entile
society. In Rome the gentile organization became an exclusive
aristocracy amid a numerous plebs of outsiders who had only duties, but
no rights. The victory of the plebs burst the old gentile order asunder
and erected on its remains the state which soon engulfed both gentile
aristocracy and plebs. Finally, among the German conquerors of the Roman
empire, the state grew as a direct result of the conquest of large
foreign territories which the gentile constitution was powerless to
control. But this conquest did not necessitate either a serious fight
with the former population or a more advanced division of labor.
Conquerors and conquered were almost in the same stage of economic
development, so that the economic basis of society remained undisturbed.
Hence gentilism could preserve for many centuries an unchanged
territorial character in the form of mark communes, and even rejuvenate
itself in the nobility and patrician families of later years, or in the
peasantry, as e. g. in Dithmarsia.[39]

The state, then, is by no means a power forced on society from outside;
neither is it the "realization of the ethical idea," "the image and the
realization of reason," as Hegel maintains. It is simply a product of
society at a certain stage of evolution. It is the confession that this
society has become hopelessly divided against itself, has entangled
itself in irreconcilable contradictions which it is powerless to banish.
In order that these contradictions, these classes with conflicting
economic interests, may not annihilate themselves and society in a
useless struggle, a power becomes necessary that stands apparently above
society and has the function of keeping down the conflicts and
maintaining "order." And this power, the outgrowth of society, but
assuming supremacy over it and becoming more and more divorced from it,
is the state.

The state differs from gentilism in that it first divides its members by
territories. As we have seen, the old bonds of blood kinship uniting the
gentile bodies had become inefficient, because they were dependent on
the condition, now no longer a fact, that all gentiles should live on a
certain territory. The territory was the same; but the human beings had
changed. Hence the division by territories was chosen as the point of
departure, and citizens had to exercise their rights and duties wherever
they chose their abode without regard to gens and tribe. This
organization of inhabitants by l