
Originally Posted by
Burnham, The Managerial Revolution p. 55-56
To return, however, to the bourgeoisie. I have spoken of this gradual extension of bourgeois control as the general phase of the development of bourgeois dominance. This was not enough to revolutionize the structure of society and to consolidate the position of the capitalists as the ruling class. So long as important institutions of society were dominated by the feudal lords and feudal ideas, the position of the capitalists was insecure, and the possibilities of capitalist expansion were severely restricted. In particular was this true in the case of the political institutions of society, of the state, since the state comprises the coercive instrumentalities of society, charged with enforcing rights and obligations. A feudal state, to take obvious examples, might at any time, and often did, back the cancellation of debts with an appeal to the violated Church doctrines against taking interest, might prevent serfs from leaving the land to seek work as free laborers, might permit the exaction of feudal dues on capitalist enterprise and so on. Capitalism and the capitalists confronted the problem of state power. To assure their dominance and advance, the bourgeoisie had to "take over state power." Here again we deal in a metaphor. What was needed for the development of capitalism and the dominance of the capitalists, and what in time, in fact, resulted, was a transformation in state institutions such that, instead of enforcing the rights and obligations of feudal society adjusted to the dominance of the feudal lords, they enforced the rights and obligations of capitalist society, adjusted to the dominance of the capitalists. In saying that the bourgeoisie took over state power and held it in England, France, the United States, or wherever it may have been, we do not necessarily mean that capitalists walked in physically or even that many government officials were drawn from the ranks of the capitalists. A bourgeois state, a state "controlled" by the bourgeoisie, means fundamentally a state which, by and large, most of the time and on the most important occasions, upholds those rights, those ways of acting and thinking, which are such as to permit the continued social dominance of the bourgeoisie.
As a matter of fact, the transformation of the state institutions into integral parts of a capitalist society was a lengthy and complicated process, sometimes, but not always, including bitter civil wars as decisive steps. In the fifteenth and sixteenth and even the seventeenth centuries, the early capitalists, we know from the records of those times, worked closely with the princes or kings. The king in feudal society had been relatively unimportant, one feudal lord among others, often with less actual power than his chief vassals. When the kings began to strengthen their central authority and to try to build nations in the modern sense, their most obvious enemies were the feudal lords, including feudal lords who were supposed to be their own vassals. The kings sought support from the capitalists. The capitalists gave support to the kings because they, too, wanted stronger nations with national armies and navies to protect trade routes, and uniform laws, currencies, and taxes, so that trade could be carried on without constant interruption from a hundred feudal barons who considered themselves independent lords; because they made huge sums of money from dealings with the princes; and because they exacted protection and privileges in return for the aid they gave. In the wars and peace treaties, the elections of popes or emperors, the voyages of explorers and conquering armies during the sixteenth century, we always find a most prominent part played by the money of the Fugger or Medici or Welser or the other great merchant-bankers of Augsburg or Antwerp or Lyons or Genoa.
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