Lecture 15 - Revolution in Property, Part 1

8/6/2019 Lecture 15 - Revolution in Property, Part 1

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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.

Lecture 15 - Revolution in Property, Part 1

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