The ABC’s of Communism Bolshevism 2011

Jason W. Smith, Ph.D.

 

Chapter 9: The Stage of Advanced and Theocratic Chiefdoms

An advancing Simple Chiefdom is a society about to be torn apart by antagonistic special interest groups. For Chiefdom society to survive it is essential that the specialist groups and the “ranks” be unified behind the leadership.

The Origin of Religion

For supernaturally steeped people it is religion that can do the job. For there is nothing else. No “state apparatus” (army and police) yet exists so it is impossible to compel obedience of one rank to another or even of one special craft guild to the center. In other words, before there was coercion there was persuasion, because there had to be persuasion, in the absence of the “state” (armed thuggery). It was the only way to insure social unity and cohesion.

The archaeological evidence is clear in this regard. Religions emerged which persuaded people to give over more authority to allocate their abstracted labor-time (labor drafts; annual labor-time voluntarism), and to adjust the amount of produce to be kept in the individual family farming household, per “head,” as the leadership wished. In this way the privileged ranks could take more of the surplus social product being created at the family farm or village commune to the center (themselves). - And, more of the abstracted socially necessary labor-time to the center too, even before it had become surplus social product (which you will recall can also be thought of as “proto-surplus value.”). This was the function of what we call the first “religions” and of their specialist practitioners – the priests and priestesses – the job(s) of which was (were) to support the center and its new selfish extraction (of surplus) policies.

In Mexico we see this religion emerge and spread like wildfire and we call it the Olmec. In Peru it is the Chavin and Paracas. In China, Lungshan. In the Near East the An-En cult. - And, in Egypt the Solar Cult. Structurally they are all the same thing. A unifying religion that persuades people to obey the dictates of the center. Thus reinforced, we see in the archaeological record, in each and every case, that these societies often last a millennia or more. In “short hand” terms, for convenience of rapid calculation when reading archaeological sequences, you can think of this “religious” Stage as lasting in each and every case roughly 1000 years. The ranking becomes acute in these Advanced Theocratic Chiefdoms; the separation of the specialist crafts and guilds the basic feature of their social organization. The selfish and sadistic imprinting of infants and children proceeds apace, as it must, since it is sadistic relations which for the first time are everywhere at hand (as we know archaeologically and even historically) and thus, what all infants and children must see as they mature.

- And, everywhere, abstracted homogenized socially necessary labor-time is emerging (which is to say the new economic category of labor-power.) From now on it will be this proto-labor-power which is the principal form of human labor setting the standard for our formula. Not that concrete human individual laboring activity ceases. Far from it. But, it is the new category of labor-power as applied to technology which sets the pace; acting as the common denominator for the payment of Value 1, even to those who are not part of the category of collectively applied, temporally measured, group labor. From this point forward in history, what is obtainable, by the individual, will be measured by what the collective labor of “corvees” or forced labor (slaves, convicts, captured peoples) has to be paid (in food and shelter – the cost of their minimal subsistence.)

However, the seeds of the destruction of this order are also very much in place. Religion has temporarily solved the problem of “labor discipline” (obtaining voluntary compliance with the theocrats production plan) in the production of surplus (now a definite necessity) but in so doing the practitioners of religion have set themselves up as a factor (new social rank) exacerbating the increasingly complex division of social production. No matter how this increasingly acute struggle over social produce is resolved it is likely the poorest people will get the shit-end of this stick.

Let us look at how our formula says that the SURPLUS VALUE column is subdividing:

       lp + t à V1, V2 + SV           

     Storage/Support         

     Profit/Theocrats

lp = labor-power

t = Chalcolithic and Bronze Age technology in the Old World; Classic and some post-Classic technology in the New World.

V1 = cost of labor-power

V2 = cost of maintaining technology

SV = surplus value: its distribution is the locus of the general crisis in this Stage.

Support = cost of supporting the professional specialists

Storage = that surplus value held in storage

Profit = that appropriated by the high ranks for themselves for the first time

Theocrats = that appropriated by the theocracy for itself; a substantial continuing

appropriation, derived from what the Chiefs and Consigliore took during Simple Chiefdom times (a form of profit.) To the degree that the theocrats are also part of the high ranks, this is a “double dipping” for them.

__ = Religion temporarily solves the problem of labor discipline in the production of surplus (now a definite necessity) but sets itself up as a factor exacerbating the increasingly complex division of social production.

Comment on Process: Monumental architecture (pyramids, Nazca lines, etc.) is an archaeological hallmark of ATC stage society. Such construction is the real world manifestation of religious tenets holding the masses of ignorant farming families in line.  

However, eventually, all the explanation and persuasion of the theocrats in justifying the social order, the division and distribution of surplus social product, (the bullshit in other words) from the priests and priestesses will be insufficient to assuage the anger and insight of the mass of farmers and other lower ranked laborer specialists.

This is the locus of the general crisis of the Stage of Advanced Theocratic Chiefdoms – which is to say on the one hand society must have the theocrats to stay together, and on the other hand, the priests are also simultaneously exacerbating the inherent unjust nature of a society (in the process of dividing against itself, between the haves and have nots) and are contributing to the splitting of society by helping themselves to the maximum as well.

When a crisis arises that puts too many people between a rock and a hard place, and the resolution attempted by the center is blatantly unfair, Ma and Pa Kettle will gather round with their fellow rubes and revolt.  Then they will either tear society apart in a rank war; or some will flee to begin life again in a simpler way, in lands far from the home region; or, a new solution will appear to the civil conflict. What can that be?

Origin of the State

The state! The state is the Army and Police in the pay of the richest families. It exists to compel obedience from the poor families. That is what the “state” means in scientific terms and should not be confused with “government” which existed before the state and which will exist after the state withers away.

The archaeological record is replete with proof of this eventual end to Advanced Theocratic Society in Mesoamerica, the Central Andes, along the Nile, Tigris and Euphrates, Huang ho and Yangtse rivers, and many many other places including East Africa, the Indus, the USA Southwest, the USA Eastern Woodlands, etc. Everywhere it is always the same.

Is there no way forward?

Yes there is, but it involves the emergence of armed force in the very private pay of a few financially powerful families and/or ranks of the old Theocratic Chiefdoms. Where that happens, which is to say, where “the state” emerges, then true class society has also emerged. Ranks have been transmuted into Classes and the ruling classes will domesticate the rest of society.

Mel Gibson’s movie Apocalypto is as perfect a recreation of an Advanced Theocratic Chiefdom (ATC) as I could imagine, and I have no hesitation in recommending this movie to you as an excellent historical example of the stage. It was precisely this kind of society Hernan Cortes and associated investors and adventurers first encountered at the mouth of the Grijalva River in the contemporary state of Tabasco, Mexico, along the Gulf of Mexico coast, as the movie brilliantly illustrates. (The Spanish Monarchy was unaware of Cortes’ existence let alone his adventure against Mexico. In 1518 Cortes put together an investor group of wealthy men and women in Cuba and Hispaniola and a bunch of buccaneers and went after a rumored City of Gold on the newly discovered Mexican Yucatan peninsula.)

As an aside, it is a matter of continuing interest to me that a religious person such as Mr. Gibson should again and again recreate a perfect Marxist example of historical events as in Braveheart, the Patriot, and Apocalypto (the struggle within English feudalism, the North American Revolutionary War and finally the Advanced Theocratic Chiefdoms of the Yucatan peninsula, respectively.)

Stonehenge

Not All Chiefdoms on the Road to Statehood

In Neolithic Europe and thereafter through the early Bronze Age we find a tradition of building large stone structures called Megaliths. Most of these are tombs but some are of the rather spectacular impress-the-sheep variety such as Stonehenge. The latter architecture is clearly a major undertaking of many Tribes, Simple Chiefdoms and at least one Advanced Theocratic Chiefdom in southern England bringing the main construction elements (blue stone) from some 240 miles away. In both cases these projects serve as excellent dumps of communal surplus proto-labor-power (regulated let us say by dawn to dusk collaboration) reinforcing simultaneously the main tenets of the religion of these builders. At Stonehenge we see the equivalent to ATC pyramid construction (or Nazca lines) we have just discussed elsewhere in the world. – And, for exactly the same reasons. But, unlike the Chinese, Mesopotamians, Egyptians, Mesoamericans and Central Andeans, the Stonehenge builders did not move on to statehood immediately. Why? Mainly, because there were inherent economic limitations in the far northerly climate which put a real world cap on surplus social product creation.

What is now Great Britain and Ireland would have to wait the coming of Julius Caesar to learn the glories of true class division, slavery and rule by the Army. With the collapse of the Roman Empire West (c. AD 400) the descendants of Stonehenge would prove they had learned the lessons of Roman class/state society well and permanently.