Gaetano Mosca: The Transition from the Feudal to the Bureaucratic State

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The following is an excerpt from Gaetano Mosca's "The Ruling Class" (1896), Chapter 2: "The Ruling Class".

[start of excerpt]

Everywhere - in Russia and Poland, in India and medieval Europe - the ruling warrior classes acquire almost exclusive ownership of the land. Land, as we have seen, is the chief source of production and wealth in countries that are not very far advanced in civilization. But as civilization progresses, revenue from land increases proportionately.

With the growth of population there is, at least in certain periods, an increase in rent. [...] Eventually, if other circumstances permit, a very important social transformation occurs. Wealth rather than military valor comes to be the characteristic feature of the dominant class: the people who rule are the rich rather than the brave.

The condition that in the main is required for this transformation is that social organization shall have concentrated and become perfected to such an extent that the protection offered by public authority is considerably more effective than the protection offered by private force. In other words, private property must be so well protected by the practical and real efficacy of the laws as to render the power of the proprietor himself superfluous. This comes about through a series of gradual alterations in the social structure whereby a type of political organization, which we shall call the "feudal state", is transformed into an essentially different type, which we shall term the "bureaucratic state". We are to discuss these types at some length hereafter, but we may say at once that the evolution here referred to is as a rule greatly facilitated by progress in pacific manners and customs and by certain moral habits which societies contract as civilization advances.

Once this transformation has taken place, wealth produces political power just as political power has been producing wealth. In a society already somewhat mature - where, therefore, individual power is curbed by the collective power - if the powerful are as a rule the rich, to be rich is to become powerful. And, in truth, when fighting with the mailed fist is prohibited whereas fighting with pounds and pence is sanctioned, the better posts are inevitably won by those who are better supplied with pounds and pence.

[end of excerpt]

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Gaetano Mosca (1896), 'The Ruling Class' (originally titled 'Elementi di Scienza Politica', translated by Hannah D. Kahn; 1938 Edition) pg. 84-85