We have just seen how in certain societies, warfare may have been adaptive, but the writer sees it as maladaptive behaviours toward females, your creators of life. It made heroes of men, enhanced male dominance and encouraged the extremely adaptive behaviour of female infanticide, cancelling Roe and Wade, removing 40 uteri from non speaking English people, who were in the country illegally, cancelling family planning centres for females, resulting in the most inefficient technique of population control. It is fascinating to note that in most cases war does not result in the domination of a society by another, or one social group by another, but by the cruelties toward females.
In a very few places on earth where this domination did occur, the results were social stratification and the state. Social stratification is the division of societies into social classes that differ in the amount of control (or lack there of it) that they have over energy, resources, withholding food by driving up prices through inflationary measures, and interfering in other peoples lives. Most members of a stratified society are much poorer and much less powerful than the rich, and powerful minority which rules.
A state is a stratified society, divided into classes of rich and poor. It can be described as an autonomous political unit, encompassing many communities within it’s territory and having a centralized government with the power to collect taxes, draft men for work, or for war, and to decree and enforce laws. The state is the instrument to maintain law and order in stratified societies. (Carneiro, chapter 44 in People’s of the Past). Law and order for a good reason of Peace, is acceptable, but for Political purposes, is questionable.
The inversion of the State is a major achievement of human societies – cultural evolution, comparable with the evolution of language, exogamy, and tool making. This does not mean the State is “good” (whatever that may mean) but that the appearance of the State institutions, or symbol of the State has very important consequences for the relationship of people with each other and with their respective habitats, or neighbors.
The state was invented independently in Mesopotamia, India, and China, Central America, and South America. The kinds of institutions invented in these states were very similar as Robert Carneiro shows in his essay “The Origins of State.”
Carneiro suggests a very sound and now largely accepted ecological explanation for these similarities: the theory of “ecological circumscription.”According to it, the kind of political unit called the State arose independently at different times, in different places, but always in the area of that which had ecological similarities i.e, valleys with great agricultural potentiality. He called these circumscribed areas, and after mentioning the Valleys of the Tigers and Euphrates Rivers, he explains in details the different mechanisms which might arise there. The main one is; that if because of war a local group living in a circumscribed area is defeated, it would accept paying tribute and taxes to stay, because escape could only mean starvation. This could have happened to people living in the middle of a wide plain – like the Assiniboine Indians of Canada or in the middle of a tropical forest like Yanomamo.
There is agreement with the origin of the State and attempts have been shown to gradually increase centralization of power by giving three examples:
(1) The King of Bunyoro who was the owner of the land. Chiefs and commoners, had to provide him with tributes and gifts in exchange for his permission to use the land. Part of this wealth was used for luxuries for his court and for administrative duties. Some was returned in gifts demonstrating the generosity of the King to his subjects who looked upon him as a relative.
(If you read about King Constantine and his ideas, it is closely relative to today’s situation.CDH)
(2) The kings of Feudal England also had a system of stratified redistribution based on tribute and taxation, but the policing military functions of the King were stressed. The King’s generosity did not benefit the commoners but the feudal Lords. Kingship was no longer an important aspect of the political system.
(And yet the if you overstep your class in stepping forward to express concerns, you might die considering the Queens life, or treason toward the Queen.CDH)
(3) The Inca Emperors had achieved complete ownership of the means of production (land, water, and people) because as Carneiro shows so well the subjects had to accept their rule or die ( for lack of imperial irrigation canals) in the arid areas. The Inca Emperor was not only the single owner of the whole socio – economic system but he was also a living God, worshipped in his own lifetime. Instead of the unruly Lords of England, the Inca Emperor had administrators who could act as his representatives , only in his name as they lacked power of their own. Census, taxation, Public works and temples were all tools of this very centralized power. The Political Systems of the Incas and Peru and the Aztecs of Mexico are discussed in detail by Pedro Carrasco in Chapter 46 of “The Peoples of the Past.”
There is yet one more condition necessary for the appearance of the State which Caneiro did not mention. It is also necessary that grain crops be cultivated, instead of resting in storage – like sweet potatoes – grains such as rice, wheat, maize, can be stored safely for years, and this is done each year. Only grain crops can provide the huge storage of foodstuff that makes the difference between rich and poor, and keeps the tax payers and soldiers stomachs fed without revolution in years of poor harvests. Harris used the argument that Hawaii could never have become a “Pristine State” because it lacked grain production (Harris, 1991; 220 – 203).
A fascinating complement to the analysis of the state presented by Harris is found in the “Cyclical Conquests” by J, Steward and L Faron (chapter 45 in “People’s of the Past and Present”) Steward points out that the State is:
(1) An integrating and coordinating agency that serves the needs of the people (e.g, by providing roads, large scale irrigation and other public services).
(2) A consuming institution that demands goods and services from the People (taxes, military service, labour to build palaces, temples, pyramids etc.).
As soon as the State comes into existence all of it’s political, military, and religious institutions start existing more for their own need or benefit than for the serving the Public (consumer rather than “Integrate.”) Anyone with a gripe against the civil servants can see that. As long as the economy is expanding (new land, new technologies, or new resources are available), the State demands and obtains an increasingly constant amount of the production in the country such as (luxury goods, labour and taxes). When the rulers have extracted all the production the local traffic can bear, their only recourse is to try and acquire a portion of production from other states, and to incorporate their neighbors into multi – state Empire.
An Empire is a group of States that have been forcibly subjugated by another more powerful state which acquires a portion of their production. An empire is a device for concentrating goods and services into the hands of a ruling hierarchy. When the production can no longer be increased and population pressures becomes so serious that the standard of living of the commoner decreases to the point of threatening their survival, they revolt against the Political and Economic pressures of the Empire. If they succeed the Empire collapses, public works fail into disrepair, and civil war, famine and pestilence wipe out much of the population. The survivors later join to become small villages which through time, grow and become amalgamated into Chiefdoms and soon swallowed up by the State – and then an Empire. Steward aptly concludes that the rise and fall of Empires is the inexorable result of ecological, economical, and social forces, and not the unpredictable consequences of military encounters, political manoeuvres, and other factors that depend fortuitously upon, individual decisions.
The Inca State for example built irrigation systems and filled granaries that prevented and alleviated famine. You could say very accurately that everybody in the Empire benefited from the social order. the welfare system of the Incas was so sophisticated that some have called it a “socialist state.” Yet there was no questions that the Inca Emperors lived with great luxury, while the workers and their families and other members of the ruling class lived in great luxury, while the working masses worked very hard and were not allowed any luxury. In other words the elite benefited much more than anyone else from class stratification and social order. It is because of this unfairness that these inequalities can be maintained only with the threat of death, jail or torture. Only state power exercised with hired specialists whose job it is to maintain stratified order, can maintain this inequality. Policemen, judges, jailers, torturers, executioners who impose fines, jail sentences or death to the poor, who would like to share or take the place of the rich, can maintain inequality.
The “order” maintained by these specialists is an oppressive one. Any member of an egalitarian society would be shocked to learn, that when a poor man takes money from the bankers we do not jail the banker for exposing the greediness, the selfishness, as our Canadian Law and order specialists jail the poor man calling him a thief. Explain that to a King, or to a Sharanahua. Power is dangerous to express or exercise. This is why whenever the State was invented it was accompanied by the creature of a State Religion and a complex apparatus of propaganda involving the Churches, the schools, the media, and Harris calls it, “thought control.”
This in itself exemplifies the murders, tortures, kidnappings, and anarchy of the last few years between (2014 to 2025 CDH), and the complete failure of the State supported, only by naked power, who gave no thought to thought control and no authority to maintain Law and Order.
I personally disagree with weaponry, killing, violence of any kind being the only way that civilized people can habitate with each other. Thought control is a falsehood and only supports the rich and powerful. On thought control of self, this includes law abiding citizens of poor, it is more into evolving in thought of the individual hybrid. Also in conclusion Carolyn d Hogarth says that the function of thought control is to control the citizens through the State being a legitimate way of civilized people being mature without greed or pay- cheque. Peace being part of the Social Stratification purpose, or “Good” wanted by God, is the State and thought control of self, in evolution, standing for Good?
Thought control of self, gives naked power the cloak of one’s own authority, in one’s own life with choices, self direction, adaptation and survival. We are not little children that must be jailed for doing the right thing. We are evolved adults.
Written by Carolyn d Hogarth from an educated, evolved perspective. Is Peace more important than Greed? I would suggest yes. We can find trade throughout the world with other countries without the extremes of war, or the takeover of the State.
United We stand and divided we Fall. Vote This is your democracy. Do the right thing, and no Anarchy. Be mature and vote for Peace for family.