Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 5.djvu/375

 A SOCIOLOGICAL VIEW OF SOVEREIGNTY 36 1

the coercive factors which remain in possession of the given class, acquires power adequate to gain a share in the coercion hitherto exercised alone by the monarch. Their voluntary organization is thus incorporated in partnership with the king, and the coerci\'e institution thus inaugurated is the germ of the state. State consciousness is simply class consciousness organ- ized for partnership in the coercive control of society. The problem of the diffusion of state consciousness is, therefore, the problem of the basis of social classes as constituents of the state. And, since the state is the coercive institution differentiated out from the primitive homogeneous blending of all institutions, the basis of a social class is the consciousness of common depend- ence upon a definite mode of coercion. This brings us back to our classification of coercive sanctions."

We have seen that in the early emergence of private property the proprietor possessed both corporal and privative sanctions. VVe are now to notice that in the gradual emergence of absolu- tism and the state it is first the corporal sanctions that are extracted from private property and are constituted the basis of sovereignty. In other words, private vengeance, private execution of criminal justice by feudal courts, and private owner- ship of serfs and slaves, were displaced by the king's justice. This involved eventually the entire undermining of the character- istic coercion exercised by feudal chiefs. Population at this time was sparse. Only a small portion of the land was under cultiva- tion or reduced to private ownership. Slavery or serfdom was the only means of coercion, and the escaped serf became an "outlaw," roaming the primeval forest a free man, envied and sung by those unable to escape. Ownership under these condi- tions necessarily became a hereditary aristocracy. Communities were separated. Security required that each should be undivided and controlled by a single will. This was the economic basis of primogeniture. The feudal nobility, based on this common property interest, when finally deprived of private control by absolutism, recovered it collectively through state control, by

tr. by Bouchard.
 * See also Loria, Les bases honomiques de la constitution sociale (Paris. 1893),