Liberty and Property. Ellen Wood

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СКАЧАТЬ concentrations which had survived the collapse of the Roman Empire, together with landholding patterns that preserved a free peasantry in contrast to the serfdom that had emerged elsewhere, produced a distinctive configuration: more or less autonomous city-states, governed by urban elites, often – as in the case of Florence – exercising what has been described as a collective lordship over the surrounding countryside, the contado. Some developed into prosperous commercial centres, serving a fragmented feudal Europe as trading links, providing goods to landed aristocracies and offering financial services to kings and popes.

      But, if these city-states departed from seigneurial patterns of lordship, they had their own forms of parcellized sovereignty. The civic communes were always fairly loose associations of patrician families, factions, parties and corporate entities with their own liberties, organizations, jurisdictions and powers. In the Middle Ages, they were also battlegrounds for larger temporal authorities. In particular, they were caught up in struggles between the papacy and the Holy Roman Empire, which conducted their rivalries through the medium of factions within the civic commune – most notably, the infamous battles between Guelf (papal) and Ghibelline (imperial) factions, which typically, though not always, coincided with divisions between merchant classes and landed signori. These self-governing cities were, on the whole, oligarchies; and even when more effective republican governments came to power, they never succeeded in overcoming their internal fragmentation. Still later, even the most centralized Renaissance kingdoms continued to be divided by party, privilege and competing jurisdictions. For all the talk of civic humanism, the civic order never marked out a clearly defined public sphere detached from private corporate powers of various kinds.

      Nor did the commercial activities of the civic communes mark a significant departure from feudal economic patterns. Their commercial success depended not, in the capitalist manner, on cost-effective production and enhanced labour productivity, in a market driven by price competition, but rather on ‘extra-economic’ factors, that is to say, factors external to the ‘economic’ transactions of production and exchange: not just the quality of goods but political power, monopoly privileges, sophisticated financial techniques, and military force. In external trade, which was the most lucrative economic activity for a major commercial centre like Venice, success clearly depended on military power and a symbiotic connection between commerce and war. Venice’s command of east–west trade required control of eastern Mediterranean sea routes, no less than rivers and mountain passes on the Italian mainland. To maintain that control, the Venetians developed a powerful military force, which itself became a marketable commodity, as Venice offered military aid to other powers – notably the Byzantine Empire – in exchange for commercial privileges and rights to trading posts.2

      In general, economic rivalries took the form of power struggles among merchants, cities or states over direct control of markets; and city-states were constantly at war with one another. The major centres such as Florence and Venice consolidated their commercial dominance by forcibly incorporating their less powerful neighbours into larger city-states. It is certainly true that Venice, and even more Florence, traded in commodities produced in their own cities, such as Florentine textiles; and great merchant dynasties did invest in production. But substantial wealth and power depended on command of trading networks, which in turn depended not simply on the quality or price of goods produced at home but on superiority in controlling and negotiating markets, to say nothing of dynastic connections, patronage, personal networks among patrician families, and leading positions in ruling oligarchies.

      Even where, as in Florence, wealth was heavily invested in production, it was no less dependent on ‘extra-economic’ factors, not least on office in the city-state’s administration. The career of the Medici speaks volumes: they began in the wool trade, then moved on to achieve their greatest wealth, with the help of family connections and personal networks among the Florentine patriciate, not as producers but as bankers to European princes and popes. Three Medici themselves became popes. The dynasty finally reached the summit of its ambition as effectively rulers of the Florentine republic, leaving the wool trade far behind.

      In Renaissance Florence, in other words, political and economic power were inextricably connected in the feudal manner; and this was true not only for city elites. The guilds that organized the wool trade and other occupations were principal players not only in the economic sphere, protecting the interests of their members and sheltering them from competition, but also in the political domain. The guilds themselves had autonomous corporate powers, governed by charters and systems of rules that had the force of law. It may even be misleading to speak of citizenship in the republic, since active membership in the civic community did not reside in individuals but in these corporate entities.

      Internal conflicts in the city-states were shaped by this unity of political and economic power. Economic rivalries among merchant families could never simply take the form of competition in the marketplace but were always political rivalries at the same time. The pursuit of high office and the dominance of any family depended on its standing in a complex network of patrons and clients, inevitably embroiled in factional struggles, often with support from foreign powers. It has even been suggested that this helps to explain the remarkable cultural richness of these city-states and their patronage of the arts, creating not only great wealth but a climate of competitive achievement and conspicuous consumption – especially in times and places where, as in the Florentine republic, artisanal guilds played a major political role.

      In Venice, which remained an oligarchy even when ostensibly ruled by one man, the Doge, it was largely a matter of rivalry among noble families. In Florence, other strains and conflicts were also at work. Patrician family connections or membership in major guilds afforded the only consistent access to the political sphere; and political battles throughout the history of Florence often revolved around the political standing of lesser guilds. There were constant struggles over access to the political domain among signori, rich merchants and guildsmen, as well as between major and lesser guilds. Outside the guilds, the popolo minuto, the ‘little people’ or labouring classes, including large numbers of skilled and unskilled workers in the wool trade, were completely excluded from the political sphere, except for one brief democratic moment, the Revolt of the Ciompi in 1378, one of the most famous incidents in Florentine history. The ciompi rebels briefly seized control of the government and then, with support from some members of the minor guilds, obtained guild privileges, which meant access to the political domain – only to lose it soon thereafter when the popolo grasso, their wealthy ‘fat’ compatriots, now with the help of the minor guilds, deprived them of guild and political privileges.

      This episode would long remain, for better or worse, a vivid memory in the consciousness of the republic, not least for Machiavelli; and it illustrates most dramatically the distinctiveness of the civic domain in the Italian city-states. When, just three years later, the English peasant revolt erupted, its leader, Wat Tyler, is reported to have said, ‘No lord should have lordship save civilly’, and all men should be equal but the king. He was advocating not the peasant’s access to the civic domain but rather certain rights of property against the claims of lords and, perhaps, access to common-law courts to protect those property rights. The contrasts between this English case and the Revolt of the Ciompi are striking. For English peasants the issue is lordship, not citizenship; but, while the Italian case may seem in this respect less ‘feudal’, it is distinctive not because it presages some modern principle of individual autonomy and citizenship. The issue for the ciompi, no less than for the English peasantry, is the exclusive extra-economic powers and privileges, or ‘politically constituted property’, of their superiors. We might even be tempted to say that the English assertion of property rights against the claims of lordship have more in common with modern conceptions of citizenship than do the demands of Florentine labouring classes for a share in corporate privileges.

      What singles out the Italian case, and what helps to explain the particularities of Renaissance Italian political thought, is that ‘politically constituted property’ is indeed political – that is to say, the extra-economic rights and privileges upon which economic power rests derive from the civic community, depending not on individual powers of lordship but on membership in the civic corporation. СКАЧАТЬ