The first characteristic of the developed feudal state is the manifold gradation of ranks built up into the one pyramid of mutual dependence. Its second distinctive mark is the amalgamation of the ethnic groups, originally separated.
The consciousness formerly existent of difference of _races_ has disappeared completely. There remains only the _difference of classes_.
Henceforth we shall deal only with social classes, and no longer with ethnic groups. The social contrast is the only ruling factor in the life of the state. Consistently with this the ethnic group consciousness changes to a class consciousness, the theories of the group, to the theories of the class. Yet they do not thereby change in the least their essence. The new dominating classes are just as full of their divine right as was the former master group, and it soon is seen that the new nobility of the sword manages to forget, quickly and thoroughly, its descent from the vanquished group; while the former freemen now declassed, or the former petty nobles sunk in the social scale, henceforth swear just as firmly by “natural law” as did formerly only the subjected tribes.
The developed feudal state is, in its essentials, exactly the same thing as it was when yet in the second stage of state formation. Its form is that of dominion, its reason for being, the political exploitation of the economic means, limited by public law, which compels the master class to give the correlative protection, and which guarantees to the lower class the right of being protected, to the extent that they are kept working and paying taxes, that they may fulfil their duty to their masters. In its essentials government has not changed, it has only been disposed in more grades; and the same applies to the exploitation, or as the economic theory puts it, “the distribution” of wealth.
Just as formerly, so now, the internal policy of these states swings in that orbit prescribed by the parallelogram of the centrifugal thrust of the former group contests, now class wars, counteracted by the centripetal pull of the common interests. Just as formerly, so now, its foreign policy is determined by the striving of its master class for new lands and serfs, a thrust for extension caused at the same time by the still existing need of self-preservation. Although differentiated much more minutely, and integrated much more powerfully, the developed feudal state is in the end nothing more than the primitive state arrived at its maturity.