In relation to Rus', the concept of feudalism was first applied by N. A. Polevoy in his “History of the Russian People” (vol. 1-6, -). Subsequently, N.P. Pavlov-Silvansky made an attempt to substantiate the concept of “Russian feudalism.”

In the economic field under feudalism, landowners and land users sharply differ from each other and are opposed to each other: property and use are fragmented, and not only the latter, but also the former acquire a conditional (limited) character.

In the field of the political system under feudalism, a decline in state unity and a weakening of centralizing supreme power is noticeable: the territory of the state is fragmented into parts and state prerogatives disintegrate, passing into the hands of the owners of these parts (feudal fragmentation); landowners become "sovereigns". Under the dominance of feudal principles, the struggle is stronger than the union, force is more important than law: life is much more subject to morals than to institutions, personal or group initiative - than to the general law, which is replaced by oral, local, very shaky customs. In such an era, war is not only the only valid form of protection of treaties and rights, but also a powerful means of consolidating the privileges achieved by their violation, an obstacle to the development of its firm, permanent legal and state norms. Supreme political power became the subject of private property during feudalism; “private wars” between lords took the place of armed clashes between nations. Each noble lord had the "right of war" and could wage war with anyone other than his closest lord.

Finally, in the field of relations between the individual and the state and between individuals, the predominance of private law (instead of public law) principles and the beginning of an individual contract is also established - instead of general law.

Origin of feudalism[ | ]

The origin of feudalism is associated with the collapse of the tribal system, the last stage of which was the so-called military democracy. The warriors of the leaders' squads took possession of lands with peasants (especially during conquests) and thus became feudal lords. The tribal nobility also became feudal lords.

The development of feudalism in the territories of the former Western Roman Empire was also facilitated by the presence there of latifundia, in which slaves who worked were allocated plots of land and turned into coloni.

Feudalism outside Western Europe[ | ]

There are different opinions about whether feudal relations (in the classical sense) existed outside Western Europe. Marc Bloch considered feudalism primarily, if not exclusively, a Western European phenomenon that developed as a result of specific historical conditions and identified the following features of European feudalism: dependence of the peasants; the presence of the institution of feud, that is, remuneration for service with land; vassal relations in the military class and the superiority of the warrior-knight class; lack of centralized power; simultaneous existence in a weakened form of the state and family relations.

The main aspects of criticism of the concept of feudalism as a universal stage of development of society are that in most societies of the non-European area there were no such systemically important elements as large private land ownership, serfdom, and the immunities of the service class. Marc Bloch strongly objected to the identification of the social system with the economic one:

A habit, ingrained even among historians, tends to confuse in the most annoying way two expressions: “feudal system” and “seigneurial system.” This is an entirely arbitrary assimilation of the complex of relations characteristic of the rule of the military aristocracy to the type of dependence of the peasants, which is completely different in its nature and, in addition, developed much earlier, lasted longer and was much more widespread throughout the world.

Japan's social system was especially similar to European feudalism. Nitobe Inazou wrote:

Everyone, when getting acquainted with Western history, is struck by the widespread spread of the feudal system to all states of Western Europe. This is noticeable only because Western history is better known, although feudalism is by no means limited to Western Europe. It existed in Scandinavia, Central European countries and Russia. The same system was in ancient Egypt, Abyssinia, Madagascar and Mexico... The feudal system of France, Spain, England and Germany was strikingly similar to the Japanese... Even the time of the formation of feudalism coincides. It is generally accepted that European feudalism arose in the 9th century, after the collapse of the Carolingian Empire. In the 11th century the Normans brought it to England. Three centuries later he reached the Scandinavian countries. It's amazing how these dates coincide with ours.

Fall of Feudalism[ | ]

The history of the gradual fall of feudalism covers the end of the Middle Ages and the entire modern era until the middle of the 19th century, when, under the influence of the revolutions of 1848, the serfdom of peasants in western Europe finally fell.

Of the two sides of feudalism - political and social - the second showed greater vitality: after the new state crushed the political power of the feudal lords, the social structure continued to remain feudal for a long time, and even in the era of the full development of the absolute monarchy (XVI-XVIII centuries), social feudalism retained all its strength.

The process of the fall of political feudalism consisted of the gradual unification of the country under the rule of one sovereign, the separation of sovereignty from land ownership and the replacement of vassal relations with relations of citizenship. Thanks to this process, the king ceased to be “first among equals,” turning into the sole bearer of supreme power in the country, and the lords, along with all other inhabitants of the country, became subjects of the sovereign, albeit privileged ones.

This privilege of the upper class (nobility) was one of the remnants of the social power that belonged to this element of medieval society. Having lost sovereign rights in their lands, having even lost the significance of an independent political force, the nobility retained a number of rights in relation to the peasant masses and to the state. Land ownership retained a feudal character for a very long time: lands were divided into noble and peasant lands; both of them were conditional property, immediately dependent on two persons - dominus directus and dominus utilis; peasant plots were taxed in favor of the lords with various quitrents and duties. The legal dependence of the peasants on the nobles, the owners of the land, remained for a long time, since the latter owned the patrimonial police and justice, and in many countries the peasants were in a state of serfdom.

With the liberation of cities, which sometimes turned into independent communities with a republican system, new, so to speak, collective lordships appeared next to the former feudal lordships, which had an enormous corrupting influence on feudalism. In the cities, all forms of the former feudal life disappeared first of all. Where feudal nobles were part of urban communities, they had to submit to the new orders established in the cities and became simple (albeit privileged) citizens, and the resettlement of the peasant to the city was accompanied by his liberation from serfdom (“city air makes free "). Thus, there was neither vassalage nor serfdom in the city. In the city, the separation of supreme power from the ownership of land took place first. For the first time in the cities, the principle of feudal land tenure was dealt a blow, since each homeowner was the full owner of the plot of land on which his house was built. Finally, the economic development of cities was based on trade and industry; Next to land ownership as the basis of an independent and even powerful position in society, the possession of movable property took its place. The feudal economy was subsistence; in the cities began to develop, which little by little began to penetrate into the villages and undermine the very foundations of feudal life there. The city, becoming the economic center of the entire district, gradually destroyed the economic isolation of the feudal lords and thereby undermined one of the foundations of feudalism. In a word, everything new in political and economic life, which essentially contradicted the entire feudal system and way of life, came from the cities. It was here that the social class, the bourgeoisie, was formed, which mainly waged a completely conscious and always almost more or less successful struggle against feudalism. The struggle of the bourgeoisie with the nobility is one of the most important aspects of the social history of the West from the second half of the Middle Ages to the 19th century.

FEUDALISM, the class-class structure of society, characteristic of a collective that is agrarian in nature and predominantly leads a subsistence economy. In some cases - in the ancient world - it replaces the slave system, in others (in particular, in Rus') - it is associated with the birth of a class-stratified society as such.

Feudalism is also called the era when the system, in which the main classes were landowners and the peasantry dependent on them, dominated and determined the socio-economic, political, and cultural parameters of society. Etymologically feudalism goes back to the terms fief(Latin feodum, in French version fief – fief- the same as flax – Lehen in German practice, i.e. hereditary land holding received by a vassal from a lord on the condition of performing military or other service), feudal lord(bearer of rights and obligations associated with his place in the military system). It is believed that in Europe the genesis and development of feudal relations took about a millennium - from the 5th century. (conditional milestone - the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476) until the beginning of the 16th century. However, the system-forming features of feudalism and the nature of the social evolution that took place in its depths are interpreted ambiguously in the scientific tradition.

Feudalism as a scientific term came into use in the early modern period. From the very beginning there was no unity in its use. C. Montesquieu and a number of other authors focused on such signs of the phenomenon as the hierarchical structure of the full part of society, the resulting division of power and rights to land holdings between the lord and his vassals (among which, in turn, their own subordination could develop, and in some places The principle was in force: “my vassal’s vassal is not my vassal”). But the word was often used in a broad sense: any socio-political institutions based on noble privileges and discrimination against the “third estate” were called feudal.

The science of the Enlightenment was mostly contemptuous of feudalism, identifying it with the reign of violence, superstition and ignorance. On the contrary, romantic historiography tended to idealize feudal orders and morals. If, when studying the feudal system, jurists and historians for a long time concentrated attention on the nature of social connections in the upper strata of society, on personal and land relations within the noble class, then throughout the 19th and 20th centuries. the center of gravity is shifting towards the analysis of relationships between classes.

The problem of feudalism has given rise to a huge literature. It aroused interest among historians, sociologists, cultural experts, philosophers, and publicists. The largest contribution to its development was made by French historiography, primarily Fustel de Coulanges and Marc Bloch.

When studying in-depth feudal institutions and the sociocultural processes behind them, scientists, as a rule, prefer to refrain from strict, exhaustive definitions. This may be considered a disadvantage. But the point, obviously, is not so much in the miscalculations of individual historians, but in the extreme complexity and diversity of the object of research, which makes it difficult to reduce its characteristics to a few basic parameters.

Marxist historical thought went further than others in formulating clear, unambiguous definitions of feudalism, at the same time filling the old term with new content. The development of Russian science took place under the sign of Marxism throughout almost the entire 20th century. There were many followers of Marxist methodology in other countries.

Developing Hegel’s world-historical concept and at the same time considering the entire historical process from the point of view of class struggle, Marxism included the feudal mode of production in its stage-typological scheme of the social evolution of mankind (primitive communal system - slavery - feudalism - capitalism - communism). The basis of the feudal socio-economic formation was recognized as the ownership of the feudal lords in the means of production, primarily land, and incomplete ownership of the production worker, the peasant. At the same time, the presence, along with feudal property, of the feudal-dependent peasant’s private ownership of his tools and personal household was established, as well as the coexistence within the feudal formation of several socio-economic structures.

The development of the question of the forms of land rent and other aspects of the feudal mode of production occupied a particularly important place in that modification of the teachings of K. Marx, which was called Marxism-Leninism. Having formed in the conditions of Russia, where pre-bourgeois socio-political institutions were not only especially tenacious, but also had significant originality, Lenin’s doctrine attributed the centuries-old history of the Russian people, starting from the times of Kievan Rus and up to the abolition of serfdom, to the period of feudalism. Having acquired the status of a monopolist in the Soviet Union and sharply limiting the field of discussion in science, Marxism-Leninism, even when it came to the essence of feudal relations, unconditionally cut off any deviations from the letter Short course or other directives.

If the founders of historical materialism, when creating their model of the world-historical process, showed certain hesitations when deciding the place of feudal society in it (this was most clearly expressed in Marx’s hypothesis regarding the so-called Asian mode of production), then V.I. Lenin and his followers, actively using feudal themes for propaganda purposes, gave the formation model complete certainty and completeness. They paid little attention to the discrepancies that arose.

As a result, serfdom, intuitively or consciously understood in the Russian manner, was included in the generally accepted definition of feudalism in the USSR. Not only non-professionals, but also some experts, who knew from school years from the works of N.V. Gogol and M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin, considered serfdom to be the standard of feudal society, not knowing or ignoring the fact that under feudalism the bulk of the rural people in the countries Western Europe remained personally free. The ideological situation in Russia contributed to the introduction of vulgarized or simply incorrect positions into Soviet historical science - for example, the thesis about the “revolution of the slaves” and the “revolution of the serfs” proclaimed in 1933 by I.V. Stalin in a speech at the First All-Union Congress of Collective Farmers-Shock Workers ", supposedly - respectively - opening and closing the period of feudalism.

The understanding of feudalism as a socio-economic formation, which certainly ends in a revolutionary breakdown of the old order, forced Soviet scientists to significantly expand the chronological boundaries of the object. On a scale throughout Europe, they chose the Great French Revolution as the upper formational boundary. The idea was not new at all. The thesis that the 18th century was the time of the “overthrow of feudal oppression” by the French Revolution was repeatedly repeated by historians, for example, N.Ya. Danilevsky, the founder of the theory of cultural-historical types. However, in the context of rigidly monistic, dogmatized Marxist-Leninist teaching, the periodization shift acquired new meaning. In addition, since the identification of the era of feudalism with the Middle Ages was preserved, a renaming was necessary: ​​the period of the 17th–18th centuries, formerly called early modern, in Soviet literature became the period of late feudalism, or in other words, the late Middle Ages.

In its own way, the change in nomenclature, not without logic, created new difficulties. Within the framework of a very extended in time and, nevertheless, seemingly preserving its identity of a single formation, qualitatively heterogeneous social processes and phenomena were practically put on the same level - starting with class formation among Germanic or Slavic tribes emerging from the stage of barbarism and ending with the formation and crisis of the absolute monarchy, which Marxists considered as a state-political superstructure, owing its emergence to a certain balance of power achieved by that time between the nobility and the bourgeoisie. Moreover, as a result of such a “prolongation” of the Middle Ages, mutual understanding between historians of the old and new, Marxist-Leninist, schools became even more difficult. Finally, the new periodization came into conflict with the established tradition - it seemed unusual to classify Montesquieu or Voltaire as medieval authors.

After the war, Soviet historians were allowed to slightly lower the upper limit of the Middle Ages. Marxist-Leninist thinking demanded that the line between the feudal and capitalist formations be necessarily marked by a political revolution, and therefore the English bourgeois revolution of the mid-17th century was declared the end of the Middle Ages for a long time. Then the question will be repeatedly raised that since in the advanced countries of Western Europe in the 17th century. Since the transformation of feudal society into bourgeois society has already gone far enough, it would be more correct to take the Dutch bourgeois revolution or the German Reformation as a formational line (at the same time they referred to Friedrich Engels, who wrote about the Reformation as an unsuccessful bourgeois revolution).

Specific historical and conceptual shortcomings, aggravated by the dogmatic approach to the subject characteristic of the Soviet system, did not prevent the fact that domestic historiography of the 20th century. made a huge contribution to the study of the Middle Ages. Through the works of B.D. Grekov, E.A. Kosminsky, A.I. Neusykhin, A.D. Lyublinskaya, L.V. Cherepnin, M.A. Barg, Yu.M. Bessmertny, A.Ya. Gurevich, many Other researchers advanced the elucidation of individual phenomena and events in the history of the medieval world, and the theoretical understanding of the problems of feudalism progressed.

When Soviet ideological censorship became a thing of the past, domestic historians returned to the traditional understanding of the Middle Ages. Bringing the use of terms into line with generally accepted practice in the world was not so difficult. The substantive side of the problem still caused and continues to cause much more difficulties. It was necessary to revise a number of approaches to it, clarify the chronological and territorial limits of feudal social system(as many historians began to put it, having demonstratively abandoned the concept too closely associated with Marxist-Leninist dogmas socio-economic formation).

Disputes continued about the place of non-economic coercion. It is present to one degree or another at all stages of the development of society, but, according to a number of researchers, there is reason to believe that under feudalism this factor was especially significant. Indeed, in conditions of complete predominance of small-peasant farming, the feudal lord did not act as an organizer of production. At best, he only ensured its uninterrupted functioning by protecting it from external enemies and from local violators of law and order. The feudal lord actually did not have economic tools to confiscate part of the surplus product from the peasant.

The attention of historians is also drawn to the mechanism of interaction between various forms of socio-economic organization of society. On the one hand, along with land holdings of the feudal model, medieval sources testified to the presence of other forms - starting from a completely natural, self-contained peasant allodial ownership as a legacy of pre-state life, and right up to an economy of a completely bourgeois type based on hired labor and operating on the market.

On the other hand, it is obvious that feudal personal and property relations, their refraction in the mass consciousness of their era, are also observed beyond the chronological limits of that approximately thousand-year interval (from the 5th to the 15th centuries), which is recognized in science as the period of feudalism. For a long time, scientists have made attempts to consider the history of the ancient world from a “feudal angle.” For example, the history of Sparta with its helots gave reason to consider the social system of Lacedaemon as serfdom, finding close analogues for it in medieval Europe. The history of ancient Rome with its colonation and other phenomena that suggested parallels with the Middle Ages also provided well-known grounds for this approach. In the classic monograph by D.M. Petrushevsky Essays on the history of medieval society and state almost half of the text was devoted to the consideration of “the state and society of the Roman Empire.” In a similar way, signs of feudal type relations are found in industrial society - not only in modern times, but also in modern times. Among the many examples is the absence of passports for Soviet collective farmers for decades, their actual attachment to the land, and the obligatory minimum of workdays. Not in such painful forms, but the relics of the Middle Ages made and are making themselves felt in Western Europe. The famous French historian Jacques Le Goff said in the early 1990s: “We live among the last material and intellectual remnants of the Middle Ages.”

A lot of disagreement and controversy is caused by the question of how universal feudalism is. This question inevitably returns the researcher to polemics regarding the complex of those features, the presence of which is necessary and sufficient for recognizing a society as feudal. The legal monuments of Northern France (more precisely, the Paris region) or the body of feudal law of the crusader states in the Middle East - the “Jerusalem Assizes”, which once served as the main support of historians and lawyers who reconstructed the appearance of the medieval seigneury and elucidated the structure of the hierarchical ladder, are obviously unique. The relationships they depict should not be taken as a universal or widespread norm. Even other regions of France, outside of Ile-de-France, had their own regulations.

Official Marxist-Leninist science without hesitation gave an affirmative answer to the question whether feudalism is a stage through which all humanity passes. In Russian historiography, the universalist point of view was confidently defended, in particular, by Academician N.I. Conrad, although he himself, like other orientalists, faced intractable problems when considering feudalism on a world-historical scale. It was impossible not to take into account, for example, that in the European version of feudal society (although it is sometimes difficult to draw the line between full and divided property, between property and hereditary holdings) one of the main indicators was land relations, while in those Asian regions, where irrigation dominated, ownership of water rather than land was of great importance. The predominance of nomadic pastoralism across vast areas of Asia made it even more difficult to draw parallels between European and Asian agricultural practices of past centuries. Even in areas where agriculture was not much different in nature from European farming, it was not always possible to detect a division of property rights between levels of the hierarchical ladder. Often, on the contrary, eastern despotism demonstrates the concentration of power functions at the top of the social pyramid. Such obvious facts, which were difficult to ignore, forced supporters of the world-historical scheme to introduce numerous amendments to the specifics of natural conditions, the peculiarities of local mentality, the influence of religious ideas, etc.

A detailed analysis of the arguments of supporters and opponents of the universalist point of view on feudalism from the position of orthodox Marxism-Leninism was undertaken back in the 1970s by V.N. Nikiforov. The interpretation he defends, which still finds adherents not only among Marxists - “feudal society in world history was a stage that naturally followed the slave society” - of course, has every right to exist. In his opinion, at one of the early stages of its development, society inevitably goes through a stage that is characterized by: 1) the growth of exploitation based on the concentration of land ownership in the hands of a few; 2) rent as a form associated in that era with non-economic coercion; 3) transfer of land plots to direct producers and their attachment to the land in various forms. This theory does not contradict the modern state of historical knowledge. But such an understanding of feudalism turns out to be extremely impoverished, reduced to a meaningless sociological abstraction.

European feudalism, which still remains the basic model for almost all researchers, had a number of additional and essentially important features, a significant part of which was due to a unique synthesis of ancient and barbarian principles in world practice. Of course, in comparison with bourgeois society, feudalism, as it was realized in European countries, appears as an inert structure, difficult to undergo progressive changes. However, if we compare it with what (according to, say, V.N. Nikiforov) feudalism was on other continents, then the European version looks completely different. It's not just more dynamic. Its development reveals qualities that have no analogues in other regions. Even in the most sedentary times - in the “dark ages” of European history - deep social processes were observed here, leading not only to the emergence of trade and craft centers, but also to the city’s conquest of political autonomy and other changes that ultimately led to the recognition of rights by society human personality.

Such a burden of connotations certainly prevents the reduction of rather heterogeneous social phenomena under one general sign of “feudalism”. It is not surprising that discussions constantly flare up on this issue both in Russia and abroad. Not considering it possible to sacrifice empirical wealth in the name of an abstract formula, many modern researchers give preference to the civilizational approach over the world-historical (in other words, formational) approach. Feudalism is understood as one of the stages in the history of European civilization. This interpretation, as far as one can judge, seems to be the most acceptable today.

Galina Lebedeva, Vladimir Yakubsky

Feudalism (French féodalité, from Late Latin feodum, feudum - possession, estate, fief) is a class antagonistic socio-economic formation, representing the middle link of an integral dialectical process of change of socio-economic formations: the era of feudalism lies between the slave system and capitalism. In the history of many peoples, feudalism was the first class-antagonistic formation (that is, it directly followed the primitive communal system).

The economic system of feudalism, with all the diversity of its forms in different countries and at different times, is characterized by the fact that the main means of production - land - is in the monopoly ownership of the ruling class of feudal lords (sometimes almost completely merging with the state), and the economy is carried out by the forces and technical means of small producers - peasants, one way or another dependent on the land owners. Thus, the feudal mode of production is based on the combination of large land ownership of the feudal class and small individual farming of direct producers - peasants, exploited with the help of extra-economic coercion (the latter is as characteristic of feudalism as economic coercion is for capitalism).

Thus, the most important relations of the feudal mode of production are land relations. Land relations form the basic production relation of the feudal mode of production. Feudal land relations were characterized by a monopoly of large land owners - feudal lords - on land.

Most of the land owned by the feudal lords consisted of many plots of land that were used by peasants, which gave them the opportunity to conduct their own individual farming on this land. The allotment nature of peasant land use is an important feature of land relations under the dominance of the feudal mode of production. Since the land was the property of the feudal lords, the peasant could be driven off the land at any time. However, feudalism was characterized by a tendency to attach the peasant to the land. Allotment land use of peasants was in most cases hereditary. Thus, in feudal society, the direct producer was not the owner of the land, but only its holder, he only used it, cultivated it.

On the lands of the feudal lords there were not only numerous villages and hamlets, but also a significant number of cities. Therefore, not only peasants, but also urban artisans fell into the sphere of exploitation of the feudal lords. Feudal property meant the complete dominance of the feudal lord within a certain territory, including power over the people inhabiting this territory. Feudal land relations were inextricably linked with relations of personal dependence.

Relationships of personal dependence permeate the entire socio-economic system of feudalism. “...We find people here,” K. Marx pointed out, “who are all dependent - serfs and feudal lords, vassals and overlords, laymen and priests. Personal dependence here characterizes both the social relations of material production and the spheres of life based on it.”

The relationship of personal dependence of the peasants on the feudal lords (landowners) acted as an inter-class, antagonistic relationship, pitting direct producers against the feudal exploiters.

Under feudalism, the nature of relations of dependence was already different than under slavery. The dependent peasant was not the full property of the landowner; he could work part of the time on his plot of land, working for himself and his family. The peasant owned the means of production, agricultural and craft tools, working and productive livestock. Urban artisans also had their own means of production. Both peasants and artisans had their own housing and outbuildings. Some means of production, such as wells, roads, and sometimes pastures for livestock, were in some cases used by the surviving rural community.

The method of connecting the direct producer with the means of production under feudalism is characterized by a certain duality. The direct producer - the peasant, on the one hand, having his own small farm, was interested in labor on this farm, and, on the other hand, his work for the feudal lord took the form of forced labor of the exploited for the exploiter. Non-economic coercion of the direct producer to work for the feudal lord had as its economic basis and condition the feudal lords' monopoly on land and was a means of realizing feudal property in the production process.

Thanks to a different way of connecting the direct producer with the means of production than under slavery, under feudalism his attitude to work changed, and a certain incentive to work appeared. Here the antagonism between the direct producer and the tools of labor that took place during slavery is overcome. Since the tools of labor belong to the direct producer under feudalism, he, despite his dependent, oppressed position, took care of their preservation and improvement.

Non-economic coercion (which could range from serfdom to simple class inferiority) was a necessary condition for the feudal lord to appropriate land rent, and independent peasant farming was a necessary condition for its production.

The well-known economic independence of the peasant, established in the era of feudalism, opened up some scope for increasing the productivity of peasant labor and developing the productive forces of society, and created more favorable conditions for the development of the individual. This, ultimately, determined the historical progressiveness of feudalism in comparison with the slave-owning and primitive communal system.

2.3.  Forms of feudal production and feudal land rent. Feudal exploitation

Feudal production was carried out in two main forms: in the form corvée economy and in shape quitrent farming. What was common to both forms of economy was that: a) the direct producer was personally dependent on the feudal lord (landowner); b) the feudal lord was considered the owner of all the land on which agricultural production was carried out; c) the direct producer - the peasant - had in use a plot of land on which he ran his individual farm; d) all agricultural production was carried out with the labor and tools (living and dead implements) of peasants; e) the peasants expended surplus labor and created a surplus product for the landowner as a result of non-economic coercion.

Corvee farming

Under corvée farming, all the land of the feudal estate was divided into two parts. One part is the lordly land, on which the labor and equipment of the peasants produced agricultural products, which were completely appropriated by the feudal landowner. Thus, the expenditure was carried out on the lord's land surplus labor peasants, production surplus product.

The other part of the land is peasant land, called allotment land. On this land, the peasants farmed for themselves, created required product, i.e., a product necessary for the existence of the peasants themselves and their families, as well as for the restoration of the worn-out part of live and dead agricultural equipment.

Under corvée surplus labor was given to the landowner in its natural form as a certain number of corvee days. The necessary and surplus labor of the producer exploited by the feudal lord were here separated from each other in space and time: necessary labor was spent on the peasant's allotment field, surplus labor on the lord's field. Some days of the week the peasant worked in his field, and others in the master’s field. Therefore, under corvée, the distinction between necessary and surplus labor it was physically tangible.

Surplus labor was appropriated during corvee labor in the form of working rent.

Surplus labor under corvée differed little from slave labor. The product of all the labor spent on corvee was appropriated by the feudal landowner; the direct producer - the peasant - was not at all interested in the results of this labor; his coercion required a lot of labor to supervise. Therefore, feudal landowners transferred their peasants to quitrent.

Obroch farming

With quitrent farming, almost all the land was transferred to the peasants as an allotment. All agricultural production was carried out on the farms of peasants who were on quitrent. One part of the product created on the farm in the form of quitrent was transferred by the peasant to the feudal landowner, and the other part remained with the peasant as a fund for the reproduction of his labor force and for maintaining the existence of his family members, as well as as a fund for the reproduction of peasant equipment, living and dead.

In many feudal estates, a mixed system was used: along with corvée, peasants had to provide quitrent. It happened that in some estates corvee prevailed, in others - quitrent.

Under the quitrent system of farming, all the peasant's labor - necessary and surplus - was spent on the peasant's farm. Surplus labor was given not in its natural form, but in the form of a product. Therefore, here the difference between necessary and surplus appeared physically tangible. product: what the peasant gives to the feudal landowner in the form of quitrent is a surplus product. That part of the product that remains on his farm constitutes the necessary product.

Under the quitrent system, surplus labor is appropriated by the feudal lord in the form of surplus product. This form of feudal rent is called annuities by products. “Product rent,” wrote K. Marx, “presupposes a higher culture of production for the direct producer, therefore, a higher level of development of his labor and society in general; and it differs from the previous form in that surplus labor must no longer be performed in its natural form, and therefore no longer under the direct supervision and coercion of the landowner or his representative; on the contrary, the direct producer must carry it out on his own responsibility, driven by the force of relationships instead of direct coercion and the decree of the law instead of the whip.”

Over time, quitrent in kind began to be combined with quitrent in cash, or was completely replaced by money. And the peasant had to not only produce a surplus product, but also turn it into money.

If the quitrent is established in money, then the surplus labor is appropriated by the feudal lord no longer in the form of labor and not in the form of a product, but in the form of money. Go to cash rent occurred as a result of the further growth of the division of labor, which caused the development of exchange and the gradual spread of commodity-money relations in society.

Features of rent relations in Eastern countries

A certain uniqueness in the development of forms of feudal land rent and forms of dependence of direct producers on feudal lords existed in many countries of the East.

Since in the East the feudal state acted as the main owner of land and irrigation structures, a large master's economy did not develop here for a long time.

The predominant form of feudal land rent in most countries of the East was not corvee, but product rent, and partly cash rent, which was collected from peasants by government officials. Usually, the state allocated a significant part of the collected funds (in kind or cash) to the feudal lords in the form of a kind of salary.

Natural form of feudal production

Feudal estates, within which the production process was carried out, were characterized by isolation and isolation of economic life. Personal consumption of feudal lords and peasants, as well as industrial consumption, was ensured mainly due to what was created in each estate by the labor of direct producers.

Feudalism was characterized by the combination of agriculture as the main branch of production with household crafts playing an auxiliary role. In that era, household crafts provided lordly and peasant households with most of the necessary products of handicraft labor. Only certain products that could not be obtained locally for various reasons, for example, some metal products, jewelry, salt, etc., were usually delivered by visiting merchants. The consequence of this was that the economy of the feudal estate was characterized by a closed, self-sufficient character.

The products created by the labor of direct producers in the process of feudal production were consumed for the most part within the feudal estate itself by feudal landowners and serfs in their natural form.

The surplus product took on a commodity form only with money rent, which already corresponded to the period of decomposition of feudalism.

The necessary product, even under conditions of cash rent, especially under conditions of labor rent and product rent, in most cases remained in kind and did not become a commodity. And this was of great importance, since the necessary product represented a very significant part of the produced product.

The various duties performed by serfs at all stages of the development of feudal society were also of a natural nature. Thus, a characteristic feature of feudal production was that it had a natural form.

2.4.  Basic economic law of feudalism

The goal of feudal production was to create a surplus product, which was used for the direct consumption of feudal lords, acting in a specific socio-economic form of feudal rent.

The essence of the basic economic law of feudalism was that the surplus product produced as a result of forced labor of peasants personally dependent on the feudal lords was appropriated by the feudal lords in the form of feudal land rent to satisfy their needs.

2.5.  The contradictions of feudalism

All stages of the development of feudal society, which passed through successively replacing each other forms of feudal production and feudal exploitation, are characterized by the presence of numerous contradictions. The large property of the feudal lords is opposed to the small individual property of direct producers personally dependent on the feudal lords, on which their small dependent production was based; large feudal economy - small peasant land use; non-economic coercion of direct producers to work for the feudal lord - the possibility of them running their own farm on the basis of personal labor; the class of land owners and bearers of non-economic coercion - feudal lords - to the class of peasants personally dependent on them.

The contradictions of feudalism were generated by duality, an internally contradictory way of connecting the direct producer with the means of production.

2.6.  Feudal reproduction

The determining factor was the reproduction that took place in the peasant economy. Peasant labor reproduced not only the products used to satisfy the personal needs of the feudal lords (surplus product) and the producers themselves (necessary product), but also the conditions for the subsequent continuation of the production process in the peasant’s household.

The peasant had to carry out economic work that ensured the continuity of production: repairing tools, replacing worn-out tools with new ones, creating reserves of seed grain. “...The product of the serf,” wrote K. Marx, “should be sufficient here to, in addition to the means of his subsistence, compensate for the conditions of his labor...”.

The source of any increase in production is surplus product.

Therefore, expanded reproduction could only be carried out if some part of the surplus product was directed from time to time to expand and improve production. This happened sporadically and mainly in cases where, due to the presence of previously fixed duties, which were usually established for quite a long time, the feudal lord did not have time to fully appropriate all the results of the growth of labor productivity in the peasant economy.

2.7.  Feudal city

Feudal relations covered not only the village, but also the city. The cities were inhabited mainly by artisans and traders. Craftsmen, who made up the majority of the urban population, were recruited mainly from among former serfs who fled to the city from their landowner or were transferred to the city by the landowner himself.

Having freed themselves from serfdom in the countryside, the former serfs, who became urban artisans, once again found themselves under conditions of feudal oppression. Taking advantage of the right of owners of the land on which the cities stood, the feudal lords established a system of personal dependence in the cities and forced the townspeople to perform various types of duties.

Guild system

In the cities, a specific feudal form of organization of crafts took shape in the form of so-called guilds. The workshops were associations of artisans of a certain branch of handicraft production living in a given city.

Full members of the guilds were guild foremen - owners of their own workshops. In addition to himself, several apprentices and apprentices worked in the workshop of the guild foreman. A characteristic feature of medieval workshops is strict regulation of production and sales conditions (determining the quality of raw materials and finished products, volume of production, time and order of work in the workshop, etc.). This ensured the monopoly of the workshop in the production of a particular product and prevented competition between artisans.

Under the conditions of the guild system, apprentices and journeymen were exploited by the guild foremen. Since the master himself worked in the workshop, his superior position in relation to journeymen and apprentices was based not only on private ownership of the means of production, but also on his professional skill. When teaching a student who came to him, the master did not pay him any remuneration, although the student brought a certain income with his work. The apprentices, who were already essentially skilled artisans, received a certain payment from the master for their work.

Merchant guilds

The cities were the center of concentration of the merchants, who carried out both domestic and international trade. Merchant capital played a very significant role under feudalism. Small commodity producers were not always able to sell their goods due to the fragmentation of production and the remoteness of sales markets. Merchants took on the role of intermediary in the sale of their products. They appropriated a significant part of the product of direct producers. Merchants sold luxury goods, weapons, wines, spices, etc. to the feudal lords, purchased partly within the country and partly on foreign markets. The profit they received as a result of resale of goods at higher prices contained part of the feudal land rent.

The weakness of the central government of the feudal state and its inability to provide personal and property protection to traveling merchants encouraged the latter to unite for self-defense in a guild. Guilds fought competition from outside merchants, regulated weights and measures, and determined the level of sales prices.

As monetary wealth accumulated, the role of merchant capital changed. If at first merchants were only occasional intermediaries in exchange, then gradually the circle of producers selling their goods to one or another merchant became permanent. Merchants often combined trade operations with usurious ones, issuing loans to artisans and peasants and thereby further subordinating them to themselves.

The accumulation of significant sums of money in the hands of the merchants turned them into a major economic force, which became the basis for the dominance of the merchants in city government. At the same time, the merchants gradually became a force capable of resisting the feudal lords and striving to free themselves from feudal dependence.

The contrast between city and countryside

Under feudalism, the village politically dominated the city, because the cities were owned by the feudal lords. The townspeople were obliged to bear certain duties in favor of the feudal lord, the feudal lord was the supreme judge for the townspeople, and even had the right to sell the city, pass it on by inheritance, and mortgage it. However, the economic development of the city significantly outpaced the economic development of the village.

The growth of handicraft production and the accumulation of great wealth in the hands of moneylenders and merchants created the preconditions for the economic dominance of the city over the countryside. “If in the Middle Ages,” noted K. Marx, “the village exploits the city politically everywhere where feudalism was not broken by the exclusive development of cities, as in Italy, then the city everywhere and without exception exploits the village economically with its monopoly prices, its tax system, its the guild system, its direct merchant deception and its usury."

The power of feudal lords hindered the development of crafts and trade. Therefore, the cities waged a fierce and constant struggle with the feudal lords for their liberation. They sought political independence, self-government, the right to mint coins, and exemption from duties. Due to the fact that significant sums of money were concentrated in the hands of merchants, moneylenders and wealthy craftsmen, cities often managed to pay off the feudal lords, buying their independence with money. At the same time, cities often achieved their independence by armed means.

2.8.  Commodity-money relations under the feudal mode of production

As a result of the growth of productive forces and the deepening of the social division of labor under feudalism, commodity production and commodity circulation received a certain development. Commodity production in the era of the development of feudalism was subordinate to natural economy and represented only a separate structure of the feudal economy. It served feudal production and played a supporting role, especially in the early feudal period.

As a result of the expansion of trade between peasants and feudal lords, on the one hand, and urban artisans, on the other, internal markets emerged. Through trade, the economic connection between agricultural and handicraft production is established and strengthened.

Merchant capital under feudalism was primarily an intermediary in the exchange of surplus product appropriated by the feudal lords for luxury goods imported from other countries. Merchant capital also acted as an intermediary in the exchange of products between peasants and urban artisans. The trade profit received by merchants was formed as a result of unequal exchange, i.e., buying goods at prices below cost and selling them above cost. The source of trade profit was ultimately the surplus product created by direct producers (peasants and artisans), and in some cases, part of their necessary product.

The process of development of commodity production and circulation is enhanced by the expansion of foreign trade. International trade was already relatively developed during the slave era. During the transition from slavery to feudalism, international trade died down somewhat. As production grows and commodity-money relations spread, it revives again.

The growth of domestic and foreign trade led to the development of monetary circulation, an increase in the amount of money in circulation, and an improvement in the minting of coins. However, medieval trade, despite its significant development, was still limited. It existed under conditions of the dominance of natural production, feudal fragmentation, lack of roads, imperfect means of circulation, the absence of uniform measures of weight and length, a unified monetary system, and frequent predatory attacks by feudal lords on merchants.

With the growth of commodity-money relations in feudal society, usurious capital develops. Money loans were issued by moneylenders to feudal lords, as well as to artisans and peasants. The source of usurious interest, as well as the source of trade profit, was the surplus product created by peasants and artisans, as well as part of their necessary product.

As commodity-money relations grew, the feudal estate was increasingly drawn into market circulation. Buying luxury goods and urban handicrafts, feudal lords are increasingly in need of money. It becomes profitable for them to transfer peasants from corvée and natural rent to cash quitrent. In this regard, peasant farming was drawn into the market.

3. Decomposition of feudalism

3.1.  The growth of commodity relations and the decomposition of subsistence farming

The feudal organization of handicraft production in the form of a guild system with its strict regulation of the volume and technology of production, with a guild monopoly, limited the possibilities for significant and consistent progress in production technology and an increase in the volume of marketable products. Feudal agriculture, with the fragmentation of allotment land use by small producers and forced crop rotations within the community subordinate to the feudal lord, hindered the increase in labor productivity and the consolidation of farm sizes. At the same time, a self-sufficient subsistence economy limited the capacity and capabilities of the domestic market and hampered the development of commodity exchange. Feudal relations of personal dependence prevented the influx of labor into the cities, without which commodity production could not expand further. Craftsmen and peasants were kept in the feudal production system by non-economic coercion. Even persons who had accumulated significant monetary wealth (merchants, moneylenders, wealthy artisans) could not essentially organize large-scale production in a city or village, since there was not a sufficient amount of free labor. In this situation, the method inherent in feudalism of connecting the production worker, the direct producer, with the means of production began to increasingly hinder the further development of the productive forces of society.

The development of production inevitably led to an aggravation of the contradictions inherent in feudalism: between the economy of the feudal lord and the individual economy of peasants and artisans, between physical and mental labor, between city and countryside, between the natural nature of production organically inherent in feudalism and its growing marketability.

An irreconcilable contradiction arose and became increasingly intensified between the new productive forces, requiring enlarged forms of organization of labor and production in the form of cooperation of specialized producers and a new way of connecting the labor force with the means of production, on the one hand, and the old production relations based on the personal dependence of producers from land owners, feudal lords, on the other.

A conflict is brewing between productive forces and production relations, objective preconditions are being created for a deep socio-economic revolution, for replacing feudal production relations with new production relations, for the transition to a new, more progressive mode of production. Thus, a social need arose for the elimination of feudal relations of production, to replace them with new relations that would correspond to the level and nature of the growing productive forces.

These new relationships were capitalist relations of production, which assumed the replacement of non-economic coercion of direct producers to work on the basis of their personal dependence with economic coercion through the system of using hired labor of producers in production.

3.2.  Property and social stratification of commodity producers

With the deepening of the social division of labor and the expansion of the sphere of commodity-money relations, the property stratification of commodity producers and the social stratification of commodity producers are intensifying. In the conditions of growing market relations between commodity producers, a fierce competitive struggle is unfolding, which led to an ever greater deepening and property stratification between the poor and the rich, both in the city and in the countryside.

The process of stratification of the peasantry in the countryside was significantly accelerated by the transition to cash rent. Thus, new conditions and factors for the development of social production lead to overcoming the limitations of the feudal era, to the disintegration of the guild system in the city, to the social differentiation of producers - peasants and artisans - both in the countryside and in the city.

Thus, conditions are objectively developing for the emergence of a new way of connecting direct producers with the means of production. The increasingly significant use of wage labor in production meant that a new way of connecting producers with the means of production was emerging. Simple commodity production, based on the producers’ own means of production and their own labor, creates the conditions for the emergence of a new, capitalist form of commodity production, and increasingly develops into this new form.

3.3.  The emergence in the depths of feudalism of the capitalist form of commodity production. Initial accumulation of capital

Capitalist commodity production, which arose in the depths of feudalism, differed from previous forms of commodity economy as large-scale production, using the cooperation of wage labor of many producers.

The development of trade (merchant) and usurious capital was one of the necessary historical conditions for the emergence and development of capitalism. Merchant capital flowed in many cases into industry, and the merchant then turned into a capitalist-industrialist. Moneylenders, using the money they had accumulated, sometimes also became capitalist-industrialists, or turned into capitalist-bankers. But neither commercial nor usurious capital by themselves could cause a radical revolution in production relations. They only contributed to the creation of conditions for the emergence of capitalist forms of production.

Workshops based on simple cooperation of wage labor and merchant manufactories were the first embryos of large-scale capitalist production. They arose in Europe in the 14th-15th centuries, first of all in the city-republics of Italy, and then in the Netherlands, England, France and other countries.

The establishment of the capitalist mode of production presupposes, firstly, the transformation of the mass of producers into proletarians, personally free and at the same time deprived of any means of production, and secondly, the concentration of monetary wealth and the means of production in the hands of a minority. The creation of these conditions is the essence of the so-called initial capital accumulation, which represented the prehistory and immediate starting point of the formation of the capitalist mode of production.

Characterizing the essence of the initial accumulation of capital, K. Marx wrote: “The capitalist relation presupposes that the ownership of the conditions of labor is separated from the workers... Thus, the process that creates the capitalist relation cannot be anything other than the process of separation of the worker from the ownership of the conditions of his labor, a process that transforms, on the one hand, social means of production and means of subsistence into capital, and, on the other hand, direct producers into wage workers. Consequently, the so-called primitive accumulation is nothing more than the historical process of separation of the producer from the means of production."

3.4.  The role of violence in the development of capitalism

Bourgeois historians and economists portray the history of the emergence of capitalism in an idyllic way. They claim that the accumulation of wealth occurred in ancient times as a result of the “hard work and frugality” of some, the “negligence and wastefulness” of others. In fact, the production relations of capitalism arose and then became dominant due to the objective laws of social development. But the initial accumulation of capital was facilitated and accelerated by the use of direct, undisguised violence.

A classic example of this were the dramatic events that took place in the 16th and 17th centuries. in England, where capitalist production achieved significant development earlier than in other countries. Here, the bourgeois nobility forcibly removed peasants from their lands, who had by that time freed themselves from serfdom. The peasants, deprived of their land, having lost the opportunity to run their own farms, were forced to hire out to the capitalists. In parallel with this, the process of education of capitalist farmers - agricultural capitalists - was going on in the countryside. The dispossession of agricultural producers and their expropriation constitute the basis of the entire process of primitive capital accumulation. “...The history of this expropriation of theirs,” wrote K. Marx, “is inscribed in the annals of humanity in the flaming language of blood and fire.”

Thus, the new class - the emerging bourgeoisie, on a large scale, used violent methods of forcing proletarians to work in capitalist enterprises, violent methods of creating a new labor discipline to subjugate producers to capitalist wage slavery. State power, with the help of legal legislation against the “homeless” and “vagrants,” forced disadvantaged people to go to work for capitalist enterprises.

Violence was also an important means of accelerating the process of concentrating wealth (money, means of production) in the hands of a few. A significant number of capitalist enterprises were created through savings that were concentrated in the hands of traders and moneylenders. But, as already noted, other methods of accumulating wealth using violence also played a major role, as well as the system of colonial robbery of peoples, colonial trade, including the slave trade, trade wars, the system of government loans and taxes, and the protective customs policy of the state.

In Russia, which began the transition from feudalism to capitalism later than many other European countries, the process of forced separation of direct producers from the means of production began intensively only in connection with the abolition of serfdom. The reform of 1861 was a grandiose robbery of the peasants. As a result of its implementation, the landowners seized two-thirds of the land, and the most convenient lands for use were in their hands. Defining the nature of the peasant reform of 1861, V.I. Lenin pointed out: “This is the first mass violence against the peasantry in the interests of emerging capitalism in agriculture. This is the landowners’ “land cleansing” for capitalism.”

Through robbery, the violent ruin of the mass of small producers, and the brutal enslavement of colonial peoples, the creation of conditions for the dominance of the capitalist mode of production was accelerated.

3.5.  Class struggle in feudal society and bourgeois revolutions

The decomposition of feudalism was an inevitable process that unfolded due to the operation of objective laws of economic development. This process was accelerated by the widespread use of violence as a means of initial capital accumulation.

The foundations of feudalism were increasingly shaken under the blows of the intensifying class struggle in feudal society, under the influence of mass uprisings of peasants against their oppressors. In the XIV century. An uprising of English peasants broke out under the leadership of Wat Tyler and an uprising of French peasants (Jacquerie). In the 15th century Peasant wars broke out in the Czech Republic under the leadership of Jan Hus. XVI century was marked by a broad peasant movement in Germany under the leadership of Thomas Münzer.

The serfdom system of Russia was the cause of large peasant uprisings under the leadership of Bolotnikov (XV century), Stepan Razin (XVII century), Emelyan Pugachev (XVIII century) and others.

Peasant uprisings were the harbingers of bourgeois revolutions. Peasants, as well as artisans, made up the bulk of the fighters during the bourgeois revolutions. But the bourgeoisie took advantage of the fruits of their struggle and victories, seizing state power into their hands. For the first time, bourgeois revolutions took place in the Netherlands (XVI century) and England (XVII century). The French Revolution, which began in 1789, was of great importance for overthrowing the rule of the feudal lords and establishing the power of the bourgeoisie in Europe. Later, bourgeois revolutions occurred in other countries.

Bourgeois revolutions completed the collapse of the feudal social system and accelerated the development of bourgeois relations.

3.6.  "Second edition of serfdom"

A long-term feudal reaction, which took the legal form of the “second edition of serfdom,” triumphed during the period of late feudalism in the countries of Central and Eastern Europe. The political expression of the feudal reaction was the developed system of an undivided noble dictatorship (the political dominance of the magnates and gentry in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, the tsarist autocracy in Russia). In the countries of the “second edition of serfdom,” feudalism assumed a stagnant character, only gradually giving way to embryonic forms of capitalist relations. Their development under the cover of feudalism proceeded through a painful restructuring of the landowner economy for the peasantry on the basis of bonded, semi-serf forms of wage labor, which personified the so-called Prussian path of development of capitalism in agriculture; in industry, the use of hired labor was long combined with the use of forced labor. The stage of late feudalism continued in this region until the middle and even the second half of the 19th century, and after that significant feudal remnants remained (especially in agrarian relations, in the political superstructure).

4. Remnants of feudalism in capitalist and developing countries

Several centuries have passed since the fall of feudalism in many countries. However, its remnants and vestiges persist in the modern capitalist world. Thus, in Italy, with a high level of capitalist development, large noble landholdings still continue to exist. The sharecropping system is widespread here, in which the owner of the land is paid part of the harvest in the form of land rent. In essence, this is nothing more than a remnant of feudal relations.

There are remnants and vestiges of feudalism in a number of other capitalist countries in Europe, for example in Spain, Portugal, and Greece.

There are remnants of feudalism in a number of developing countries. Significant remnants of feudalism in the form of large landholdings and remnants of pre-capitalist forms of rent survive in countries such as India, Pakistan, Turkey, Iran, some Arab countries, and other countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America.

The backward economic structure of a number of developing countries is used by the monopolies of the imperialist states to enrich themselves. The remnants and vestiges of feudal economic forms impede the progress of the peoples of developing countries, hinder their struggle for true freedom, for national revival and economic independence.

The attempt to prove the eternity of capitalist relations leads bourgeois economists to the other extreme. They strive to identify capitalism with those forms of production that existed before it, to attribute a capitalist essence to feudalism, and to deprive it of its own socio-economic content. A number of bourgeois economists and historians limit themselves only to the political and legal definition of feudalism, without revealing its socio-economic content, thereby turning one or another “secondary” feature of the feudal system (derived from the economic basis) into a defining one. Based on the eternity of capitalism, they portray feudalism as a time of immaturity and underdevelopment of capitalist forms of economy, as a kind of “rudimentary capitalism.”

Taking an idealistic position, bourgeois ideologists deny the class struggle during the period of feudalism, ignore the role of the masses as a decisive force for social progress, overestimate the importance of individual historical figures, and characterize the feudal state as a body standing above society and supposedly ensuring “social peace.” These kinds of provisions have nothing in common with a real analysis of the process of emergence, development and death of the feudal mode of production.

The feudal system existed, with one or another characteristic, in almost all countries.

The era of feudalism covers a long period. In China, the feudal system existed for over two thousand years. In the countries of Western Europe, feudalism covers a number of centuries - from the fall of the Roman Empire (V century) to the bourgeois revolutions in England (XVII century) and France (XVHI century), in Russia - from the 9th century to the peasant reform of 1861, in Transcaucasia - from the 4th century to the 70s of the 19th century, among the peoples of Central Asia - from the 7th-8th centuries until the victory of the proletarian revolution in Russia.

In Western Europe, feudalism arose on the basis of the collapse of the Roman slave society, on the one hand, and the decomposition of the clan system among the conquering tribes, on the other; it was formed as a result of the interaction of these two processes.

Elements of feudalism, as already mentioned, originated in the depths of slave-owning society in the form of a colony. The colons were obliged to cultivate the land of their master - a large landowner, pay him a certain amount of money or give him a significant share of the harvest, and perform various kinds of duties. Nevertheless, the colons were more interested in labor than the slaves, since they had their own farm.

Thus, new relations of production were born, which received full development in the feudal era.

The Roman Empire was defeated by tribes of Germans, Gauls, Slavs and other peoples living in various parts of Europe. The power of the slave owners was overthrown, slavery abolished. Large latifundia and craft workshops based on slave labor were fragmented into small ones. The population of the collapsed Roman Empire consisted of large landowners (former slave owners who switched to the colonata system), freed slaves, coloni, small peasants and artisans.

At the time of the conquest of Rome, the conquering tribes had a communal system that was in the stage of decay. The rural community, which the Germans called a mark, played a major role in the social life of these tribes. The land, with the exception of large land holdings of the clan nobility, was communally owned. Forests, wastelands, pastures, ponds were used together. Fields and meadows were distributed among community members after a few years. But gradually, household land, and then arable land, began to pass into the hereditary use of individual families. Distribution of land, trial of cases concerning the community, settlement Disputes between its members were dealt with by the community assembly, the elders and judges chosen by it. The conquering tribes were led by military leaders who, together with their squads, owned large lands.

The tribes that conquered the Roman Empire took possession of most of its public lands and some of the lands of large private landowners. Forests, meadows and pastures remained in common use, and arable land was divided between individual farms. The divided lands later became the private property of peasants. Thus a vast layer of independent small peasantry was formed.

But the peasants could not maintain their independence for long. Based on private ownership of land and other means of production, property inequality between individual members of the rural community inevitably increased. Prosperous and poor families appeared among the peasants. As wealth inequality grew, community members who became rich began to acquire power over the community. The land was concentrated in the hands of wealthy families and became the subject of seizure by the family nobility and military leaders. The peasants became personally dependent on large landowners.

In order to maintain and strengthen power over dependent peasants, large landowners had to strengthen state authorities. Military leaders, relying on the clan nobility and warriors, began to concentrate power in their hands and turned into kings - monarchs.

From the ruins of the Roman Empire, a number of new states were formed, headed by kings. The kings generously distributed the land they seized as lifelong and then hereditary possession to their associates, who had to perform military service for it. The church received a lot of land, which served as an important support for royal power. The land was cultivated by peasants, who now had to perform a number of duties in favor of the new masters. Huge land holdings passed into the hands of the royal warriors and servants, church authorities and monasteries.

Land distributed on such terms was called fiefs. Hence the name of the new social system - feudalism.

The gradual transformation of peasant land into the property of feudal lords and the enslavement of the peasant masses (the process of feudalization) occurred in Europe over a number of centuries (from the 5th-6th to the 9th-10th centuries). The free peasantry was ruined by continuous military service, robberies and extortions. Turning to the large landowner for help, the peasants turned into people dependent on him. Often peasants were forced to surrender under the “patronage” of the feudal lord: otherwise it would be impossible for a defenseless person to exist in conditions of continuous wars and predatory raids.

In such cases, ownership of the land passed to the feudal lord, and the peasant could cultivate this plot only if he fulfilled various duties in favor of the feudal lord. In other cases, royal governors and officials, through deception and violence, took over the lands of free peasants, forcing them to recognize their power.

In different countries, the process of feudalization proceeded differently, but the essence of the matter was the same everywhere: previously free peasants fell into personal dependence on the feudal lords who seized their land. This dependence was sometimes weaker, sometimes stronger. Over time, the differences in the position of former slaves, colons and free peasants were erased, and they all turned into a single mass of serf peasantry. Gradually, a situation arose that was characterized by the medieval saying: “There is no land without a seigneur” (that is, without a feudal lord). The kings were the supreme landowners.

Feudalism was a necessary step in the historical development of society. Slavery has outlived its usefulness. Under these conditions, further development of the productive forces was possible only on the basis of the labor of the mass of dependent peasants who owned their own farms, their own instruments of production and had some interest in the labor necessary to cultivate the land and pay tribute in kind to the feudal lord from their harvest.

In Russia, in the conditions of the disintegration of the communal system, patriarchal slavery arose. But the development of society here went mainly not along the path of slavery, but along the path of feudalization. Slavic tribes, even under the dominance of their clan system, starting from the 3rd century AD, attacked the Roman slave-owning empire, fought for the liberation of the cities of the Northern Black Sea region that were under its rule, and played a large role in the collapse of the slave-owning system. The transition from the primitive communal system to feudalism in Russia took place at a time when the slave system had long since fallen and feudal relations in European countries were strengthened.

As human history shows, it is not necessary for every nation to go through all stages of social development. “For many peoples, conditions arise under which they have the opportunity to bypass certain stages of development and move directly to a higher level.

The rural community among the Eastern Slavs was called “verv”, “world”. The community had meadows, forests, and ponds for common use, and arable land began to come into the possession of individual families. The community was headed by an elder. The development of private land ownership led to the gradual disintegration of the community. The land was taken over by elders and tribal princes. Peasants - smerds - were at first free members of the community, and then became dependent on large landowners - boyars.

The largest feudal owner was the church. Grants from princes, deposits and spiritual testaments made her the owner of vast lands and the richest farms for those times.

During the formation of the centralized Russian state (XV-XVI centuries), the great princes and tsars began, as they said then, to “place” their associates and service people on the land, that is, to give them land and peasants under the condition of performing military service. Hence the names - estate, landowners.

At that time, the peasants were not yet completely attached to the landowner and the land: they had the right to move from one landowner to another. At the end of the 16th century, landowners, in order to increase the production of grain for sale, intensified the exploitation of peasants. In this regard, in 1581 the state took away the right of the peasants to move from one landowner to another. The peasants were completely attached to the land that belonged to the landowners, and thereby turned into serfs.

In the era of feudalism, agriculture played a predominant role, and among its branches - agriculture. Gradually, over the course of a number of centuries, methods of arable farming were improved, and vegetable gardening, horticulture, winemaking, and butter-making developed.

In the early period of feudalism, fallow farming prevailed, and in forest areas - slash-and-burn farming system. A plot of land was sown with one crop for several years in a row until the soil was depleted. Then they moved to another area. Subsequently, there was a transition to a three-field system, in which the arable land is divided into three fields, and one is alternately used for winter crops, the other for spring crops, and the third is left fallow. The three-field system began to spread in Western Europe and Russia from the 11th-12th centuries. It remained dominant for many centuries, surviving until the 19th century, and in many countries to the present day.

Agricultural implements in the early period of feudalism were scarce. The tools of labor were a plow with an iron ploughshare, a sickle, a scythe, and a shovel. Later, the iron plow and harrow began to be used. For a long time, grain grinding was done by hand until windmills and water mills became widespread.

In the section on the question what is the feudal system?? definition given by the author Hfhf hgfhg the best answer is Feudalism (from the Latin feudum - flax, feudal land tenure) is a type of society characterized by the presence of two social classes - feudal lords (landowners) and commoners (peasants), who occupy a subordinate position in relation to the feudal lords; feudal lords are bound to each other by a specific type of legal obligation known as the feudal hierarchy. OS
The word “feudalism” (originally a term of judicial practice) was used in resolving land disputes among feudal lords.
Feudalism was considered as one of the socio-economic formations, superior to slavery.
In feudal relations, land owners (feudal lords) are lined up in a feudal ladder: the inferior (vassal) receives a land plot (fief) and serfs from the superior for his service. At the head of the feudal ladder is the monarch, but his power is usually significantly weakened compared to the powers of large feudal lords, who, in turn, do not have absolute power over all landowners below them in the feudal ladder (the principle of “my vassal’s vassal is not my vassal” ", operating in many countries of continental Europe).
The producer of material goods under feudalism was the peasant, who, unlike the slave and the hired worker, managed the farm himself, and in many ways completely independently, that is, he was the owner. The peasant was the owner of the yard, the main means of production. He also acted as the owner of the land, but was a subordinate owner. So, not only the ownership of the land was split, but also the personality of the workers.