The lowest police employee of the civilized state
has more "authority" than all the organs of gentilism combined. But the
mightiest prince and the greatest statesman or general of civilization
may look with envy on the spontaneous and undisputed esteem that was the
privilege of the least gentile sachem. The one stands in the middle of
society, the other is forced to assume a position outside and above it.

The state is the result of the desire to keep down class conflicts. But
having arisen amid these conflicts, it is as a rule the state of the
most powerful economic class that by force of its economic supremacy
becomes also the ruling political class and thus acquires new means of
subduing and exploiting the oppressed masses. The antique state was,
therefore, the state of the slave owners for the purpose of holding the
slaves in check. The feudal state was the organ of the nobility for the
oppression of the serfs and dependent farmers. The modern representative
state is the tool of the capitalist exploiters of wage labor. At certain
periods it occurs exceptionally that the struggling classes balance each
other so nearly that the public power gains a certain degree of
independence by posing as the mediator between them. The absolute
monarchy of the seventeenth and eighteenth century was in such a
position, balancing the nobles and the burghers against one another. So
was the Bonapartism of the first, and still more of the second, empire,
playing the proletariat against the bourgeoisie and vice versa. The
latest performance of this kind, in which ruler and ruled appear equally
ridiculous, is the new German empire of Bismarckian make, in which
capitalists and laborers are balanced against one another and equally
cheated for the benefit of the degenerate Prussian cabbage junkers.[41]

In most of the historical states, the rights of the citizens are
differentiated according to their wealth. This is a direct confirmation
of the fact that the state is organized for the protection of the
possessing against the non-possessing classes. The Athenian and Roman
classification by incomes shows this. It is also seen in the medieval
state of feudalism in which the political power depended on the quantity
of real estate. It is again seen in the electoral qualifications of the
modern representative state. The political recognition of the
differences in wealth is by no means essential. On the contrary, it
marks a low stage of state devel