Welcome to no Role Road and we are talking about class conflict and the crisis of feudalism and specifically chapter 18 , which is feudalism are feudalite and signuri in France and England are feudalism versus signorism . I'm a seniorist .
Speaker 2Anybody who has been on Twitter for the past week , you'll understand why the fuck . We're just you know .
Speaker 1So when this is released , so it'll be in the past month it's been a just hotening . Yeah , every four years there's a period on on in left media spaces where I end up walking away and just saying you know why ? There is no Cointel Pro anymore ? Because we don't need it ?
Speaker 3Yeah , because that's it would be redundant . That's the reason why .
Speaker 1Like why send feds in to like trick us into destroying ourselves , when we could just do it on our own for free ?
Speaker 2Right . I mean we've internalized Cointel Pro infiltration tactics , as good practice , you know , so they don't need to do anything at this point .
Speaker 1Yeah , you know my hot take on that , chris , and we'll talk about this in our revolutionary pessimism episode , but that , like I think , cointel Pro tactics actually were always redundant and that was sort of the dark secret in a few places that they weren't redundant . That's when there's actual violence .
Speaker 1Like okay , like well , I mean like , for example , like how Cointel Pro mess with the RCP was just convincing members of the RCP to state their opinions . That was it , that's all they did Like . Then , eventually , when the RCP becomes more unified , from all the splits that they accidentally encouraged and they didn't even know they were encouraging the splits because they were already there they sent them that . You know , during one of their salting campaigns they come into conflict with local cops and the Cointel Pro people . Like give the cops intel and the cops fuck up and shoot a kid right , which the Cointel Pro people are immediately horrified by , because every time there's a murder like that of a white kid , then there's going to be like inquiries that can expose what they're doing . So that's what I learned from reading all the declassified Cointel Pro stuff with the RCP and when I read the rest of it , the only , the only place it was significantly different was the Panthers , where there was a lot more violence . But there was a lot more violence because there's a lot more room for it , right .
Speaker 2Yeah .
Speaker 1Yeah , but that's not related to the middle ages . I mean it kind of is we can get into vassal board stuff and nights and fucking shit up , so let me .
Speaker 2I can try , and as much as everything is related to the middle ages , yeah .
Speaker 1Try hard enough . We are on page . What 230 ? Did we finish with 229 ? I think . Well , no , we stopped at the Village .
Speaker 2Community was more collective than it was yeah , very last paragraph on the page 229 .
Speaker 1Yeah Right , I think we this gets us into debates about peasantry in France and why , like Marxist generalizations from Marx about about French conditions of the peasantry actually can't be trans-historicized , even though we try to do it all the time .
Speaker 2And we talked about how the peasant economy was an incomplete economy and we talked about the commons . So I think maybe we are on 230 then .
Speaker 1Right , and we because of the commons . It's a more communal life , yeah , and the the . The actual exception to that is post feudal France and in Marx's somewhat . You know Marx uses that as the model , although not he's not his only model . He does actually know there's differences between , like , german peasants and French peasants and whatnot . Yeah , but but the quotes that Marx makes about the peasantry in France are the quotes that people tend to derive as the trans-historical cases for how we should approach the peasantry .
Speaker 2Right , yeah , and this I don't know if we'll get to all of it , but he tries to make some very clear distinctions between English and French feudalism . So the the , the state of the peasantry in both places is completely different , yeah .
Speaker 1I think that's important , so let's get into that , all right . So okay , I'm just going to start us off like I tend to do . I tend to be aligned by Linus . Chris tends to be a big idea and Jason seems to split the difference . So , jason , you were the dialectical sublation here . I came here to do All right . So in some parts of France this is on page 230 , particularly New Paris and the and further East , some rural communes emerged as social and political entities with limited autonomy . In spite of the successes of the village communities , however , we must not see them as any more than we see the peasant holdings as essential , distinctive units of feudal society . Any gains made by rural communes were partial and not widespread , and it is rather to the , the , the the , the , the , the , the the , the , the , the , the , the , the Lordship or manner that we should look .
Speaker 1It was in this institution that the two great classes met face to face the landowners , great and small , and the peasants , rich and poor . First to receive , second to give their labor or the fruits of their labor , and cash or in kind . It was the principle here , that of that act of coercion , sanctified by custom , legitimated juridically in various forms of dependents ranging from serfdom to villainage . By villainage we mean villainage to be made a outlaw , by which the infinitely scattered surplus is the peasant economy were concentrated as they have the politically and socially dominant class . There's a whole lot in there . I mean like in there , for example , we in that one paragraph we see things that would hint at the debates around whether or not debt or hard currency is super important to medieval societies , how you pay them , whether or not it was in currency a lot of chartleism are in kind and turns out it was both depending . So there's a lot of just so stories about how we got the modern economy that David Kramer and other people have have speculated on . That I mean , weirdly , this chapter trust is on , but I don't want to go to too much down those Rabbit holes , because I think it's actually really important that what he sings like yeah , they're , they're strong communes , they were even economically profitable , but the the relationships of Lord in the relationships of dependents and independence created by by these Taxations .
Speaker 1And these taxations are not taxations of just like nominal currency , like the way we talk about it in modern Economic trade , the way we think about like you know , if you're an MMT , you're like the reason why we tax is to get rid of inflation or whatever . Like these are actually no , the Lord needs your fucking labor and your stuff . Like this is not . They're not getting money to increase their power through money , they're , they're accumulating goods for use values , and that's actually kind of important . At least they are here in France , and so we have to look at that , that class relation .
Speaker 1Now I think it's interesting from a Marxist standpoint , because Whether or not you think relations of production , our modes of production , is actually a super big debate within Marxism , and it actually seems like Hilton is kind of coming down on relations without like stating it clearly . So so I think this is interesting . I think this is also interesting the thief and the Lord ship eventually overlapped and Astros is , in the case of France , the thief was a piece of income yielding property held of a superior Lord by a vassal who's who are felt . He promised military services on horseback , financial aid and advice . As a side note , interestingly , I learned today that connect In German in German means servant and English means night , and it has something to do with this actual transition and continental Relations .
Speaker 2So right , yeah , yeah . Well , we'll talk about this later , never mind , obviously , about the thing ship in in that English accent , anyone , but whatever . Yeah that's , that's in this article later .
Speaker 1Yeah , it could be very small . Some English military tenants in the 12th century had feasts and land which were fractions of villages , I Don't think . I don't think until I read this text that it occurred to me that , like villages were number of feasts which I think I always thought they kind of were always in feasts , but apparently they weren't so .
Speaker 2Yeah , they could be fractions of villages , that's .
Speaker 3This is definitely the first in time . I've ever encountered this either .
Speaker 2I mean and that's one of the things I mentioned last time is kicking the . Kicking the landlords out of Florence wasn't just kicking them physically out of Florence , but like divesting them of their property in Florence , you know is actually a pretty revolutionary act .
Speaker 1So so it's not just like literal kicking them out or even literal land reform . It's also like and your property title ? How will things are gone ?
Speaker 1Yes , right , yeah , any anything within the commune , for sure , yeah , right which which I guess leads to a problem because , for example , there's One of the great debates about England and English quote land reform was that we didn't , england didn't get it because the bourgeois revolution wasn't complete . But what , why they didn't get it was it was sometimes argued that they kind of got it by proxy , by indirect , you know , because of the way they that Land was administered , that you kind of hadn't , didn't need land reform in the same way . But I think this actually puts a lot of that as a claim , which is very interesting , because for me , you know when we're interesting this and understanding the history of Marxist historiography , for example , in Hilton's of Marxist Like , if you're not , if you're reading this super closely , you all said we're like he's not just like for him trying to settle scores on you know the historiography of the Middle Ages , he's also like for him clarifying obscure political commitments that it might actually emerge from some of this shit . I think , yeah , at least if he isn't doing it actively , he's doing it accidentally , like Anyway , blah , blah , blah .
Speaker 1The concept of thief as part of a fund of landed property handed down through the feudal hierarchy in order to reward or retain the loyalty Of words would seem to be well supported by the English evidence . This is only one way of looking at the disposal of estates of conquered England and France . However many fees for family allodial property , the term of whose tenure was futilely Redefined without the family losing its original endowment , the families grew up on the land , was hardly weakened . The heredity of feasts , even in England , though briefly challenged , was never really in doubt . But as property bought and sold , subdivided in regroup , the thief as a means of mobilizing military service became little significance . That seems pretty important . Can you explain why it's important , chris ?
Speaker 2like well , because it's whenever you start switching away from the thief as the as from where , as the source of military , the way the king would build his military , and you start switching towards people paying cash to the king to fulfill their , their , their , their military duties , that's when you get the beginnings of the standing army . Of course , that doesn't come into play until much , much later , but you see the king starting to hire out mercenaries Right . And then they eventually figure out you could just have a standing army for cheaper than hiring out mercenaries . And actually they build , build the state in order to be able to hire out mercenaries , or to first to hire out mercenaries and then second to have a standing army . So it's part of the process of building the , the nation state .
Speaker 1Right , and I think it's
. I think it's crucial that we're looking at England and France here and specifically that they're two very different cases . But but you know , I always put it , until you get the Treaty of Westphalia , your only real nation states and I know this is a controversial claim , but it's one that I'm one that's taken point on Are England and France , which is why we always use them for everything right , like and you know , the further you go , the the less clear it is for like a very long time , like up into the 20th century even .
Speaker 1Right , like , and then you know , you get into this weird , this weird stuff . Now , where you know you have people like liberals will say , well , germany is a new nation , but it's an ancient culture . And I'm like , but it isn't though like , unified Germany is a modern creation and its cultural unification is modern . They just had a similar language and even the language becoming becoming the same as like a Bible thing . Like you know , lutheran German and you know yeah , I mean that's that's .
Speaker 3That's mostly true . I think Otto Bauer , he does do a bit of work to Make the opposite case , although I don't exactly know how effective it is , because I've just kind of been a while since I've read this stuff .
Speaker 2I mean , I think that , like if you , if you study German at all , you see the the enormous differences and dialects that that are , like I don't know , probably Not too much different than , say , like Czech and Slovak are , and those are considered to be two different nations . I mean , yeah , yeah , shouldn't be , but you know , are .
Speaker 1National projects and languages are very clear , because we're like we have Chinese dialects , right , but those dialects are not mutual , they're not even mutually comprehensible . That's a political project versus , like Certain families of romance languages , for example , they're they're actually more , more mutually comprehensible , or like Yugoslav languages .
Speaker 2Yes , exactly .
Speaker 1Like southern Slavic languages is like you guys just don't want to admit you speak the same language as you have an alphabet like .
Speaker 3Sometimes even the same alphabet , serbian is , is religious , and that's it .
Speaker 2I had a Serbian professor who's like oh yeah , I always pad my resume . I used to pad my resume out by saying , oh , I speak Croatian and Bosnian and Serbian .
Speaker 1Which is true enough . But so , yeah , whatever , whatever I'm like . So so the political context here I think it's something we do have to keep in mind when we talk about this , and I think even Marxist have not been great about that in the past . But wait , let's go back to France . I just wanted to illustrate what the like that , why this is important . Right , because if , if you , if , this change of Of , say , nested relations moves from what we could call private governance and and In some ways I don't want to go all Han's Herman Hoppe , because I think he's wrong , but there is a sense in which early feudal relations is is , ironically , private governance , because the Empire's a fawn apart , I and so what governs ?
Speaker 1Like , yes , there is law , yes , there's an emperor to enforce the law , but really , though , the laws are weird , there's multiple sources of law and there's multiple jurisdictional courts that overlap and and not in a way of like them being nested in each other , like , no , you were just subject to different jurisdictional courts , some ecclesiastical , some some secular , etc .
Speaker 1And With the exception of France and England , this is , you know , this is really fragmented till , really , the bourgeois revolutions . Now , france and England , though , you have this shift in relations , which seems to solidify a need for the state Earlier than in other places , except for places that have strong empires , which , again , we don't talk about them because they're not nation states , but that already had similar relations , such as the various caliphates , the Byzantine , the Byzantine Roman Empire , various Chinese states , etc . So what we have here is , like the idea that you would have a nation state versus an imperial state seems to actually be related to it in this shift of Administrating relations in France and in England , but they're different in France and England . Am I understanding what the argument being made here is ?
Speaker 3I Mean , I think so yeah yeah yeah .
Speaker 1All right . Well , let us move on , because I think that's that's a key , established point . Okay , I want to skip a little bit ahead because I'm not gonna read everything . It is not only difficult , perhaps mistaken tasks , to compare feudal societies immediately will France and medieval England , just like that line is like so this thing we're doing , it's probably bad idea , goes right back into it doing the exact same thing .
Speaker 1Within the modern boundaries of the two countries there were in the Middle Ages most striking regional diversities that each kingdom .
Speaker 1There were greater contrast between some of the provinces of each . So the provinces are administered so differently that , like , maybe England and France share more than like Burgundy and Luxor on you know that's the town of Provence or whatever , like All right England south of the Thames was more like Normandy than it was the marches of Wales , the isle , the isle de France was a lot more like the Valley of the lower Thames and it was like a lot long doc , but long doc . But if there were three great regional diversities within each country , perhaps in so far we can arrive overall Generalizing view of England and French society , the similarities will emerge more , fortunately in that , in that we recognize these internal diversities , the divergencies . So I guess what we are saying here is like you know what ? Yeah , it's impossible to do , but we're doing anyway because it's gonna be clarifying , even though we realize that the internal to each of these countries it's still highly diverse and kind of a mess .
Speaker 3Yeah , I mean this . What this would not historic people's that whole discussions all about is , like the ruling class has a shared culture of a of a general kind of you know there what's England and that , and then over there there was France within the . The people underneath them , mm-hmm , they don't . They don't really represent anything . They're just .
Speaker 3They're just tenants of the nation right like , and so in some cases , like entire what we would call today , we would recognize as people's , just don't come into play into any of this , like , for example , like Chris , like you just said , like oxy's hung , for example . They're , they're just not historic .
Speaker 2They're a different people , then yeah , the French . Yeah , they speak a different language . In fact , that's where the longer doc comes from is . In southern France , you would say ok instead of we , for yes . So they're the language where you say ok , you know , or whatever . I don't know , I don't know my , my French is not good , I didn't take enough of it to get any good at it . But uh , yeah .
Speaker 1So I mean like that , the way that France became France was fucking through fire and sword , right which I think we I want to like Talk about historic people's thing a little bit , because one of the things that Marxist get get a Critique of is is conflating the normative and descriptive . And whether or not that's true for Marxist and maybe it is it's definitely true for Hegel yeah , because that's why , because Hegel , hegel really thinks that this is a true process that brings us closer to God , and Everyone who tries to secularize hey , but only that closer to God through negativity thing out , I don't think you can actually understand what he will do .
Speaker 1Well , and , and to be fair , like most people don't understand Hegel , that's true but like , if you , but it's not up to me , it's like it's not a hard assumption to be like . Oh no , he thinks that like history is leading us to God's kingdom , like it's an escalate , it's an eschatological argument .
Speaker 3I'm sorry , it is yeah , like a lot of what he says is just to be taken literally . He just means exactly what he says and that , and if you take it literally it's not hard to understand at all .
Speaker 1Which and the reason why I bring this up here , though , is that , when we talk about historic peoples , like Hegel thinks there's a reason why there are historic peoples , whereas you and I would just think , well , they just won the fight on a given day . Like it's , it's a lot more Arbiter , it's not mere contingency , but it's still not as Well . It's not . It's not part of some master Theological plan in which the whole universe is playing at very specific subjects at certain times , which which means secularizing that , and Marxist language gets into us into some weird problems , because how do we decide who's a historic people or not ? Well , we can decide in the past , but we're also given to try to predict it in the now , and that usually does not go well .
Speaker 3Yeah , it's usually a bad thing .
Speaker 1Yeah , I mean just looking at , for example , when , when Marx or Ingalls tries to pick who's gonna be progressive or not in a national liberation movement in the 1860s is like , well , you call that wrong and that wrong , that wrong yes , they were wrong every once in a while .
Speaker 2Yeah , well , I'm not .
Speaker 1You know , I don't like I don't lose sleep over this , I think . But I my point is , I think like this is something that Marxist historians . Now I think you're faced with the choice to either double down on the historic peoples categorization or to throw it out like you can't just kind of namby-pamby deal with it . You either have to like try to defend it in secular terms , or and and thus try to come up with a way to make it predictive , or you have to be like well , this is some hangalium baggage , it doesn't help us . I don't know like we can try to like square the circle . Maybe you guys will offer me a sublated way for me to read this , but I don't .
Speaker 1I don't see one , because I I get , when we talk about Historical peoples in the past , like that makes total sense . Like well , this group lost and they were subsumed into this group . Like , like , and maybe not even like actually killed , because most of the case we've actually learned that people actually tend to not be Super genocidal monsters and they're literally killing everyone with sense . I mean we do it every now and then , but it's not a common thing . I mean I think it it makes sense , but only when looking back in the past .
Speaker 3I mean , I think it , it makes sense , but only when looking back in the past , like a right , like . If you think about the so like angles and his characterization of the Slavic people , the , the non-polish Slavic people , as non-historic , he's probably , he's , he's actually kind of right , but only only as it relates to what has already happened . And then you know , then Austria-Hungary , the empire that breaks apart , and then all of those individual cultures , they all start to assert themselves and start to really make a make , their stamp on history , and they stop being non-historic . So it's just not a useful way to understand anything anymore , right ?
Speaker 1I mean for me it , it is only useful on hindsight . So , yeah , like like , I wouldn't remove it from talking about like , well , we don't talk about Landoc as like an origins of France , because they're subsumed in the French culture and you know Other differences are are by by hook , crook , fire and sword and Inquisition , um , literally erased , um , and you know , whereas there , there , there are , there are cases that are harder , though , like the Scottish .
Yeah , actually a hard call why ?
Speaker 1kind of is actually yeah , um , so so you know , I just don't know how helpful it is to try to apply that into the future .
Speaker 2Uh , it's not helpful at all and in in as much as it was , it was less than helpful .
Speaker 3It's because it's about as helpful as trying to decide where an owl is going to land after dark but during the daytime .
Speaker 1Yeah , um you know , unless you're an owl scientist . Yeah , um .
Speaker 3Why don't you app Like check else ?
Speaker 1I mean we probably could figure it out probabilistically , but there's still that 1% . That's my anyway , not gonna get into this . My favorite thing is when people get mad . We're like , oh , you predicted it wrong and I was like I gave it a 30% chance of happening . Do you have any idea how big of a percentage chance of something happening 30% actually is like ?
Speaker 2That's one of my favorite things that people do yeah on the internet is Get mad at you for predicting things wrong . I was like dude , I was fucking guessing what the fuck .
Speaker 1I've never claimed to be correct on this . I was trying to like Read tea leaves . Like the rest of you dumb motherfuckers , I don't know .
Speaker 2I'm not . All difference between me and you is that I said it on the internet and you didn't . You know ?
Speaker 1Oh , man , um , uh , I hold me accountable . When I try to theorize my predictions and and come up with a system for it , then I think it's fair to call me out , but If I'm just like I don't know , I think this might happen . Good luck , um , okay , so I'm this . So I think this , I think this is interesting . I'm gonna read this paragraph because I think it's also gonna be helpful . Um , two English historians .
Speaker 1The difference at first seemed considerable . The most obvious partly in our minds as a result of preoccupation with the 19th and early 20th century historians , with the emergence of the central I stayed in the form of the feudal monarchies , is that the English aristocracy never managed to complement their undoubted powers as landowners and lords of tenants with corresponding Jurisdictional and political power . This seems huge , actually , and this seems actually part of why why capital isn't made developed in English , like in all seriousness . The lesson that we learned about France is that , following the disintegration of the ranch , shackle on relatively short-lived power of the Carolinji and emperors God , that's a slam on the Carolinji and the great Creep . Like the Carolinji and you know that super big empire that we're always let be known about , how awesome Charlemagne is . Well , they stopped , couldn't even like stay together for very long .
Speaker 3Ramshackle power is is very yeah . Yeah , that's definitely a call that .
Speaker 1Take that Charlemagne , the great provincial landholders , the potentus , openly appropriated the public jurisdiction that they held as dukes and counts by imperial nomination . The aristocratic families of the region , tied by Vasillusion , increasingly by tenure and there are a lot's were turned into feasts To the dukes and counts themselves underwent an important evolution family allegiances with a rise , but lateral links between Agnit and cognate connections Consolidated themselves into lineages more concerned with direct ancestry and descendants , then we collateral's , and focus more on the male rather than on the female line of descent . This concentrated and consolidated lineages and established firm bases of local power , usually focused on castles like actual physical things . Guys they were . They too appropriated the public Jurisdictions whose boundaries nearer than the country were defined by an area of domination of the castle . Finally , their vassal , the Knights of the village , has consolidated their local power as landowners with various levels of public jurisdiction , and they too turn their tenants into subjects as they themselves climbed into the ranks of them . The ability Interestingly , this is just me talking , I also .
Speaker 1I thought this is what happened in England and I was apparently wrong . So this is what I was taught happened in feudal societies in general .
Speaker 2So yeah , yeah , same . That's because , I mean , that's that's what these historians that say feudalism didn't exist are tilting against is the idea that you can apply one single , very rigid description of feudalism to everywhere in Europe .
Speaker 1Yeah , which is fair enough , like , yes , true way . Friend of the show , enemy of Marxism . Colin drum also makes the same point and Although I think he takes it to the point that he thinks we should redirect historical distinct , like Historic graphic periods all together .
Speaker 2Yeah , how useful that is .
Speaker 1Yeah , I do . You know that , though that's a common argument these days though that's not just Colin . I've heard it a lot in academia that we just need to like that these distinctions lead us to false differences , and I'm like , I don't know , man , I there really is a very different way the economy works between the 14th and the 18th century . Sorry , why .
Speaker 2Like between the 18th and the 20th , I mean .
Speaker 3I mean , yeah , go ahead . I feel like you know there's a tendency , especially a I don't know what to call it exactly , but let's just say in Intellectual discourse , whatever that means over the last few decades , to like collapse as many categories as possible in order to streamline , make things simpler . But I don't think it does . I think it in every case . I think that actually makes things less clear and let and more confusing , like , yes , it's true that the category is Not exactly a hundred percent applicable the further out you zoom . But if you do , if you just delete the category all together , then Nothing is distinguishable at all . And also , that just happens to be exactly , even formally , the the actual logic of postmodernism .
Speaker 1Yeah , the ever present present . Yeah , what's the map in the territory problem ? So , okay , you have an accuracy problem on your map . Well , let's just , you know , get more accurate with the map and drop the artificial distinctions . Well , you know what eventually happens it becomes not useful because the map is basically just a picture of the fucking planet , undistinguished , with no clarifying cat , like that's what happens . Yeah , but , and it's weird that , like what is interesting to me is over the 20th century , the opposite tendency happens everywhere but historiography and history . Look , we get more obsessed with categories everywhere else , but in history , which is like , oh , no , categories bad , like Categories aren't real , like no shit , whoever thought they were real ? Like they describe real things , they're not real enough themselves . Like , yeah , who's a historical Platonist ?
Speaker 3They're only real if they're Enforced like . I've had a friend that once said uh , the difference between a language and a dialect is who has a better army , and that's kind of true , yeah .
Speaker 1The difference between a religion and an idea set is uh did , did a Christian emperor declare ?
Speaker 1anyway , um , yeah , all right , so , okay . So we have this , this , uh , this model where , like in England , the aristocracy is really only able to To develop rentiae power , right , for whatever reason , like they're not , they don't actually have the same jurisdictional power . And when I think about that I like I Guess that does ring true to me , because I don't think of like strong jurisdictional Ways to fight , like the nobility in England after , like the 13th century just doesn't seem to exist , like even before the Reformation and whatnot . Maybe I'm wrong about that , but that seems to . You know , that does seem to be what what Hilton is is is indicating here , right , like that , like in England proper , like the lords had a shit ton of economic power but they really weren't that Like politically or militarily powerful as warlords separate , separately from the norm and state like it just doesn't seem to be case . Yeah , in fact , actually , whenever they became that kind of powerful .
Speaker 1They became a problem for the actual power right whereas like , I mean militarily , I mean yeah , right , whereas the whole system in in , uh , in France , like seems to be dependent on these people being actual military powers with actual , you know , internally consistent standing armies , etc . But what , chris ? What you're taking , this is actually your specialty , not mine . Yeah , that's not mine .
Speaker 3Well , I mean , and Hilton gets into this- Later on in the , in the article .
Speaker 2But yeah , you are right , the norman state is Much more powerful than the French state , but he talks about how , later on , how it sort of Starts to delegate more judicial power , you know , actual local Power over life and death and everything else , including military , not not including military down to the local levels .
Speaker 1Uh , down to the local levels so common law becomes more and more important than just like lords , lords decree right , because , as a common law is like the the autumn I hate to use this word because it's confusing to people . It's like the automation of the lord's will , because the good courts are protected by the king , not lords the kings , the kings will because the good courts are protected by the kings , as we can trust the court judgment . So the court itself , the actual medieval court , doesn't have to travel around our little island . It can just stay in london all the time and we can trust the ministers to be the court in lieu of the court or the actual court a's and and , and . That is kind of weird actually to think about . I mean , it's even kind of hidden in the words Just Anyway , um , and I don't think that would have been possible in anglo-saxon .
Speaker 2Uh Well , the uh . Originally after , after 1066 , you had traveling Jurists like traveling judges . That went around . But if that toward later on it really starts , the power starts to devolve to local landlords .
Speaker 1So , yeah , the emphasis on the common law becomes really important um , okay , but the norman invaders , destroying their old english aristocracy , took the institutions of the english monarchy and from this firm base In the next two centuries , successfully excluded Individual magnates that set for the lords of the western and northern marches from developing a baron , a baronical or baronal jurisdiction founding on alienated uh , public powers . Comparable to that Opposite number in france , the haught justice in england by the end of the 13th century was doubt out by royal justices of of of a size , as were most disputes concerned with land held in the freehold , including military tenure . The old franchises whereby jurisdiction at the level of a hundred of the hundred court was in private hands were seemingly denatured in that , instead of being appropriated the , instead of being an appropriation of public power by private law , the private lord had been appropriated by the agent of the public power . Okay , what does that mean , chris ? I like I kind of read that sentence like 50 times when I encountered it the first time it does sound very important , but I yeah .
Speaker 2What does it ?
Speaker 3mean Hold on .
Speaker 2Let me read it again . I was distracted .
Speaker 1I tripped over the number of of of legal words that I hadn't seen in like 10 years , because I don't read legal documents anymore .
Speaker 2Hold on . What ? What section are we on ? I was .
Speaker 1I got an email from a student , I was answering it and I wasn't paying attention 232 , chris 232 , the Hot justice in england by the end of the 13th century was dealt out by royal justices of a size which I think you mentioned . Yes , as where most disputes concerned with land held in the freehold , including the military tenure , the old franchises Whereby jurisdiction at the level of the hundred court were held in private hands were seemingly denatured In that , instead of this being an appropriation of public power by private land by a private lord , the private lord had been appropriated as an agent by the public power . What is what's ? What's the difference between that distinction ?
Speaker 2at the end , that's what I'm struggling with okay , so , rather than sort of in the , the old french method of the , the , the lord , essentially having complete jurisdiction over all of his own land , every and everything that happens within his own land ended being affiliated to the king through a , an oath of fealty right . This is essentially power delegated downwards . Ultimately , it's still the king's power , but you are exercising the king's power through the complicated legal system of the English state , the Normans .
Speaker 1Yeah , right . So basically , okay , you get your power back , lord , but you don't hold this as a franchise where it's your power Really , your power is my power , motherfucker . Is that what I'm saying here ? Yeah , exactly .
Speaker 2Yeah . I mean it's essentially the slow evolution towards centralized power and the forming of the nation state . You know it happens within the 13th century .
Speaker 1Right . So instead of Lord as the Lord's prerogative , it's Lord as Functionary of the King .
Speaker 2Yeah , which is kind of like what the Carolingian state was trying to do right but failed . The 19th state actually did for the most part .
Speaker 1Right , yeah , yeah , I mean the business . It was an empire . So basically , what you have then is the Norman state is able to do internal imperialism better than the French state is .
Speaker 2Yes .
Speaker 1Got it .
Speaker 2Okay , the Norman system , as I mentioned last time , is the most , I think , the strongest of the feudal systems .
Speaker 1Yeah , yeah , with the stronger central , stronger central court , and okay , there's a good reason for not carrying this , for not carrying this contrast to extremes . First , there's a question of scale . England at the end of 13th century was a feudal kingdom of about 4 million people out of a comparably small area of land , mostly concentrated to the southeast of the line from Exeter to York . France was a country of 15 million people , evidently distributed , with variable densities but with an extreme south by no means lagging behind . The Paris region , from the Norman coast to the Mediterranean , is about 600 miles and from Bordeaux to Lyon is 350 miles . Secondly , there's a question of distribution of aristocratic land , of properties . In England , in contrast to France , the greater magnets tended to have properties scattered rather than concentrated in one region . That seems important actually .
Speaker 3Yeah , and that's actually part of the reason for the French Revolution is the utter incoherence and scattered nature of everything . You live in one area and you're going to bring some goods to another area , and you have to pay a tax four times instead of just once . Stuff like that is even the reason why they understood themselves to be abolishing feudalism , regardless of what actually happened .
Speaker 2Yeah , Would you say the French ? Yeah , the English was way more scattered and decentralized than , yeah , the English
would . If you were awarded land , you wouldn't necessarily be awarded land adjacent to your land . So if it comes to raising an army against your lord or whatever , you can't necessarily have a base of territory that's all contiguous . Some of your land might be in the middle of your enemy's land , right ?
Speaker 1So I think you're getting at it to late . Jason is late French like jurisdictional . Everybody has all these different rights to taxes overlapping , and that doesn't happen in England . There's basically one withholding tax , but the English king and state eventually make sure that it remains most powerful by saying , yeah , you can have a bunch of lands . But I would just give the example here the Clair Earl's of Gloucester , for example , had the most important concentration of property in East Anglia , the West Midlands and South Wales . So good luck raising a consistent army when your landholdings are spread out across the country with people who don't even necessarily speak the same language .
Speaker 3Right yeah .
Speaker 1Yeah , and post-Carolingian Gaul , the collapse of authority of the state , simply revealed the real power was and could only be exerted in an area which was not too big for a duke or account to rule with the aid of his followings . So they maintain clear , contiguous landholdings Right . In contrast , in spite of the difficulties of travel , lowline England , where the population was concentrated , was small enough to be handled by royal administration , eventually settled in Westminster , furthermore to the spacial property and eloquence of the following intelligences meant that , except for Wales and the Welsh and Scottish Marshes , it was more realistic for a higher inability to exercise power through the influence of the King's court than the rely on regional strength and their local followings had an important power base for the sake of leverage at the center . So geography actually really matters here . Yes , like how the geography is maintained .
Speaker 2Stose material conditions man .
Speaker 1Yeah , material conditions actually mean stuff . And they also mean stuff other than just like whether or not you have a factory .
Speaker 2All right , yeah , you can't just say geographic determinism is bullshit , it doesn't mean anything . Which ? I can't believe that people actually do . It's always blown my mind . I've never understood that .
Speaker 1No , I'm a big . I'm not a geographic determinist in like the way that , say , 19th century Germans tend to be , where I think , like geography determines your personality .
Speaker 2But like the Falkish Nationalists , that you we're from a place where we have moist soil , so we're more romantic , but if you're from an area with dry soil , it means you're going to be greedier .
Speaker 1Yeah , which , by the way , I mean , it's not that Marx and Engels weren't given to that stuff sometimes themselves , well , yeah it's not like that stuff is based on nothing , it's just it's taken way too far , you know right .
Speaker 1But I do think like , hey , looking at like the fact that geography actually does kind of , and how you administered that geography , so it's not just . It's not just like , oh , the rocks are this way , this is how this is going to be , everything does affect the way power can concentrate or not . And the reason why I bring this up is if you think it matters here , when David Graber goes in his Dawn of Everything book with David Winger goes . Well , if we just think a different way , other things were possible and I'm like , yeah , but have you looked at , like the conditions of the societies that had egalitarian relations , or all like in certain places with certain conditions , and maybe if we I don't know learn what those conditions are , we can mimic them , as opposed to just like saying believing shit is possible , because , because you know , if we believe it , we can make it happen . If you build it , they'll come .
Speaker 2Like it's like a reading rainbow lesson .
Speaker 1Yeah , it's , it's . It's just . It just seems to be like yeah , I mean , like people have , like there's obviously human will and to why why , for example , England has a strong state versus France is relatively weak one , and why , when France attempts to build a strong state in the early modern period , it's like a ridiculous , ridiculous overclaim . You know , that's why , like French , absolutism is so absolute . It's actually because their state priority was so weak .
Speaker 3Yeah right .
Speaker 1Yeah . So it's like , whereas , like the English don't need absolutism , their central state is strong , we can , we can have like proto bourgeois liberty because we have a strong central state .
Speaker 2Fuck you Like in fact , the most absolute is state that exists , I think , is England , but not through the king , through parliament . Parliament has absolute authority , which is a semi democratic institution . And so it's like you bypass the problems of absolutism in doing that .
Speaker 3That's the thing about making a revolution first is , like it's not nearly as complete as once , a cumulator .
Speaker 2No , it's not . We're actually going to be talking about the Jeff Ealy article or book about the incomplete German bourgeois revolution pretty soon .
Speaker 1Well , I mean one of the things I like to point out when , when people talked about incomplete bourgeois revolutions in the 19th century , it wasn't a metaphor , no , it wasn't just about , it wasn't even just about rights , it's like no , literally . Like there's fucking still a feudal aristocratic basis to the state . Like literally , yeah
.
Speaker 2His claim is that Bono , not Bonaparte . Bismarck is actually a Bonaparte figure and does a top down bourgeois revolution .
Speaker 1Interesting . Yeah , it gets us into our progressive Bonapartism versus regressive Bonapartism . We're going to skip that because that's not going to help us understand the Middle Ages .
Speaker 2No , it's not .
Speaker 1That was just a teaser . It's a teaser into Varn having a heart attack about if we're ever going to finish this paragraph , which I am also the worst offender of . All right , so that we are done , all right . We finally got to page 32 . 33 .
Speaker 2All right 233 .
Speaker 1Yeah , yeah , all right . 321 . The principal characteristics from the standpoint of the relations of lords and peasants was that the peasant holding provided rent consisting of unpaid and enforced labor services for the cultivation of the dimmest and for the manufacturer of craft products needed in the estate . The rent , mostly labor services , was to some extent in kind , was a payment to the lord and his capacity as the landowner and was notionally related to the size of the holding . From the 10th century , as populations grew , and coincidentally of course , with social political decentralization , peasant family holdings disintegrated and were reformed , dimmest cultivation dwindled and labor rent was largely reprised by money rent , which tended to become fixed by custom and devalued . But since this was precisely the time when the lords , high and low , were appropriating public jurisdictions , including the power of command , that is to say ban over all persons within their jurisdictional area , the opportunity arose to organize a transfer of peasant surplus and forms of very jurisdictional profits court fines , payments of the uses of the lords mill , oven and wine presses , corvées unrelated to the tenure but consequent to the general power of command . In a word , by the 11th century , signoré domino I don't know was succeeded by Signoré banile . That's funny . Counts , castilians and Knights were not merely landholders with tenants but sovereigns with subjects , and the whole movement was inseparable with the growth of the urban markets , great and small , and with the conversion of serfdom into villainages , which might be considered a change of terminology rather than substance . I'm not going to leave that last bit . So I think that's what we see . There is like the reason why France doesn't have a and the reason why I actually think , why French national consolidation is even more violent than English , which I think we need to know because it is is because , like , basically the lords by necessity had to become many little states of administration and they they got , they had basically sovereign exception within their domains , because their domains were contiguous , etc . And because they can , and because the , the actual the , the onerous nature of the rent system in in France actually collapsed the peasant holdings in a way that had them backdoor change their economy through legal fiat , yeah Right , which seems kind of important , whereas England didn't do that At least , at least in the doomsday book time right , though seldom reaching the high proportions of demands to the 10 years , found an example in the state of Saint-Germain-des-Pérées , our Saint-Breton , and the Carl-Ingien period .
Speaker 1The organizing principle list of credit granted property at the time of the doomsday book and in the 12th century surveys , with the cultivation of the demons by labor services owned from dependent 10 years , usually realized economically in the payment of fixed annual farm , farm and money are kind . After a marginal concentration of dimmest in the 12th century , the whole system had remained virtually intact , not merely since 1810 , 86 , but since at least the 10th century was rejuvenated and expanded . Under the inflation the inflationary conditions of the 13th century , dimmest management was made accountable , managers replaced farmers , labor services were increased and rents were raised . It's the opposite of France . Dependent villainages , which have not been regarded as servile , were declared unfree in the public courts . Minerial profits rose and the proportion of income from the sale of dimmest produce sometimes exceeded the income from rent . So we had the beginnings of a market system . That's actually really important .
Speaker 1The dominoesial system did not collapse in England until the second half of the 14th century , and it was almost as if England were three centuries behind France and feudal development conserving large scale dimmest , state management and mainly land loan earners , tenant relationships within the polity where the monarchy was strong and private jurisdiction in the hands of landowners being little more than regulatory customary laws of the land of the state . In fact , the contrast is misleading . We will leave aside the question of the relative strengths of the Capian and Plantagen at monarchies , only to deal with the minor estate and lordship . Here the similarities are considerable , though through . Our perception of these similarities does not come easily , because the differences in nomenclature and historical traditions have emphasized contrast . But once those comparisons made , aspects of the country's history are thrown into relief by examining those of the other . All right , do we want to go into the next paragraph before we stop today , or do you want to stop here ? What are we at ? We're at almost an hour .
Speaker 1Yeah , we're about almost an hour and we're at 34 . So , for our listeners , are we gonna we ? I'm afraid of my fear , dear dear co host and listeners , that this next argument's long . I'm not sure , though I can't remember so well we ?
Speaker 3I mean there are two pages left in the entire chapter .
Speaker 2Yeah , but we can take us for yeah .
Speaker 1Okay yeah , never mind , there are two pages left in the entire chapter , but each one of these paragraphs could take us 10 minutes to parse .
Speaker 3Yeah , they are kind of long paragraphs and they do kind of cover a lot .
Speaker 1And I have to check and make sure I understand them , because they actually use very technical language , even for me .
Speaker 2So yeah , so one of the things that I think that we talk about villainage versus serfdom Right For class , classical , medieval scholarship there's like a differentiation between the two . Like medieval , like classical , serfdom is different than villainage . But like I think what Hilton is trying to say is it's a change in terminology and there's no actual difference , especially because of the variation at which the system is applied . So he kind of uses villainage and serfdom interchangeably , which as a Marxist he would Right , because I think ultimately , the thing that we're , the thing that is most important to us , is the relationship to the means of production in this , or actually the social relations as well . But like , the nitpicky details of how those social arrangements are arranged is not super important for our purposes .
Speaker 1So what are we drawing from this so far ? I mean , we're going to be spending a lot of time in the Hilton , but but I think what we're learning for I , what I'm learning is law in geography , our mid and I know law is going to be the claim that people are going to are going to really get up and arms about our material conditions . I know I talk about this all the time , but it's actually kind of important like , and that over time , these develop with certain logics that really do make pretty significant differences in how , like , a state isn't ministered , how power works and how much individual power one can have , which also means , for example , the relative difference of trying to centralize that state is going to be different . And one thing I will point out is like , yeah , england , england's a corporation of its marshlands and what not pretty bloody like , which is something that Hilton actually is doing here . So , like like , wales and Scotland are difficult because they're both culturally different , but they're also , like , geographically problematic , whereas France is just like to assert for the crown , to assert yourself over these lords is going to take breaking a lot of these lords because they're not . So they're not like their power , their power , and England is actually directly through the crown .
Speaker 1Here . It's kind of like , even though technically they're servile to the crown not survival , but but bound bonded to the crown they're they're barely actually bonded to the crown . They have their own contiguous land holdings , they they the whole rent farming system isn't even how they make money anymore and they Can raise their own armies and enforce their own law , which actually does make sense to me , because one of the things I've always tried to figure out is like why is English common law so much more coherent than all these other forms of law which have to be standardized later on , either Like through a Napoleonic performs or just Indian cults or whatever ? And this actually gives me a reason why that happened . Yeah , it gives me an explanation for that that I have not had and is not , you know , like that used to be . Like why is English common law so powerful ?
Speaker 2like what's , what's super interesting to me is that England , the existence of England , the , the kingdom of England , is a direct result of the Decentralized nature of French feudalism , because it was the , you know , the , the Duchy of Normandy right that takes over England and that's right yeah the Duke of Normandy becomes the King of England , who is nominally Subject to the King of France , but since he's more powerful than the King of France because his system is more centralized , even though the King of France has , he individually is more powerful than the King of France on paper , like right , even though the King of France has all of his retainers or anything , which is the cause of the Hundred Years War which we're gonna get into next time .
Speaker 1I mean that makes that makes a lot of sense when you're like , okay , so England is , england technically should be a French holding ran by a , but a barren old Lord who just happens to also be the accidental king of this other nation .
Speaker 1Right , like , like the , the English claim to kingship is is actually not through the French system , it's through the . It's true the fact that they , they have a tenuous holding on the Anglo-Saxon system , but they bring this sub , like this particular administration within the French system , into the English state and makes them stronger . Yeah , and that's what that also indicates how varied they are . Because , like , it's not like the Burgundians or whatever could do this , because the , the different administrations are different . So , like the , the way that the , the Normans are administering their state , makes it stronger than even other other Berenal states , because that means that diversity between the two Within France now makes sense for why it has an effect . Because , like , let's say it was the Burgundians who got England for some reason , like I don't know how they had a claim , but let's just say they did . How would this look different ? Like on or whatever ? Like it might not , but I suspect it would .
Speaker 3I I think it probably would it like most ways .
Speaker 1Yeah , I think the my France is what I think .
Speaker 2The Norman system , wherever it's exported , creates very interesting situations like the kingdom of two Sicilies for one right , the kingdom of Jerusalem for another . I Mean , if you want to go with the traditional history , like what about the , the Kievan Russe right ? Supposedly the they call what they call the Norman theory right , but that's technically not normus as Vikings . But you know yeah , they're northmen , though northmen right , but they call it the Norman theory , which is which is why Ukraine is . They're all Norse , defending us against the hordes of barbarian slobs , right .
Speaker 3That's true ?
Speaker 2Yeah , because asianic slobs in particular as the adex of the worst kind as opposed , as opposed to those good Norse slobs , those good .
Speaker 3Norse mingled slobs . Yeah , because everybody on the western side of the collapse of the Union is actually a descendant of the feudal aristocracy from before the Romanos .
Speaker 2Do ?
Speaker 3they're all rude kid , all of us , all of them instead of how they were almost all peasants and Much , much lower than anyone . In fact , they all were yeah they're all if anyone's actually saying that ?
Speaker 1Well , they do say to make it like on the blood claims . I mean , you know , oh yeah , I know .
Speaker 3Yeah . The thing is like even if they're not saying that , that's what they're saying .
Speaker 1Yeah , I'm proud to be of a weird asiatic Dissent myself , so yeah , you're a Bulgarian Ancestry on Right ? Yeah , but Gary and you but Gary and you and Scottish , yeah so , but I am married into , like native Burgans , it's not just so far so like , but so Sephardic Jew and Bulgarians and then and then Scotch Irish , so like . But yeah , I have easy questionable North African asiatic content . I used to like hope that it turned out that I was secretly a Khazar . Better than cool . Doesn't seem to have been the case .
Speaker 2DNA . Dna testing ruins everything . Like we figured out , there were way more German than we thought we were .
Speaker 1Well , it ruins everything , or it's are ? It's weird race science which is you know ?
Speaker 2like yeah , that's true , it is weird race science and we don't have to take it seriously , which means we're not German at all , we're just check .
Speaker 3Yeah , I mean the thing is that you can just reject it because it's weird race science like in favor of my own , like race science that I don't actually like fucking adhere to .
Speaker 1See , you believe it . Speaking check gives you mystical powers .
Speaker 2Absolutely yes , it does the issue to sloth like eating colache . It makes you , gives you mystical powers . Yeah , that's what it is .
Speaker 1You don't have to , okay ? So Colache Versus cool latches , which is what we get here , because I only get check cuisine as interpreted by Texans .
Speaker 2So yeah , the Colache , as a Texan , would refer to it .
Speaker 1Yeah .
Speaker 2Colache or Colache right .
Speaker 1Yeah , the Colache or cool latches with . This is how it gets by the time it gets to Utah .
Speaker 2Well , is it the one , is it the one that has like sausage in it ?
Speaker 1They have those two . Some of them will be like stuff of like Southwestern egg like so that they claim it's Texas check hybrid fusion food , which I think is fair .
Speaker 2Yeah , that would be what Texas checks would call a club asnick . Okay , which would anything that has like savory food , a club as a club , as a sausage right . So a club asnick is a sausage Colache , but a Colache is has fruit or , you know , farmers cheese or something like that in it , or cream cheese , whatever and relatively sweeter dough also . Yeah , sweeter dough as well .
Speaker 3Yeah , I mean fluffier , sweeter fluffier .
Speaker 2In Texas it's fluffier you go to check Republic . It's not as fluffy .
Speaker 1I'm , uh , I .
This is why I believe that cultural appropriation is good , because I think Texas Slavic food is a God's gift of humanity . Even though I would agree with that , I do the eggs , though .
Speaker 2So I Cultural appropriation is .
Speaker 3It's just not real . This is it never happened . There's never there . Never actually was cultural appropriation .
Speaker 2That's why Tejano music and Norteno music exist is from , like you know , mexicans in South Texas and northern Mexico like playing the same music checks in Germans . Yeah , yeah .
Speaker 1Because it's awesome that happened in Scotch Irish . So you get that , you get the check German squeezy box in the Scotch Irish country music sound and then you add all your Are your Spanish indigenous , like singing over it , and you get terrenio , not a new , and Corita , and I mean Corita's . I admit Corita's funny because when I'm like that's the gangster music , it has polka beats . Okay , but , but Not to . I'm not insulting any cartels with this statement but , but .
Speaker 2This is a real good way to end . The episode is just go off on the most insane tangent we could .