This theoretical deduction is moreover confirmed by the _experience of history_. Wherever there existed a society in which vast estates did not exist to draw an increasing rental, there “pure economics” existed, and society approximated the form of the state to that of the “freemen’s citizenship.”
Such a community was found in the Germany of the four centuries[148] from about A. D. 1000, when the primitive system of vast estates was developed into the socially harmless dominion over vast territories, until about the year 1400, when the newly arisen great properties, created by the political means, the robber wars in the countries formerly Slavic, shut the settlers from the westward out of lands eastward of the Elbe.[149] Such a community was the Mormon state of Utah, which has not been greatly changed in this respect, where a wise land legislation permitted only small and moderate sized farm holdings.[150] Such a community was to be found in the city and county of Vineland, Iowa, U. S. A.,[151] as long as every settler could obtain land, without increment of rent. Such a commonwealth is, beyond all others, New Zealand, whose government favors with all its power the possession of small and middle-sized holdings of land, while at the same time it narrows and dissolves, by all means at its command the great landed properties, which by the way, owing to lack of surplus laborers, are almost incapable of producing rentals.[152]
In all these cases there is an astoundingly equalized well-being, not perhaps mechanically equal; but there is no wealth. _Because well-being is the control over articles of consumption, while wealth is the dominion over mankind._ In no such cases are the means of production, “capital,” “producing any surplus values”; there are no “free laborers” and no capitalism, and the political form of these communities approximates very closely to a “freemen’s citizenship,” and tends to approximate it more and more, so far as the pressure of the surrounding states, organized from and based on the laws of war, permit its development. The “state” decomposes, or else in new countries such as Utah or New Zealand, it returns to a rudimentary stage of development; while the free self-determination of free men, scarcely acquainted with a class fight constantly tends to pierce through ever more thoroughly. Thus in the German Empire there was a parallel development between the political rise of the unions of the imperial free cities, the decline of the feudal states, the emancipation of the crafts, then still comprising the entire “plebs” of the cities, and the decay of the patrician control of the city government. This beneficent development was stopped by the erection of new primitive feudal states on the easterly border of the former German Empire, and thus the economic blossom of German culture was ruined. Whoever believes in a conscious purpose in history may say that the human race was again required to pass through another school of suffering before it could be redeemed. The Middle Ages had discovered the system of free labor, but had not developed it to its full capacity or efficiency. It was reserved for the new slavery of capitalism to discover and develop the incomparably more efficient system of coöperating labor, the division of labor in the workshops, in order to crown man as the ruler of natural forces, as king of the planet. Slavery of antiquity and of modern capitalism was once necessary; now it has become superfluous. According to the story, every free citizen of Athens disposed of five human slaves; but we have supplied to our fellow citizens of modern society a vast mass of enslaved power, slaves of steel, that do not suffer in creating values. Since then we have ripened toward a civilization as much higher than the civilization of the time of Pericles, as the population, power and riches of the modern communities exceeds those of the tiny state of Athens.