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The UK Bible Students Website Christian Biblical Studies |
From the Feudal System to the Modern Service Economy
Today most are bound to a 9-to-5 job, earning a wage in exchange for their time and often in debt to a bank for the land on which they live. In the Middle Ages, the mode of service was a fiefdom, where the vassal served his lord in return for protection and maintenance. The vassal was a tenant on the lord’s land and paid tribute from the proceeds of any farming or business in which the land was employed. The lord, in an oath of fealty, or loyalty, swore to defend his tenant’s livelihood and rights – necessary in a time of roving bandits and border skirmishes.
The mediaeval feudal arrangement was a grand hierarchy, in which tenants had sub-tenants, and lords had lords. At the top of this pyramid, pope and emperor were considered vassals of God. To be free from any bond or service was rare.
Civilisation was not always this way. When the Celtic tribes spread westward over Europe they divided the land among the families and clans proportionately, and every man was free to sustain his life according to his own industry. The later Angles and Saxons followed the same pattern. To be a freeman implied a definite legal status; that of a servant, another. In fact, freedom was the reason these nations migrated and settled in foreign lands. The same pattern can be seen in European migration to North America beginning in the seventeenth century.
The society of these early peoples, loose-knit and free, stratified
after their first liberties became eroded and entangled in debts of loyalty. The
various fortunes of each freeholder saw some prosper and others fail. A poor
harvest, sickness or accident, would lead to one family borrowing from another.
Wars and border disputes accelerated the loss of liberty, as in the time of King
Alfred who, preparing to repel the Viking invasion, divided his kingdom into
three groups – working men, praying men, and fighting men. Maintaining an army
often required some to be freed from husbandry of the land and others to labour
harder to support them. (The Levites were a ‘praying’ class, who owned no land
and who were supported by the nation of Israel by a system of tithing – Num.
2:33; 18:23, 24).
The development of a nation establishes the organs of government and consequently increases the mutual obligations of free men. Those elected to power and relieved from a life of self-sufficiency, are duty-bound to work for the good of those who support them. While those who by their taxes fund the state have a duty to abide by the laws and customs arranged for their good. It is inevitable that as society advances, the intricacies of sharing a common living space reduce the liberties of men and women compared to what they might choose were they without personal or social obligations.
It is a neat paradox. The freedoms lost in an ordered society through submission to the law, the payment of taxes, and an orderly deference to the state, are substituted with rights which bring other freedoms – healthcare, education, social welfare, housing, free access to the marketplace, legal aid – and so on. Those tired of the ‘rat race’, and who yearn for a return to Eden – be it in the ‘hippy’ movement of the 1970s, or in the ‘green’ movement of the 1990s – must weigh the loss of these rights against the individual liberties offered by independence.
In Tranquility of the Mind, the Roman philosopher, Seneca, echoes this condition of the restless spirit captive to the State:-
We are all fettered to fortune. For some, the chain is made of gold, and is loose, for others it is tight and filthy – but what difference does that make? All of us are surrounded by the same kind of captivity, and even those who hold others bound are in bonds themselves, unless you happen to think that the handcuff the guard wears on his left wrist hurts less than the prisoner’s. Public offices hold one man captive, wealth another; some are disadvantaged by high birth, some by humble birth; some have to put up with other people’s commands, some with their own. Some have to stay in one place because they’ve been exiled, others because they’ve been appointed to a priesthood – all life is slavery.
Seneca states his maxim bitterly, but the truth of it is plain – all seek the freedom of self-determination. No man is an island, and an uncertain world forces each one of us to make some unfortunate alliances. In binding himself to another, each individual becomes prey to his fellow, rather than Nature. In an ordered society, self-interest makes even the lightest bonds chafe. – Selected
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