An Excerpt from Victor Considerant’s Manifesto of Democracy – Paris, 1847
Ancient societies had as their basic principle, Might makes right; their politics was War; their goal was Conquest; and their economic system was Slavery, which is the most total, inhumane, and barbarous form of man’s exploitation by man. Free men, rich or poor, made war and consumed: the slave was the producer. SLAVERY was the base of society; its summit was WAR. Human compassion didn’t extend any further than a Nation’s borders. Foreign policy consisted of one Nation’s merciless domination over others; domestic policy was slavery and the spirit of caste. Such was the nature of the ancient social order.
The feudal order, derived from conquest, was merely conquest legitimated. Its major feature was still war, and, above all, the permanent institutional sanction it gave to the de facto privileges of conquest.
Its economic system was a slightly less harsh and brutal form of man’s exploitation by man, Serfdom. Human compassion, unfolding in the radiant warmth of early Christianity, was reaching beyond the narrow boundaries of the Nation. The principle of fraternity began to bind together diverse peoples and nations, but the bonds corresponded to the feudal hierarchy. In all Europe the progeny of the conquerors, the Nobility, recognized each other as equals, trampling underfoot the peasant and commoners who in their view weren’t even men of the same species. But these people, everywhere subjugated, were treating each other as brothers and were even prefiguring the advent of God’s Kingdom and its justice. They already understood that their oppressors were merely their elder brothers in the great human family.
The spirit and the rights of feudal times were the aristocratic spirit and the rights of nobles. Both, however much changed or weakened by the great social progress of the last few centuries, still prevailed in France until the revolution of 1789 ended the Ancien Régime and inaugurated the new Order.
Right to Live 