Marxism arranges the past in a series of stages of development, beginning with communalism, followed by slavery, then feudalism, finally capitalism. Where we go from there is something worth thinking about by wider circles of the popular classes. That we are in fact moving is unnstoppable. Of course, Marxists say the next stage is supposed to be colored red.
A quick summary of the stages.
Communalism encompasses that period when humanity was more nomadic, foraging for food and water, and tending to a more sensible vegetarian diet since animal products had to be hunted and eaten quickly. Ownership of land was an unknown concept, hence the idea since no one owned it everyone did. The state as we know it today, with its cabinets, bureaucracies, and bloated militaries did not exist because they didn't need to. On a recent extended camping trip, a squirrel came up to my tent with a morsel of something in its little hands. I watched it munch away and realize that squirrels do not conspire to fight other squirrels because they spend too much of their day making sure they get enough calories.
The emergence of the state - in the later feudal era - is more or less viewed an apparatus to keep the chain of command in place, and property protected.
The slave stage emerged with the settling of these nomadic people on land from which food could be grown. The land - which had been a highway and open-air market - took on a special importance. Livelihood came directly from that plot. This stage includes not only agricultural laborers needed to increase yield of the plot but also women and their enslavement to property. Since it became critical for land to go to my progeny of its owner, the female partner's delivery of only children of said ladowner had to be ensured. Otherwise, my plot of land would be dispersed too vastly to support my family. Another phenomenon of this period is the world's oldest profession: women who were unable to access land had to make means in other limited ways.
Feudalism continued the importance of agriculture, peasants tied to the land, the defining/enslaving of gender roles, and wars, which were about the conquest of better land for better sustenance for inevitably growing populations. The state solidified as a force to protect property rights in the same vein that men's roles had solidified earlier to protect their private plot of land, and women's to be subservient to the same. One of the turning points is Henry VIII's break from the Catholic Church, when Europe-wide, Rome-dominated Christendom disintegrated and state power rose. Essentially, by Henry stealing Church assets he was marking a shift in the power of the tiny English state and the depreciation of Rome.
The capitalist stage is what we high school social studies teachers call the Modern World. It is marked with the French and US revolutions - at least that's where the textbook curriculum starts. It is also marked by imperialism. The capitalist era is the rise of urban merchants who were not the elite agricultural landowners [nobles] who had access to state power [the king and court]. This new merchant class were commoners, albeit increasingly rich ones who wanted a voice at court and government policy. Their wealth was in global trade, particularly the forced migration of hundreds of thousands of Africans from their homeland. When the United States could no longer provide textiles to the British, the merchant class turned state power on India.
The sea wearing away at rock is slow, methodical.
Unlike the acts of a staged play, one stage did not end abruptly and the new the next. It was not like an end-of-the-year sale where everything must go to make way for the new. The change could take several generations and hundreds of years to complete. To be in at the end of the nomadic period, for example, did come with headlines or fireworks. Invariably there were the Conservatives who wanted to keep on the move and the Liberals who wanted to try something new, like staying put and building permanent settlements.
With these decisions came new sets of values - monogamy, fidelity to home and king, private property but also racism, sexism, and homophobia. Part of this view of the historical record is that our supposed morality is a gift not from any god but rather a sort of by-product of our aims. For their times, they were necessary to an established order.
What would Henry do?
So it is strange to me to find modern people reaching back to slavery-age texts, like the Bible, as if anyone - especially the Christians! - would ever go back to that.
The Modern World is in just such a paradigm shift, a change of stages. Where we are is not as easy as referring to the clock on the corner of a YouTube video, but the evidence is in. If old King Henry VIII were alive today his spiritual brethren would not be found at Windsor Castle but Hanoi, Johannesburg, Havana, and possibly a cave on Afghanistan/Pakistan border.
Caliphate rumba, anyone?
No comments:
Post a Comment