Feudalism—Critique of a Model of Society and Political Economy

Plucknett Theodore F. T. , A Concise History of the Common Law, 5th edn (Boston: Little Brown, 1956), p. 507. Otto Brunner, “Feudalism: The History of a Concept,” in Cheyette Frederick L. (editor), Lordship and Community in Medieval Europe (New York: Holt, Rinehart, 1968), pp. 32–61, 37. Baron De Montesquieu, The Spirit of the Laws, trans. Thomas Nugent (New York: Hafner, 1949), Vol. II, ch. 30, p. 31.

Anderson Perry , Passages from Feudalism to Antiquity (London: N.L.B., 1977), pp. 18, 147–148.

Kula Witold , An Economic Theory of the Feudal System, trans. Garner Lawrence (London: N.L.B., 1976), pp. 9, 17.

Wallerstein Immanuel , The Modern World System (New York: Academic Press, 1976), p. 28.

Hindess Barry Hirst Paul Q. , Pre-Capitalist Modes of Production (London: Routledge, 1975), pp. 234–242. The tortuous discussion in chapter 5 eventuates in a circular definition.

Referring to the Annales school made prominent by Braudel Fernand , The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II, 2 vols., trans. Williams Sian (New York: Harper, 1972), and continued in his magisterial Les Temps de Monde, 3 vols. (Paris: Armand Colin, 1979); for a survey of the school's literature see Trian Stoianovich, French Historical Method—The Annales Paradigm (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1976).

Otto Hinze in Cheyette, Lordship (Note 1), pp. 26–30; J. F. Lemarignier, op. cit., pp. 102–111; A. Borst, op. cit., pp. 188–189. Strayer and Coulborn's essays in Rushton Coulborn (editor), Feudalism in History (Hamden, CT: Archon Books, 1965). Marc Bloch, Feudal Society, 2 vols., trans. L. A. Manyon (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1971), II: 400–401, 408–410. Georges Duby, Early Growth of the European Economy, trans. H. C. Clarke (New York: Cornell University Press, 1971), p. 162.

Pirenne Henri , Economic and Social History of Medieval Europe (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1937), pp.7–8.

Anderson , Passages (Note 2), pp.18–19, 130–131, 91–96, 115, 117, 122, 174, 141–142. Anderson provides a concise analytic summary of the standard scholarship.

Anderson , Passages (Note 2), Part II; Coulborn, Feudalism (Note 7), pp.151–166. de Oliveira Marques A. H. , History of Portugal, 2 vols. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1972), I. pp.85–87. N. H. Bates and H. Ross (editors), Byzantium (Oxford; Clarendon Press, 1948), pp.51–70. Georges Ostrogorski, Pour l'Histoire de la Féodalité Byzantine (Brussels: Inst. de Philologie, 1954), pp.92–154. Leon-Pierre Raybaud, Le Gouvernement et l'Administration Centrale de L'Empire Byzantine (Paris: Sirey, 1968), ch.5. R. H. Barrow, Slavery in the Roman Empire (New York: Barnes and Noble, 1968), pp. 89–90, dates serf tenancy to the time of Augustus. B. H. Slicher von Bath, The Agrarian History of Western Europe from A.D. 500–1850, trans. O. Ordish (New York: St. Martins, 1963), p.35.

Chevalier Francois , Land and Society in Colonial Mexico, trans. Eustis A. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1972), pp. 291–292.

Anderson, Passages (Note 2), pp.182–183. These innovations are not all medieval; the three-field crop rotation was known in 4th century Greece, the watermill in 1st century B.C., the collar harness in China in the 1st century B.C. See Cipolla Carlo M. , The Economic History of World Population, 7th ed. (New York: Penguin Books, 1979), pp.44–54.

von Bath , History (Note 10), p.51.

Duby Georges , Guerriers et Paysans (Paris: Gallimard, 1973), pp.214, 211–236.

von Bath , History (Note 10), p.29, ch.1.

Wallerstein, System (Note 4), pp.17–18. See Forman Shepard , The Brazilian Peasantry (New York: Columbia University Press, 1975), p.12.

Pirenne , Europe (Note 8), p.10.

von Bath , History (Note 10), pp.31–34.

Bloch Marc , “Natural Economy or Monetary Economy: A Pseudo-Dilemma,” in Land and Work in Medieval Europe, trans. Anderson J. F. (New York: Harper and Row, 1969), and remarks by Professor Franz Irsigler, Univ. of Trier, at the Social Science History Convention, Univ. of Indiana, Bloomington, 6 November 1982.

Bloch , Feudal (Note 7) I, ch.XVI, XVIII for list of services owed; von Bath, History (Note 10), pp.35, 47.

von Bath, History (Note 10), pp.41, 40.

op. cit., p.36.

op. cit., p.37; Duby, Growth (Note 7), pp.90, 88–92, 40, 84.

Duby , Growth (Note 7), pp.92–93.

von Bath , History (Note 10), p.46.

Duby , Growth (Note 7), pp.221–224; Kula, Theory (Note 3), p.37; Gerard A.J. Hodgett, A Social and Economic History of Medieval Europe (London: Methuen, 1972), pp.174–175, 170–178.

von Bath , History (Note 10), p. 145, 148; free tenancy, however, increased the economic insecurity of the peasantry. Compare Forman, Peasantry (Note 16), pp.51–66, for discussion of rents, corvée, and sharecropping in modern Brazil, which can be called “feudal” only in the abusive sense of the term.

Duby , Growth (Note 7), pp.230–232. Compare the role of the church in colonial Mexico as money lender to the hacendados in MacLachlan Colin Rodriguez Jaime E. , The Forging of the Cosmic Race (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980).

Kula , Theory (Note 3), p.55.

op. cit., pp.70, 52–70.

op. cit., pp.139–145.

Wallerstein , System (Note 4), pp.28–29, 18–23.

Hodgett , Europe (Note 26), p.167.

Stephenson Carl , Mediaeval Institutions, ed. Lyon Bruce D. (New York: Cornell University Press, 1976), p.234. Anderson, Passages (Note 2), pp. 151–153. Joseph Strayer, On the Medieval Origins of the Modern State (New York: Princeton University, 1970), pp.34–35 and passim.

Ullmann Walter , Principles of Government and Politics in the Middle Ages (New York: Barnes and Noble, 1961), pp.159–160, 195–200. Bloch, Feudal (Note 7) II, 379–383.

Ullmann, op cit., pp.150–152; Coulborn , Feudalism (Note 7), pp.16–17, 15, fn.1.

Petit-Dutaillis Charles , The Feudal Monarchy in France and England, trans. Hunt E. D. (New York: Harper and Row, 1967), pp.301–319, 304.

Lot Ferdinand , The End of the Ancient World (New York: Harper and Row, 1961), pp.346–347. Robert Boutrouche, Seigneurie et Féodalité (Paris: Aubier, 1970), Vol. 11, pp.298–301. Guy Fouquin, Seigneurie et Féodalité au Moyen Age (Paris: P.U.F., 1970), pp.100–110. Otto Brunner in Cheyette, Lordship (Note 1), pp.51–52.

Petit-Dutaillis, Feudal (Note 37), pp.233–248; Lapeyre Henry , Les Monarchies Européennes de XVIe Siècle (Paris: P.U.F., 1973), pp.286–293.

Prawer Joshua , The Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem (London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 1972), pp.113, 100–106, ch.8.

Boutrouche , Seigneurie (Note 38), pp.260–269; Fouquin, Féodalité, pp.72–94.

In Cheyette , Lordship (Note 1), pp.144–145, 137–155.

Boutrouche , Seigneurie (Note 37), pp. 270–271. Prawer, in Cheyette, Lordship (Note 1), pp.165, 156–179. Japanese feudalism based on rice revenues rather than tenancy: See Jon Halliday, A Political History of Japanese Capitalism (New York: MR, 1975), pp.6–8. Perry Anderson, Lineages of the Absolute State (London: N.L.B., 1974), pp.439–440. Mikiso Hane, Peasants, Rebels, and Outcastes (New York: Pantheon, 1982), ch.5. Chie Nakane, Japanese Society (New York: Penguin, 1970), ch.2, for differences between Western and Japanese notions of hierarchy, and authority.

Duby, in Cheyette, Lordship (Note 1), p.144.

Duby, in op. cit., p.139. See the documents in Strayer Joseph , Feudalism (New York: Van Nostrand, 1965), pp.146–147, 144–145, 113–114.

Lot, End (Note 38), ch.7.

Genicot, pp.128–136, and Duby, pp.145–155, in Cheyette, Lordship (Note 1). Bloch, Feudal (Note 7) II, chs. xxi, xxiv-xxvi.

Bloch, Feudal (Note 7), II, 335. Duby, in Cheyette, Lordship (Note I), p.152. Fedou Rene , L'état au Moyen Age (Paris: P.U.F., 1971), ch.3.

Marx Karl , Capital vol. 1 (New York: International Publ., 1967), pp.715, 717–7.

Marx Karl , Capital vol. 3 (New York: International Publ., 1967), pp.325–333.

Marx , Capital 3: 334–337, 332.

Marx , Capital 1: 714–715, Part 8.

See the observations of Ribeiro Darcy , Os Brasileiros (Petropolis: Vozes, 1983), pp.25–27; Maxime Rodinson, Islam and Capitalism (Austin: University of Texas, 1981), p.58–68; Forman, Peasantry (Note 16), pp.35–37; Claudio Veliz, The Centralist Tradition in Latin America (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1980), ch.1.

Grindle Merilee , State and Countryside (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, 1986), pp.25–34, Colin MacLachlan and Jaime E. Rodriguez, The Forging of the Cosmic Race (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980), pp.151–165. Juarez R. B. Lopes, Do Latifundia a Empresa Rural (Petropolis: Vozes/CEBRAP, 1981), pp.16–18.

Forman, Peasantry (Note 16), pp.11–12, 14–16, 35–37. Rothstein Francis , “The Class Basis of Patron-Client Relationships,” Latin American Perspectives, vol.1.2, Spring 1976, pp.25–35. Jose de Souza Martins, Os Componeses e a Politica no Brasil (Petropolis: Vozes, 1983), pp.46–50.

Rodinson , Islam (Note 53), p.64.

“Marxism is radical dialectics. As a praxis of theorizing, radical dialectics mediates the sociohistorical situation to its antecedent conditions, current consequences, ethical possibilities, and practical means. This concrete, situationally relative, totalizing determinate negation reveals the contradictory relations of sociohistorical actuality, and finds its ultimate mediation in social action. Its transformative capacity, within a field of conflicting praxes, is its adequation. To the extent that it modifies actuality, a dialectical theory cancels its own efficacy in creating a new situation requiring fresh mediation. Though the situation contains a portion of rationality resulting from realized intentions, no praxis masters totality; totalization in the here and now must be radically presupposition-less. Rigorous theory is profound and ruthless and thus proves the most practical. Radical dialectics serves the interest of the oppressed; it, has shown itself to be the inevitable method of their conscientization and world-transformative praxis, precisely because it perpetually revolutionizes the given and renews itself.” P.94 of my book A Dialetica Radical (Petropolis: Vozes, 1986), or Radical Dialectics which will be published in Brazil in October 1986.

A striking example of dialectical transformation occurs with the Catholic Church's union organizing and rural radio school (M.E.B.), begun as programs to teach “solidarity, temperance, property, and family” and to combat the growing influence of the Communist and socialist union movements (ULTAB and the Ligas Camponeses). As the youth of Catholic Action directly encountered the injustice and violence of the landlords they swung to the left, adopting Paulo Freire's method of conscientização (consciousness raising and literacy training) and increasingly involving themselves directly in union organization. The coup of April 1, 1964 was welcomed by the Church hierarchy as a way of reasserting control over its radicalized cadre and removing the political content of its welfare programs. However, by the 1970s the systematic terror of the “national security state” had thrown the institutional Church into opposition and in the defense of civil rights and union organization. In the 1980s, the Church was working in coordination with left parties, especially the democratic socialist Partido dos Trabalhadores, in rural and urban union federations and in the campaign for direct election of a civilian President. Guided by variants of liberation theology, the base and most of the Church hierarchy is committed to a “preferential option for the poor” and conceives of the “Kingdom of God” as a socialist future for Brazil. The Freire method of concientização is part of the daily practice of some 80 000 Ecclesiastical Base Communities, and strongly influences the thought and action of the secular left.

See de Kadt Emanuel Catholic Radicals in Brazil (London: Oxford University Press, 1970) chs.5–8, Thomas C. Bruneau The Political Transformation of the Brazilian Catholic Church (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970), Marcio Moreira Alves, A Igreija e A Politico no Brazil (Sao Paulo: Brasiliense, 1979), Comissão Pastoral da Terra: Pastoral e Compromisso (Petropolis: Vozes, 1983), my “Paulo Freire and the Workers Party of Brazil'’, University Field Staff International Report, Sept. 1986, and my “Liberation Theology and Catholic Opinion in Brazil: A Q-Methodology Study,” forthcoming.