Sentence:  To free the factors of production <WSD>was</WSD> a major objective of the rising bourgeoisie , and this objective required that governmental authority - administrative officials and judges - be limited as precisely and explicitly as possible ; that old customs which inhibited trade be abrogated ; that business be free from governmental supervision and notions of morality which might clog the automatic adjustments of the free market ; that obligations of status that were inconsistent with the new politics and the new economics be done away with . 
Meaning of the word marked with <WSD> tags:  have the quality of being; (copula, used with an adjective or a predicate noun)