From the earliest times in their history, the Greeks and Romans recognized private property as applied to the soil, and thetraces of the ancient tribe community were already so indistinct as not to be discoverable without a careful study. The Slavs;on the other hand, have not yet abandoned the collective system. geology shews us that certain continents preserve a Floraand Fauna, which have elsewhere been extinct for ages. Thus in Australia plants and animals are found, belonging to anearlier period of the geological development of our planet. It is in cases such as these that the comparative method canrender great service. If certain institutions of primitive times have been perpetuated till our own time among any nations, wemust turn here to the living forms, that we may better comprehend a state of civilization, which elsewhere is lost in the nightof time.
We shall first endeavour to describe the system of village communities, as still existing in Russia and Java. We will thenshew that this was the system in force in ancient Germany and among most of the nations known to us. Lastly we willexamine the family communities, which were so widely spread in Europe in the middle ages, and a type of which can still beseen among the Southern Slavs of Austria and Turkey.
NOTES:
1. . See Etudes historiques sur le développement de la Société humaine : -- "We have often been struck by the fact that aparticular custom or institution is constantly being represented as peculiar to a particular race or people, whereas the customor institution is to be found among many other nations and forms one of the general customs, or necessary phases, underwhich the human race carries out its work of development and civilization."2. Two publications have recently directed attention to this hitherto little known subject, in which many enquiries still remainto be pursued notwithstanding the admirable works of von Maurer. The one, Ueber die mittelalterliche Feldgemeinschaft inEngland , is due to Professor Nasse of the University of Bonn, who has lately established the fact, which very fewEnglishmen suspected, that village communities were originally the general system of property in England, and thatnumerous traces of this order of things survived till after the middle ages.
The author of the second publication, Village Communities , Sir Henry Maine, so well known for his work on Ancient Law,a masterly treatise on the philosophical history of law and its connection with early civilization, says ( Lectures on the EarlyHistory of Institutions , p. 1). "The collective ownership of the soil by groups of men... is now entitled to take rank as anascertained primitive phenomenon;" and he bears witness to the great value of the materials collected by the author tosupport this position.
3. The evolution of property has been well described in its general features by Dr Valentin Mayer, Das Eigenthum nach denverschiedenen Weltanischauungen , Freiburg i, B., 1871.
Chapter 2
Village Communities in Russia In order to form a clear idea of the collective ownership of the soil, which is vested in the Russian village even at the presentday, we must picture to ourselves the social organization of the tribe among the Nomads, from whence the Russian system isobviously derived.
The following is the description given of this organization by an accurate and thoughtful economist, M. Le Play, who hasmade a careful study of the system of property among various pastoral nations, and especially among the tribes on theAsiatic side of the Urals. Among these Nomads, the members of the same group or community join together theiragricultural implements, and collectively cultivate their land, and manage the capital -- that is the cattle -- destined to make itproductive. There the system of common property is a direct consequence of the pastoral life and the family organization.
"A group of tents is always the characteristic of a society of shepherds, whether the flocks belong to a great proprietor, orare joint property. Every individual forming part of this group has always an interest in the profits of husbandry; he isentitled, in all cases, to a share of the produce, the maximum of which is fixed by the nature of his wants.
"Among the Nomads, the direct descendants of one father generally remain grouped together; they live under the absoluteauthority of the head of the family, in a system of community. We may say that nothing is the subject of separate ownershipexcept their clothing and weapons. When the increase of a family no longer admits of all its members remaining united, thehead of the family directs an amicable separation; and determines the portion of the common possessions that should begiven to the branch which is separating from the stem. On the other hand, the community often holds together after thedeath of the head of the family. In this case, the collateral relations, even though connected only in distant degrees ofrelationship, remain united under the direction of the member who can exercise the patriarchal authority with most influence.
"The principle of community is equally adapted to the organization of tribes with settled abode... Among the semi-nomadictribes subject to Russia... the arable land, although generally cultivated by each family on an independent title, is mainlyowned in a species of indivisibility.
"Among the Bachkirs, nothing of the nature of individual property is seen, except as applied to the dwelling-houses andtheir immediate dependences" (1)
The agrarian organization of the Russian village is exactly similar to that of the Tartar tribe, except that the land is improvedby agriculture instead of being merely worked under the pastoral system.
