Who was the Fourth Estate?

A line drawing representation of the three estates

Liberalism and conservatism; socialism and capitalism; absolute monarchy and liberal democracy; creation science and natural selection; individualism and nationalism; religious fundamentalism and rationalism.  What do all these things have in common?  They are all modern.

This blog is intended to be a critique of all things modern, so all the above concepts are fair game to dissect and place under the microscope, which, incidentally, is also modern.  Can you put a microscope under a microscope?  If you can, then it's fair game too.

A critique, however, can only be made with reference to a benchmark, and if one wants to critique modernity an external reference is required.  But what reference point is there?  At this time the whole world is modern and the concept of "postmodernity" only exists as a relative term to modernity.  For want of anything better, the benchmark I will use will be an earlier premodern system in which the three estates of the realm lived side by side, not always in harmony but usually in balance.  This is not a defence of the inaccurately named "Ancien Régime", which is itself modern, but refers to a time before absolute monarchy and Protestantism.  I will not be treating this prior time and place as a utopia either (another modern concept), I'll simply be using it as a benchmark from which to critique modernity.

I guess the first thing I'll need to do is to give a brief explanation of what the premodern estates are (or were) and why they deserve discussion.

To begin with, our term of reference is European society.  We can rightly ask the questions:  Why Europe?  What is so special about Europe?  For that matter, what is Europe?  The answer to the third question is beyond the scope of this post, but to give a brief answer to the first two questions: the fundamental social philosophies of today's global system of states and economy originate from Modern Europe.  But Modern Europe didn't spontaneously appear in a vacuum, it originated from somewhere.

In the society we are dealing with, the concept of "Europe" was only a vague imagining - another modern idea loosely derived from a classical idea with a somewhat differing meaning.  The people who lived in the time and place we call "Medieval Europe" didn't identify themselves as "European".  Their common identity was by virtue of membership to a society they called "Christendom", and they just called themselves "Christians".  In brief, Christendom was a collection of realms that weren't "sovereign" in the modern sense.  Each realm was ruled by a secular prince, and all realms shared a common faith that was taught by a universal magisterium.  And society was divided into three estates.  The naming and priority of these varied from realm to realm, but in general they can be identified as follows:

The Three Estates

The First Estate was the Church, and was peopled by the bishops, cardinals, abbots, and abbesses that governed and represented it, as well as parish clergy, canons, monks, nuns, hermits, mendicants, anchorites, preachers, prophets, porters, clerks, lawyers, scholars, et al.  The First Estate was supposed to be the spirit and conscience of Christendom.  Its principle job was to strive for the eternal salvation of all souls by teaching of the faith, administrating the sacraments, and common prayer.  As the First Estate typically included the most educated members of society, it was also charged with preserving culture, studying the sciences, providing clerical administration, and providing critical account to the other estates.  And as it was also, nominally, the most outward looking of the estates, it was responsible for things like social security, charitable works, hospitals, orphanages and education.  The members of the First Estate originated from and often served particular realms, but they were not of those realms.  The institutions they belonged to transcended temporal boundaries and the Church itself was the unifying point of all the realms of Christendom.  To be a member of the First Estate was to be an International citizen.  The First Estate was also the only estate you could not be born into.  (This is not to say that members of this estate never had illegitimate children, but such children were not automatically members of this estate).  It drew its membership from the other estates, and so all members of this estate had family in at least one of the other two.

The Second Estate was the nobility, and was peopled by the princes that governed and represented it, as well as lesser lords, and both landed and landless knights and squires.  The Second Estate was supposed to be the guardian of Christendom.  Its job was to uphold justice by the passing and enforcing of laws, and to defend the territorial integrity of Christendom, which, when it existed, was almost always under siege.  Significantly, it was the only estate permitted to use and depute physical force towards these ends.  To be of the Second Estate usually meant to share a strong family tradition, and its landed members were charged with the protection of justice and faith over a designated inherited territory.  Since these families would also draw their incomes from the territories in their charge they would occasionally come into dispute with each other over territorial claims, but their faith and codes required them to have a sense of responsibility over the territories in their charge.  Members of this estate would typically owe their allegiance to a particular realm, although some of the most powerful families would occasionally claim guardianship over multiple realms.  All, however, belonged to and were bound by a moral code of the same faith.

Some individuals, known variously as prince-bishops, prince-abbots, princess-abbesses, etc. were technically members of both the First and Second Estates, but these were not inherited positions and were governed by strict laws of succession.

Optimally, the First and Second Estates held each other accountable, and it was the conflict and tension between these estates that helped maintain a sense of justice in society.  It was when these estates failed to hold each other to account because of mutual self-interest (i.e. corruption) that injustice entered the system.

The Third Estate consisted of the remainder of society, and its constituents formed the vast majority of the population of Christendom.  Its members were mostly farmers, but also included tradesmen, smiths, masons, labourers, servants, merchants, et al.  Its members included landowners, tenants, boarders, and itinerants.  The Third Estate was the hands of Christendom and was responsible for providing the material needs of society.  Most members of the Third Estate lived frugally.  However, a small number, the burghers (or bourgeoisie) lived quite affluent lives, often significantly better than members of the Second Estate.  The bourgeoisie were also called the "middle class" because they were not technically "working class" i.e. they didn't provide manual labour towards economic production, being more of a managerial class; neither were they nobility.  They were something in the middle.

Modern commentators often talk about a fourth estate.  This is based on the idea that in various representative parliaments throughout late Christendom the representatives of the Third Estate were typically drawn from the bourgeoisie.  As such, they tended to represent bourgeois interests rather than the interests of the entire Third Estate and, resultantly, the non-bourgeois Third Estate members had no representation.  This unrepresented majority were later tagged as "fourth estate".  However, I would argue that they, represented or not, were the true Third Estate because they were the ones who actually provided the economic backbone of society - the responsibility of the Third Estate.  The bourgeoisie were are sub-class that emerged from the Third Estate and politically hijacked the entire estate for their interests.
In future posts I will discuss how they also subverted the First and Second Estates to create the system of modern statehood and the global economy we have today.