brief compass of this pamphlet, I pass three great periods of
the world's history in review before the reader; and for each one I
point out that it proceeds on a single comprehensive idea, which
controls all the various, apparently unrelated, fields of development
and all the different and widely-scattered phenomena that fall within
the period in question; and I show that each of these periods is but
the necessary forerunner and preparation for the succeeding period,
and that each succeeding period is the peculiar and imminently
necessary continuation, the consequence and unavoidable consummation
of the preceding period, and that these together, consequently,
constitute a comprehensive and logically inseparable whole.

First comes the period of feudalism. I here show that feudalism, in
all its variations, rests on the one principle of control of landed
property, and I also show how at that time, owing to the fact that
society's productive work to a preponderating extent consisted in
agriculture, landed property necessarily was the controlling factor,
that is to say, the feature conditioning all political and social
power and standing.

And I beg you, Gentlemen, to take note with what a strict scientific
objectivity of treatment, how free from all propagandist bias, I
proceed with the discussion. If there is any one datum which lends
itself to the purposes of that propagandist bias which the public
prosecutor claims to find in this pamphlet--namely the incitement of
the indigent classes to hatred of the wealthy--it is the peasant wars.
If there is any one fact which has hitherto been accepted, in
scientific and in popular opinion alike, and more particularly among
the unpropertied classes, with, the fondest remembrance, as a national
movement iniquitously put down by the strong hand of violence, it is
the peasant wars.

Now, unmoved by this predilection and this shimmer of sentiment, with
which the science and the popular sense have united in investing the
peasant wars, I go on to divest these wars of this deceptive
appearance and show them up in their true light,--that they were at
bottom a reactionary movement, which, fortunately for the cause of
liberty, was of necessity doomed to failure.

Further: If there exists in Germany an institution which, as a
question of our own times, I abominate with all my heart as the source
of our national decay, our shame and our impotence, it is the
institution of the territorial