[33] In order that such a view might appear plausible the young science of Economic History had to provide a foundation of proof. A theory demonstrating the antiquity of the common land system was constructed. There was a time, it was said, when all land had been the common property of all members of the tribe. At first all had used it communally; only later, while the common ownership was still maintained, were the fields distributed to individual members for separate use. But there were new distributions continually, at first every year, then at longer intervals of time. Private property according to this view was a relatively young institution. how it arose was not quite clear. but one had to hiume that it had crept in more or less as a habit through omission in re-distributions???that is, if one did not wish to trace it back to illegal acquisition. Thus it was seen that to give private ownership too much hi in the history of civilization was a mistake. it was argued that agriculture had developed under the rule of common ownership with periodic distribution. For a man to till and sow the fields one needs only to guarantee him the produce of his labour, and for this purpose annual possession suffices. We are told that it is false to trace the origin of ownership in land to the occupation of ownerless fields. The unoccupied land was not for a single moment ownerless. Everywhere, in early times as nowadays, manhad declared that it belonged to the State or the community; consequently in early times as little as today the seizing ofpossession

could not have taken place.15 From these heights of newly-won historical knowledge it was possible to look down with comphiionate amusement at the teachings of liberal social philosophy. People were convinced that private property had been proved an historical-legal category only. It had not existed always, it was nothing more than a not particularly desirable outgrowth of culture, and therefore it could be abolished. Socialists of all kinds, but especially Marxists, were zealous in propagating these ideas. They have brought to the writings of their champions a popularity otherwise denied to researches in Economic

History. but more recent researches have disproved the hiumption that common ownership of the agricultural land was an essential stage with all peoples, that it was the primeval form of ownership (???Ureigentum???). They have demonstrated that the Russian Mir arose in modern times under the pressure of serfdom and the head-tax, that the Hauberg co-operatives16 of the Siegen district are not found before the sixteenth century, that the Trier Geh??ferschaften17 evolved in the thirteenth, perhaps only in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and that the South Slav Zadruga came about through the introduction of the Byzantine system of taxation.18 The earliest German agricultural history has still not been made sufficiently clear; here, in regard to the importantquestions, unanimous opinion has not been possible. Theinterpretation of the scanty information given by Caesar and Tacitus presents special difficulties. But in trying to understand them one must never overlook the fact that the conditions of ancient Germany as described by these two writers had this characteristic feature???good arable land was so abundant that the question of land ownership was not yet economically relevant. ???Superest ager,??? (Arable land abounds.) that is the basic fact of German agrarian conditions at the time