Mutual Aid by Peter Kropotkin (ebook reader play store .txt) 📕

on without them for dozens of years; or it was vested in, or usurped by, an aristocracy of merchants or even nobles, as was the case in hundreds of Italian and middle European cities. The principle, nevertheless, remained the same: the city was a State and⁠—what was perhaps still more remarkable⁠—when the power in the city was usurped by an aristocracy of merchants or even nobles, the inner life of the city and the democratism of its daily life did not disappear: they depended but little upon what may be called the political form of the State.

The secret of this seeming anomaly lies in the fact that a medieval city was not a centralized State. During the first centuries of its existence, the city hardly could be named a State as regards its interior organization, because the middle ages knew no more of the present centralization of functions than of the present territorial centralization. Each group had its share of sovereignty. The city was usually divided into four quarters, or into five to seven sections radiating from a centre, each quarter or section roughly corresponding to a certain trade or profession which prevailed in it, but nevertheless containing inhabitants of different social positions and occupations⁠—nobles, merchants, artisans, or even half-serfs; and each section or quarter constituted a quite independent agglomeration. In Venice, each island was an independent political community. It had its own organized trades, its own commerce in salt, its own jurisdiction and administration, its own forum; and the nomination of a doge by the city changed nothing in the inner independence of the units.197 In Cologne, we see the inhabitants divided into Geburschaften and Heimschaften (viciniae), i.e. neighbour guilds, which dated from the Franconian period. Each of them had its judge (Burrichter) and the usual twelve elected sentence-finders (Schöffen), its Vogt, and its greve or commander of the local militia.198 The story of early London before the Conquest⁠—Mr. Green says⁠—is that “of a number of little groups scattered here and there over the area within the walls, each growing up with its own life and institutions, guilds, sokes, religious houses and the like, and only slowly drawing together into a municipal union.”199 And if we refer to the annals of the Russian cities, Novgorod and Pskov, both of which are relatively rich in local details, we find the section (konets) consisting of independent streets (ulitsa), each of which, though chiefly peopled with artisans of a certain craft, had also merchants and landowners among its inhabitants, and was a separate community. It had the communal responsibility of all members in case of crime, its own jurisdiction and administration by street aldermen (ulichanskiye starosty), its own seal and, in case of need, its own forum; its own militia, as also its self-elected priests and its, own collective life and collective enterprise.200

The medieval city thus appears as a double federation: of all householders united into small territorial unions⁠—the street, the parish, the section⁠—and of individuals united by oath into guilds according to their professions; the former being a produce of the village-community origin of the city, while the second is a subsequent growth called to life by new conditions.

To guarantee liberty, self-administration, and peace was the chief aim of the medieval city; and labour, as we shall presently see when speaking of the craft guilds, was its chief foundation. But “production” did not absorb the whole attention of the medieval economist. With his practical mind, he understood that “consumption” must be guaranteed in order to obtain production; and therefore, to provide for “the common first food and lodging of poor and rich alike” (gemeine notdurft und gemach armer und richer201) was the fundamental principle in each city. The purchase of food supplies and other first necessaries (coal, wood, etc.) before they had reached the market, or altogether in especially favourable conditions from which others would be excluded⁠—the preempcio, in a word⁠—was entirely prohibited. Everything had to go to the market and be offered there for everyone’s purchase, till the ringing of the bell had closed the market. Then only could the retailer buy the remainder, and even then his profit should be an “honest profit” only.202 Moreover, when corn was bought by a baker wholesale after the close of the market, every citizen had the right to claim part of the corn (about half-a-quarter) for his own use, at wholesale price, if he did so before the final conclusion of the bargain; and reciprocally, every baker could claim the same if the citizen purchased corn for reselling it. In the first case, the corn had only to be brought to the town mill to be ground in its proper turn for a settled price, and the bread could be baked in the four banal, or communal oven.203 In short, if a scarcity visited the city, all had to suffer from it more or less; but apart from the calamities, so long as the free cities existed no one could die in their midst from starvation, as is unhappily too often the case in our own times.

However, all such regulations belong to later periods of the cities’ life, while at an earlier period it was the city itself which used to buy all food supplies for the use of the citizens. The documents recently published by Mr. Gross are quite positive on this point and fully support his conclusion to the effect that the cargoes of subsistences “were purchased by certain civic officials in the name of the town, and then distributed in shares among the merchant burgesses, no one being allowed to buy wares landed in the port unless the municipal authorities refused to purchase them. This seem⁠—she adds⁠—to have been quite a common practice in England,