nor the so-called primitive peoples. The neighborhood community of a village may originate in a certain case in the division of the inheritance of a house community. When nomadic cultivation is replaced by permanent agriculture, land may be assigned on a clan basis, since the latter is usually taken into account for military assignment; thus the territory of a village may be considered clan property. This seems to have happened in ancient Germanic times, since the sources speak of genealogiae as the owners of village territory even when it appears that the land was not occupied by a noble family with its retainers. However, this was probably not the rule. As far as we know, the military bands of a hundred or a thousand men, which developed from personal into territorial units, were not linked to the clan communities, and neither were the latter to the "rural communities."

II.i.7: Land and Clan

We can make only three generalizations: (1) Land may be primarily a place to work on. In this case all land and all yield belong to the women's clan communities, as long as cultivation is primarily women's work. The father does not leave any land to his children, since it is handed down through the mother's house and clan; the paternal inheritance comprises only military equipment, weapons, horses and tools of male crafts. In pure type this case is rare. (2) Conversely, land may be considered male property won and defended by force; unarmed persons, especially women, cannot have a share in it. Hence, the father's local political association may be interested in retaining his sons as military manpower; since the sons join the father's military band, they inherit the land from him, and only mobile property from the mother. (3) The neighborhood composed of a village or a "local community" always controls the land gained through joint deforestation, that means, through men's work, and does not permit its inheritance by children who do not continuously fulfill their obligations toward the community. The conflict of these practices, and possibly of even more complex ones, may have very diverse results. However, we cannot make a fourth generalization that might suggest itself in view of these practices: that the primarily military character of a community points clearly to the predominance of the father's house and of male ("agnatic") family and property attribution. Rather this depends on the type of military organization. The able-men's communities may permanently live in barracks; typical examples are the "men's band" or the Spartan syssitia. In this case the men's absence frequently establishes the house community as a "maternal grouping" in which children and property are attributed to the maternal house community, or the woman achieves at least a relative domestic independence, as it is reported for Sparta. The numerous means that were specifically invented to intimidate and rob women--for example, the periodic predatory exploits of the dukduk are an attempt by the men who have left the house community to gain their authority over women.

II.i.8: Paternal Law

However, when the members of a military caste were landowners living dispersed in the countryside, the patriarchal and agnatic structure of house and clan community became usually predominant. As far as our historical knowledge goes, the empire-built peoples of the Far East and India, the Near East, the Mediterranean and the European North developed patrilineal structure and exclusively agnatic attribution of kinship and property; contrary to a frequent assumption, the Egyptians did not have agnatic attribution even though they had patrilineal structure. The major reason for this phenomenon is that great empires cannot be maintained in the long run by small monopolistic communities of warriors who live closely together in the manner of "men's bands"; in a natural economy empire-building requires as a rule the patrimonial and manorial control of the land, even if it would be developed from communities of closely settled warriors, as in Antiquity. The manorial rulership and its structure are developed quite naturally out of the patriarchal house community that is turned into an apparatus of rulership; everywhere the manor originates in patriarchal authority. Hence, there is no evidence for the assertion that the predominance of "paternal law" was ever developed from another order, since family relationship was the main object of its law building.

II.ii: PROPERTY RIGHT

II.ii.1: Legitimate Children

The development of property right of household in the great empires was directed to steadily weakening of unlimited patriarchal power. Where legal regulations were originally missing, no distinction was made between "legitimate" and "illegitimate" children; in the Germanic law of the Middle Ages the master's right to determine "his" child was a residue of the once unlimited power of the patriarch. This power was first restricted by only the intervention of political and economic communities, which made membership dependent upon "legitimate" ancestry, that means, on permanent relationships with women from their own circle. The most important stage in the development of this principle, the very distinction between "legitimate' and "illegitimate" children and the protection of the right of succession for the former, is usually reached when the propertied or status-privileged strata no longer regard women merely as work force but begin to protect, by contract, daughters and their children, against the unlimited power of the buyer. From then on, the property is supposed to be inherited only by the children of legitimate marriage. Hence the motivating force of this development is not the man's but the woman's interest in "legitimate" children.

II.ii.2: Dowry

As "status" consciousness and the corresponding costs of living rise, the woman, who is now regarded as a luxury possession, receives a "dowry"; at the same time this represents the compensation for her share in the house community --a structure clearly developed in ancient Oriental and Hellenic law-- and provides her with the "material means" of breaking husband's arbitrary will, since he must return the dowry if he divorces her. In time, dowry was achieved, in different degrees and not always through formal law, but often so successfully that only an endowed marriage was considered a marriage proper.

We cannot deal here further with the development of "property rights of marriage." Decisive changes occur wherever the military importance of land declines as a possession taken by force or as the basis of maintaining self-equipped warriors; then land can be used primarily for economic purposes, especially in the cities, and daughters too can inherited land. The compromise between the interests of husband and wife and of their clan varies greatly depending on whether the family earns living primarily from joint labor or from rent producing property.

II.ii.3: Property Right of Marriage

In the Occidental Middle Ages the institution of "joint property" prevailed in the former case and that of "joint administration" (actually the administration and utilization of the wife's property by the husband) in the latter; in addition, since the feudal families did not want to release any land, widows were maintained through a rent attached to family holdings, as it occurred typically in England ("dower marriage"). For the rest the most diverse determinants may come into play. The social conditions of the Roman and English nobility were similar in some respects, but very different in others. Whereas in ancient Rome the wife became economically and personally emancipated by the "freely dissolvable marriage," yet was completely unprotected as a widow and had no legal protection over her children, in England the wife remained under "coverture" which prevented any economic and legal independence and made it almost impossible for her to dissolve the feudal "dower marriage." The difference was conditioned by the citizenry character of the Roman nobility, on the one hand, and the effect of Christian marriage and patriarchalism in the English family on the other. Whereas feudal marriage institution persisted in England and French marriage institution was shaped by petty-citizenry and militaristic considerations --in the Code of Napoleon through the personal influence of its creator--, bureaucratic states (such as Austria and Russia) have strongly leveled sex differences in the property right; this levelling tends to go furthest where militarism has receded most in the ruling classes. With the advance of the market economy the marital property structure is also strongly influenced by the need to protect creditors. The manifold arrangements deriving from these factors do not belong in the present context.

II.ii.4: Legitimate Marriage

The "legitimate" marriage that developed out of the wife's interests does not necessarily lead to sole dominance of monogamy. The wife whose children are privileged in succession may be distinguished as the "chief wife" in a circle of other wives, as it was the case in the Orient, in Egypt and in most areas of Asian culture. This "semi-polygamy" was of course everywhere a privilege of the propertied strata. The ownership of several wives is advantageous only when women still do most of the agricultural work, at most when their textile production is especially profitable (as is still assumed in the Talmud); for example, the possession of a large number of women is considered a profitable capital investment by the chieftains in Kaffraria of southeast Africa; this presupposes, of course, that the man has the necessary means to buy women. But polygamy is too costly for all middle-propertied men in an economy in which male work predominates, and especially in social strata in which women work only as dilettantes or for luxury needs in jobs considered beneath the dignity of freemen.

Monogamy was established first among the Hellenes (even though the royal families did not consistently adhere to it as late as the period of the Diadochs, Alexander's successors, in the 4th and 3rd centuries BC) and among the Romans; it fitted into the house community structure of the emerging citizen patriciate. Subsequently Christianity raised monogamy to an absolute norm for ascetic reasons, in contrast to at least the early stages of all other religions. In the main, polygamy persisted when the strictly patriarchal structure of political rulership preserved the unlimited power of the house head.

The institution of the dowry affects the development of the house community in two ways: (1) As against the children of concubines, the "legitimate" children attain special right as the sole inheritors of the paternal property; (2) the husband's economic position tends to be differentiated according to the wife's dowry, which in turn depends on her family's wealth. It is true that the dowry becomes formally subject to the husband's decision (especially in Roman law), but in fact it tends to be set aside as a "special account." Thus the calculation enters into the relations between the family members.

II.ii.5: Possession of Artifacts

However, at this stage other economic motives have usually involved in the dissolution of the house community. Unbroken communism was economically weakened at such an early stage that it existed historically perhaps only in marginal cases. In principle, artifacts such as tools, arms, jewelry and clothes may be used by their producer alone or preferentially, and they are inherited not necessarily by the community but by other qualified individuals. (Examples are riding horse and sword, in the Middle Ages.) These forms of the individual right to succession developed very early even under authoritarian house communism; however, their beginnings probably originated in the house community itself and are found wherever tools are produced by individuals. In the case of arms, the same development was probably owing to the intervention of military powers interested in equipping the most able-bodied men.

III: DISSOLUTION OF HOUSE COMMUNITY

III.i: WEAKENING OF HOUSE AUTHORITY

In the course of cultural development, the internal and external determinants increasingly weaken house authority. From within, the development and differentiation of abilities and wants among the house members weakens house authority in accordance with the quantitative growth of economic means and resources. With the diversity of life chances and opportunities, the individual becomes less and less content with being bound to rigid and undifferentiated forms of life regulated by the house community. Increasingly the individual desires to shape one's life as one's own and to enjoy the fruits of one's own abilities and labor as wishes. From outside, the dissolution of the house authority is furthered by a number of other social bands. One is the fiscal interest of political bands in a more intensive exploitation of the individual taxpayer. These bands may work contrary to the house community's interests in keeping property intact for the sake of military self-equipment.

The usual consequence of these weakening is, in the first place, the division of house community by inheritance or marriage of children. In the early times of relatively primitive agriculture, employment of mass labor was the only means of increasing land yields. As a result, the house community grew in size. However, the development of individualized production brought about a decrease in the size of house communities, which continued until the family of parents and children constitutes the normal size today. The decrease in the size of house communities is not due to a growing "subjectivism," as a "stage" of social psychological development, but due to the objective determinants of its growth.

III.i.1: Change in Role of House Community

Thereby the function of the house community has changed principally that it is becoming increasingly inopportune for an individual to join a large communistic house community. An individual no longer gets protection from the house community and clan but rather from the institutions of political bands. Furthermore, "house" and "occupation" become located separately, and the house community is no longer a unit of common production but of common consumption. Moreover, the individual receives one's entire education increasingly from outside and by means which are supplied by various "enterprises": schools, bookstores, theaters, concert halls, clubs, meetings, etc. The individual can no longer regard the house community as the bearer of these cultural values to which the one serves.

III.i.2: Hindrances of Dissolution

It should not be overlooked that there exist also hindrances to this development, particularly on the "highest" levels of the scale of economy. In agriculture, the possibility of unrestricted splitting up of lands is tied in with certain technological and economic conditions. A unit of land, even a large one, with valuable buildings on it, can be partitioned only at a loss. The division is technically facilitated by mixed holdings and village settlement. Isolated location makes such a partition difficult. Farms and large estates, operated with an intensive use of capital, therefore tend to be inherited by one individual. A small farm, operated with intensive use of labor on scattered holdings, has a tendency to continuous splintering. In addition, the large land and farm are much more suitable objects from which the lenders extract payments by mobile property in the form of permanent or long-term mortgages, and they are thus kept intact for the benefit of the creditors.

Large property-holders, being a carrier of social status, are tend to keep their property togather in the family. A small farm, on the other hand, is merely a place of labor. There is an affinity between the manorial conduct of life, which style is found in fixed conventions, and the large house community. Given the spaciousness of, say, a castle and the self-installed "inner distance" even between the closest relatives, these large house communities do not restrain the freedom as does the citizenry house community, which may consist of an equally large number of persons but occupies a smaller space and lacks the aristocratic sense of distance, and whose members, moreover, typically have far more differentiated interests of life than do those of a land-seated gentry family. Today, the large house community provides a basis of distinctive conduct of life, aside from the manorial one, for the highly intense ideological community of a sect, whether religious, social-ethical or artistic, corresponding to the monasteries and the cloister-like communities of the past.

III.i.3: Calculation

Even where the house community remains outwardly united, the internal dissolution of house communism by the growing "calculation" goes on irresistibly in the course of cultural development. Let us look at the consequences of this factor in somewhat greater detail.

As early as in the large capitalistic house communities of medieval cities --for example, in Florence-- every person had his own "account." Each has pocket money (danari borsinghi) at one's disposal. Specific limits are set for maxim, for example, if one invites a visitor for a stay. The member must settle one's account in the same way as do partners in any modern trading company. The individual has capital shares "in" the house and its properties (fuori della compagnia) which the house controls and for which it pays him interest, but which is not regarded as working capital proper and therefore does not share in the profit. Thus, a rational association takes the place of the "natural" participation in the house communal action with its advantages and obligations. The individual is "born" into the house community, but even as a child the one is already a potential "business partner" and companion of the rationally managed enterprise. It is evident that such conduct became possible only within the framework of a pure money economy, which therefore plays a role in the internal dissolution of the house community. The money economy makes possible an objective calculation both of the productive performances and of the consumption of the individuals, and for the first time makes it possible for them to satisfy their wants freely, through the indirect exchange medium of money.

III.i.4: Roman and Chinese House Community

The parallelism of money economy and weakening of house authority is, of course, far from complete. House community and its authority are relatively independent of economic conditions, in spite of their great importance, and appear "irrational" from an economic point of view; in fact, they often influences upon economic relationships because of their historic structure. For example, the head of a Roman family (patria potestas), who retained his authority unbrokenly until the end of his life, had economic and social as well as political and religious roots (the preservation of noble house community, military grouping according to clan and, probably, house unit, and the father's position as house priest). The house authority (patria potestas) persisted during the most diverse economic stages before it was finally weakened by the Empire. In China, the same situation was perpetuated by the principle of filial piety, which was carried to an extreme by the code of duties and furthered by the state and the bureaucratic status ethic of Confucianism, in part for reasons of political domestication. This principle led not only to economically untenable consequences (as in the mourning regulations) but also to politically questionable results (for example, large-scale office vacancies, because piety toward the late father --originally, fear of the dead person's envy-- forbade the use of his property and the occupation of his office).

Economic factors originally determined to a large extent whether a property was inherited by one person or principal heir or whether it was divided. This practice varies with economic influences, but it cannot be explained solely by economic factors, and especially not by modern economic conditions. Under similar conditions and in contiguous areas, there exist often quite different structures, affected especially by different ethnic belongings, e.g., Poles and Germans. The far-reaching economic consequences of these differing structures were caused by factors that could be regarded as economically "irrational" from the very beginning, or that became irrational as a consequence of changes in economic conditions.

III.i.5: Economy and House Authority

In spite of all, economic realities intervene in a compelling manner. First, there are characteristic differences depending on whether economic earning is attributed to common work or to common property. If the former is the case, the house authority is basically unstable, no matter how autocratic it may be. Mere separation from the parental house community and the establishment of an independent house community is sufficient for a person to be set free from the house authority. This is mostly the case in the large house communities of primitive agricultural peoples. The emancipatio legis Saxonicae of the German law clearly has its economic foundation in the importance of personal labor, which prevailed at the time.

On the other hand, the house authority is typically stable wherever ownership of livestock, and property in general, forms the prime economic basis. This is particularly true when land ceases to be abundant and becomes a scarce commodity. For reasons already discussed above, strong unity of house community is generally an attribute of the landed aristocracy. The man without any landed property or with only little of it is also without hereditary house community.

The same difference is to be found in the capitalistic stage of economic development. The large house communities of Florence and other parts of northern Italy practiced the principle of joint responsibility and of maintaining the common property. In the trading places of the Mediterranean, especially in Sicily and southern Italy, the exact opposite was the case: each adult member of the house community could at any time request one's share while the house head was still alive. Nor did joint personal liability to the outsiders exist. In the family enterprises of northern Italy, the inherited capital represented the basis of economic power to a greater degree than did the personal business activities of the partners. The opposite was true in southern Italy, where common property was treated as a product of common work. With the increasing importance of capital, the former practice gained dominance. In this case, the capitalist economy, a "later" stage in terms of a theory of development starting with undifferentiated social action, determines a theoretically "earlier" structure in which the house members are more tightly bound to the house community and subjected to house authority.

III.ii: ENTERPRISE

However, at the same time a far more significant, and uniquely Occidental, transformation of the house community and authority was under way in these Florentine and other capitalist enterprises of medieval house communities. The entire economic orders of such large house communities were periodically regulated by contract. Whereas, originally, the personal "funds" and the business organization were regulated by the same set of rules, the situation gradually changed. Continuous capitalist acquisition became a special "vocation" performed in an increasingly separate "enterprise." A rational action emerged out of the communal action of the house community, in such a way that the old belonging of house community, workshop and office fell apart, which had been presupposed for the unbroken house community as well as the ancient "oikos," to be discussed in the next section.

III.ii.1: Separation of Business from House

First, the house community ceased to exist as a necessary basis of business enterprise. Henceforth, the partner was not necessarily or typically a house member. Consequently, business assets had to be separated from the private property of the partners. Similarly, a distinction began to be made between the business employees and the house servants. Above all, the business debts had to be distinguished from the private debts of the partners, and joint responsibility had to be limited to the former, which were identified as such by being contracted under the "firm," the name of business enterprise.

This whole development is obviously a precise parallel to the separation of the bureaucratic office as a "vocation" from private life, the "bureau" from the private house community, the official assets and liabilities from private property, and the official dealings from private dealings. The capitalist "enterprise," emerged from the house community and eventually retreats from it, thus had affinity to the "bureau" from the very beginning and now bureaucratized the private economy.

But the factor of decisive importance in this development of enterprise is not the spatial separation of the house from the work-shop and the store. This is rather typical of the bazaar system of the Islamic cities in the Orient, which rests throughout on the separation of the castle (kasbah), bazaar (suk), and residences. What is crucial is the legal and accounting separation of household and "enterprise," and the development of a corresponding body of laws, such as the commercial register, elimination of family-bound of the association and the firm, separate property of the private firm or limited partnership, and laws on bankruptcy. This fundamentally important development is the characteristic feature of the Occident, and it is worthy of note that the legal forms of our present commercial law were almost all developed as early as the Middle Ages--whereas they were almost entirely foreign to the law of Antiquity with its capitalism that was quantitatively sometimes much more developed. This is one of the many phenomena characterizing most clearly the qualitative uniqueness of the development of modern capitalism, since both the concentration of the family property for the purpose of mutual economic support and the development of a "firm" from a family name existed, for example, in China as well.

III.ii.2: Chinese Firm

In China, too, the joint liability of the family stands behind the debts of the individual. The name used by a company in commercial transactions does not provide information about the actual proprietor; there, too, the "firm" is related to the business enterprise and not to the house community. But the laws on private property and bankruptcy as they were developed in Europe seem to be absent in China, where two things are of special relevance: association and credit, until the modern era, were to a large degree bound on the clan. And, the keeping of the property intact in the wealthy clans and the mutual granting of credit within the clan served different purposes. They were concerned not with capitalistic profit but with raising money to cover the costs of family members' preparation for the examinations and afterwards for the purchase of an office. The position of the office then offered the relatives an opportunity to recover their expenses with a profit from the legal and illegal revenues that the office afforded. Furthermore, these relatives could benefit from the protection of the office-holder. It was the chances of the politically rather than economically determined gain that were conducive to the "capitalistic" unity of the family, especially one that was well-off economically.

The capitalistic association which corresponds to our "joint-stock company" and is completely detached, at least formally, from clan and personal ties has its forerunners in Antiquity only in the area of politically oriented capitalism, i.e., in companies of tax-farmers. In the Middle Ages, such associations were also organized in part for colonizing ventures --such as the big partnerships of the creditor's association in Genoa -- and in part for state credit --such as the Genoese community of creditors which for all practical purposes held the state finances under sequester. In the realm of private enterprise, a purely commercial and capitalistic association initially developed only in the form of temporary community in long-distance trade, such as the commenda association which can be found already in Old Babylonian law and later quite universally. A financier entrusts his capital to a travelling merchant for a concrete voyage, with profit or loss distribution on this basis. This is the form typical for the period of "occasional trade." Enterprises in the form of joint-stock corporations, especially colonial undertakings which were monopolistically privileged by the political powers, constituted the use of such enterprise also in purely private business. These kinds of undertakings which, as the basis of a capitalist enterprise, constitute its most radical separation from the original house community, however, do not particularly concern us at this point. Rather, we shall turn to a radically different way in which a house community may develop: oikos, lord's house economy.

III.iii: OIKOS

III.iii.1: Origin Of Oikos

The dissolution of the house community and authority because of "exchange with the outside," and the subsequent rise of the capitalist "enterprise" stands in clear contrast to the internal development of the house community into an "oikos." In technical term, the oikos is not simply any "large" household or one which produces on its own various products, agricultural or industrial; rather, it is the authoritarian household of a prince, manorial lord or patrician. Its dominant motive is not capitalistic acquisition but the lord's organized want satisfaction in kind. For this purpose, the lord may resort to any means, including large-scale trade. Decisive for oikos is the utilization of "property," not "capital investment." The goal of the oikos is to organize want satisfaction, even if market-oriented enterprises are attached to it. Of course, there is indistinguishable transitions between the two types of economic orientation, and often also a more or less rapid transformation from one into the other. In reality, if there is a relatively developed material culture, the oikos is hardly a pure communal form of natural economy; the pure type exists only if it permanently eliminates all exchange and trade, or at least aims at a self-sufficient economy (autarky). In this case an apparatus of house-dependent workers, which are often highly specialized, produces all the goods and personal services, economic, military and ritual that the lord requires. His own land provides the raw materials, his workshops with their personally dependent workers supply all other materials. The remaining services are provided by servants, officials, house priests and warriors. Exchange takes place only if surplus is to be dumped or if goods simply cannot be provided in any other way.

III.iii.2: Historical Cases

This is the type of the royal economies of the Orient, especially of Egypt, and to a lesser degree by the economy of the Homeric aristocrats and princes; those of the Persian and Frankish kings also appear quite similar. In the Roman empire the propertied moved increasingly in this direction as they grew in size, the slave supply became scarce and capitalist acquisition was curbed by bureaucracy and taxes. But the medieval military lords took the opposite course with the increasing importance of trade, the cities and the money economy. However, in all these cases the oikos was never really self-sufficient economy. The Pharaoh engaged in foreign trade just as did the majority of the early princes and aristocrats of the Mediterranean; their treasuries depended heavily upon trade proceeds. As early as the Frankish kingdom the land lords received substantial amounts of money or various tributes which had cash-value. The captain (capitularia) took for granted that the royal treasuries (fisc) were free to sell whatever was not needed by the court and the army.

III.iii.3: Unfree Workers

In all better known cases only a part of the unfree worker of the big owners of land and people was completely tied to their house community. Those most strictly attached to the house community were the personal servants and the workers who labored in the master's house community and were wholly maintained by him the case of "self-sufficient utilization" of labor. However, another community of strictly attached workers consists of those who produced for the market; the Carthaginian, Sicilian and Roman plantation owners employed their barrack slaves in this manner, as did the father of Demosthenes (384-322 BC), a Greek orator, with the slaves in his two workshop (ergasteria) or, in modern times, the Russian landlords with the peasants in their "factories": these are cases of the capitalist utilization of unfree labor. However, many slaves on the plantations and in the ergasteria were bought on the market, hence they were not "produced" in the house community. Unfree workers born in the master's house community presuppose some kind of unfree "family," and this implies decrease of house-bound and normally also of the exploitation of labor power. Therefore, the majority of these hereditarily unfree workers is not employed in centralized enterprises, but surrenders only part of their work capacity to the master, and pays him more or less arbitrary and traditionally fixed taxes in kind or in coin. Whether the master prefers to use his unfree workers as a work-force or as a source of revenue depends above all on what yields most to him in a given situation.

Barrack slaves without families can be replaced only if they are very cheap and plentiful; this presupposes continuous slavery wars and low food costs (a Southern climate). Hereditarily attached peasants can pay money taxes only if there is a (local) market, and this in turn requires a degree of urban development. Where this was low, and the harvest yield could be fully used only through export, as in the German and European East at the beginning of modern times (in contrast to the West) and in the "Black Earth" regions of Russia in the nineteenth century, the forced labor of the peasants was the only way of making money. In this way "large-scale enterprise" developed within the oikos. The owner of an oikos may become almost indistinguishable, or wholly identical, with a capitalist entrepreneur, if he establishes large industrial undertaking with his own unfree labor, or rented unfree or even free workers, he may use the latter two groups either partly or exclusively, and he may run his own or rented ergasteria. A major example for this transformation are the creators of the Silesian landlord (starost) industries.

However, the "oikos" is defined only by the rent-producing utilization of property, but in terms of the owner's primary interest this meaning may become practically indistinguishable from, or outright identical with, entrepreneurial capital proper. The manorial origin of the starost industry is visible only because of the particular combination of enterprises large-scale lumbering with brick-yards, distilleries, sugar refineries, coal mines, that means, of enterprises that are not integrated, along technically or economically suggested, horizontal or vertical lines, like the modern "combined" and "mixed" firms. However, a manorial lord who adds a foundry or a steel-mill to his coal mines, or a lumber-mill and paper-mill to his lumbering operations may in practice bring about the same result. Only the starting point, not the end product are different.

III.iii.4: Ergasterion

In the ancient workshops (ergasteria) too, we find incipient combinations based on the possession of raw materials. The father of Demosthenes, who descended from a family of Attic merchants, was an importer of ivory which he sold to anyone desiring it, to any comer and which was used as inlay for knife handles and furniture. He eventually trained slaves to manufacture knives in his own workshop and, in addition, had to take over the ergasterion, that means, mostly the slaves of a bankrupt cabinet-maker. He combined these holdings into both a cutlery and a furniture ergasterion. The ergasterion developed further during the Hellenistic period, especially in Alexandria, up until early Islamic times. The use of unfree craftspersons as a source of rent was widely known throughout Antiquity, both in the Orient and the Occident, during the early Middle Ages, and in Russia until the emancipation of the serfs. The master may rent his slaves, as Nikias did with masses of unskilled slaves for the mine-owners. He may turn them into skilled craftspersons, a practice found in all Antiquity, from a contract in which the Persian prince Cambyses (6th century BC) is mentioned as the owner of the trainer, up to the late Roman pandects, but it is also found in Russia as late as the 18th and 19th century. The master may also leave it to the slaves, after he arranged for their training, to work for their own account in exchange for a rent (Greek: apophora, Babylonian: mandaku, German: Halssteuer, Russian: obrok). The master may also provide them with a workshop and capital equipment (peculium) as well as working capital (merx peculiaris). Historically, we find all imaginable transitions of work-force from almost total freedom of mobility to complete regulation in barracks. A more detailed description of the "enterprises" emerging within the oikos and run by either the master or the unfree belongs into another area of the study of economic history. However, the transformation of the oikos into a patrimonial rulership will be discussed in the Sociology of Rulership.

IV: ETHNICITY AND COMMUNITY

IV.i: RACE AND CULTURE

IV.i.1: Racial Belonging

A much more problematic source of social action than the sources of economic action is "racial belonging": the possession of inherited and inheritable common traits that actually derive from the commonality of ancestry. Of course, racial belonging creates a "community" only when it is subjectively regarded as a common character; this happens only when a neighborhood or the mere nearness of racially different communities is the basis of social (mostly political) action, or conversely, when some common fates of members of the same race are linked to some enmity against members of an obviously different race. The resulting social action is usually merely negative: those who are obviously different are avoided and despised or, conversely, viewed with superstitious awe. Their different outer habits that they have "acquired" or "been" are simply despised, or venerated superstitiously if they are too powerful in the long run. In this case "antipathy" is the primary and normal reaction. However, this antipathy is shared not just by persons with anthropological commonality, and its extent is by no means determined by the degree of anthropological similarities; furthermore, this antipathy is linked not only to inherited traits but just as much to other visible differences of outer habits.

IV.i.2: U.S. Experiment

If the degree of objective racial difference can be determined, among other things, purely physiologically by establishing whether hybrids reproduce themselves at approximately normal rates, the subjective aspects, the reciprocal racial attraction or hatred, might be measured by finding out whether sexual relationships are preferred or rare between two communities, and whether they are carried on permanently or temporarily and irregularly. In all communities with a developed "ethnic" consciousness the existence or absence of intermarriage relationship (connubium) would then be a normal consequence of racial attraction or segregation. Research on the sexual attraction or hatred between different ethnic communities is only beginning, but there is not the slightest doubt that racial factors, that means, common ancestry played the role for the intensity of sexual and intermarriage relationships, sometimes decisively. However, the existence of several million racially mixed persons in the United States speaks clearly against the assumption of a "natural" racial antipathy, even among quite different races. Apart from the laws against biracial marriages in the Southern states, sexual relationships between the two races are now abhorred by both sides, but this development began only with the Emancipation and resulted from the Blacks' demand for equal civil rights. Hence this abhorrence on the part of the Whites is socially determined by the previously sketched tendency toward the monopolization of social power and honor, a tendency which in this case happens to be linked to race.

The intermarriage relationship (connubium) itself, that means a permanent sexual relationships from which the offspring can participate in the activities and advantages of the father's political, economic or status community, depends on many circumstances. Under unbroken father's powers, which we will discuss later, the father is free to grant equal rights to his children from slaves. Moreover, the glorification of female kidnaping by the hero made racial mixing a normal event within the warrior strata. However, father's power was increasingly restricted with the monopolistic closure of the community, by now well known tendency of political, status or other communities and with the monopolization of marriage opportunities; these tendencies restricted the intermarriage to the offspring from a permanent sexual relationship within the given political, religious, economic and status community. This also produced a high incidence of inbreeding. The "in-group marriage" (endogamy) of a community is probably everywhere a secondary product of such tendencies, if we define it not merely as the fact that a permanent sexual relationship occurs primarily on the basis of membership in a band, but as a process of social action in which only endogamous children are accepted as full members. "Pure" inbreeding of anthropological types is often a secondary consequence of such closure; examples are sects (as in India) as well as pariah peoples, that means, communities that are socially despised yet wanted as neighbors because they have monopolized indispensable skills.

Reasons other than actual racial relationship influence the degree to which blood relationship is taken into account. In the United States [before 1920] the smallest admixture of Black's blood disqualifies a person unconditionally, whereas very considerable admixtures of Indian blood do not. Doubtlessly, it is important that the Blacks appear esthetically even more alien than Indians, but an important fact is that the Blacks were slaves and hence disqualified in the status hierarchy. The conventional intermarriage is far less impeded by anthropological differences than by status differences, which are formed by socialization and upbringing in the widest sense of the word. Mere anthropological differences account for little, except in cases of extreme esthetic antipathy.

IV.i.3: Race and Community

The question of whether apparent "racial" differences are based on biological "inheritance" or on "tradition" is usually of no importance as far as their effect on mutual attraction or hatred is concerned. This is true of the development of in-group marriage communities, and even more so of attraction or hatred in other kinds of "social intercourse," i.e., whether all sorts of friendly, companionable, or economic relationships and communities are established easily and on the footing of mutual trust and respect, or whether such relationships are established with difficulty and with precautions that betray mistrust. The more or less easy emergence of social intercourse community in the broadest sense of the word is linked to the most superficial features of historically accidental circumstances just as much as to inherited racial characteristics. Decisive for the social intercourse community is that the different "custom" is not understood in its subjective "meaning" since the cultural key to it is lacking, besides the unfamiliarity of different custom as such. But, as we shall see soon, not all antipathy is attributable to the absence of a "consensual community." Differences in the styles of beard and hairdo, clothes, food and eating habits, division of labor between the sexes, and all kinds of other visible differences can, in a given case, give rise to hatred and contempt, yet the significance or insignificance of these differences as well as their actual extent is little to do with the sentiment of attraction or antipathy, as is illustrated by primitive travel descriptions, the Histories of Herodotus or the older pre-scientific ethnography. Seen from their positive aspect, however, these differences may give rise to consciousness of commonality, which may become as easily the bearer of communities ranging from house and neighborhood to political and religious communities.

IV.i.4: Differentiation of Custom

All differences of "custom" can sustain a specific sense of "honor" or "dignity" in its bearers. The original motives for the rise of different habits of life are forgotten and the contrasts are then installed as "conventions." In this manner, any community can create customs, and it can also effect, in certain circumstances very decisively, the selection of anthropological types. This it can do by providing favorable chances of survival and reproduction for certain hereditary qualities and traits. This holds both for internal assimilation and for external differentiation.

Any external trait, no matter how superficial, can serve as a starting point for the familiar tendency to monopolistic closure. However, the universal force of "imitation" has the general effect of only gradually changing the traditional customs and usages, just as anthropological types are changed only gradually by racial mixing. But if there are sharp differences between observable styles of life, these are due to conscious monopolistic closure, which started from small differences that were then cultivated and intensified; or these are due to the peaceful or warlike migrations of communities that previously lived far from each other and had accommodated themselves to their heterogeneous conditions of existence. Similarly, strikingly different racial types, bred in isolation, may live in sharply segregated neighborhood to one another either because of monopolistic closure or because of migration. We can conclude then that similarity and contrast of habits and custom, regardless of whether they are biologically inherited or traditionally transmitted in origin, are subject to their change and development through similar conditions of social life and the formation of a specific community. The difference lies partly in the differential instability of biological traits and types, partly in the fixed (though often unknown) limit to engendering new hereditary qualities. Compared to this, the scope for "habituation" of new "customs" is incomparably greater, although there are considerable variations in the transmissibility of traditions.

Almost any kind of commonality or differences of habits and customs can induce the subjective belief in ethical affinity or disaffinity between friendly or opponent communities. Not every belief in ethnic affinity, however, is founded on the resemblance of customs or of habits. But in spite of great variations in customs, such a belief can emerge and develop community-forming powers when it is carried by a memory of an actual migration, be it colonization or individual migration. The persistent memory of the old habits and of childhood continues as a source of home-country sentiment among emigrants even when they have become so thoroughly adjusted to the new environment that return to their homeland would be intolerable (this being the case of most German-Americans, for example).

In colonies, the attachment to the colonists' homeland survives despite considerable mixing with the inhabitants of the colonial land and despite profound changes in tradition and habituation as well. In case of political colonization, the decisive factor is the need for political support. In general, the continuation of relationships through marriage is important, and so are the market relationships, provided that the "customs" remained unchanged. These market relationships between the homeland and the colony may be very close, as long as the custom remain similar, and especially when colonies are in an almost absolutely alien environment and within an alien political territory.

IV.i.5: Ethnic Commonality

The belief in ancestry affinity, regardless of whether it has any objective foundation, can have important consequences especially for the formation of a political community. We shall call "ethnic group" the human group that nurtures a subjective belief in the commonality of its ancestry because of similarities of habits or customs or both, or because of memories of colonization and migration; this belief must be important for the propagation of communal relationship; conversely, it does not matter whether or not an objective blood relationship exists. "Ethnic" commonality differs from the "clan" community precisely because it is mere a belief in "commonality" (Gemeinsamkeit), not a "community" (Gemeinschaft) as the latter which constitutes real social action. In our sense, ethnic commonality does not constitute a community; but mere a moment leading to communal relationship of any kind, particularly in the political sphere. On the other hand, it is primarily the political community, no matter how artificially built, that nurtures the belief in ethnic commonality. This belief tends to persist even after the disintegration of the political community, unless drastic changes in the custom, habit, or, above all, language take place among its members.

This artificial cultivation of the belief in ethnic commonality follows the reorientation of rational relationship into communal relationship. Under the condition that rational and objective social action is not prevailed, almost any rational social relationship, even the most rational one, is reoriented to an overarching communal consciousness; this takes the form of a brotherhood on the basis of the belief in "ethnic" commonality. In the ancient Greek city-state (polis), even the most arbitrary personal band became at least the member of a cult community and often of a common fictitious ancestor. The twelve tribes of Israel were subdivisions of a political community, and they were charged monarchy's want satisfaction on a monthly basis. The same holds for the Greek tribes (phyla) and their subdivisions; the latter, too, were regarded as units of common ethnic ancestry. It is true that the original division may have been induced by political or actual ethnic differences, but the effect was the same when such a division was made quite rationally and schematically, after the break-up of old communities and abandonment of local units, as it was done by Cleisthenes. It does not follow, therefore, that the Greek city-states was actually or originally a clan- or hereditary-state. Rather its ethnic fictions were a sign of the low degree of rationalization of Greek community life. Conversely, it is a symptom of the greater rationalization of Roman formation of the community that its old schematic subdivisions (curiae) were based on each religious origin, and only a small degree of ethnic commonality.

The belief in ethnic commonality often restrict the circles of a "social intercourse community," which in turn is not always identical with in-group marriage communities, for greatly varying numbers of persons may be encompassed by both. Their similarity rests on the belief in a specific "honor" of their membership, not shared by the outsiders, that is, the sense of "ethnic honor."

Communities, in turn, can breed sentiments of commonality which will persist even after their dissolution and will have an "ethnic" sentiment. The political community in particular can produce such an effect. But most directly, such an effect is created by the community of language, which is the bearer of a specific "cultural possession of the masses" and makes mutual "understanding" possible or easier.

Wherever the memory of the origin of a community by peaceful secession or emigration --"colony," Holy Sacrifice (ver sacrum), and the like-- from a mother community remains for some reason alive, there undoubtedly exists a very specific and often extremely powerful "ethnic" sentiment of community, which is determined by several factors: community of political memories or, even more importantly in early times, persistent ties with the old cult communities, or lesser degree the strengthening of clan community and other communal relationships, both in the old and the new community, or other persistent social relationships. Where these ties are lacking, or once they cease to exist, the ethnic sentiment of community is absent, regardless of how close the blood relationship may be.

"Ethnic" differences remain where they are aesthetically apparent in the habit or equally weighted in the conduct of everyday life. But the "ethnic" differences that may otherwise seem to be of small relevance, become of special importance when they are connected to the language community, which may or may not coincide with objective or subjective belief in blood relationships, to the independent commonality in religious belief, or to the effect of pure political common destiny and its memory. Language community and similarity of ritual regulation of life, which was conditioned by common religious notions, are extraordinary strong and effective foundation of the sentiment of ethnic affinity precisely because "understandability" of the meaning of other's deeds is the most fundamental presupposition of communal relationship.

IV.i.6: Ethnic Honor

But we shall not consider these two elements in the present context, rather we ask: what is it that remains? It must be said that apparent differences in dialect and in religion do not exclude ethnic sentiments of community. Next to obvious differences in the economic conduct of life, the belief in ethnic affinity has at all times been affected by outward differences in clothes, in the style of housing, food and eating, the division of labor between the sexes and between the free and the unfree. That is to say, these things are connected to one's conception of "propriety" and, above all, one's sense of honor and dignity. All those things we shall find later on as objects of specific "status" differences. The conviction of the superiority of one's own customs and the inferiority of alien ones, a conviction which sustains "ethnic honor," is actually quite analogous to the concept of "status" honor.

"Ethnic" honor is a specific honor of the masses, for it is the honor of anybody who belongs to the subjectively believed ancestry community. The "poor white trash," i.e., the propertyless and jobless, very often destitute white inhabitants of the southern states of the United States of America in the period of slavery, were the actual bearers of racial antipathy, which was quite foreign to the planters. This was so because the social "honor" of the poor whites was dependent upon the social segregation of the Blacks.

And behind all ethnic diversities there is somehow naturally the notion of the "chosen people," which is alone the counterpart of "status" differentiation in the plane of horizontal co-existence. The idea of a chosen people derives its popularity from the fact that it can be claimed to an equal degree by any and every member of the mutually despising communities, in contrast to status differentiation which always rests on subordinate relationships. Consequently, ethnic hatred may take hold of any conceivable differences in the propriety and transform them into "ethnic conventions."

IV.i.7: Custom and Ethnic Consciousness

Besides the previously mentioned moments of conventionalization, which were still more or less closely related to the economic order, may take hold of such things as a hairdo or style of beard and the like. The differences thereof have an "ethnically" discriminative effect, because they are thought of as symbols of ethnic belonging. Of course, the ethnic hatred is not always based merely on the "symbolic" character of the distinguishing traits. The fact that the Scythian women oiled their hair with butter, which then gave off a rancid odor, while Greek women used perfumed oil to achieve the same purpose, according to an ancient report, prevention of social intercourse between the aristocratic ladies of these two communities. The smell of butter certainly had a more compelling effect than even the most prominent racial differences, or--as far as I could see--the "Black odor," of which so many fables are told. In general, "racial qualities" are effective only as limiting factors with regard to the belief in "ethnic" commonality, such as in case of an excessively heterogeneous and esthetically unaccepted habit; they are not positively community-forming power.

Obvious differences of "custom," which play a role equal to that of inherited habit in the creation of sentiments of ethnic community and beliefs in blood affinity, are usually caused, in addition to linguistic and religious differences, by the diverse economic and political conditions of various social communities. If we ignore cases of clear-cut boundaries in linguistic, political, or religious communities as a basis of differences of "custom" (these in fact are lacking in wide areas of the African and South American continents), then there are only gradual transitions of custom and no solid "ethnic boundaries," except those due to gross geographical differences. The sharp differences in ethnically relevant customs, which were not conditioned either by political or economic or religious factors, usually came into existence by way of migration or expansion, when communities of people that had previously lived in complete or partial isolation from each other and became accommodated to heterogeneous conditions of existence came to live side by side. As a result, the obvious contrast in the conduct of life usually evokes, on both sides, the idea of blood disaffinity, regardless of the objective state of fact. It is quite difficult to determine in general --and even in a concrete individual case-- what influence specific "ethnic" factors (i.e., the belief in blood affinity, or its opposite, which rests on commonality, or differences, of outer appearance and conduct of life) have on the formation of a community.

There is no difference between the "ethnically" relevant "customs" and the "customs" in general, as far as their effect is concerned. The belief in ancestry affinity, in combination with a similarity of customs, is likely to promote the spread of the social action of an ethnic banding among the rest, since the community consciousness of ethnic belonging furthers "imitation." This is especially true of the propaganda of religious communities. However, it is not possible to go beyond these vague generalizations. The content of social actions that are possible on an "ethnic" basis remains indeterminate.

IV.i.8: Folk, Tribe and People

There is a corresponding ambiguity in concepts of ethnically determined social action, that means, determined by the belief in blood affinity. Such concepts are "folk," "tribe" and "people", each of which is ordinarily used in the sense of an ethnic subdivision of the following one (although the first two may be used in reversed order). Using such terms, one usually implies either the existence of a contemporary political community, no matter how loosely organized, or memories of an extinct political community, such as they are preserved in heroic tales and legends; or the existence of a linguistic or dialect community; or, finally, of a religious community. In the past, cult communities in particular were the typical component of "tribal" or "folk" consciousness. But in the absence of the political community, contemporary or past, the external boundary of the community was usually obscure. The cult communities of Germanic tribes, as late as the Burgundian period (6th century AD), were probably rudiments of political communities and therefore pretty well defined. By contrast, the Delphian oracle, the undoubted cultic symbol of Hellenic "folks," also revealed the oracles to the outsiders and accepted their veneration since it was a rational enterprise of the cult only among some Greek segments, excluding the most powerful cities. The cult as an exponent of "tribal sentiments" is thus generally either a remnant of a political community which once existed but was destroyed by disunion and colonization, or it is --as in the case of the Delphian Apollo-- a product of a "cult community" brought about by other than purely ethnic conditions, but which in turn gives rise to the belief in blood community. All history shows how easily political action can give rise to the notion of "blood community," unless gross differences of anthropological type impede it.

IV.i.9: Tribe as Political Artifact

The "tribe" is clearly defined when it is a subdivision of a "polity," which, in fact, often establishes it. In this case, the artificial origin is revealed by the round numbers in which tribes usually appear, for example, the previously mentioned division of the people of Israel into twelve tribes, the three Doric tribes (phyle) and the various tribes of the other Hellenes. When a political community newly establishes or reorganizes "tribes," they are a political artifact, even though they soon adopt the whole symbolism of blood community and particularly a tribal cult. Even today it is not rare that political artifacts develop a sentiment of commonality in the blood affinity. Very schematic constructs such as those "states" of the United States that were made into squares according to their latitude have a strong consciousness of belonging; it is also not rare that families travel from New York to Richmond to make an expected child a "Virginian." Such artificial formation does not preclude the possibility that the Hellenic tribes, for example, were at one time independent communities and that the city-states used them schematically when they were merged into a political band. However, tribes that existed before the city-states were either identical with the corresponding political communities which were subsequently associated into a city-states, and in this case they were called ethnos, not phyle; or, as it probably happened many times, the politically unorganized tribe, as a presumed "blood community," lived from the memory that it once engaged in political rational action, typically a single conquest or defense, and then such political memories constituted the "tribe."

Thus, the fact that "tribal consciousness" was primarily formed by common political destiny and not by "ancestry" appears to have been a frequent source of the belief in "ethnic" belonging. Of course, this was not the only source; commonality of "customs" is an important source of tribal consciousness, which is derived largely from adaptation to natural conditions and the imitation of neighbors. In practice, however, "tribal consciousness" usually has a political orientation: in case of military danger or opportunity, it easily produces the subjective sentiment of blood affinity among "tribal" or "folk" members. The potential drive to political action is thus one of the major contents of the rather unclear notions of "tribe" and "folk." Such periodic political action may easily develop into the duty of solidarity as the "customary" norm of all members of tribe or folk to support one another in case of a military attack, even if there is no corresponding politically installed administration; violators of this duty may suffer the fate of the Germanic tribes of Segestes and Inguiomer --expulsion from the tribal territory--, even if the tribe has no political "organ." If the tribe has reached this stage, it has indeed become a solid political community, no matter how inactive in peacetime, and hence changeable, it may be. However, even under favorable conditions the transition from the "habitual" to the customary and therefore "obligatory" is very fluid. All in all, the notion of "ethnically" conditioned social action requires a subtle sociological analysis, which, as we do not attempt here, would have to distinguish carefully: the actual subjective effect of those "customs" conditioned by circumstances and those determined by tradition; the differential impact of the varying content of custom; the influence of language, religion and political communities, past and present, upon the formation of customs; the extent to which such factors create attraction or hatred, and especially the blood solidarity or enmity; the consequences of this belief for social action in general, for diverse sexual relationships, and specifically for action on the basis of custom-community or the belief in blood affinity, all of this would have to be studied in detail. It is certain that in this process the collective term "ethnic" should be abandoned, for it is not usable for really objective analysis. However, we do not pursue sociology for its own sake and therefore limit ourselves to showing briefly the diverse problems that are hidden behind this seemingly uniform phenomenon.

The concept of the "ethnic" community, which dissolves if we define our terms exactly, corresponds in this regard to one of the most bothering concept: the "nation," since it brings us pathetic sentiment as soon as we attempt to grasp it sociologically.

IV.ii: NATIONAL COMMUNITY

IV.ii.1: Serbs and Croats

The concept of "nationality" shares with that of the "folk" --in the "ethnic" sense--the vague connotation that is based on "communal" sentiment of distinctively common ancestry community must derive from common ancestry. In reality, of course, persons who consider themselves members of the same nationality are often much less related by common ancestry than are persons belonging to different and hostile nationalities. Differences of nationality may exist even among communities closely related by common ancestry, merely because they have different religious confessions, as in the case of Serbs and Croats. The concrete reasons for the belief in "national" commonality and for the resulting social action vary greatly.

IV.ii.2: Alsatians

Today, in the age of language conflicts, a "language community" is pre-eminently considered as a normal basis of nationality. Whatever the "nation" means beyond a mere "language community," the specific objective of its social action can only be carried out by a political band. Modern "nation-state" has become conceptually identical with "state" based on common language. But it may comprise several language communities, even though it usually has one official language for political communication. A language community is also insufficient in sustaining a sentiment of "nationality" --a concept which we will leave undefined for the present. Aside from the examples of the Serbs and Croats, this is demonstrated by the Irish, the Swiss and the German-speaking Alsatians; these people do not consider themselves as members, at least not as full members, of the "nation" based on their language. Conversely, language differences do not necessarily cultivate a sentiment of "national" community. The German-speaking Alsatians considered themselves --and most of them still do-- as part of the French "nation," even though not in the same sense as French-speaking nationals. Hence there are qualitative "stages" of the belief in "national" commonality.

Many German-speaking Alsatians feel a wide sense of commonality with the French because they share certain commonality of their "sense of culture" and also common political memories. This can be understood by any visitor who walks through the museum in Golmar, which is rich in relics such as tricolors, pompier and military helmets, edicts by Louis Philippe and especially memorabilia from the French Revolution; these may appear trivial to the outsider, but they have sentimental value for the Alsatians. This common political and indirectly social experiences, which are highly valued by the masses as symbols of the destruction of feudalism and the story of these events takes the place of the heroic folklore of primitive peoples, brought about the sense of community. The "French" nation was the liberator from feudal servitude, she was the bearer of "culture," her language was the cultural language, while native German was a dialect for everyday communication. Hence the attachment to the cultural language is an obvious parallel to the sentiment of community based on common language, but the two phenomena are not identical; rather, we deal here with an inner attitude that derives from a partial cultural community and from shared political memories.

IV.ii.3: Poles

Until a short time ago most Poles in Upper Silesia had no conscious "sentiment of Polish nationality, which was an antagonistic consequence to the Prussian political band of essentially the German language community. The Poles were loyal as passive "Prussians," but they were not interested in being a member of the German Empire, the majority did not feel a conscious or a strong need to segregate themselves from German-speaking neighbors. Here the Poles lacked entirely the development of "national sentiment" based on the language community, and knew no "cultural community" base on the cultural development.

IV.ii.4: Baltics

Among the Baltic Germans we find neither a positive sentiment of nationality based on a language community with the Germans, nor a desire for political union with the German Empire; in fact, most of them would abhor such a unification. However, they segregate themselves strictly from the Slavic environment, and especially from the Russians, primarily because of "status" consciousness and partly because of different "customs" and cultural values which are neither "understandable" nor "acceptable" each other. This segregation exists in spite of, and partly because of, the fact that the Baltic Germans are intensely loyal vassals of the Tsar and have been as interested as any "national" Russian in the predominance of the Imperial Russian community which they provide with officials and which in turn maintains their descendants. Hence, here too we do not find, in the modern meaning of the term, any "national sentiment" oriented toward a language and cultural community (the case is similar to that of the purely propertyless Poles). The Baltics were loyal to the Russian political community with their German language community, and had modified sentiment of community strongly influenced by status consciousness. Of course, they were no longer a uniform status community, even though the differences are not as extreme as within the white population of the American South. In particular, inner status and class-antipathy hindered a communal relationship in a language community.

IV.ii.5: Swiss

Finally, there are cases for which the term nationality does not seem to be quite fitting; witness the sentiment of community by the Swiss and the Belgians or the inhabitants of Luxemburg and Liechtenstein. We hesitate to call them "nations," not because of their relative "smallness" --the Dutch appear to us as a nation--, but because these "neutralized" states have purposively forsaken "power." The Swiss are not a nation if we take as criteria common language or common literature and art. Yet they have a strong sentiment of community in spite of some recent disintegrative tendencies. This sentiment is not only sustained by loyalty toward the political community but also by the subjective belief in common "customs" (irrespective of actual differences). These customs are largely shaped by the differences in social structure between Switzerland and Germany, but also all other big and hence militaristic powers. Because of its inner structure of rulership, Switzerland appears to be preserved only by such a special political existence.

IV.ii.6: Quebec

The loyalty of the French Canadians toward the English polity is today determined above all by the deep antipathy against the economic and social structure, and customs, of the neighboring United States; hence membership in the Dominion of Canada appears as a guarantee of their tradition.

IV.ii.7: Sentiment of National Community

This classification could easily be enlarged, as every detailed sociological investigation would have to do. It turns out that the sentiments of community under the term "national" are not uniform but may derive from diverse sources. Differences in the economic and social structure and in the internal structure of rulership, with its impact on the "customs," may play a role (but within the German Empire customs are very diverse); common political memories, religion, language and, finally, racial features may be source of the sentiment of nationality. Racial factors often have a peculiar impact. From the viewpoint of the Whites in the United States, they were not united with the Blacks by a "common sentiment of nationality," but the Blacks had a "sentiment of American nationality" at least by claiming a right to it. On the other hand, the pride of the Swiss in their own distinctiveness, and their willingness to defend it vigorously, is neither qualitatively different nor less widespread than the same attitudes in any "great and powerful nation." Time and again we find that the concept "nation" directs us to political "power." Hence, the concept seems to refer --if it refers at all to a uniform phenomenon-- to a specific kind of pathos which is linked to the idea of a political organization of power exercise by the people who shared the sentiment of language, religious, customary, and destined community; such a state may already exist or it may be desired. The more power is emphasized, the more the sentiment becomes specific. This pathetic sentiment in the "power" of one's own community, or longing for it, may be much more widespread in relatively small language communities such as the Hungarians, Czechs or Greeks than in a similar but much larger community such as the Germans 150 years ago, when they were essentially a language community without pretensions to "national" power.