ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that the economic conditions there prevailing naturally give rise to a perfect type of political democracy. The labourers are thus compelled to uphold the combination of political power and economic revenue, and in the way property’s hold upon political sovereignty becomes an accomplished fact. Political sovereignty thus becomes the ultima ratio of the property system. The history of mankind furnishes striking demonstration of the powerful influence exerted upon the political constitution by the suppression of the free land and its outcome the capitalistic property system. The great truth, already voiced by Hobbes, that wealth is power, because the holders of riches always appropriate to themselves political authority, is common to the various historical phases of capitalistic property. The labourer had thus to be excluded from political authority in some indirect way, and herein the cleverness of the ruling class showed itself anew. The political constitution of serfdom was profoundly different, as were also its economic antecedents.
