| View single post by Joe Kelley | |||||||||||||
| Posted: Thu Jan 10th, 2008 12:07 pm |
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Joe Kelley
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Another result of this process was that a specialized labor force had to the bused for this kind of work, and for cultivating the land necessary to grow food for those others who were specialized in crafts, public works, and trade. They had to be organized by the community and directed by the elite which did the planning, protecting, and controlling. This means that a much greater accumulation of surplus was needed than in the earlier Neolithic villages, and that this surplus was not just used as food reserve for times of need or growing populations, but as capital to be used for an expanding production. Childe has pointed to another factor inherent in these conditions of life in the river valleys – the exceptional power of the society to coerce its members. The community could refuse a recalcitrant member access to water by closing the channels leading it to his field. This possibility of coercion was one of the foundations upon which the power of kings, priests, and the dominant elite rested once they had succeeded in replacing or, ideologically speaking, “representing” – the social will. (The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness by Erich Fromm page 188 under The Evidence Against the Instictivist Thesis) http://www.amazon.com/Anatomy-Human-Destructiveness-Erich-Fromm/dp/080501604X/ref=pd_sim_b_img_5/104-1378235-6870328 Note: I contend with the inevitability of 'elite' thesis
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