lecture 15 - revolution in property, part 1
TRANSCRIPT
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Revolution in Property:
From There to Here (Part I)
Edward Mitchell, 6 April 2011
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No human relationship toNature is direct.
Relationships t
oN
ature are always mediated so
cially
natural world < society > humans
Social relationships shape our relationships to nature and
give them meaning
We can specify structures patterns of relationships.
These relationships set limits on our activities and
choices.
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Property relationships
The relationships of individuals to production (and distribution).
The formation of classes in relation to production and
social/political re-production.
How individuals and classes re-produce themselves.
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Fun with words:
property [Latin: proprius
] --o
ne
so
wn; what isproper(appropriate) tooneself; a qualityorstate that belongs to
something (this stone is hard, this table is flat, etc)
state [Latin: status] -- condition or quality of something;
state political state [from status / estate] political
organization according to social status, according to what is
properfor each class, according to the social properties of
each class.
In English, property comes to mean something we own
legally, something that is separate from ourselves (land,
house, objects, etc.) very late about 1600.
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The Fall of Icarus Pieter Brueghel 1558
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From a 1920 Handbook for Boys: learning to fly is a proper
activity for boys
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80 years later (2003) two robots are sent to the planet Mars,
225,000,000 km from Earth powered by the Sun
they test atmosphere and soil transmit results to Earth
one is called Spirit, one is called Opportunity
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Bart Simpson (with help from Lisa)
about 1600
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Time-line of Population
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How did this happen?
Why do technology (productivity) and population
increase suddenly starting about 1600?
Why not earlier in history? Why not more evenly?
And where is this happening?
(in England)
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T ere are t ree ominant exp anations:
1. Technical knowledge accumulates and
compounds a progressive view of history
2. Trade/commerce increased after the European
Middle Ages (after the Dark Ages). Trade
motivates production, technology, science theRenaissance, etc., (blah, blah, blah)
3. Population was increasing after 1500 > more
market demand > increased production,technology.
None of these explanations is sufficient.
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Antikythera celestial clock, 60 BCEWhy was there no Industrial Revolution in the Ancient World?
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Roman aquaduct, southern France, early 1st century
Engineering and building skill: the total length of this aquaduct system was 50 km.
Slope = 34 cm / 1 km. For each kilometer of horizontal distance, there is a vertical
drop of only 34 cm
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Hierarchy Sumeria and after
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Hierarchy Sumeria and after
All pre-modern civilizations:
commands come from the top and go down
taxes and obligations come from the bottom and go
up
(not an economic exchange)
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The basic division within society.
Different properties
fo
r each class:
Ruling class (by origin: the warrior class -- askeriye)
social properties are defined as rights:
right to command
right to tax right to carry weapons
__________________________________
__________________________________
Peasants and townspeople (reaya)
Social properties defined as obligations:
obligation toobey
obligation to pay taxes and provide labor
obliged to work the land tied to the land of the lord
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What is the relationship of each class to production?
Do they produce what they need directly?
Are they dependent on others for their needs?
And how do the members of each class re-producethemselves?
How do they survive from one day to the next, one year to the
next, one generation to the next?
What do they invest in to re-produce themselves?
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Peasants (80% of the population):
Agricultural producers
Direct producersPeasants produce most of what they need > self-sufficient
They are organized in families (households)
They use their family labo
r to
produceTheir goal is to feed the family to re-produce the family
Family labor is not specialized. Everyone in the family can
carry out the necessary roles plant, harvest, care for
children and animals, etc.
Redundancy of roles, not specialization.
Their economic strategy: self-sufficiency
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What do peasants need to reproduce themselves?
Land access to land. Peasants must have land (and
seeds and tools) to produce. They use theirown labor.
Peasants (throughout history) are NOT specialists. They try
to produce almost everything that they need.
Why? Because the risks of specializing in a single product
are great.
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Thousands of years of peasant culture say, Use the market
to advantage, but do not depend on the market.
Produce what you need.
Feed the family.
Be self-sufficient.
The big question: If 80% of the population does not dependon the market, how can a dependable market develop?
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How do the warriors/lords re-produce themselves, as
individuals and as a class?
Do they directly produce theirown needs (food, clothes, etc.)?
No. They depend on the products ofothers. They take
the surplus (the extra) from the peasant producers.
How do they get the products ofothers?
By force, by command (conquest, taxes, obligations,
laws).
Bypoliticalorganization as a class. They tie the
peasants (by law) to the land and to their service.
Warriors are specialists specialists in force/politics
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The class relationship between warriors and peasants
conditions the economic behaviorof each class:
Warriors/lords can be more powerful if they can get more
from the peasants. But can they?
There is a limit. If warriors take too much, the peasant
family cannot re-produce itself.
Who will work the land, if there are no peasants?
Crisis. Production stops.
No production = no taxes = no warriors.
Conclusion: warriors cannot take everything that the
peasant produces.
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The peasant can have more
by paying less tax to the lords (but will the lords allow this?)
by access to more land (but good land is occupied by other
peasant families)
by producing more efficiently (using better technologies,
improving the land so it is more productive, etc.). But this
requires investment and risk.
Does the peasant have enough surplus to invest in newtechniques -- no, because the lords leave the peasant with only
enough to re-produce.
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Peasants: Crisis and response -- typical patterns:
Crisis: Not enough food. (population is rising, family is larger)
Plan A: cultivate more land
by using marginal land
difficulties: the land is not as good, lower returns; other
peasant families are trying to
do
the same > limitofresources.
Plan B: pay less to the lord
hide, resist, rebel
difficulties: lords/state punish
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Ruling class: crisis and response typical patterns
Crisis taxes are not enough to support warrior class/state:
Plan A: Warriors take more from the peasants.
They demand more taxes and labor services.
But there is a limit and peasants fight back.
Plan B: War. Warrior class goes to war against neighbors.
The goal is more territory (control of more peasants=more
taxes).
War requires more resources. A stronger warrior class
means more warriors.
Plan C: The warrior class/state divides into factions. Warriors
against warriors. The weak warriors are eliminated. There is
more for the victors.
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If the warrior class depends on force (and not on voluntary
economic exchange), what do they invest in?
Do they invest in production, in new techniques of agriculture?
No. Production is primarily in the hands of peasants.
To change the techniques of production, lords would have toremove the peasants from the land.
Can they do this? Who would work the land?
Can they replace peasants with slaves? Possibly.
But slavery is expensive it is another f
orm
of force.
The lords have no economic motive for investing in more
efficient technology.
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Warriors/lords invest in force:
Crude force
Military force (weapons, soldiers, armies)
Political force
Institutions or law/religion/ideology
Networks of personal influence (intisap)Prestige (servants, luxuries, symbols of power)
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The successful ruling class invests in the process of state-
building building state institutions institutions ofstatus
(their status/properties/rights as lords).
They set limitson their individual rights as warri
ors in fav
oro
fconsensus among themselves as a class.
Institutions of state define and structure their status and the
status of the other classes.
kudurru sumerian property rights
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The process of state-building is the process of city-building:
The City = concrete institutions of the symbolic/imaginary order:
Rulers/Soldiers
Temples
Law courts
Artisan producti
on w
orksh
opsMerchants -- Market place
Everyone in the City is a specialist. They depend on the
city/state order. They must exchange.
Walls divide the city (the specialists) from the countryside
(self-sufficient peasants)
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The pre-modern City articulates the symbolic order according to
status. It makes status visible a spatial orderof political and
economic organization.
A place for everyone and everything. And everyone in his/her
place.
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Is like with like functional or symbolic?
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The ideal of niche societies everyone has a proper place
Like properties go with like properties.
Each social group dresses (by law) in the propermanner different
clothing, hats, colors, etc. You can read the whole.
The political/economic orderof the state is visible. And it is fixed
hereditary. It is re-enforced by daily experience. It is re-produced everyday
as an ideal figure of appropriateness (what is proper).
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From pyramid to circle:
the political ideal of pre-modern civilizations
The ideal circle resists change. Change brings crisis. Crisis brings change.
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The Well Ordered Society -- M.C. Escher
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But the circle of justice has conflict at every moment:
Conflict between warri
ors f
or controlof the state.Conflict between the ruling class and peasants for surplus
production.
Conflict between the city/state and the self-sufficient peasant
producer.
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Political ideal eternal properties Technical reality
Trapped in History
This is not the road to the Industrial Revolution. The sumerian-type property
relations must change and must change radically. This change will happen in
England, and only in England, in the 1500s -- not by choice, or intention, or
design. How, why, and consequences next week.