I like to tell a fable which begins, "And it came to pass, the People
grew Nobles; and the Nobles domesticated the People." The prevalence of what
anthropology-archaeology folks (Renfrew, notably) these days call "peer-
polity interaction" prior to the actual emergence of states is what ensures
there is no such hypothetical event as The Empergence of THE State, but
always and everywhere the emergence of State Systems.
Think about it. If you were going to foster The Emergence/Rise of THE
State, you'd be required to build a wall around yourself for a good long
while, then whilst mercifully undisturbed by your intended victims, think
up a scheme to *get somebody else to do the work*. This is the meaning-purpose-
essence of Civilization, no?
Peer-polity-interaction, the People Grow Nobles, the Nobles Domesticate
the People, ensures that the longrange strategic planning process is super-
fluous. States emerge as State Systems, each polity whereof or wherein helps
sustain the legitimation of all, as they war one with the others, possibly
for centuries, till (a) unification of the state system occurs, giving out
on membership of the resulting Empire in a vaster State System of more
diverse origins; (b) continuity as mutually hostile polities with shifting
enmities and alliances some more stable than others; or (c) simultaneous
decline with possible overthrow of all members of the State System, or
"system collapse" in arch/anthro-speak. Probably it requires several cycles
of System Collapses before the principle gets nailed permanently into the
heads of the Broad Masses: It is in the Nature of Things that some do the
work and altogether others, no kin of theirs (except maybe fictively), do
the Civilization, the latter Thingie being defined as whatever the second,
and by far the smaller, category of humans construes as Worth Expending Time
and Energy Upon. "What is not worth the time and energy of the complete human
being is consigned to women and slaves."
The effect is that H. sap sap is the only species the vast majority of
whose specimens are kept as domesticated animals by members of the same
species. The instrumentalities of this have historically been (a) forced
labour systems (b) guaranteed by the means of violence, where the two are
wielded by the same people until a division of labour occurs between
entrepreneurial and politico-military specialists within the single exploiting-
ruling class, called the bourgeoisie, at least in the old days, by what are
now Reactionary Traditionalists.
The state, being stuck in ruts of demography and geography, or Blood and
Soil (*Blut und Boden*), to put a "positive" fascist face on it, where by
positive is meant coerced optimism as part of the nationalism-militarism-
imperialism associated with such irrationalist creeds (but not with them
alone), is handicapped in relation to the competition for control of new
resources, all of them potential sources of power and influence; the state
is relegated to leavings and pickings. Such as its forte, monopoly of the
means of violence in a given territory. This is good for guaranteeing the
social relations (I'm leaving off the "of production" part, as it's not
clear that the economy isn't qualitatively changed beyond anything those
Marxist coinages can handle), but not for initiatives in managing the flow
of the new Thingies bought and sold in new markets. Which are increasingly
embodiments of mental life, each one Maningfully Different from another one
coming in a similar box of different colour and cover design. The State is
the vanishing preserve of stupid, backward people whose remnant tasks are
the breaking of heads among the losers and the making of heads among the
winners. Both ends of this, or two tails of the distribution, if you wish
to Ring The Bell Curve, BONG, BONG, BONG, are contained within the Education
Industry, the largest mental-life-products manufacturer in society out there
and in here; and it can be shown to employ most of you on this list. Who quite
understandably wish to Discuss Discursively among your own kind, with minimal
obstruction or obfuscation from ignramuses and disruptionists who Simply Don't
Understand and Waste Our Valuable Time.
The foregoing message has been slipped into the text by Dialectical Process,
and is not necessarily the Opinion of the writer, who is a left-hemispherical
linear thinker, not as a rule one to get tangled up in contradictions. On this
occasion, however, a little Perspective has been deemed Healthy and Progressive
by some Homunculus upstairs. Sorry for the disturbance.
Now, it is to be expected that the graduate schools, the crown jewels of
the Education Industry, are ever more visibly differentiable from the holding
pens in which those masses socially constructed as Stupid, Uneducable,
Mindless, or falling short of criteria of cost-benefit-analysis origin for
receipt of consciousness-development services are given rudimentary motions
to go through prior to condemnation to sporadic-to-permanent unemployability.
The State, in its national form, guarantees Inequality, ie, Inferiority for
the majority and even vast majority. Recall the foregoing definition of
Civilization as operationalized by the Civilized since inceptions of agreed-
upon Civilizations: some do the work, us folks who write the book you are
reading and appreciate art, etc, do the Civilization. Which should be self-
evident, or there is Something Wrong With You. Diagnoses of Reality Impariment
are made by experts trained and retained for this purpose, and Reality, for
our purposes, shall be defined as ideology taken as Real-like pending desertion
of the army, as it's guaranteed by the means of violence like all social
relations.
Did I really need to have said all of this again?
Under what conditions does the dissolution of nation-state frontiers to
constitute larger territorial units wherein capital sloshes around happily
in its larger pool or tank (with less constraint, that is to say, from
barriers onceuponatime set up by nation states on their frontiers but now
serving no "useful" purpose, ie, to business)? We're not completely sure
yet, but it's a growing pattern in North America and Europe that inequalities
are standardized, and isolated cases of egalitarianism in this or that country
are found Uneconomic. Canada. Sweden. Ex-Yugoslavia (in its own curious way,
but I'm editorializing, since whatever was wrong with Ex-Yugoslavia before,
is except for Slovenia, maybe, infinitely worse). Name your once-favourite
Model, and Serious Economists disdain it. Even New Zealand, world's most
tiresomely rational country, whose prime minister, Jim Bolger, makes John
Major look interesting, has got itself a fascist (by New Zealand standards,
that is, terribly civilized) party, New Zealand First, which is leading in
the polls at this time, and is pledged to a species of, up to a point, Pat
Buchananization of the ruling National Party's marketized utopia (up to,
that is, a New Zealandistic sensible point). I am told, and find it difficult
but, given New Zealand's being what it is, ie, unexciting, New Zealand First
will be the first antiracist fascist party, hence not truly fascist, except
by New Zealand standards, since its appeals include generous support of Maori
cultural nationalism. (This may all turn out to be wrong, based as it is on
fragmentary stories in the press including The Economist; nothing, it is
taken for granted, ever happens all that much in New Zealand.)
Vote for the McGillicuddy Serious Party, play it safe, New Zealand.
Daniel A. Foss